bicyclemark

bmtv36 A Protest in Zagreb

Hello again from Belgrade. Day 3 that I am in town and leaving soon, back to Croatia. But I’ll talk about all that later…

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During my time in Zagreb last week, I had the privledge of attending a protest against the destruction of a beloved city block. The buildings are very important for their cultural heritage, which sparked particular concern by artists of all walks of life and all ages. The plan is to destroy them and erect a shopping mall… but the people of the city have come out in force against this plan.

Good Evening Serbia

Well… I can’t properly put into words how amazing it feels to be in Serbia. Plus.. internet is not so easy to come by in Belgrade, in the middle of the night.

So here’s a photo of the border patrol, on the way in from Croatia this evening… Ill be back in the morn.

Oh.. and yes… Belgrade has some very cool personality to it.

Ex Yugoslavia

Standing at the nightclub this evening, my eyes are scanning the crowd. going from face to face.. I keep asking myself.. do I see any differences.. between these kids and the kids in amsterdam.. or the kids in lisbon.. or the kids in new jersey?

Most would say there is no difference. They dress the same. They drink the same. They party the same. (?)

But I always see one difference. History. The history, not so much of these children per se, but that of their families. My mind starts wondering all sorts of crazy questions… how many of their parents were in the military… fighting in the war against Yugoslavia/Serbia, a bit more than a decade ago. How many have gandparents who can tell stories of Yugoslavia under Tito, or world war II when the Germans invaded. Each of these kids has a family history that would probably blow my mind. Yet here I am, having a drink side by side with them, and they seem less obsessed with the turns of history than I am.

I think it is truely interesting to be living in an ex-anything. Ex- GDR in Germany, ex-Soviet Union in Estonia, ex-Indochina in Vietnam, and yes.. Ex-Yugoslavia in Croatia. I guess every place on earth can claim to be an ex-something.. but being at a recently turned EX, I somehow see it in every piece of sidewalk or trainstation. A combination of an over active imagination and a quest to know as much history as possible, crammed into a few late night reading sessions and conversations with kind locals.

Eventually the boom-boom-boom of what seems like the same DJ Ive seen all my life broke me out of my deep thoughts. Time to move on, brave the below zero temperatures, and head back to this warm hotel.

Day 2…. done.

From Zagreb with Love

Dear Zagreb, capital of Croatia,

I write you this letter yet I’ve barely known you for more than 12 hours. Yet the moment I met you there’s been a certain connection.

I couldn’t believe how far apart your buildings were, nor how big the houses are. But then Tom explained that we were near the airport and everything was different out there.

Still I sat in the back of the car and kept looking left and right at you… wide avenues, giant housing projects who’s lack of paint creates a depressive beauty.

Then we crossed into your heart, and the good Tom kept explaining the history, the culture, the changes. I knew about your Roman Catholic roots, and some details of the old days under the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. But I didn’t realize you weren’t damaged during the terrible war in the 90’s. Even knowing this I look at your very European majestic buildings and I find myself scanning for bulletholes. Silly habit.

Your people are what really caused me to want to write this letter… in only half-a-day I’ve encountered the nicest of people. Whether in shops, or getting luggage at the airport, or attending this crazy festival… your ladies especially, have a wonderful charm about them. I’m probably too easily charmed, but even the ladies at the pizzaria seemed to be giving me extra smiles and laughing about the little misunderstandings.

And so Zagreb, I write you this letter on my first night… exhausted but captivated but all you have to offer. You may be European at heart, but for me you’re in a class of your own, an exciting class.

So whatever may happen, bad or good, this letter is just to say.. on day number 1, dear Zagreb… you rock.

-sincerely,

bicyclemark writing in a blogpost

ps- the funniest thing I saw on the flight over, Minnesota Stories doing the SOTU Drinking Game VLOG

Ruined for Work

Number of copies…. click click… beep beep.

Single sided to double sided… beep beep.

Push Copy button… commence loud life sucking noises.

Have you ever gone back to an old job you used to do and thought… did I ever work here?
That could happen for a number of reasons, not necessarily cause you didn’t like it, but maybe just because… mentally.. you’re past it.. you’re somewhere else.. you travelled forward in time or to another dimension, where somehow, you can barely picture yourself doing this job.

When I go back to Portugal I always go pickup BadHareDay at the Walford P Street school, where we used to both teach. I walk in there and I see a long list of unfamiliar faces. If I get a look its normally a “who are you, what do you want, are you lost?” kind of look. Eventually he comes down the stairs and it is as if, for a brief moment, the year is 2002 again; we go out for lunch. Later I see students I used to teach, I smile, they don’t notice me; I don’t work there anymore.

Lately I’ve been doing some office work for the american exchange program. Normally I’d stay away from the place where I was pretty much pushed out, but the people of that office have always been kind to me, and guiding the new fresh-off-the-plane american students is a wonderfully horrifying experience that I like to think keeps me grounded and lets me know what the kids these days, over there, are into.

But as I stand at that copy machine… click click.. beep beep.. oops.. staple remover.. load paper.. one thought goes through my head and I know everyone can see it, “I don’t work here anymore, and that is a great thing.”

Instead my mind is on my program, and my future guests like Josh flying in from Uganda in a few hours, or the Brazilian topics I’m working on, or the Bangladesh show next week. Then there’s my trip to the balkans this week, I cannot wait. And to top it all off, I see something extra exciting on the horizon… it looks like, yes I think it is… I see @ XOLO!

Pension Fund Used to Be a Nice Thing

“How are you with finances?”, a frisbee buddy asks me this evening…
thought about it for a split second, and realized “I pay attention to markets and economics, but I don’t consider it one of my strong areas”.

That said, I’m reading all these reports and articles about different companies and governments, and whenever there is a reference to pension funds or benefits for employees, it is almost always referred to as a liability… a bad thing.. a problem.

Amazing the era we live in. Where having to actually pay your retired employees the pensions they have been paying for so many years, becomes an inconvenience.. or some kind of financial kiss of death.

It’s not that I want to be completely deaf to the complications of managing big organizations and businesses, but the first thing that I think has gone horribly wrong is how we talk about pensions.. especially in media who are so often influencial in how we talk. (like that goddam troop increase they call a S—-)

The other question I have, is who the hell is messing with this money. I understand references to baby boomers, and how many people retiring at once can be alot of money to spend on benefits. Still, I see alarming and annoying details that indicate that companies and governments alike are wrongly dipping into these pension funds and using them for other things. If true — THAT — is the real crime.. the real curse that we all have to suffer.

I watched a frontline special last year about “can we afford to retire”, which spoke of how American Airlines was so plagued by its retirement payments, it found a way to basically NOT PAY many of its former employees. And apparently other companies are looking for the same rationale / loophole to do the same. Somehow we’re all supposed to take pity and allow these companies that have made millions in profit and government subsidies,
and we’ll just forgive them for defaulting on retirement funds that people have long paid for and may not survive without.

The article I mentioned was about New York City, which apparently is an exception, as it has a budget surplus. Most cities, according to the article, are in deep trouble as many city employees will soon retire and than demand their pensions. What a crazy concept, that many people might reach a certain age and retire.. at the same time.

Im being quite sarcastic, but my question is very real… what is the REAL reason pension funds are so impossible to pay? What happenned to all the money people paid into the system throughout their working lives, and why wasn’t the system properly designed so that the money wasn’t lost or squandered… but there, for when the time came?