Quixotic

And You Thought I Would Wiggle Out of This Topic

Now, I believe we were talking about moral values, were we not?  As in, the principles pertaining to right and wrong conduct.  And we considered leaving this discussion for the great thinkers, and then I said poppycock; but then a coffee was in order, and then there was work - always, work - and so here we are, again.

As I could easily spend the remainder of November on this topic - and perhaps I will - let me start with something that Derrida said about ethics.  Derrida said, and I am paraphrasing here, that simply following an accepted norm or behavior is not ethical.  That is to say, if society has already established right and wrong behavior, and we are simply abiding by it, ethics are not required.  Ethics are necessary when you don't know what to do in a situation, when there are no clear guidelines for behavior, when you have to make a decision.  This, he said, is when ethics come into play, when you have to invent the rule:

"That's where responsibility starts, when I don't know what to do.  If I knew what to do, well, I would apply the rule...  Ethics start when you don't know what to do, when there is a gap between knowledge and action, and you have to take responsibility for inventing the new rule which doesn't exist... This is very dangerous and you have no guarantee.  An ethics with guarantees is not an ethics.  If you have an ethics with some insurance, and you know that if you are wrong the insurance will pay, it isn't ethics.  Ethics is dangerous."  (Derrida, 2001)

Dangerous.

My question is this: what drives us to be concerned about right and wrong in the first place?  Is it the need to reduce or minimize the natural tensions which result from our everyday interactions with each other, with society?  I keep going back to the double-bind.  I keep going back to cognitive dissonance.  I keep going back to Self and Others.

But these are discussions for another day.

My Schtick

Sometimes people ask me about work.  How's work?  they ask. 

Work is... well, work.  I like to work.  Here's a funny thought I had the other day: I was mentally weighing my advantages over some of our competitors, and their strategies and positions compared to mine, when it dawned on me that my competitive advantage is not that I am more knowledgeable in my field, or more experienced, or have a larger staff, or that my prices are lower (because they aren't), or that I smoke more cigars, or drink more wine, or that I make better small talk (because I don't), or that I play the game better than anyone else.  My big charm, the thing that brings in the business, is my integrity.

Integrity is my schtick.

It's my gimmick, my bit of performance art in this bidness we call international engineering.  The message is right there between every line I write, in each discourse and diatribe I deliver about my work: You can count on me to do the right thing.

What's more, when I really stop to think about it, it turns out I have been in the integrity racket for quite some time.  I have built my entire reputation on it, apparently.  I have fought and rallied to not be labeled as flaky, indolent, irresponsible, obtuse, or otherwise unreliable.  And let me tell you: flaky has been a tough one.  It's been a real battle, the Battle Against the Flake.  Even when I put on my best poker face, the Flake Factor flashes its fistful of freakiness.  Oh, Caprice!  Reign in your wanton impulses, I implore you, bridle your mercurial whimsy!  And put a halter on your wontons, Caprice.  Do as I say, damn you, or I shall cast hideous horse-related metaphors upon you until you founder, until you gallop away with little she-dogs nipping at your heels!

But integrity, as I was saying, is more than the sum of its parts, if one can ignore that highly erroneous application of mathematical principle for a moment.  Integrity is an adherence to moral values.  And this brings us to ask: what are moral values, and how may we adhere to them?  These questions, you may say, should be reserved for the great thinkers, but I say poppycock.  That's right: poppycock.  It's a word.  Look it up if you don't believe me.  But you will believe me, because I am a person of unquestionable moral values.

Now I would like to elaborate on my moral values, but I seem to be in need of a coffee.  And then, to be honest, I really should get some work done around here.  Thanks for asking.

The Power of Short-Term Thinking

I always liked the little doohickey in Men in Black which zapped people with a blinding, brainwashing light after they came into contact with aliens.  What a delightful gadget.  I want to order one today.

On a related note, someone very correctly pointed out to me after my post about the Exchange Rate a few days ago that the Dollar has been dropping like a hit of bad acid for years.  Not months.  Years.

And it's so true.  When I moved to Portugal in January 2000, the local currency was the Escudo.  The strange thing is, I just looked at some images of those old escudos and they look completely unfamiliar to me, even though I carried them around in my pockets for several years.  What can I say?  I have a revisionist mind.  I am the sole victim and beneficiary of self-zapping.  Unnecessary information?  Zap.  How lovely it is to have such a selective memory; I rarely have to worry about all those irrelevant thoughts cluttering up my mind.

Anyhoo, when the Euro was physically introduced in January 2002, I carried both currencies for several months during the transition period.  This was relatively easy for me, but lifelong residents who had never used any currency other than their beloved Escudo found this to be confusing.  Even today, the prices of many products in stores throughout Europe are displayed in both the old and new currencies.

Upon arrival of those shiny, new Euros, the exchange rate with the U. S. Dollar was around 1 Euro = 0.89 USD.  Now it is 1 Euro = 1.46 USD.  This has been a steady decline over the past six years, and with each drop we think certainly it has hit rock bottom now.

I am beginning to doubt that.  I think we will see it hit 1.50 USD/Euro by the end of the year, and onward to 1.60 USD/Euro shortly after that.  There seems to be no end in sight.

Except... wait... 2008 is an election year, right? 

Perhaps next year our poor dollar will see a temporary reprieve and we will all forget about this nasty trend in the bright, shining light of a healthy economy.  And, besides, who cares about the dollar anyway? 

Zapppp.

Dollar?  What dollar?

Colores

In the Parque Maria Luisa today there were several outdoor art exhibitions celebrating autumn colors.  Among them, frogs with streamers issuing forth from their mouths:

An array of colored disposable plastic plates in random patterns at one of the playgrounds:

And, my favorite, a curious display of leftover books from a university course.  They were selling them for 3 Euros each.

I picked up a copy of Don Quijote de la Mancha (part I), in Spanish.  The illustrations in this edition are delightful, drawn by Pilar Coomonte:

That was pretty much all I did today.

X Rates

I am always curious: do Americans know that the Dollar is weakening against other currencies?  Like, a lot?  In January the exchange rate was 1.30 USD/Euro, and now it is up to almost 1.47 USD/Euro. 

Here's the data for the past 3 months:

2007-08-10	Friday, August 10	1.3686	USD
2007-08-13	Friday, August 17	1.3492	USD
2007-08-20	Friday, August 24	1.3645	USD
2007-08-27	Friday, August 31	1.3641	USD
2007-09-03	Friday, September 7	1.3772	USD
2007-09-10	Friday, September 14	1.3848	USD
2007-09-17	Friday, September 21	1.4076	USD
2007-09-24	Friday, September 28	1.4219	USD
2007-10-01	Friday, October 5	1.4154	USD
2007-10-08	Friday, October 12	1.4168	USD
2007-10-15	Friday, October 19	1.4263	USD
2007-10-22	Friday, October 26	1.439	USD
2007-10-29	Friday, November 2	1.4481	USD
2007-11-05	Friday, November 9	1.4665	USD

Data taken from this website which I check every day.

En El Supermercado

In the supermercado today, an old man hunches over a box of pre-packaged chocolate doughnuts, studying them intensely.  He holds up a hand as I pass by-

Excuse me, can you see the expiration date on this?

I take the box and look carefully at it, finding the small black letters printed on one side.  It is here, 14 November.  Today is 9 November.

Thank you very much, he nods and takes the box back, straining to see the tiny print.  I stand in the checkout line; he continues to inspect the package.  Eventually he shrugs and puts it in his basket.

He doesn't know it, but he just made my day.  Six months ago I dreaded when total strangers asked me questions in Spanish; today I have a certain sense of pride that I could not only understand but respond to his need. 

The expiration date!  I knew that one!

Expressing One's Self

When I graduated from college, a friend presented me with a coffeemaker as a gift.  I thought it odd at the time. 

No, not odd; I thought it was a joke, a gag gift of sorts to welcome me to the working world, the one where white collar lackeys stand around water coolers and gum-chewing secretaries take phone messages while filing their nails.

I quickly learned that the corporate reality was, in fact, even worse than the stereotype.  Water cooler conversations drifted into offices where the staff passed much of the early morning discussing sports and interoffice memos; secretaries regularly escaped to smoke breaks outside, beneath the awnings, and pinned notes to refrigerator food; some of my colleagues spent entire afternoons playing solitaire and mahjong.  Few people, it seemed, were truly interested in the work at hand.

So the coffee machine seemed more of a symbolic gesture than an actual practical gift.  I even drank coffee symbolically, at first.  I only started using it as a stimulant a few years later, and not even regularly.

When I moved to Portugal, however, coffee became the social focal point of the work day.  Decisions were made over a coffee.  This coffee, of course, was a much different breed than the kind dripped through a flimsy filter; this coffee was pressed through a small steel cup.  This coffee whispered to my veins, barked instructions at my arteries.  It was swallowed in an instant, leaving only a faint african odor on my lips.  I learned how to request it curto, how to order un pingo, how to ask for a meia de leite when I wanted to linger a bit.  I even learned which cafes had expresso machines which operate on gas when the electric power failed.  And now, in Spain, I have adapted my tastes to the ever-popular cafe con leche and the occassional cafe solo when I need a quick boost. 

As the coffee has changed, so too has my work environment.  Long gone are the days of drippy corporate meetings; work is now more intense.  It occurs to me now that my versatility and expertise in coffee has, in a certain sense, mirrored my professional aptitude.  One might even say that coffee is a fair representation of my professional life, that as I have become a master of coffee, so too have I developed my trade. 

It seems that now I am not able to separate the act of drinking coffee - which is not even referred to as "drinking" here, but more accurately as "taking a coffee" - from the social self-act of becoming invigorated and, I daresay, integrated. 

Anyway, it's certainly good for staving off the urge to play mahjong.

Serenades

Belgium is an interesting place because it is almost like being in two countries, one predominantly french and the other dutch, and oddly enough they don't get along all that well.  Brussels is perhaps the most international city I have ever visited, the seat of the European parliament, headquarters of the EU and NATO, with signs plastered in four languages in almost every public setting.  It is one of the few places in Europe where I don't feel immediately identified as American because there are so many foreigners milling about speaking English.

Upon landing in Sevilla, I shed layers of clothing and dug out my sunglasses, soaking in a balmy 21C compared to a chilly 7C in Brussels this morning.  The taxi driver from the airport had tuned the radio to a station that played 99 Red Balloons, which was a different experience than my last three Sevillano taxi drivers, all of whom sang to Spanish flamenco music during my trip.  This used to embarrass me, or at least make me feel terribly uncomfortable, that a cabbie would sing loudly and passionately while I passively listened in the backseat, but I find that I have grown quite used to it and even think of it as an endearing quality in these southern Spaniards. 

You would most certainly not encounter singing taxi drivers in, say, Germany.  I had the fortune of having our "regular" cabbie in Frankfurt yesterday.  He is a taxi driver of unknown origin who happened to pick up our regional manager for a fare a few years ago and became our regular guy ever since then.  On the twenty-minute ride to the train station he spoke honestly and at length about how Germans treat foreigners, his high opinion of my boss, and his disdain for people who use mobile phones (handys) on trains.

On this last point I asked him how he felt about people speaking on their handys while riding in his cab.  It's one of those things I have always wanted to ask, a curiosity similar to wondering about tipping for various services in different countries, and decided to take advantage of our regular cabbie's candor to find out.  His answer: he is fine with it if the person is seated in the back behind the passenger's seat, but does not like it if they are in the front passenger's seat or directly behind him. 

I never had the opportunity to inquire further about this because he then went into a discourse about how it is acceptable to make a short call on a public train, but if he finds that someone is having a long conversation and is bothering the other passengers, the most effective way to make them stop is by repeating what they say.  Upon hearing their conversation repeated the offender will immediately desist their infraction and everyone can contentedly continue their travel in silence.

I nodded and smiled, wondering to myself how he would feel about being serenaded by our uninhibited, latino taxi drivers in Seville.

Alighting

The train on the way back to Brussels was full of orderly Germans and their over-polite train etiquette. 

At each stop, the illuminated sign at the front of the car would show a message in German, French, and then English.  It says:

We will soon be arriving in Bonn.  Alight in the direction of travel: right.

Alight?  I looked it up in the dictionary and it means to disembark, to get down, as from a vehilcle.  Dismount.

Tomorrow I return to Sevilla and normalcy.

O Coração Do Mundo

A lovely train ride today from Brussels to Frankfurt, complete with autumn foliage and quaint landscapes.  There is nothing quite like traveling by rail in Europe, and now they do not even stop at border crossings.  Even so, the train crawled along through the Belgian countryside, only picking up speed for the final stretch after Koln (Cologne). 

Every time I am in Frankfurt I stay at a different hotel in another part of town, and I never feel like I really get to know this city.  Right now I am staring out my 5th floor window at downtown Frankfurt, watching my reflection looking back at me.  Tomorrow I spend the day in the office here at a strategy session, then a train back to Brussels in the evening, then back to Spain on Wednesday.  I can never suppress the amazement and wonder of being in three countries in three successive days, immersed in multiple languages and converging cultures.  Western Europe feels, to me, like it's the heart of the world.