Silence, it is night

16 April 2010
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

A soft summer wind outside shakes the huge mango trees and the palms in our garden. It is past midnight and I cannot remember last time I have been so late up working on a paper and writing now in this blog. Headphones throwing ambient music from my iTune radio. Familiar sounds that accompany my home based work. For a second a felt like being back at the university, more precisely in Glasgow. Working on the research at night and listening to the summer wind outside the half open window. Back late that evening and before entering my block, looking at all those windows of individual students rooms like a giant bee nest. Life stories and youth going on and me being one of them. One of those students and those room’s was Katja’s but we did not know back then. Now we are here, more than ten years later living in Dumaguete, our two daughter sleeping softly under their mosquito nets.

Buona notte, questa musica e’ per voi

H – Hotel Lobby

20 March 2010
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

A Vietnamese woman in her mid thirty enters the lobby of the Horison Hotel in Ha Noi. She gives a quick glance to various groups of people gathered after breakfast. Most are men in dark gray suits, white shirts, laptop bags in their hands, ready for the day.  She finds the people she has come to meet at the left corner of the lobby and moves towards them. A woman about her age walk towards here. They meet at the centre of the lobby. They take each other hands before speaking any words and start to cry. It is not the happy cry that sometimes bursts when people meet after a long time. This is a cry of grief and loss.

They hold hands for some minutes, unable to utter any words. They do not hug though. After some minutes, one of them takes a hand to dry her tears away from her cheeks. They move and reach a group of three older men who seems not to notice their tears, or if they do, they do show any emotion.

Around them, the life in the lobby continues untouched by the grief of the two women. Maybe other people have noticed them as I did and as in other times I feel a sense of isolation. Their grief and emotions isolated from the routine life of people like me who are here ready to start a day of work. Or maybe, it is our isolation, immerged as we are in a daily routine, from real emotions. I do not know.

I also wonder whether I should approach the two women and even though I am a perfect stranger, ask if I can be of help. Say a word. Press a hand on a shoulder. Express a feeling of empathy. Show with an action, and not just thoughts, that even though we do not know, we are not so distant.

A conversation starts in the group. The two women do not cry anymore. Then one of them look at the door, says something to the others and they all leave with some hurry. I take my bag and walk towards the door to take a taxi that will bring me to the office.

In the car I think about that day I travelled with the same grief and hurry from Cambodia to Portugal. My brother had died and I hurried back with a hidden hope that it was not true.  I remember my agitation talking at airports to check-in staff to get into a plane. I remember the great help I got at the airport in Phnom Penh from staff telling me to sit, they would take care of it. The same kind help in Bangkok with a Thai Airways representative who advised on which ticket to buy and, as in Phnom Penh, asked me to sit down. They would take care of it. Wishing me all the best with a sad expression when I got my ticket. I remember when I burst in a loud cry in the airport restaurant in Bangkok. Other customers sitting to nearby table talking about their holidays in Thailand and their trips back home. Their table surrounded by souvenirs they were bringing to children, relatives, husbands, wives, parents, brothers and sisters.

The taxi is now managing the traffic jams on Kim Ma. Almost there. Remember also when I arrived in Rome and with the same agitated behavior but talking the language of my country, spoke to a young and pretty Alitalia desk assistant who grew more and more alarmed by the second at my agitation and my explanation as to why I needed to catch a flight to Lisbon, that I did not have a ticket but could maybe get on a TAP Portugal flight leaving after one hour. I could see her eyes turning ice cold and then telling me that this was a Alitalia desk and that I needed to speak to TAP at the desk behind me. I tuner and saw it was closed. ‘Can you please help me? I need to get on that flight.’ No, she could not. End of it. Welcome back home Arnaldo!

The taxi stops at 1 Lieu Giai. I pay the taxi driver. Give a little tip and ask for receipt. Move out of the car, glance at the 15 floor building where I will be working today. The two women of the hotel lobby are still crying in my mind. I rehearse the video clip of their meeting – holding hands –  tears.

I did not do much for them. Actually nothing. They did more for me. They helped me to finally find the words to write this story which has been in me for five years now. Xin cam’on and all the best to you.

Discovery

25 February 2010
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

Night. Alone in my room in Dar es Salaam. Had nice dinner in the best Indian restaurant of the continent. Silence. The hooming of the a/c. Talk to myself. My mind in circles having conversations. My voice. The reply. The reply to the reply. Seeing myself running slowly at Oyster Bay at the sunset. Waves of the Indian Ocean. Philippines are in that direction. Silence. Only my voice talking to myself. I did not Skype home tonight and maybe the girls really wanted to talk to me. Again those voices, the conversation I am having in my mind and which I will bring into my dreams. What did I discover today? Anything new, also not necessarily useful? There is a underknown game park about three hours by car from here. Not famous as it is too close to Dar. The lodge where one can stay is very close a pond where elephants come to drink. Something to show to my girls.
I also discovered that somebody else has made a discovery but does not really know about what. Same with me, not sure yet what the real discovery will be.

A – Abroad

22 February 2010
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

‘How can you do this? How can you live in this way?’ These were the two questions that my old friend P. asked me one evening of twelve years ago. They resonate in my memory. they have been with me all these years and have accompanied me in various countries and travels patiently waiting for a reply. Not sure I have one, though.

There is a price to be paid in every choice. The famous other side of the coin, the Jing of the Jiang. One of the main costs to be paid by living and working overseas is the reduce contact with long time friends. By this I mean, those few friends that when you meet them you just need the time to drink a glass of a nice prosecco to re-connect. That friendship, as many other things in life when we are young, seems unchangeable and unalterable. But is is not so. Friendship, as many of those unchangeable aspects of life that we thinks are unchangeable when we are young, needs to be cultivated. Time needs to be spent and an effort made to re-connect. The re-connection occurs if time and effort are invested in order to meet as we did that winter of twelve years ago.

So, there we were. Out from a nice sauna. Wearing our towels. Sitting on the floor and talking about life sipping a cold and refreshing beer. I was had already been abroad for few years but mainly in Europe and therefore with the possibility to travel back to Italy or receive visits abroad. 

‘How can you do this’? How can you live in this way?’, he asked me. By this he meant on the one hand how could I move from country to country, apparently without a plan and on the other hand, where did I find the nervous and emotional energy to do it.  I remember considering my answer to that.  It took me a while because at first I did not understand the question. We were there, in a fairly remote corner of Finland. Outside everything trapped in the silence of the snow.  We had a relaxing sauna. We would have a nice risotto al tartufo which was being prepared by M. downstairs. We would drink a very good red wine. There was our friendship. Our language. Wasn’t that enough?

I was in love then. I was trying to deny it as things were not going very well. But I was in love.  I knew of course that love is changeable and erratic, but it was one of the strong driving force for taking my chances and being there that winter.  I did not know then that I was also risking friendship. Friendship was for me the solid background, the direct line to back home a back home which was growing more and more distant as I was changing, but felt (a bit arrogantly I must say) that friendship was much harder to be touched by time and distance.

‘You just decide to go and take what comes’, I replied to P. ‘You make a decision and follow on it taking the consequences’. Once you decide, once you go past that split second where not only your mind but also your heart says yes, that it is done you cannot turn back.’

‘I understand. But how about you habits, the friends, the people, the feeling of home instead of your being around and in a sense homeless?’ he asked me.

‘I do not feel without those. We are here, we are meeting in this new place. This is what is special to me. It is not so important where we meet.’, I replied and sip from my bottle.

Thinking about that conversation, I think there was in me a hint that despite being in this special place were were starting to talk different language. It was a language linked to different needs which we felt and that resulted in me being abroad and P, staying back home.  It was just a hint, but I worked around it through the alibi that friendship is unchangeable and that we could maybe have these conversations and moments every winter, at every Christmas a a regular meeting of friends who have taken different directions and routes, but keep in their diary one time in the year when they would get together.

It did not occur of course. It was a nice hope, though. Abroad became farther and farther for me so that it became more and more difficult to meet my friends. I grew more distant and at some point could not bare the thought of being back home not even for a short visit. So the years passed. Internet somehow helped, but I grew more distant and isolated. Worked a lot on my social feeling, as Adler would put it, by working in development but denied the importance of friendship as the link with something more that just back home: my roots, the values, the sense of belonging and coming from one specific place and an identity that living abroad enriches with experiences but also inevitably blurs and makes more uncertain.

Who is this? Me?

15 February 2010
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

Advanced Global Personality Test Results

Extraversion |||||| 23%
Stability |||||||||||||| 56%
Orderliness |||||||||||||||| 70%
Accommodation |||||||||||||||| 63%
Intellectual |||||||||||||||| 70%
Interdependence |||||||||||||||||| 80%
Mystical || 10%
Materialism |||| 20%
Narcissism |||||| 30%
Adventurousness |||||||||||| 50%
Work ethic |||||||||||| 50%
Conflictseeking || 10%
Need to dominate |||||| 30%
Romantic |||||||||||||||| 70%
Avoidant |||||||||||||||| 70%
Anti-authority |||||||||||||||||||| 90%
Wealth |||| 20%
Dependency |||||||||||| 50%
Change averse |||||| 30%
Cautiousness |||||||||||| 50%
Individuality |||||| 30%
Sexuality |||||||||||| 50%
Peter pancomplex |||||| 30%
Histrionic |||||| 30%
Vanity |||||||||| 40%
Artistic |||||||||| 40%
Hedonism |||||||||||||| 60%
Physicalfitness |||||||||||||||||||| 90%
Religious || 10%
Paranoia |||||| 30%
Hypersensitivity |||||||||||||| 56%
Indie |||||||||||| 50%

Take Free Advanced Global Personality Test
personality test by similarminds.com

Stability results were moderately high which suggests you are relaxed, calm, secure, and optimistic.

Orderliness results were high which suggests you are overly organized, reliable, neat, and hard working at the expense too often of flexibility, efficiency, spontaneity, and fun.

Extraversion results were low which suggests you are very reclusive, quiet, unassertive, and secretive.

Summary: clean, secretive, does not make friends easily, observer, hates large parties, risk averse, perfectionist, reclusive, solitude loving, more practical than abstract, does not like to stand out, high self control, intellectual, mind over heart, very cautious, takes precautions, respects authority, irritable, emotionally sensitive

Running – Correre

11 February 2010
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

Ho provato un nuovo modo di correre alla sera. Scarpe da jogging,
pantaloncini, maglietta, iPod e i podcast di Travaglio. Corro qui a
Dumaguete su una pista attorno ad un campo di calcio e quindi dopo
qualche giro mi perdo nelle parole che ascolto nelle cuffiette. Ieri ‘e
stata la volta del podcast sulla protezione civile e gli interventi (o
mancati interventi) in Abruzzo per il terremoto. La prefettura che si
svuota alle 23:30 alla prima scossa e non avvisa nessuno dei cittadini,
niente esercitazione, niente educazione nelle scuole come invece fanno
in Giappone.  La Impregilio, grande azienda edile italiana che ha
costruito il secondo ospedale dell’Aquila 12 anni fa e che e’ venuto
giu’ con il terremoto, mentre quello vecchio costruito molto prima ha
resistito. Il Impregilio che ha anche il contratto per il ponte sullo
stretto. Ogni tanto mi metto a ridere mentre corro.

Oggi ho letto le dichiarazioni dei politici contro Travaglio, contro il
nuovo quotidiano, contro trasmissioni televisive. Secondo me in Italia
ci si sta abituando a cose che all’estero non sono possibili. Se un MP
inglese e un Americano rilasciasse le stesse dichiarazioni contro la
stampa che non e’ dalla sua parte, dovrebbe fare le valigie subito.
Questo e’ strano ma anche stranamente preoccupante.

P.

Reverse remittance

31 January 2010
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

The global financial crisis seem to have had a lower impact in South Asia or South East Asia where countries were growing. The Philippines have not been immune from the recession in two ways: reduced economic expansion and incomes for people at home and reduced remittances from overseas where the many Filipinos work and had their jobs threatened by the crisis.

One example is of Filipinos who work in the Middle East employed as home staff or in hotels and resorts.  These jobs have also been threatened by the recession as the number of tourists diminished. What this means is that many Filipino working in the Middle East have been made redundant and were facing therefore the prospect of having to return home.

The led their families back home to start a reverse remittance flow as they started to send money to their relatives overseas and allow them to look for a new job as the economy recovers and jobs become available again.

Many of the Filipino workers have been living overseas for long time. I remember a flight from Hong Kong to Manila sitting next to a Filipino couple with three kids and all of them talking Italian to each other. The links with families back home is the safety net against difficult times. The link serves also as safety net to be used to cope with difficult times overseas and not to loose the possibility of finding a better paid work there.