Complete sentence: I am so old that when I was a kid...

... milk was delivered to my home by a man on horseback
... detergent was first introduced in my home town
... there were no plastic bags, balls or toys. The only plastic at home was bakelite
... people could buy goodies at the market and pay half a penny
... "The wizard of Oz" was shown for the first time in my home town
... people took weekly baths- as many Frenchmen still do I am told
... my nanny concocted a medicine for her arthritis using my urine as ingredient
... people made their own comic books cutting and pasting newspaper's funny pages
... the main way to travel was the train
... markets did not have carts, you hired an Amerindian to carry your purchases on his back until you got home
... radio programs were broadcast alive, with a live audience. TV had not started.
... Doris Day was the hotest girl on the movies
... photos of me were printed in sepia tone
... kids played with kaleidoscopes, little wooden guitars, made flipbooks
... chicken was eaten only on special occasions i.e. weddings, birthdays, or Christmas

How To: Give Nutrition Education to your Child

Kids are egocentric, so you better give them messages about sharing food without taking somebody else's portions. I was explaining my son Jose Miguel when he was 5-6 years old that kids grew faster than adults and therefore kids should be given priority to receive nutritious foods such as liver and meat. Jose Miguel instantly replied: then pass me your chicken. He ate my share for a long time.

Jose Miguel absorbed rapidly my educational messages and used the information to manipulate his nanny. Jose Miguel would ask her things like "what vitamins are contained in rice? After she pledged ignorance, he would tell her that since he was better informed, he should decide when to eat what and how much.

How to: explain the Doppler effect to a kid

When I was a 6- year old I visited my uncle's dairy farm near our home town. While there a whistling train passed nearby. My sisters and I noticed that the pitch was higher when the train was approaching and had a lower frequency when getting away from us. Sister Miyaray hypothesized trains might have two whistles, one to let people at a station know the train was approaching it, and other to announce the train was departing. The only inconsistency: there was no train station in sight.

Later on the same day, I fell into a deep hole in the ground and had to be rescued. My parents concluded I had been frightened to the point I could get ill from "susto" and took me to the traditional healer at the market to be prescribed herbal teas.

WANTED: Stolen Art

In or about 1975, I enrolled in an art class on Saturdays. I would go very early and start a work, then rush to the University Hospital to attend regular morning class, return at noon to the workshop to finish my art project. Sometimes I got distracted in my art project and one of my classmates would come to remind me I had a clinical conference at the same time.

Once, I finished a carbon drawing of a curtain, I had played with light and was specially proud of my job. My colleagues said looked realistic. My art, posted on the wall, was gone by next Saturday. All other projects done by my classmates in art class had not been taken away. It was possible it had been taken by somebody, jealous of a work that could have made his/her own work look clumsy by comparison, or even worse, someone could have used my drawing to wrap fish or light a fire! But as a consolation, I preferred to think that my work had been valued to the point that someone took risks to steal it. My consecration as an artist!

Going tribal: Tale of two Luandas

Old Luanda: I lost my hotel reservation, and because of the oil and diamond boom it would take four months to get a hotel room. Thanks to a colleague living in the US, I get a room at Mother Luisa's Inn, actually a large house. I get the maid's room, with a latrine-type of bathroom, while a female colleague traveling with me gets the main suite with a private bathroom. Mae Luisa sleeps in a couch for a couple of weeks. The daily rate, $150, includes a breakfast. Mae does a fusion of Portuguese, Brazilian and African cuisines of her ancestors. Her home is immaculate but lacks basic services. As it is not connected to the generator in the compound, we often lack electricity, the water pump broke during most of our stay and there was no running water, naturally there was no Internet. Extremely noisy neighbors held wild parties every night until Mae called the cops. Traffic to downtown was so bad it took me more than 2.5 hours to travel approx 5 miles. I went to the Hospital for meetings. As I left the building, I tried not to step over roadkill, a rat flattened like a pancake. I woman with a headscarve moved rhythmically while wailed- her mother had died. Some buildings at the Colonial (since their got their Independence in 1975, anything older than that is Colonial) downtown are still scarred with bullet holes, others have been occupied by squatters. Cranes build more skyscrapers at a frenzy pace. Nobody seems to be building parking, SUVs park everywhere in the streets blocking traffic. I watched at passerby's buttocks and conclude they must be eating too little because of food inflation, walking home from work, because of the bad traffic, or both, since few have fat reserves. I regard my watching as a scientific endeavor, there is no informed consent, but got OK from my wife just in case.

New Luanda: On the last night, I went to the new Luanda. Wide, straight and clean streets, new buildings with a modern look, malls and all the amenities of a piece of the US transplanted into the heart of Africa. A few people walked, most drove brand new cars (priced double than in the US, but at least fuel is cheap). Prices were outrageous, $100/person for a dinner, but those eating here -executives, high government officials including top army brass- seemed able to afford them.

Going tribal: Starving on Paradise Island

I am visiting Paradise Island (not its real name), a beautiful Island larger than France, in the Indian Ocean. Locals are friendly, most displaying a lot of hospitality. I was unlucky to travel with perhaps the only locals that have not hospitality at all.

We departed to a rural area by car Wednesday morning with the intention of returning Thursday night. I packed lunch for the first day (tuna sandwiches, cashews, and soda). I shared my lunch with the locals (driver and my government's counterpart) and invited them beverages once we reached our destination. They warned me that I had failed to bring local currency and that nobody in the countryside would take my dollars, because of the incipient tourism industry. I had with me over a thousand bucks. I asked my counterpart to exchange a few dollars for the local currency and he refused.

On Thursday I had no local currency for breakfast, lunch or dinner. My counterpart that ate my lunch on the previous day, would go alone to the restaurant and return satisfied without offering nothing but a tiny bag of candied bananas. On the return trip, the driver munched candies he bought by the package, without sharing (he also refused to exchange money or lend some currency). We arrived 11 pm to my hotel that fortunately offers a great room service, satiating my 28-hour hunger in no time.

I cannot make any generalization. I still don't know why they acted like that, since my grant's administrator had given them enough cash for fuel and incidental expenses. Read Maupassant's "Boule de suif" to learn how bad an experience like this -mine sans gang rape- can be. I clearly need to improve my negotiation skills. I should have asked "what do I need to tell you in order to persuade you to give me some local currency?".

People: My mom (3)

Mom worked hard all her life. She once purchased live chicken, gutted and shipped the birds to a highland city without industrialized coops, and where an uncle' restaurant wanted to add roasted chicken to its menu.

Mom had to use public transportation before dawn to get to the market. As her older male child (10y)I thought it would be inappropriate for a beautiful woman walk alone before dawn, so I volunteer to escort her, since it will not interfere with school time.

Mom would wake me up at 4am and after a quick breakfast we walked 1 km to the avenue where a shared taxi would take us to the main market. Sometimes there were no chicken at all at that market and we had to go to the coops outside the capital. We returned home with 30 chicken or so that Mom killed and gutted. I bought dry ice, then she packed and couriered the birds. We were left with a lot of innards and since I hated livers' taste, Mom would ask me to sell them in the neighborhood, she would not discard anything nutritious.