In a kosher restaurant

I had lunch in a Jewish restaurant on 33rd Street, between Lexington and 2nd Avenues (a Lonely Planet pick). I ordered the keplach, which I didn't know what was. I asked the waitress, an old woman, but didn't understand what she said. Before the keplach (with sautéed onions: that I knew I liked), I asked about the blintzes, and about the pierogen, all words written under the heading "Traditional dishes" on the menu - but, as I say, I didn't understand the woman and didn't ask again. It was good enough to be in a traditional New York restaurant, with tables, tablecloths, chairs, real knives and forks, waiters and waitresses serving tables and going around asking if everything were fine,... and not in one of those take-away places, or do-it-all-yourself places (and do it fast), so ugly, disheartening, and common in New York. So I had the keplach, which were balls of meat and tasted very good, specially with the onions.


Keplach.


PS: How's this for a lyric (heard on a latino drugstore, in Brooklyn)?:

No te quites la ropa-a-a-a
Que quiero hacerlo yo-o-o
Sin que tú te des cuenta-a-a-a
Con manos de ladró-óoon

PS 2: João Gilberto is being played everywhere. :)

PS3: Many people are asking: "How do you like New York?", like deferential people do in Rio, Recife or Salvador. Something unthinkable in 2000 or before.

PS4: Yesterday night I found myself lying about my age for the first time. (It wasn't funny.)

PS5: Next post about John Updike. :(

My favorite café

In my favorite café they make the best omelettes, salads, cakes, muffins, etc. and play the best music. Yesterday I listened to "Perfect Day". And then to "Satellite of Love".




Tiny Cup: my favorite café.

Dumbo, Brooklyn

Julia and the Manhattan Bridge.


In a café on Front Street.


Apparently somebody had jumped off the bridge.
These two journalists were looking for the body.

P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center

Circular Mirror, by Olafur Eliasson.


Under the Circular Mirror, with Pedro and Julia.


Swimming Pool, by Leandro Erlich.


Julia under the water.





White face, by Gino De Dominicis.


Red room, by Gino de Dominicis.


Self-portrait, by Gino De Dominicis. :p

Fugitiva (Runaway), de Alice Munro

Fragmento do conto "Poderes".

Fomos até a North Bridge, onde várias pessoas, em sua maioria homens e rapazes na hora do almoço, se tinham reunido para ver o degelo. Os blocos nem estavam tão grandes neste ano, depois que o inverno demorara tanto a começar. Ainda assim, o gelo se chocava com os pilares da ponte, se estraçalhava e produzia um barulho tremendo, como sempre, com os pequenos filetes de água correndo em meio aos blocos. A única coisa a fazer era ficar olhando para aquilo como se fosse um espetáculo hipnótico, e meus pés foram congelando. O degelo pode ter começado, mas o inverno ainda não dá a impressão de ter chegado ao fim e a primavera ainda parece muito distante. Perguntei-me como é que algumas pessoas agüentavam ficar ali paradas, achando aquilo uma diversão suficiente para horas a fio de contemplação.

Walking around Manhattan

A bronze ear in a subway station. (There's another one on the other side
of the steel beam, so you can actually whisper your secrets.)


Wall Street. (The outgoing Administration or the money-mad pirates
of Wall Street and other markets - somebody should pay for the disaster.)


A bus on 6th Avenue.


Battery Park. (Não parecem vitórias-régias de gelo?)





PS (en català!): Vaig ben abrigat, ja no tinc fred. Samarreta + jersei + forro polar + jaqueta. Texans gruixuts. Les botes de muntanya. I em vaig comprar un gorro a Zara i uns guants a H&M. Ara amb el gorro els cabells sempre em queden llisos (new look). Sento tan poc el fred que aprofito per passejar, que és el que volia fer des del principi. Vaig a museus petits que no coneixia...

PS 2: Hi ha persones de l'alberg que busquen feina i no en troben. La cosa a Nova York està molt fotuda. S'estan perdent molts llocs de treball (és l'estat on se n'estan perdent més) i no hi ha feina ni de cambrer, la gent ha deixat de sortir, anar als restaurants, etc. País econòmicament en decadència total. La gent omple la biblioteca pública, ocupa totes les taules de les enormes cafeteries de Barnes & Noble (sense comprar llibres), totes les cadires i sofàs dels Starbucks (sense prendre res).

New Museum

The New - and almost empty - Museum.


At least it has some nice views.


And some beautiful paintings by Mary Heilmann (only until January, 26).


PS: Lines of poetry found in today's newspaper (from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets):

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time

A hostel with a view

View from my bed in the 1st floor.


View from the third floor.



Advertising in the subway. It reads: Stay at home, cause it's fucking cold.


PS: It's getting better all the tay-ay-ay-ayme! :)

The Brooklyn Museum

Today I went to the Brooklyn Museum. There I found nothing particularly special, except for the African art collection. But I just wanted to spend time indoors, away from the cold - worse than cold: "frigid", the NY Times says -, and the visit served that purpose.

This is a Dan mask. Individuals wearing masks like this one "were believed to be incarnate spiritual beings capable of rendering unbiased judgments". It's made of wood, organic material (?), monkey skin (!), and iron nails. It was found in Liberia and dates from the 19th century.

Back in New York

I shouldn't be writing this, I don't want to worry anybody, but anyway: I took a non-regular cab from the airport to the hostel. I exchanged some words with two guys, who said they had all the papers and their price was cheaper, and trusted them (they were not the only people offering alternative rides to tourists), so a black guy took me to Bedford-Stuyvesant, in Brooklyn - he said he had grown up there, didn't need directions. On the way, he told me about the plane landing on the Hudson. I said: you're kidding, and he turned the radio on so that I could listen to the news. We passed through deserted areas, abandoned apartment buildings and factories, until we arrived at a corner that he didn't think could be my destination. Good luck, man, he said. Patricia, a Japanese-looking girl who speaks Spanish (she studied for a while in Madrid, she said), showed me, in a quick tour, the hostel common areas - living room, TV room, kitchen -, which looked comfortable enough to me; but soon I found everything a bit of a mess. In the kitchen, the dishes had not been washed and I couldn't find a glass to drink tap water; food seemed to belong to everybody and nobody, cramming the refrigerator and the kitchen cabinets; nobody was in charge of anything, Patricia being just one of the residents. I wrote to Gabriela asking for moral support. She knows about this kind of places, she stayed in a very similar one in Madrid - I know about them too, but the ones I've been in, with her, have always been nicer, cleaner, more well-organized, all of them better, most of them a lot much better than this one. I wrote to her that the place was a chaos and that today I'd leave to find somewhere else to stay. I wrote about each floor having only one bathroom, about the conditions of the kitchen, the freaks I had already met. About a hysterical, very young Brazilian girl, for instance, shouting at her mum, via Skype, not to be hysterical. I thought and also told Gabriela that staying and getting to know these people - the majority of them, I must say, isolated, keying on their laptops - could be interesting, but things got worse when I went out to a Chinese restaurant. They said it was a Chinese restaurant, but it was an empty, distressing, scary take-away with the lights like those in the shops in Blade Runner. Back at the hostel, I ate the chicken chop suey, and went to bed decided to stay just one night.

I woke up with the same idea in mind. I took a shower at 8 o'clock, using someone else's soap, and went out to try to find a place where I could have breakfast and go through my Lonely Planet guide. The stretch of Bedford where the hostel is is all but lively, and to have coffee there is only a take-away. At some point, though, I turned into a street full of brownstones - sad, abandoned-looking brownstones, but brownstones all the same -, bare gray trees, and creaking snow on the sidewalk, and I passed by a black man (I'm in a mainly black neighborhood) walking two dogs. The man might have seen me too pensive, because he said, in a loud voice: "Good morning, how are you?". I answered, and I guess it was a few steps later that I decided to stay. That was a warm welcome. The Café that I found definitely cheered me up. It was homely, cozy, with two long wooden tables and two armchairs, with a magazine rack, all very country-like. And it had all kinds of salads, soups, pastries. The woman was in lack of bread, so I couldn't have the scrambled eggs, but I had a delicious, home-made banana muffin and a big cup of coffee with milk. Reading the guide I realized that in cheap places in Manhattan I'd be spending in four days what I paid for four weeks in the hostel. I also read a little bit more about it - the hostel. "For the adventurous", the guide says, "there are B&B in Brooklyn (...). For the experimental-minded, oversized 'loftstels' - big lofts turned into communal dorms in Williamsburg and Bedford-Stuyvesant".

Back in the room, I found my fourth room-mate - he wasn't there when the other two and I went to sleep. Guess what. He's from Porto Alegre. Guess what. He studies Law at PUCRS. We had a nice talk, I standing in the small space between the two bunks, he laying in the upper bed in front of the one I'm in, his laptop on. Downstairs I also talked to the hysterical Brazilian girl, a student from São Paulo. I took the G train and then the A train to Manhattan, and noticed that one of every three people was reading, including the passengers standing up. Books, mainly. A guy was reading the newspaper; a middle-aged woman, a folded New Yorker - holding it with one hand. I got off at 16th Street and had my second coffee with milk while reading about the unbelievable landing of the plane in the Hudson yesterday. And then headed towards what was my neighborhood in 2000, my hands and face aching because of the cold - it's freezing, I didn't say that yet; walking down the avenues, my nylon jacket crackles as if covered by a thin layer of hard snow.

(...)

Nada sustituye la visita, pero...

Postal de Barcelona: mi casa

www.urbarna.com

... Lo nunca visto: mi casa - o la casa de mis padres - convertida en postal de Barcelona. Y no en una postal cualquiera, sino en una de esas postales cool que retratan lugares poco o nada emblemáticos de la ciudad y se venden sólo en las tiendas de los museos de arte moderno. Uri, el fashionite de la familia, nos ha traído varias hoy al mediodía.

De El País para vocês (Una universidad nueva, de José Ramón Alonso*)

No atual debate sobre a universidade fala-se pouco do que talvez seja o mais importante: o que estamos fazendo. O diálogo aberto com o professor, a discussão de casos, o trabalho em equipe, a investigação simples, a reflexão e a defesa pública de um tema são infelizmente mais exceção do que regra nas salas de aula universitárias. E quando acontecem maravilhamo-nos, docentes e estudantes, de quão divertido e interessante pode ser dar e receber aula.

O Espaço Europeu de Educação Superior é a oportunidade de, sem deixar de ter os conhecimentos imprescindíveis de cada disciplina, não dedicarmos todo o esforço a memorizar, e centrarmos no que um universitário necessita saber e saber fazer. Coisas assim:

Primeiro, deve saber ler. Parece insultante, mas é certo; deve saber ler e extrair as idéias principais de um texto, submeter a juízo crítico o que esse autor afirma, ser capaz de contrastar com outras fontes e chegar a conclusões próprias, pessoais.

Segundo, deve saber escrever; e não estou falando de não cometer erros ortográficos, nem de saber pôr letras juntas (isso deve ser dado por feito), senão de comunicar com claridade, com eficácia, com uma extensão equilibrada, com rigor no uso da informação, com a mente posta no leitor.

Terceiro, deve saber falar, falar a uma pessoa e falar a 100. Ser capaz de apresentar as idéias próprias e indagar as alheias. Conduzir e ganhar um debate. Respeitar os tempos e usar apoios efetivos. Não é fútil: saber falar bem considera-se o primeiro fator de sucesso na carreira profissional.

Quarto, deve ter disciplina. Realizar esforços continuados no tempo, fazer um programa e cumprir-lo; se comprometer e respeitar os compromissos. Ser leal com os colegas e consigo mesmo. E isso se aprende em sala de aula, mas também em um time de rugby ou no coro da universidade.

Quinto, deve ter uma visão internacional. Deve se expressar em inglês com soltura e ter certas habilidades em, ao menos, um outro idioma. Deve conhecer outros países como universitário, e isto implica ter uns conhecimentos básicos da política, a história, as aspirações, as fortalezas e as dificuldades desse país.

Sexto, deve ser criativo. No seu trabalho e na sua vida. Deve explorar a arte em qualquer de suas manifestações. Não só como espectador, também como autor; não ficar sempre na margem, passivo ou mero crítico do que os outros acometem; deve implicar-se.

Sétimo, deve conhecer as ferramentas próprias de sua disciplina, seja o método científico ou as grandes tradições culturais das Humanidades.

Oitavo, deve estar alfabetizado nas novas tecnologias. Chatear, mas também configurar uma conta de correio, usar uma folha de cálculo, construir uma base de dados e editar um texto, uma imagem e um vídeo.

Nono, deve ter uma cultura geral. Não pode ser que o estudante de História, frente a uma regra de três, ou o cálculo de uma percentagem, diga "Eu sou de Letras"; nem que o de Ciências não saiba quem foi Augusto.

Décimo, romper os decálogos, acabar com as tradições estúpidas, como os critérios de panelinha, com o que dirão e o não me importo.

Undécimo e último, deve ter uma visão ética. Em todas as épocas houve problemas e dilemas, perspectivas e limitações que deram a medida do ser humano de cada tempo e cada lugar. E isso não é diferente no século XXI, onde não há mais problemas locais nem soluções únicas. E isso é Espaço Europeu, e isso é Universidade.


*Reitor da Universidad de Salamanca


PS: Décimo segundo, ditado espanhol: "O que a natureza não dá, Salamanca não empresta".

Bolhas douradas de cava

Não gosto de publicidade, mas acho que vale a pena compartilhar este comercial de Freixenet com os amigos brasileiros (quem sabe já passou na TV brasileira, sendo que Freixenet há anos está nas prateleiras dos supermercados do país, mas acredito que não). A cada Natal, essa marca de cavas (espumante produzido na Catalunha) e vinhos apresenta o comercial mais caro e mais esperado da TV espanhola. Grandes atores e atrizes, principalmente norte-americanos, mas também espanhóis, já foram seus protagonistas, e em 2007 a atração foi o diretor, Martin Scorsese. Neste Natal, porém, não houve figuraças, e mesmo assim o comercial ficou muito bom. As estrelas, desta vez, são as garotas do time olímpico espanhol de nado artístico, que representam as bolhas douradas do cava; a música é um "sapateado" flamenco; o comercial foi rodado em um tipo de estúdio aquático que só existe em Londres, nos Pinewood Studios; e o realizador é Howard Greenhalgh. Coloco o link para o site de Freixenet, pois a qualidade no Youtube é menor.

http://www.burbujasfreixenet.com/video.htm

The places we live

http://www.theplaceswelive.com/

Dancing on New Year's Eve

Montse, Alma, Roger, Vicen, Anna, Toni, Joan, Miquel, Cristina. (Agora só falta você, iê, iê... :)