The nameless people

Part 1: My Loving Filipina

When your nationality is more important than who you are…

You’re no more than the place from where you came from, you became part of a mass of nameless and faceless people. Your identity simply disappears.

That’s because we don’t care about your unique face, your name, your history, your family, we just don’t care if you sleep, eat, drink or enjoy yourself. You are here to work and when you finish the job there will only be more of it waiting for you.

You will be allowed to stay here for as long as you can make yourself useful and in return you will have one day off per week, after at least 12 worked hours per day plus a thousand money from here, approximately 270 $ per month. But it can be less and also your employer can reduce it, not pay it and even discount part of it from your salary if you don’t behave and dare to get a sick leave.

That’s it. Take it or leave it!

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Better done than perfect

Is there a coincidence about the time or my brain had really planned from the beginning that August was somehow a changing point in my life?

Yep! My last post dates from August 3, 2014. We’re now August 10, 2018.

Gosh! It’s been 4 years and 7 days since I, so to speak, gave birth to my first baby, this blog.

Yep! I’m ashamed.

Even if could line up all the excuses I gave myself to not write and to keep going on nurturing this “baby”, my intellectual baby, deep inside me, I knew that it was indeed my choice, a voluntary one, to stop writing.

People often say that they’re sorry that they didn’t have time to do this or that, when in reality they just didn’t find the real motivation to do whatever this or that was. Obviously I’m part of these people.

But then could someone please try to explain to me: How’s that possible that one can just assassinate their own beloved * “thing”?

* Well,  for me in that case it was my blog idea. For you it could be really anything that you’ve been planning to do and you just didn’t. Strangely, despite all the good reasons you and I could have had to keep doing it,  for some psychologically conscious or unconscious process, WE ended up here: just NOT DOING it!

Shame on us, YEP!

It is really a sad and shameful realization that I’d chosen it. It is my responsibility and mine only that I created this blog four years ago, feeling so happy to bring to life my idea of sharing ideas with hope that this would bring something positive, not only for myself, but also for this chaotic world of ours.

I’d like to add that I was never comfortable with the choice I did. I was clearly in a cognitive dissonance but the cause wasn’t yet clear to me.

Thus, while on the back of my mind I was looking for the reasons I’d chosen to watch my so to speak “baby” slowly die before my eyes, I come across some smart people with interesting ideas that later, helped me to start to understand what was going on on my head.

The following lines sum up the notions that I’ll develop on my next posts. These are some of the ideas that helped me address my cognitive dissonance, this state of mental tension and discomfort, because I couldn’t understand why my brain had decided that I should be in a state of inaction towards something that I’d put so much of my energy to create. These ideas came from simple and wise notions that I’ve got from these smart people:

Better done then perfect (Elizabeth Gilbert, author)

Good enough (Aamnah, Psychologist)

Why aren’t you taking action? (Broke Castillo, self coach, author and entrepreneur)

Better late then never (A worldwide quote from uncertain author)

Maybe you will think that this is crazy  talk or maybe you’ll find some sense in what I’m sharing here, but if you’re curious like I was to understand why my brain was sabotaging my project, keep tuned for my next posts!

Kidnapping à la française

sequestradoBefore I tell you about how kidnapping à la française goes, I would like to describe the circumstances in which I learnt about the way the French kidnap some people.

Well, well … I was in the second year of my life in France (2009), washing the dishes and cooking dinner while listening to the 8 o’clock news. That was when a story caught my attention.

At this time, I forgot that I had my pan on the stove and I stood dumbfound watching TV for a few minutes, while a deep sense of love by the French invaded my heart.

Paralysed, I heard the story about parents who had kidnapped the principal of their children’s school because he did not take any decision on their repeated requests regarding the removal of a teacher they were convinced was inept to his job.

Here’s what happened: Two out of three days, the children got back home in tears complaining about their teacher, who did not seem very tolerant towards his students.

Parents began to talk between themselves and found out that the situation affected many of them. So they decided to talk to the teacher, however nothing changed, and their kids kept coming back home crying.

shocked-faceAt this time, they decided to get together and ask to the school principal to relieve this teacher from his duties.

Time passed and the news story told that the situation remained the same and the disgruntled parents signed a petition.

Apparently this didn’t work either and this led them to act more consistently: They decided to kidnap the school principal and made him sign the teacher’s dismissal letter .

And that’s a kidnapping à la française!

And the most interesting thing about all this is that the French are not limited to kidnapping school principals. I’ve seen many times on TV reports about the kidnapping of the directors of large companies by their own employees.

The reason? The employees weren’t being paid or they’d be fired as a result of mass layoffs. But they weren’t ready to accept those situations and suffer their consequences without a fight.

You can imagine my face after realizing that my dinner was burning!

doan de casa surpresaAt least I hope you can imagine my expression of a stunned Brazilian housewife watching such reports on the 8 o’clock news. In fact, contrary to what happens in Brazil, kidnapping in France do not take place to ask for large sums of money in exchange of someone’s life. It was used primarily as a way to have your voice heard, to fight for your beliefs.

In this particular case, it was about parents who were convinced that there was a real problem with their children’s teacher, and after several attempts trying to find a civilized solution, they employed greater resources to solve the problem.

Now you see why I love these people?

They are crazy and only by living here you can see what they do every day to fight for their beliefs and rights.

They know how to come together to change things that do not suit them, and to this day I can not stop admiring their strength of mind.

My dear friends, I didn’t know any of this before living here, because unfortunately the Brazilian media would never report such kind of news. They might tell you that François Hollande, the French president, cheated on his wife, but this kind of subversive thinking should not come to the knowledge of the Brazilian people.

This is because the government has not really an interest in the people becoming aware of the power they can have when they unite.

For them, the proliferation of stupid TV shows is better, because that keeps the people alienated and in their place, while those who are in control can remain there, even with all its injustices.

It is time for the Brazilian people to write its own history, and to stop being afraid to act and accepting as absolute truth what those who are above them say.

And it is time for Brazilians to begin to think for themselves and fight for a fairer country, with equality and true freedom.

Enough of “order for the poor and progress for the rich”!

It is time we build a new home, a new Brazil!

Before you leave, here’s a curious fact: in French we have two words, two verbs used to speak about abducting someone (kidnapper and séquestrer), which have a distinctive meaning while in Portuguese we use a single word (sequestrar), so we have no distinctive meaning.

The first word, kidnapper, comes from the English; to kidnap, which means removing a person for ransom, expecting a sum of money to release that person.
The second word, séquestrer, is an offense that basically means keeping a person illegally locked, but not for ransom.

So why the French have two words while the Brazilians and Portuguese have just one? Is it because it became important for the French to dissociate the money related dimension from the more general one, what might limit the usage of the word?

In any case, when Brazilians speak about kidnapping, unfortunately it has a single meaning for them: it is about a loved one, a relative, a child, a mom, a dad that was taken from them to be exchanged against a large amount of money.

For the record: in 6 years living in France, I’ve never heard on TV a report about someone removed under such conditions, while in Brazil this type of thing is common in the news and it has become part of our daily lives. As an example: in my entourage I have two people that have been abducted for ransom.

I think it’s time for the Brazilian people to begin to abduct the right people for the right reasons.

So please: stop abducting your fellow citizens for money, but rather “kidnappez” corrupt politicians, those who are stealing behind your backs and can remain living in total impunity.

If you want to kidnap, do it in style, do it à la française: To defend your rights and assert your beliefs!

 

What Brazilians didn’t know about Allan Kardec!

surprised-baby

Most Brazilians who believe in spiritism might ignore the fact that Allan Kardec is almost unknown here in France and that his real name is Hippolyte Léon-Denizard Rivail!

Actually, those statements are not based on actual statistics, but only on questions asked around here (in France) by me, to see if there was anyone who knew Allan Kardec and the tenets of spiritualism here, as so many of us do in Brazil. Continue reading

My motivations

I love writing and I love to share!

As a foreigner living in France since 2008, I would say that a holiday in Paris will not allow you to capture the soul of this people. This takes time, takes commitment, it takes effort to understand them and I dare say, before we can love them, we need to hate them a bit before.

I would like to share with you my impressions and what I’ve learnt from this plunge into French culture, one of the best experiences of my life .

Yes, yes … It is true that when we talk about Paris , you think life in pink, the most desired products , brands that make you dream , a perfect love story, great wines, perfumes, their unique know-how, the remarkable architecture and art that you can contemplate in all its forms:

Art in all its forms

Or even just listening to them, because speaking French is also a kind of art!

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