Intelligently resigned

Strange things can happen in this world of science, where boundaries between scientific rigor and individual perception are constantly blurred. So, I was sitting at my desk this morning thinking about some way to skip this afternoon's meeting with my boss (an effort which as you might expect finally proved fruitless), when Tyler brought me one of this little pieces of paper every egotistic scientist loves to receive. A reprint request of one of his papers. To be honest it looked a bit a strange for a guy in the US (and not some backward country where internet access is still non-existent) to be asking for prints of two papers published in free access journals. And by surface mail no less.

That was a just hint, that there was something interesting in this request and the name of the institution ("Liberty" University of Lynchburg Virginia) made me curious to find out more about this. Soon I came up with details about his controversial founder, Jerry Lamon Falwell, pastor and tele-evangelist, the guy to whom the famous quote "I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them" is attributed. It was then that I let out my first "oh no!".

I carried on with the Liberty University itself, an educational institution whose 9600 students have to pay fines for attending dances, viewing R-rated movies or drinking, should restrict intercourse with the opposite (check that! strictly the opposite) sex to holding hands and abiding by a dress code which prohibits hair covering the ears or eyebrows for guys, piercing in any place else than the ears for girls and shorts for both sexes. Being just a bit prepared I thought "hmmmm..."

But then I went on to check the Biology Department. After all that was what interested me the most since the request was coming from there. I was a bit prepared from noticing certificate programs such as "Liberty Bible Program" but when I saw the list of classes being taught, I could not say neither "oh no!" nor "hmmmmm...". Looking at courses such as "Evangelism and Christian Life" (3rd year) or "New Testament Survey" (4th year) just left me speechless. So, apart from having to miss all that constitutes college life or being obliged to remain sexually inactive until they reach the age of 22 (unless they get married before they graduate) the biology students of this institution have to read the Bible not as leisure reading but as part of the process of getting their degree...Oh, and by the way. They 'll probably be informed about something called evolution as an alternative theory to God creating everything within 7 days!

I now had serious doubts about where I was sending the reprints of my papers (which by the way were juuuuuuuust a little bit more in favour of neo-darwinian evolution against creationism and intelligent or un-intelligent design). Nonetheless I thought that dialogue and interchange of opinion is the only way for the progress of science and in this case perhaps my sending the reprints could contribute, only slightly but still contribute to this dialogue, whose outmost goal should be redefining the borderline between provable scientific hypotheses and hand-waving-argumented, emotionally-charged perceptions, that are seeking not to comfort or relieve but to oppose and infuriate. Because deep down I think that people preaching intelligent design maybe should be intelligent enough to resign...

Or then perhaps, maybe if we don't get to have this dialogue after all, maybe WE should resign from trying.

Damnatio memoriae

Last weekend has been as interesting as it has been tiring. A three-day excursion to Donostia in the Basque country left me with the usual lack of sleep and slight excess of alcohol levels. It seems I am old enough to have noticed the first of the side effects of such abuses. My otherwise strong long-term memory attenuates. I am not talking about memory lapses regarding the previous night but slight long-term memory failures, resembling more a "slow disk access" (to speak like the geak I am supposed to be). To cut a long story short I cannot remember things, names of songs or writers, books or films or dates I would normally remember. The whole things is a bit disturbing but gets resolved with a bit of sleep and a little bigger effort to keep the disks running.

Some names though, cannot be easilly forgotten. Augusto Pinochet's is one of these names. It is funny that my trip with its consequent memory lapses and the dictator's death coincided. And although my initial thought was "at last!" I think it would be better for me and probably for the rest of the world if Pinochet's name did not ring any bell anymore, if it had retreated at the back rooms of our collective memory, condemned by history to utter oblivion. The Romans used to force this oblivion as the worst punishment for men of state having failed them. The process involved taking their names out of the archives of history, bringing down their statues and destroying all road signs that carried a reference to them.

They called that Damnatio memoriae and it was considered the ultimate humiliation.

On the other hand, maybe what worked for the Romans, is not fit for our case. Probably because the Romans did not entirely lack the sense of duty as opposed to their people, as dear Augusto or his friends like Maggy Thatcher did and still do. I sincerely doubt that the fear of oblivion, the fact that he might not be remembered, would have been able to stop Pinochet from "dissapearing" thousands of his people or sending to swiss banks the millions he stole from the country he had sworn to protect and was supposed to be saving from the "communists". In that sense maybe it is better for us to vividly remember him than punishing him through forgetting his crimes, because even if history does not spontaneoulsy repeat itself it is actually us that let our errors repat themselves.
And in this case it will be probably wiser never to get any tired so that we forget the life and works of Augusto Pinochet Ugarte.

A world gone crazy

All right it is December and I am walking around in my T-shirt! Whatever people may tell me, this cannot be normal, not for this hemisphere at least. Global warming is a fact and there are multiple proofs besides my sweat.

You see, from a proper point of view -proper to the proper people that is- everything is as normal as usually. The sun keeps shining over their heads even in December, maybe even during the evening. The perpetual antitheses of the city could not be making more sense to them. Almost homeless lonely people are there to feed the pidgeons, pidgeons are there to fly over the heads of the almost lonely homeless people sleeping on the benches. Over there a streetcleaner is throwing up, disgusted from the smell of the alley, two blocks away a hooker gets nauseous from the memories of last night. Or maybe it's the other way round. But the sun is still shining and unless you are an ever-wining, over-reacting, so-lazy-that-looks-all-around-instead-of-rushing-to-work kind of guy, everything is business as usual.

In the meanwhile, hundred-year-old dictators refuse to die, or death refuses to have anything to do with them and in Hong-Kong some hot-shot NOKIA executives talk about cellphones that will be able to capture smells. They may be missing the point here, ever since there's only music so that's there are new ringtones. Odours may be a bit more difficult to download but hey! we 'll make n-th generation computers to do that. In the meanwhile, hookers will still throw up on the streets of Barcelona, but the worst thing is that they will still be willing to die crossing the Atlantic all the way from Senegal to the Canary islands just to have the right to vomit somewhere in the Barrio Gotico. And in the exact same meanwhile, new dictators will spring up to take the place of the old-vampired ones in Fiji, Afghanistan or wherever else our "democracy exports" have not yet reached, this democracy that will presumably come from above like sacred rain, although it should be rising up from below, but then again, it's too darn hot to be thinking about such complicated things.

The world has gone crazy and it makes no sense. We have faster cars but spend more time going anyplace than actually being there, we have super-fast computers but somehow manage to work more than our fathers, we spent our days and nights reading crap (like this one) on the internet but have no time to read a book, we are healthier and wealthier than our parents, we 're sure to live longer than them but still pop up more Prozac that are kids swallow M & Ms. While the sun's still shining, migrating birds have no idea which way to go to and I am afraid neither do we.

Even time has gone crazy. It looks as if it's running backwards all the way to the times, when people were beeing persecuted because of what they would think, read or draw, we talk more religion than politics, we have slaves of a new kind but with the same, old colours. It feels as if we're back in the times of Shakespeare when "the rain it raineth everyday", only unfortunately Shakespeare is nowhere to be found and neither is the rain. It's only a matter of persistence of this madness until the clock makes the whole turn backwards, then we are back in the ice age, and then perhaps things cool down a bit.

After all maybe then, the absolute necessity of humankind for smell-capturing cellphones is not that absolute anymore.

Things to do when lonely...rediscover the masters

They have always been my greatest consolation and one of the most entertaining companies. My masters, my teachers, my idols. And by this I don't mean either my highschool professors (although some of them I still remember), nor the crude foot-balling genious of Dimitris Saravakos or the legendary figure of Che (whose posters could still decorate my bedroom). By masters, I refer to the people, whose work not only I admire but above all has always acted on my frustrating, vertiginous anxieties with an utterly recomposing effect.

In times of stress, I turn back to my favourite beacons of wisdom, which by doing nothing but having done everything already, by saying nothing but by having written all that is worth to write, by not letting out a single sigh but by having composed music to last until the end of time, they put me back into place. It is exactly then that my sense of what really matters becomes crystal clear. Feeling melancholic on a rainy Sunday morning loses any excuse on the sound of Ravel's "Tombeau de Couperin" (perhaps exactly because it lifts melancholy to a level of exhilarating perfection). Getting bored with the daily routine of work, work, work gets a whole lot different meaning when you remember that a previously un-discovered collection of articles by Eduardo Galeano awaits you at home (and I thank myself for choosing this book to give to Bianca as a farewell present).

Because it is the "masters" that come to your aid in all kinds of difficult situations. You think there's nothing left to be said until you come upon a well-placed phrase by Tolstoi. You think there is no way to sort out the simplest possible model about the results you produce on your screen when you remember that Feyerabend once advised you to use exactly what you are completely forgetting about: your intuition. Evenmore, you feel that an inspiring five minutes of peace are impossible until you suddenly discover that Rachmanninov once wrote 14 songs, the last one you think only for you to listen to on this dull Tuesday afternoon (Julien, I ll be forever grateful for this).

Inspiration may remain evanescent, peacefull breaks will always be short-lived, unocmfortable silences will keep occurring and intuitive models will hardly ever work. But what remains is the feeling that we are not alone in this complicated world, full of puzzles and challenges, where we can also make a difference as long as we turn to the right people for advice and councelling.

Insignificance

Here it is, another post with reference to a song title (Pearl Jam again, but I am slightly biased these last weeks since I am listening to their Athens concert over and over).

But insignificance has a meaning in this case. It is meaningless in science so I struggle against it but it keeps occurring with a disturbing persistence.

It often happens in research, that enthusiasm decays exponentially. You come up with a brilliant idea, then you formulate a satisfactory theoretical model, you implement it with a bit of a sloppy programming, you validate it against unreliable experiments and end up with insignificant results. You just can't help it.

Nonetheless, I am satisfied with myself. In my case, this Friday produced results that are less insignificant than already published ones so I can go on to read my papers for this end of the week with no guilt whatsoever. Nucleosomes are somewhere out there (or to put it better somewhere in there) waiting for someone to locate them. I am close to that but it is Friday, Medya just invited us over to her office to have some chocolate she brought from the Netherlands and I am in the middle of three books that have reached their peak of climax...so no more nucleosome predictions for this week!

Jokes aside, science can be stimulating. In fact most of the times it is. It just needs a bit of the right perspective like everything else. In the same way our girlfriends will never be perfect but we still love them, or in the way we normally hate our work but sometimes find it interesting, most important of all, the way our favourite football team is crap most of the time but we never dare forget the good moments the guys in green and white (or whatever the colour) have given us, doing science is equally appealing in a masochist way. We struggle against all our misfortunes, waiting for that 0.5% increase in sensitivity, that positive control that does not proove to be a total disaster, that protein finally making its shy appearence in the form of a dubious band on a polyacrylamide gel.

The right perspective comes in knowing that these moments appear with a rather small frequency, linearly diminishing with the increasing stress of expectance (and that IS the only significant scientific fact my experience would fully support). The right perspective is to keep in mind that if progress was linear we would be not working in science because it would be as meaningless as a factory production line. It is understanding that if our results actually MEANT progress this world would have been a better place since centuries and it is all about realizing that we are just playing around with everchanging concepts and theoretical constructions that probably won't be here when are children decide to do science. People have become rich, famous and reknown not because they discovered some ultimate truths about the universe but because, at their time, they were clever and brave enough to put forward a new concept that explained a certain problem. In the end, all it takes is some guts and some time off work to think "out of the box" for a while.

So maybe, I ll take the rest of the day off to come up with a weird, uncompromising and extraordinarily strange theory about why these bloody nucleosome predictions are so insignificant!

From the Romans to the Muslims to the Christians ...to the "geeks"!

This is Spain! I am not always obliged to be in Barcelona when updating barcabios. So there I was in Zaragoza, the city of the most bars per capita in Spain, home of the "jota", the "piedras del Ebro" and the "Basilica del Pilar".

Zaragoza, capital of Aragon is a beautiful city, built by the Ebro river by the Romans almost 2000 years ago (for a Greek it is not very old of course but for the Spanish it means something). I was there for a geek conference that consumed most of my time but at least I had a few hours off (or more precisely I gave myself a few hours off) to take a long walk around the city center, along the riverside and by the most historical buildings.

The variations of age, architecture and styles reflect the passing of the centuries and civilizations Zaragoza has suffered (or benefited from). From the Roman walls by the river, to the Aljaferia castle built by the Moores originally made entirely out of alabaster and from the mudejar cathedral of La Seo to the "Pilarica" constructed by the Spanish after the "Reconquista". The subsequent layers of the universal spanish soul lie at the feet of the visitor. And when our geek (that is bioinformatics) conference left us time, we also had the chance to have a couple of drinks in "el tubo", Zaragoza's main nightlife zone.

Sitting back at my desk in Barcelona, alternating my playlist from Theodorakis (thanks to Sarah), to Pearl Jam (thanks to Maria) and Brad Mehldau (thanks to Julien) I am trying to dig my way back into nucleosome prediction, based on some ideas I had in Zaragoza. People would say that conferences serve exactly for these things, meaning to steer new ideas to the participants and it is true but only partly. Because the ideas I had, no matter how mediocre, I had them all while walking around the city looking at this cathedral by the river...

Departure Bay

6.00 am: Diana Krall sings through my headphones as the new metro line takes me back home from the airport. It's a strange time of the day, a time I am usually asleep, or just gone to bed, but in any case not on a train on my way home. As the train goes through the stations a complete universe is unravelling before my eyes, the dark side of Barcelona, the side I had not thought about until today, although the silent consequences of its activity have always been there.

El Prat de Llobregat. A couple of dizzy, yawning latin-american immigrants get on. Changing shifts for the railway workers, the train slides past them, their day has started already but the darkest hour is just before dawn.

Belvitge. Three young nurses from the nearby hospital, climb up the wagon. Their shift has just ended, they are on their way back home, to sleep or perhaps take care of their youngs. They look exhausted but satisfied, maybe no losses at the clinic. Carrying on is what matters. Tomorrow is another night.

Estacio Sants, the commuting branchpoint. Most get off here. Off for a Thursday morning. Unlike a poet once said everyday is not like Sunday.

Passeig de Gracia. Gaudi's attractions are still sleeping, even the earliest of their morning visitors are still dreaming. People working at the hotels in the area, get off here. They strech their suites, tighten their ties, take a last look against the window glass. Perfect hairdo, awfull mood. They rehearse their morning smiles while it is still dawn and practise their "good days" while they dream of their "good nights". Their own time does not coincide with the sun's orbit around the rest of us.

Estacio Franca. Last stop. I get off, pass by the immigrants already lining up outside the immigration office next to the customs. Modern cities can't really distinguish people from commodities. The sky is now powder blue, dark spots mixed with the desperate attempts of dawnlight.

I stop and take a look at the train routes. A line connecting my place with the airport, where I just let someone go. Another one goes all the way to Paris. Soon I 'll be thinking about someone else there. The first sunrays, has just reached Barcelona at a rather obtuse angle. They are scattered into purple. I lift my head up looking for her plane. She must be up there now. I am still at my departure bay. A point on the map of the metro, of a city which is another point in a larger map. As time goes by, we scatter arround, we become points in a graph, no computer scientist will bother to study.

And our lives evolve by joining the dots.

The Battle of Ciutat Vella

Barcelona is a modern metropolis. It is full of all the things that make up the megacities of our times. That is, ambitious executives having lunch in the Port Olimpic, hoards of students having the time of their lives, avant-guard artists experimenting in complete freedom and tourists with the cameras having become an extension of their hands.

Somewhere in the backgound though, a metropolis cannot survive only on these kinds of people. It needs its hard-working lower class, its immigrants piling-up in their ant-like neighborhoods, that everybody detests but nobody could do without, not to mention a significant number of homeless people. Because the bottomline is that the mega-cities are to be fueled by inequalities. Their mode of function is such that you cannot have prosperity without attracting poverty, you cannot have fancy restaurants without being in need of the Algerians to work as waiters. Even modern architecture projects appreciate cheap labour.

The point is that this same machine-steering potential of inequalities erupts to violence more and more often. Last night we experienced one of this outbursts in the middle of the old city, the Ciutat Vella. People residing in occupied houses around the so-called "Forat de la Vergonya", (literally meaning "shame's hole"), started a demonstration against a plan put forward by the City Hall to economically exploit this "forgotten" zone. Actually, those who have lived there ever since this place was initially left in oblivion, just decided to be remembered. To remind to the rest of us, that "el Forat" has been there for so long before the real-estate sharks took notice of how much it has come to be worth. That it has been a neighborhood, a "barri" like all the others, with its people, its families living next to each other and children going to school every morning, before turning into the most rapidly expanding nightlife-theme-park with bars and restaurants packed one next to the other.

They took their protest to the streets. But as often happens in such cases, the mean was subject to the cause. During the protest they even fired a missile against the police and went so far as to throw paint-granades at the Museum of Modern Art, one of Barcelona's most emblematic buildings of the 90's era. Thus, as it happens with almost equal frequency in such cases of blind violence, the cause was eventually obscured by the means.

It nomore matters how these people were initially marginalized. If they choose to or if someone just decided it for them. They are now enclaved in a vicious circle, which they are very unlikely to escape, having to negotiate with that same system that they are confronting, having to put up with the exact same people they have once and for all rejected. This is a hard way they are very unlikely to take. They choose to oppose to all things they reject instead of trying to change them.

The easier way involves the rest of us. Those that get to appreciate Barcelona for what it appears to be away from realizing what it really is. But this turns out to be even more difficult. I spent yesterday evening having drinks in the middle of the Barri Gotic and had absolutely no idea about the "battle" until I saw it on today's news. It seems like we are living in our own happy "bubble" away from all that is going on. And finally, this drifting apart of the "two Barcelonas" is what makes understanding each other ever so harder.

Missing home...

It is not the place you miss of course. It is the people, friends and lovers that are left behind. And it is the all and all rarer occasions you can think of these people gathered together, while you are away. These moments you miss the most. And Saturday was one of these days.

Pearl Jam were playing in the OAKA sports hall, back in Athens. Some friends were there, others wished they could and were waiting at a bar downtown to listen all about the concert. I was in front of my computer in my room, having completely forgotten all about the event I have waited for more than half of my adult life. And then the phone rang, I saw Zoe's number and still had not made the connection until I heard her voice, screaming "Hi" over the rythmic introduction of "Wishlist". I talked a bit with Thodoris, who in a -more intense than his usual average- state of mental derangement, tried in vain to pronounce what must have been his best attempt to verbally express his exhilaration. Then they let me listen to the song for a good half minute.
Suddenly I felt more homesick than I 've ever been since I got here. During the following seconds, I did not only miss being at the concert. (Although Pearl Jam is probably the last of the mega-bands of my time -they just don't make them like they used to anyway- and the only one I still consider a must-see before I stop going to big stadium concerts and stick to classy theaters more suited for my early thirties...)

What I missed was the whole package. The days before the concert, listening to all of your university years-albums to warm up. The same morning, waking up with that special feeling that you don't have to do absolutely anything apart from staying well for the evening (the feeling you only get before big concerts and big football games!). Then the concert itself, jumping like crazy on the shoulders of your friends, going for a drink afterwards being hardly able to speak, stinking of sweat, beer and utter happiness!

Come to think of it, the things I miss are all the small pieces of the puzzle that constitutes my youth. It is hard for one to admit he is missing his prime at the age of 28 but how much differently am I supposed to interpret the fact that I long for all the things that were perfectly natural at 18? Maybe it is the longing for such moments or evenmore the fact you still get to experience them once in a while that keeps us young, even at 28!!! In fact, if I was to make a "Wishlist" of my own it would be largely occupied by loud laughters, huge concerts and hoarse-voice post-concert gatherings.

I was missing from OAKA last Saturday, but I promise myself it won't happen again.

Falling in love...

They say you can fall in love with a city, but I would not believe them. You may feel comfortable, you may even feel at home but "love" is a word far to strong to describe a person's realtionship with a city. For me these relationships are more like family. You are born with your city, you carry it with you until you die, although occasionally you may move from place to place. But falling in love with a place?

Last week it happened to me. And it was the kind of unjustified, not-at-first-sight, sentiment-mining love that cannot be explained. Nor was it anything like a movie-style , firework-embellished feeling. Fireworks, though, were included in the proccess.

Barcelona, was at its best during the Fiesta Major of La Merce, a four day festival, sourrounding the 24th of September, which like so many other "fiesta" dates, suspiciously coincides with an astrological timepoint, (this one with the autumn equinox), is suspiciously masked under a catholic religious miracle (the Virgin of la Merce saving the city's harvest from a swarm of locusts) and has unsuspiciously nothing to do with religion itself. This means processions of gigantic statues of everyday heroes instead of saints, "batucadas" instead of religious hymns and pagan parades of torch-bearers (correfoc) instead of devout marches of yougnsters carrying candles. And given that the equinox has been in this world far longer before the locust-scaring Virgin, it seems pretty likely that the turning of the season is behind the whole fiesta after all.

This whole extravanaza, of course, means anything else than calm, peaceful and quiet afternoon walks in the Gotico or in Barceloneta. The usual people-buzzing Ramblas are now infested with tourists once more, there is no place to appreciate the stuffy, humid air in the streets of Born, you can nomore actually listen to the tramondana blowing all the way down from Tibidabo Hill, bringing with it the suicidal tendencies Marques once described. The city seems to be stripped off from everything it would make it attractive to its regular inhabitants. She is no longer the kind housekeeper that welcomes you every day after work. You now look at a glittering, all made-up hostess trying to shine as much as she can, although you know she 'll be out of this dress soon and she 'll also have a hangover.

Still, I fell in love with her exactly then. When I saw this city trying to do her best to make her guests have a bowl! Even more when I felt pretty confident that I would like her more the day after, after all this would have gone. When people would no more be acting like crazy, kicking empty beer cans all around Plaza Reial at 4 in the morning, when Francisco will be back working instead of chasing around his shoes in the midst of all this frenzy. When car-horns replace free concerts, the garbage trucks occupy the streets of the batucadas and fireworks are substituted by the cloudy sky, completely devoid of stars.

Until next year's Merce, I 'll be living with my sweet, loving housekeeper.

Autumn in the city

The street cleaners take a moring break after having worked all night. They are having "cortaditos" in the bars of Barceloneta, while the city is slowly waking up covered in the mist. Bikers pass me by on my way to the lab, morning joggers trrying to find their way through the thick, humid atmosphere.
Cars make no noise, passers-by remain silent, the buildings are in black and white, the streets as if sprung out from a film-noire. Autumn is here.

You notice it, when you can't wake up because you think you might not want to, when the dawn starts to look less attractive than dusk, when you search your ipod for something to listen to and the only thing you come up with is Rachmanninov's concert #2. Seagulls fly in circles outside your office, signalling that rain is coming, the sun's reflection on the screen no longer bothers you. A night in with a movie now sounds like a plan instead of just an alternative.

Somehow it is not just melancholy. The Gothic Quartier as if made in sepia, locals actually living their lives, tourists silently retiring to the sidewalks of the streets that are beeing reclaimed by ordinary people. The time has come for everyday life to become the focal point.

And another night in with the tindersticks and a glass of wine does not sound that bad. The city can be silent...

...but only until tomorrow.

"Out of memory!"

When one sees a message like this appear in his terminal window, two things may be happening. One, his code is seriously full of bugs or Two he is probably trying to decipher all the hidden messages embedded in the human genome, the Bible, the jewish Torah, the books of Prospero and James Joyce's Ulysses ALL AT ONCE!
Well, I am not really sure my work does not imply the second one, but it is highly likely that my arrays are a bit overflowing, or to put it in a simpler way, my code is a bit sloppy, maybe even crappy.

After spending almost all of today trying to bypass the memory problem I am finally getting something out of it. Not the truth hidden in the Torah but something at least presentable in next week's group meeting. The method was the usual. After having been fed up with error messages on my screen, I took a big breath, went out on the balcony, had some chocolate (that's really optional in the method but it helps), went back in, put Tool's latest record on the headphones and started debugging. Now, my eyes are all sore with small red veins popping out but it is worth it going home.

All of the above is part of our daily routine but I have to admit it is a rather pleasant one. We are now in the new building of the PRBB (Parc de Reserca Biomedica de Barcelona). From our office in the fourth floor we can admire the Mediterranean and the inside of the building is quite interesting from architectonic point of view. It is not at all bad working here. The company is very good, the whole environment is quite inspiring and the weather is not bad either.

Looking out of my window, I can say that "out of memory" messages will be quite memorable in this place.

Moments stolen, moments won

We never quite realize when we start taking things for granted. When exactly happens this transition that makes us pass from appreciating things to considering them permanent rights. It happened to me only today, when passing from Carrer de Ginebra in the Barceloneta, a route I take every day to go to work. There, at the corner of Ginebra with Rector Bruguera there always stood a half-demolished building, whose destruction had led to something of a work of art. I say "always" because I have grown to think as if it has been there since the beginning of time. First time I saw it, old wallpapers still hanging, washing basins and showers still springing from the dead mural of what used to be the bathroom walls of its inhabitants, I stood amazed. People were taking photos of it everytime I would pass by but I never did, probably because of this feeling of permanence that soon prevailed over my appreciation. Too bad, it got completely demolished last Tuesday. So yesterday I did not find it there. My chance for a photo was lost and so was the feeling that I somehow owned this view on my everyday walk to work.

There come monents like these that make you realize you may becoming a bit superficial about everyday routine. That you do not anymore appreciate simple things in life, and this may be far more important than a semi-demolished building being brought down by the buldozers of the Ajuntament. You realize that you have to try appreciating moments that are evasive, just because so many worthy things inevitably are. They stand there only for a little while and then drift away leaving no evidence they once existed.

On my way back, just a few meters from home I rode by the tapas bar that is really close to my place, "Pulperia Celta". I was in a hurry so I was riding quickly but this did not prevent me from caughting a crying man's voice coming from inside the bar. I turned the bike around and stood outside the bar for a few minutes. There he was, a guy in his late forties, who could equally probably be a school teacher, a taxi driver or a construction worker singing a flamenco "a capella" after the request of his friends and a few canas of beer. The song lasted a whole two minutes and then Paco, received the applause of his friends and another cana from the bartender. For the few of us that had the luck to be passing by it was just one of these everyday moments that make a Sunday really worth it.

...In a beautiful world

Sometimes we make our own soundtrack. I explain myself. Often one finds himself floating out of his body and watching over this awkward puppet he really is, running up and down, trying to look as if he's having fun when he actually isn't and getting his share of happiness exactly when one could not tell by the look in his blank face. It is in moments like these when a melody may slowly tune in inside your head, a song that sounds as though made for the occasion has just started in your MP3 player, the soundtrack kicks in, your pace gets to be rythmical, things look as if they fall into place...

Last Tuesday in Charles de Gaulle airport I had one of these moments. I was flying to Barcelona from Athens, through Paris on a trip that apparently connected three of my most favourite cities. Holidays were just over, people very beloved were once more unvoluntarilly left behind, I had witnessed landmark moments in the life of good-old friends and been happy with how things were turning out for most of them. I had my deserved summer-share of parties and beach-relaxing. In all, I was leaving for work carrying a heavy load of all the things that make me still love my birthplace and all those that make it something more than rocks, blocks of bricks and polluted air. Bottomline was: I was sad I had to go.

It had only realised it when out of my Creative-Muvo TX 1GB player a well-placed tune by Coldplay almost commanded me: "Don't Panic".

I lifted up my head and the cold, impersonal sign welcoming me to France suddenly seemed to be polite and warm, my summer memories all melted into a crystal clear image of a precious souvenir that will keep me company throughout the winter, origins and destinations all merged into a symmetrical trajectory with no beginnings nor endings. I was once again on the road heading more for the journey than the place it was supposed to end. Life is hard, but we are masochist enough to like it that much.

through my headphones I could now listen to the chorus:
"We live in a beautiful world..."

...there are no miracles,
for miracle flows in the veins of man...

Giorgos Seferis

Origin of asymmetry

I have been particularly interested in symmetry lately. Maybe because it is a fascinating aspect of nature, or because I have been working hard on things related with symmetry in one or another way. Or just maybe because I had a great teacher that has always been attracted by it. Wherever it comes from, the constant search for symmetry has made me increasingly annoyed by a-symmetries arousing all around us lately.

War is one such. I don't know if you have noticed but wars are becoming more and more asymmetric these days. We nomore have two sides, each fighting for a cause nor have we battles, where armies get to stand one against another. More and more we tend to have the "good" and the "bad", the "terrorists" and their "victims" and wars are made from a distance with bombs flying around and soldiers appearing only on TV. In another level of asymmetry, wars are, nowadays, more and more fought between superpowers and a bunch of ragged fanatics, (almost always long-bearded, almost always arabs, almost always muslim) with a few missiles that cannot even be fired properly.

Quite asymmetric don't you think?

Evenmore, the asymmetry once again rises in terms of the people affected. In the wars of our time, everyday people pay a wholy asymmetric load. Their fates are decided by powerful "coalitions of the brave" (or willing, peaceloving, torchbearers of democracy, you make your choice). Their houses are bombarded, their hospitals are bombarded, their works are bombarded, their bridges are bombarded. In an incomprehensibly asymmetric manner, the only ones who come out stronger after the phosporus-cluster-bomb-flare extravaganzas are always the ragged fanatics, initially considered to be the main enemy.

Quite unreasonable don't you think?

And it gets even worse when you stop and think a little more about it. What if the ragged fanatics were bombing the houses of the "brave" and the "willing"? What would happen if they bombed ambulances of the red cross right in the middle of the street? What if they repeatedly attacked a UN observatory? or used cluster bombs in densely populated areas? or killed 150 citizens for each one of their own to be taken hostage? What if we referred to their leadership as sovereign, their cause as just and their missile attacks as self-defense?

And what if we would be "brave" enough to stop it all? "Willing" enough to impose santions on everybody who crosses the line? "Democratic" enough to realize who is actually crossing it? "Just" enough to draw the line in the right place?

Quite reasonable don't you think?

But A-symmetry has been so deeply incorporated into our perception of simple facts that these questions do not even cross our minds. Instead of asking such questions, we have a list of answers already made up. War is always "war against terrorism", fighters unwilling to comply with new order are "dangerous haters of democracy", killed civilans are "colateral victims", attack is "self defense", defending your land may be an "act of terrorism".

You simply don't ask questions anymore...

And until simple questions start to be asked once again and simplistic answers are discarded, I am afraid I 'll only be able to look for symmetry in the DNA structure...

...or maybe in the chart of Exxon's profits!

Campeones! Campeones!

The combination of football with politics, I have to admit, is something I find very interesting. Mostly because I think that it is difficult to separate the two, even more because I think that you really shouldn't. But being in Barcelona for only three months and a half, I have come to find this over-identification of the city's pride with a football team all a little disturbing. I mean, it could have happened to anybody if he were to watch just a couple of Barca games on the catalan TV! It doesn't take you that much to notice that players with an amazing lack of skill tend to win the admiration of the funs through their catalan origins and their even more catalan statements in the local press. And you would curiously osberve the way you very rarely have a chance to see a replay of a goal scored by the opposing team (unless of course it a totally unimportant last minute consolation).

In general you would soon get the feeling that, when it comes to FC Barcelona, objectivity as a notion becomes a little evanescent!

But honestly, not being a sterilized-romantic fun, I would not have cared a bit about all these things, if only I could share the people's feelings about Barca. I just can't. Because deep inside and although I love this city and its people, I would like to feel that I am living in Spain and not in another country somewhere between Spain and France, whose inhabitants use the words "Iberian Peninsula" with ever decreasing frequency. And although I love to connect football with politics when I like the politics behind it, I hate it when it happens with politics I disagree with.

So, no, for those who are still wondering, I did not enjoy yesterday's triumph, although from the fun's point of view Barca deserved to win this cup more than anyone.

I like the catalan people and I also like their "pride", FC Barcelona with its galaxy of stars and their fascinating football. I also feel I owe something to the country that has welcomed me so warmly since last January and I consider that country to be Spain. So I would really, really love it if the Spanish national team's performances in the upcoming World Cup would make us all, foreigners living here, catalan-spanish and non-catalan-spanish meet at Canaletas and celebrate together, with no hard feelings whatsoever.

Birthdays

Distance makes some things harder than you could possibly imagine. The ability to remember people, names, dates, fades, even for those that have always been proud of their own like myself. It sinks into a passive limbo from which it is only occasionally rescued by otherwise unimportant events such as a song that a radio dj put on at the right moment or a photo that slided in the laptop's screensaver just on time.

But it is exaclty then, when out of the blue, a simple thing sets off an avalanche of memories...

Then you drift away into this complete universe. Warm spring afternoons listening to Morissey, or Pulp, trying to put your Organic Chemistry notes in order, while you could not stop thinking of a cold beer on a terrace, or warm summer nights when after a couple of ouzo bottles you would look down at these stairs with fear. You can still smell the lousy food at the faculty's cafeteria, mixed with the salty breeze that blew from the sea on a freezing February carnival night.

Then a birthday party, begginings of May, waiting for the summer holidays like every year. Then another one, few days before the kick off of another world cup, like this year.

Longer days, more drinks, louder laughters.

You lift your head up, dizzy, comparing this sudden burst of rapid access memory that cannot be compared to any computer you have ever used. You feel happy, that you still remember. You feel lucky, that you have such good things to remember. You feel optimistic, because you keep making moments worth it.

It doesn't have to be to obvious. Friendships that last, can stay well hidden in the back of our heads.
Their memories, well protected by the passing of time and the consecutive layers of trivial information, (science theories soon to become obsolete, football players that will prove fakes, e-mail addresses and pin numbers), will always be there.

This goes out for Errika who has her birthday today. And to Patra, where many of us have spent such a good time, although I only rarely realize it.

Feliz cumpleaños chica!
Happy Birthday!

Wherever I go, Greece keeps haunting me...

Paraphrasing Giorgos Seferis I just have to admit: Leaving behind the beauties of your homeland is a difficult task.

It's been only three days since I came back from Greece, where I spent the Easter holiday and I am already thinking of the islands and the summer vacation.

Maybe because i was born lazy ...

Maybe because laziness (i.e. refusing to think about work apart from when it is only absolutely imperative) is something implicitly natural in all humans ...

Maybe because a friend is already spending a long weekend in Sifnos and keeps sending me sms while I am sitting at my desk ...

...or just maybe because my weekly browsing through the international scientific literature brought me to my knees when this cover of Science magazine appeared on my screen!!!

It is always tough to take a look at a greek island photo without actually being there, but nothing compares to taking part in the sacrilege that puts Santorini beneath such a boring title as "Science". Still it makes you think that even scientists have not yet lost their sense of priorities in life completely. They left the cover clear, unspoiled by any subtitles with disgusting protein acronyms or awful specifications of carbon-dating experiments.

But enough with the whining. Barcelona is nearly as beautiful as a greek island (in her own way of course). I promise to keep making positive thoughts. And the boat that just passed from my window taking some 3000 happy people to Mallorca may be one of them.

[08001] A dysfunction of the system?

Imagine a city of roughly 1.8 million inhabitants, among which more than 400.000 are immigrants. Imagine that the city is positioned somewhere in the middle between three continents, belonging to Europe, facing Africa and having "family" links with South America and the Arab states. Then imagine of a city being at the verge of what may still be considered "avant-guard" while at the same time being tolerant to the traditional heritage of its immigrants and, evenmore, willing to incorporate them into a "mestizo" culture, that is a cultural mixture of all of the above. This is Barcelona.

And, at least for me, Barcelona is Raval, the neighbourhood of the immigrants which is situated west of la Rambla between the Barrí Gotic and Poble Sec. A micrography of our world, with its beautiful rennovated flats of modern painters, right next door to a two bedroom flat which may be shared by a dozen of iraquis. Streets full of colours, odours and tastes from as far as Pakistan and Argentina, syrian restaurants, greek bars, dutch jazz clubs, irish pubs and peruvian barber shops. Everything in walking distance from each other, the good-looking side of "globalization". Zip code: 08001.

No wonder, the most interesting band I 've seen up to now, comes from the Raval. And no wonder it's called 08001. More a collective than a band, comprising twenty-three people from 15 different countries. Their music, a fusion of folk world music with trip-hop, hip-hop, heavy base chords, funky outbursts and melodic vocal sessions is all someone can ask for. The musicians´ inspiring performance blends with the vocalists (more than 8 that keep coming on and off the stage throughout the whole set) and with well-placed samples and video projections.

In times where multi-cultural appeal is confined in extremely expensive, trendy restaurants, when the need to get in touch with a different culture is usually satisfied with an organized trip that locks you up in a 5-star hotel in Habana or Thailand, a walk in the streets of Raval may bring you to the other side of the moon, where life is still real, people work ordinary jobs and do not dress up for tourists. And what better soundtrack for this stroll than 08001?

How I won the Six Nations' (on my first try!)

The event seemed to be a not-miss! France was playing England in what was inarguably the most decisive matchup of the Six Nations' Cup in rugby, my french colleagues were going to watch the game live somewhere close to the Sagrada Familia and this is how I decided to make my debut in yet another team sport loud-screaming-while-watching-and-drinking extravaganza.

I had only finished reading Nick Horby's "Fever Pitch" which had influenced me significantly in considering my forgotten extreme reactions of fandom an irreparable loss I had to compensate for. So I got on the metro and headed to Sagrada Familia to discover what rugby really is. The environment - an irish pub named "Michael Collins", whose owner did not even let the english national anthem to be heard from the TV- and my company -Arnaud, probably wisely masking his excitement and Sylvain making no such effort whatsoever- left me with no options about which side to support. The English were the favourites anyway, so France was the obvious choice.

[a strange game]
I experienced my first try, while ordering a first couple of pints, had to wait for the second until well in the second half and was pleased to understand the circumstances under which the third, definitive one came, a little before the end of the game. A steal and a short run towards the final line, under the cheers of french-irish-(greek?) enthusiasm.
Rugby, however, is a strange game. You understand there is a perfectly devised strategy behind the coordinated moves of so many players, but you find it somehow difficult to appreciate it in its fullness. On the other hand, my lack of experience could in no case allow me to distinguish between an awful mistake of a defender from a brilliant improvization on behalf of the attacker. In all, I felt a bit lost although we won a record win of all times.

[too late]
However, I think it is too late for me to hook up with a new game. This happens only once in a lifetime, twice maybe to the less loyal ones, and always during childhood. I enjoyed watching the match, loved the atmosphere, tried to share as much of the joy of my colleagues, but in the end, I only discovered I belonged elsewhere. That was when, a short after the game had ended, the pub owner switched channel and an Arsenal-Liverpool match came up. Five minutes of a boring, passing game just before halftime were enough to make me understand that some things are already chosen for you and all you can do is accept them without asking too many questions.

Bolkenstein? Nein! Nein! Nein!

Swans are singing their last song over Greece, Italy and Slovenia, the Representative 0 (ex Subcommandante Marcos) is losing his temper in Mexico after being provoked by local agents of stupidity, the ever-clever leaders of islamic countries are pushing people on the streets as they have only discovered some sketches drawn 5 months ago and the even cleverer leaders of the EU suddenly remember the freedom of the press.

Well, freedom is only to be for the press. Citizens throughout the European continent are protesting against the infamous "Bolkenstein Directive" which may force workers throughout Europe to work with lower wages (that is the bottomline anyway). But their representatives could not care less. Europeans may be sure that they are free to speak but noone will listen to them!

At the same time, the catalan people seem to be moving into a sphere of their own. The great issue here is not working rights, freedom of speech or the centralization of Europe. Catalans seem to be very, very far from all that, as their outmost concern is whether or not they should be declared a separate nation according to their new State Constitution. So, while throughout the rest of Europe, people protest against the Bolkenstein Directive, here they are organizing a great protest in order to declare that they are "una nacio" and proud to be catalans. What if the proud catalans of Barcelona are living in the city with the most homeless people throughout the country? And what about those proud Catalans that have a monthly salary that equals their president's daily paycheck?

I sympathize with all the people of Catalunya, but in the end I think they are very dis-oriented about the real problems. If only on tomorrow's protest I could see right next to the banner saying "Som una nacio" another one reading "Baix amb Bolkenstein!"

Happy hour...

So it is Friday and people at work have something to celebrate.
The thing is that they just want an excuse since the city seems to be celbrating everyday, if you feel like it.

Last night I attended my first "happy hour" at the Institute, a happy hour which lasted for 3 hours! Judging from they people I met, how open and warm they are, I think that it won't be hard to organize a lot of such happy hours. And given the position of the Institute, right next to the beach, I would like to think about happy hours when summer comes...They are bound to be much more entertaining.

Friday night in Barcelona, is a fiesta of its own anyway. And it gets even better when greeks are involved. You think you have set out for a day at work, you leave your house at 8.30 in the morning and you find yourself returning at 4.30 in the next morning!!!! This happens because you have spent have of the night dancing at the salsa party that a greek friend is organising every Friday at the basement of a greek restaurant.

For whomever interested, just look for Dionysos restaurant at the corner of Marques de l' Argentera and Passeig Picasso. Christos will be waiting for you at the bar, with cool drinks to quench your thirst after so much sweat on the floor. And there is also a live band playing salsa like crazy!

Then you wake up on a Saturday morning just to remember that the whole weekend is dedicated to Santa Eulalia, patron saint of the children of Catalunya. Nevertheless, there is fiesta everywhere around the city, even for older children! So gather your strength!

Cafe y cigarillos...

The latest war of the Iberian peninsula, is a smokey one! "La guerra de los cigarillos" they call it. The cigarette war!

[Main front. Bars and restaurants]

...where you may still smoke although it is frowned upon by the official state. Actually there are signs everywhere discouraging smokers. I saw a sign saying "Not smoking makes coffee taste better" in a cafeteria in Barcelona. Well, I am not a smoker but I find it hard to believe myself. I always envied the happy looks on the faces of smokers when they are enjoing a cigarette with a cup of coffee. Bar and restaurant owners are strictly advised to discourage smokers but they are free to allow smoking if they want to. Of course they ALL DO allow it. So now the minister of health, a fierce anti-smoker, says it may be time to start prohibitions throughout what is considered one of Europe 's most liberal countries...

[Western Front. The tobacco stores]

Great tobacco companies like Philip Morris and British American tobacco have decided to effectively lower the prices of cigarettes in Spain, in order to compensate for the losses they have after the hard-determined anti-smoke campain of the state. The companies imposed the tobacconists all over the country to sell cigarettes even cheaper than they had initially bought them. The sellers went mad and choose not to sell, today they went on strike and closed most of the stores leaving many smokers in distress...

[Note to greek readers: OF COURSE it is unthinkable for tobacconists to keep selling in the old prices. This would be unacceptable here, although in Greece I guess it would be the easiest way to solve the problem]

[Eastern Front. The French border]

Prices fall, fever rises! Hundreds of french cross the spanish borders everyday to take advantage of cheap cigarettes sold in Spain at prices, which sometimes reach less than half the french ones. Cars trunks are packed with packets, vans are borrowed from friends to carry the valuable herb enclosed in cylindrical bars of joy into french territory. No spirit of "contrabandieures" here. The EU laws allow it. So stores in the french side only sell newspapers and magazines, while the spanish ones get relieved of all their stocks. On the other hand, tobacconists in the spanish mainland accuse their colleagues at the frontline of bad union practice, but still, the colour of the money is the same across european borders and hard to resist.

[Smoking in Catalunya]

This is still not a problem here. I was in a bar yesterday where smoking was considered to be something like a club rule. Of course I did not feel at all awkward with no smoking and since two saxophone, one trumpet, one bass and one drum players at breathing distance had no problem with it, I had none myself.

To all not-tolerant passive smokers : Allow people to have their vices or else the vices will turn against you.

in a few words...

Se prohibe prohibir!

!Qué tiempo de mierda!

They say it rarely rains in Barcelona! Then it seems I came dancing the rain-dance, because I have only seen the sunlight for a few hours during the last two days. On the other hand, they also say it never snows in Athens, but still I left my home town almost covered in snow.

So it seems, the earth has gone crazy. What used to happen rarely becomes customary and what was customary now only appears out of the blue. This it my friends…

Global Warming – Global Warning

Nothing more to do than sit and wait for the sun to come out again. And just think I am starting work from tomorrow. For the time being watching the palm trees bending from the wind and listening to some funny, jumping music, from a Spanish band called, La oreja de Van Gogh. If Vincent had his ear on he would not be dissapointed to listen to them. It sounds so much more joyful than what the lyrics say.

“Like the paintings that are waiting to be hanged upon the wall…
…like the tablecloth after yesterday’s dinner”

Well, I am still hoping for the sun tomorrow

Intro

Hola!
Hi everybody,
This is my blog on my days in Barcelona.

I have only arrived here yesterday, it's the third time I am visiting the city but things now seem to be a little more permanent.

While my main intention is working "hard" on the research sector, I have promised myself to keep up with the great number of interesting activities going on.

So...

Stick around to watch how life flows in this city, proud to call herself the cultural capital of Southern Europe.