25 min 34 sec

2 August 2010
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

25 min e 43 sec. Questo e’ tutto quello che ho in questo momento. Corro a passo lento sulla camminata in riva al mare qui ad Hai Phong. Il mare e’ mosso, di un colore marrone fatto di sedimenti. Il vento umido e caldo. In lontanza il profile delle isole di Ha Long Bay si confonde nelle nuvole basse e grigie del monsone.

Corro. Musica nell’ iPod. Il concerto a Slane Castle vicino a Dublino degli U2. Un passo dopo l’altro. Creo i miei obbiettivi un poco alla volta: raggiungi quel muretto, fino alla prossima curva, arriva fino a quella pianta, passa il furgoncino rosso.

Alla mia destra pensioni vuote che si affacciano sul mare. Hanno un’aria triste e abbandonata affacciati su di un mare incazzato. I balconi con alcune sedie di plastica. Passo un gruppetto di uomini anziani seduti su un muretto rivolti al mare, parlano tra di loro e seguono il moto delle onde vestiti in pigiama azzurri come se fossero fuggiti da una casa di cura. Lungo la spiaggia vedo un vecchio bunker della guerra e penso che magari questi anziani sono reduci venuti per una visita ai loro ricordi. Chi lo sa. Raggiungo la fine della strada e torno indietro. I pensieri mi tornano alla mente e sono di pece come questo cielo.

Nostalgia of Argentina.

18 July 2010
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

How can I feel nostalgia for a country I have never visited? And yet, that is how I feel.

Some ingredients help of course: the never satisfied enough need to see new places and observe how people live, the need for new landscapes, the nervous excitement that precede the exit from the airport of an unknown city. The most important ingredient, however, remains music. Music makes you travel ahead of time, make you jump from one corner of the world to another, makes you imagine places you have not yet been through the lens of wishes, memories, and life. I am listening to Pampa by Gustavo Santaolalla and dream of Argentina, the huge landscapes of Patagonia, the long distances on buses and trains, the barren landscapes for summer trekking, reach small towns and pueblos and look for an accommodation in the late afternoon. Alone or together. I have never been there but something in this music tells me a familiar story, a Southern story that I seem to know but wish now to discover and live.

Us and Them

18 July 2010
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

I am at the entrance of the pagoda of Gangaramaya in Colombo.  As in the the pagoda compound everybody is walking barefoot, I take off my shoes and walk towards an old man sitting a table. Old style, black framed glasses. He sits at a table and issues tickets to foreign tourists. ‘100 Rupies, sir’ he says and opens the receipts book to issue mine. I put my shoes in a plastic basket and pay. I walk towards the main temple. The bajaj driver who brought me here offers to be my guide.   He shows me into the main temple touching the big wooden doors and saying how nice the carvings are. In the main hall we stand in front of a huge Buddha, maybe five meters high. Legs folded in the  lotus position,  The left hand resting on one knee, the palm of the right hand facing the world world. The Buddha wears a very strong orange robe. His skin is really pink and the lips are very red. He looks as peaceful always. Just in front of the the statue a table covered with jasmine flowers, a bowl with water, few glasses with tea. Offer to the Buddha. My guide touches the table and then bring his palms to his forehead as a salute. The face of Buddha is rounder that in in statues I saw in Cambodia, Laos, or Thailand. Though all countries share the same Theravada Buddhism.

I look around me. There are smaller Buddha statues all around the room on tables, in corners, on the floor. All colorful. All with the same peaceful expression. Some oil lamps burn slowly their greasy liquid. They see to want to take their time in burning out.

The wooden ceiling has a huge mandala. On the walls images of Buddha’s life. They remind me of the same images I saw in Cambodian pagodas. More dilapidated or simple than here, but nevertheless depicting Buddha as a pilgrim, Buddha under the body tree, the Buddha protected from the rain by the naga.

We leave the main hall and walk around the temple. At the right corner there is a large body tree that emerges from though the ceiling of one of a side building. We walk up to the terrace where the trunk of the body tree is surrounded by a metal fence. Two young women wit on tiny chairs holding small book, chanting softly in a whisper in the direction of the tree. A man walks around the tree. He holds a metal bowl with water. He chants in an hypnotic rhythm, and throws drops of water on the tree trunk. A woman has just empties a similar bowl of water and rises it to her forehead while standing in front of the body tree, her eyes are closed.

How peaceful is this place.

We enter a small museum which holds a collection of hundreds of Buddha images. They all seem gift by visitors and pilgrims. Outside, in a corner of the yard,  an instructor is teaching to a  young elephant is how to stop, walk, turn right and left at his orders. The elephant is young and has large white eyes that give him a worried expression. But he seems more curious than worried and moves around to sniff furniture and the people who observe.

We are leaving. I turn to look once more the huge body tree. I remember the man walking around it in endless circles, his chanting. My mind goes to to two weeks ago when I was in Phnom Penh. One late afternoon I went  playing with my daughters in the compound of Wat Lanka, near the  Independent monument. A similar atmosphere than here besides the elephant. The same young monks in their orange ropes. The same softened noise of the city around the temple.

Few days after Phnom Penh, were stayed for one day in Manila and went to visit Intramuros, the old citadel. There we visited St. Augustin, the oldest church in the Philippines, built for the first time in 1607. We entered the church though the heavy and dark wooden door.  Inside the light coloured columns, a lot of golden decorations, the statues of various saints glancing up to the sky, with wounds in their hands or on their bodies. Suffering. More suffering in the museum in the cloister. Heavy and dark wooden furniture. Large paintings of battles, killing of saints and heavily armoured Spanish soldiers landing on the beaches of the Philippines meeting half naked natives.

As I pass the gate of the pagoda of Gangaramaya here in Colombo, I think about the influence that the images of all those of suffering saints who were once human beings, Jesus on the cross, his mother assisting to the crucifixion of her own son, those soldiers, have had across centuries on our Western society. How much suffering, killing, occupation have they justified as well. All that suffering and violence.

What a contrast with the images of the life of Buddha in this pagoda. The Body Tree, its green pointed leaves. The people chanting around to it. The statue of Buddha, one finger pointing to the Earth. While the bajaj starts to bring me back to the hotel, I think that all this maybe explains why Buddhism never had missionaries.

Colombo, March 2010

Dimitri and the cappuccino

2 June 2010
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

I am walking towards the tube station. I pull my two pieces of luggage that follow smoothly on their small wheel. In front of the Italian bar with shiny metal round tables and mini skirt waitresses I see the Italian guy who did for me the three cappuccino yesterday morning. He recognizes me and says hi. I am not in a hurry so stop for a cappuccino. The morning a just a bit cloudy but nice and warm. The bar is not busy so when he brings me the cappuccino he takes a chair and sits at my table.

We start talking. I am from Cremona. He is from Parma. Not really Parma, just nearby: Borgo Val di Taro. I studied in Parma and know his place at the foot of the of the mountain that divide the large plane of the Po river form the sea. He has three daughters. I have two. No, I do not live in Italy, but in the Philippines. I was here for a week for work and go now back with a stop over in Ha Noi for a training workshop. What do I do? I never find it easy to respond to this question. I think about the 45 Vietnamese researchers I will meet after tomorrow. They are my work. They are the reason I fly around. They are the one who listen to what I present together with my colleagues.

‘I work with researchers in NGOs or other institutes. Together with them we try to make the research they conduct more visible to policy makers so that it enters laws and policies.’ He looks at me with a puzzled expression, but this is the best explanation I can give him.

At the end of the day we provide suggestions on ways that researchers can try to write their research up in different ways so that it fits with the way of working of policy makers. This is the  hope, though hope, writes Paul Krugman, is not a plan.  The researchers we train can just decide to change job. Other may leave the NGOs or public sector attracted by higher salaries in the in the private one. Some just want to do research and do not really care if their results are noticed by policy makers. To find evidence of success is not easy but, most importantly, is it possible?  In what I do the a the sequence input – output – result does not seem to fit . It definitely applies to this cappuccino. Input: a combination of my demand and the coffee that the bar has bought before hand waiting to sell it. Output: the cappuccino with its nice foam and just a bit of cocoa powder on it. Results: income for the bar and a nice after taste in my mouth that will accompany up to Heathrow.  All quite straight forward.

In my work the sequence is input, a combination of the demand by researchers of their institutes for strengthening their capacity to inform policy makers about their research and our knowledge of tools that can help these processes and funding. Outputs: trained researchers and training material or toolkits. Results: researchers know something new and they can apply it and, so far, leave the training happy about what they have heard.  To capture more than that is difficult. And thinking about it, my Italian friend sitting here can not really know what I will do with my better mood after this cappuccino and how will that influence my day. It is not his concern. maybe we should apply the same logic to our work and our projects, rather than investigating the ethereal, the world of hope where plans cannot reach, why not to focus and concentrate on the doing, on the delivery, on the quality of training and support? What the researchers will do is up to so many variables that it can bring them in so many directions, our training being only a tiny element of the complex mosaic of their lives.

It is time to go. We talk a bit on how we as Italian feel being overseas. Going back does not seem to be a plan for either of us. I stand up and want to pay but he says that the coffee is offered. ‘ Io mi chiamo Arnaldo, e tu?’. ‘ Io? Dimitri.’ ‘Ciao, alla prossima.’

Snapshots

2 June 2010
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

It is still light outside, even thought is past eight. Had a chicken tikka. Go for a walk towards the Thames. Find a small alley that brings to a tiny park behind the archbishop house. A signs says that the park was opened in 1901. Pater Gabriel sings Heroes, his voice just gets better as he gets solder.  A man sits alone on the a bench and reads a hardcover book. Red brick houses surround this tiny park. A man is changing the t-short near the football pitch. Kids play in the playground on the other side. I walk back. People sitting at wooden table on the pavements at a corner pub. A police car passes with blue lights on. The A380 from Singapore glides towards Heathrow. Under the bridge of Waterloo station a huge drink advertisement portraits Wayne Rooney who is ready for the World Cup. The circular Plaza Hotel is now ready. The Big Ben says it is 8:45. Two Indian guys talk in the middle of the bridge. One wears slippers. A group of tourists take pictures from the bridge and try to capture the Parliament. A woman takes a picture of a man in his early forties. Blue jeans. Nice shoes, a  blue cotton jumper. A sad expression in his face. A pub with a very large lamp as a sign. The peace camp next to Churchill  statue. Parliament street towards Whitehall. People waiting for the bus number 12. One man with trench coat and hat rests his elbow on a low grating, he seems tired of the day and too-warmly-dresses. Chinese tourists take picture at the gate at the entrance of Downing Street. A police man is on this side of the and jokes with three colleagues on the other side of the gate. American tourists try to get a glimpse of N. 10. They are in bad shape. At the Horse Guard a very young soldier is cleaning the shit left by the horses. He is in his army fatigue. A nasty commander in a black coat points where he had not managed to clean. He uses the brush also from the stick side. He has a embarrassed expression as many tourists pass by. I think, don’t worry. one day you will get this back. A group of eight men and women of people enters a theatre holding a bottle of white wine and plastic glasses. The three men all dressed in the same style: black shoes, jeans, shirt outside the trousers. Trafalgar square, the National Gallery is still open. A very long white limousine passes with drunk girls shouting from the windows. Nelson sailing boats rests in the huge bottle closed by a cork that must be almost a meter in diameter. The sails of the boat are really as they said: colorful and representing world cultures. A man with a black hat points the bottle to the young girls at his side. People sit under Nelson column and watch the time go by. The Korean cultural centre advertises a Buddha exhibit which will start in a couple of day. Charring Cross bridge is almost empty. A drunk young boy, oversized and with jeans that are falling from his bottom tries to keep up with his more sober friend who tells him to keep up. Italian tourists take pictures of the London Eye. A Eastern European couple walks hand in hand towards me. The field at the London Eye has very short grass. In a group of youngsters sharing drinks and sitting on the grass I notice a girls. She is on her knees opening a bottle. Very blond hairs, almost white. Very white skin and red lipstick that shines out and seems a drop of blood on a white bed sheet. An Indian guy take a picture with his mobile phone. People in group. People alone, walking , sitting. A loud Greek restaurant and the the waiter of a nearby Chinese one having a rest and smoking a cigarette his shoulder resting on a wall.  Three drunk homeless waiting at a bus stop. One looks to me, red nose and cheeks. His expression foggy. The Indian fruits and vegetable shop open 7 days a week until 11pm.  All of a sudden I feel the urge to travel in this country,  from one hostel to the next, up north to Scotland to win my fears. The corner pub I passed earlier. Less people at the wooden tables. The sky yet not dark, the last snapshots of a London walk on a Friday night.

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The cost of reaching our dreams

25 May 2010
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

What is the cost we pay when we reach our dream? Is there a cost? What do we do once a dream has become reality and is part of the past?
A child is sitting in a dentist waiting room. He opens a magazines and reads that in NY they are planning to build the tallest buildings on earth: the World Trade Center.
Those towers do not exist yet, but his dream is  and will drive him for many years to come. Man on Wire is about finding and pursuing your dream, despite the odds. While often dreams cannot be reached alone, Man on Wire is also about friendship and the emotions ad fears that accompany the pursue of a dream. To me it is also about the changes and the pain that comes with reaching a dream, and thus start to write on a new page of our book of life. Reaching a dream can break friendship and love and make us move to a new direction. It is as simple as that, but I suspect when we live the dream we are not aware of it.

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Paul Krugman on Soros back, in 1998

13 May 2010
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

Recently I found myself in not one but two meetings that also included George Soros, and I was inspired to furious intellectual effort. You see, I’m convinced it’s possible to construct a terrific palindrome centering on the famous investor’s reversible last name. Unfortunately, the best I’ve come up with so far is an imaginary conversation wherein I ask the great man what to make of the gyrations of Japan’s exchange rate, and he tells me it means we must introduce a unified global currency: “Yen omen, O Soros?”; “One money!”

Of course, that’s not what Soros is really saying. His actual message–expounded in a series of articles and speeches over the past two years, and soon to be restated in his forthcoming book, The Crisis of Global Capitalism–might be described as “Stop me before I speculate again!” And considering the source–a man whose funds have attacked currencies around the world, from the British pound to the Hong Kong dollar–it’s a message that needs to be taken seriously.

I’m not necessarily suggesting you read Soros in the original. It’s not that he writes like a businessman; it’s that he writes like a Central European intellectual, which is far worse. Someone should tell him it doesn’t help his case to dress up fairly simple ideas in pretentious philosophical language. In particular, many people have argued that financial markets tend toward boom-and-bust cycles, that investors tend to engage in herd behavior, and that financial systems are subject to self-justifying panics. But such observations are not enough for Soros: For him they must serve as illustrations of the general principle of “reflexivity,” which I take to mean that human perceptions both affect events and are themselves affected by them. Gosh, I never thought of that!

But if reading Soros isn’t exactly a pleasure, he is nonetheless saying something important–namely, that the rules of the game under which he and others like him have prospered are dangerous for society as a whole. This is not what you’d expect to hear from a speculator, or for that matter anyone in the financial world. The typical view from Wall Street or London’s City is that left to its own devices, the global capital market will always reward economic virtue and punish only vice. As one Wall Street Journal op-ed writer enthused, “Foreign-exchange markets are a continuing, minute-by-minute election in which everyone with wealth at stake, including residents of the country, gets to vote, an election in which the winners are those countries whose governments have the most pro-growth policies.” Accordingly, if these days national economies seem to be falling like dominoes, it must be their own fault–or that of the IMF, which many conservatives see as having a demonic ability to wreak economic havoc with very little actual money. (Has anyone noticed just how small a player the IMF really is? That $18 billion U.S. contribution to the IMF, which has finally been agreed upon after countless Administration appeals and conservative denunciations, is about the same size as the short position that Soros single-handedly took against the British pound in 1992–and little more than half the position Soros’ Quantum Fund, Julian Robertson’s Tiger Fund, and a few others took against Hong Kong last August.) Soros, however, believes that financial markets are “inherently unstable,” that left unregulated they inevitably produce recurrent crises. And he should know.

What would a defender of free capital markets say in response to Soros? True believers would doubtless be unshaken. Never mind who Soros is and what he’s done, they would claim that people who worry about destabilizing speculation just don’t understand how markets work. Others, however, would agree that financial markets are inherently unstable, but argue that this is a price worth paying, that the presumed huge returns from free markets outweigh the risks. And indeed that was the position I myself took a year and a half ago, when Soros and I staged a fundraising debate on global capitalism for the Council on Foreign Relations. (Yes, I was pro, he was anti.) But events since May 1997 have certainly reinforced his position, and led those of us who still believe in the extraordinary merits of free markets in goods, services, and long-term capital to search for ways to protect those merits from the destructive effects of destabilizing hot money flows.

Rather oddly, I can’t quite figure out what Soros himself thinks we should do. In general, for a businessman his approach seems peculiarly abstract and philosophical: He seems far more concerned with denouncing laissez-faire ideology than with proposing workable ways to regulate markets without strangling them. (Maybe we need a super-IMF, big enough to take on the Soroi of this world. Or maybe, horrors, we actually need to control capital movements.) But if Soros doesn’t have the answer, at least he asks the right question. Next time somebody tells you that the global capital market is our friend, that only economies that deserve it get punished, tell him to tell it to George Soros.

Three people in Athens

6 May 2010
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

Tensions erupted in Athens during demonstrations against the economic measures that government needs to take in order receive financial assistance from the IMF and the EU. Three people have died in a bank that went on fire. Three people. Who is responsible for their deaths. The ones who attacked the bank and put it on fire? Yes, of course and they need to be found and secured to justice. But who else? The politicians who falsified the economic data to allow Greece into the Euro zone and loose therefore the possibility to devaluate their currency? or who else? The managers and partners of the funds who are attacking the Euro and have bet on its loss of value (which is actually happening) and will enjoy huge profits to be used in buying yet another house in the Alps, or a boat to be docked in Monaco, or what else? This is the result of Las Vegas economics