I’ve heard about this really cool idea of time bank where you would deposit time (by doing something that you knew how to do and that another person needed) and then you would be able to withdraw some of the time you had previously deposit (that is someone else doing something you needed to be done and can’t do). If the idea works there would be lot’s of things we could get without paying cash and we could do something that we are good at to help others. It’s an interesting idea, as everybody is good at doing something and probably needs something done that doesn’t know how to do.
But the really good issue it raises is that all the work, all the jobs, all the tasks are worth the same. One hour of walking an old lady’s dog worth’s the same thing as one hour of babysitting your child, or painting your house or washing your car. This could be the first step of society to recognize that a street cleaner is worth the same as a surgeon… they both are indispensable to society, but today the distance between their salaries is so big that it should make us (that are part of these society) ashamed.
I’m not defending the same salary to everybody… I really don’t believe that, all I’m saying is that the salaries shouldn’t be to low (in Portugal a street cleaner makes less then €400 month) nor to high (a plastic surgeon in private clinics can make easy €10000 month). Only when these huge differences begin to disappear can we say that we all are worth the same in a society that needs us all to work properly.

It almost seems impossible. I spent my time writing about the American elections, writing about elections that will only influence me on an indirect level and when the Portuguese took place I didn’t bother to write anything.
Well I’m writing now. The government is only fully functional for a few days, and the first measures are begging to appear.
Well they should have no major problems in the next four year. The party that won, Partido Socialista (PS), a party that belongs to The Socialist International, won with absolute majority, a thing that they never did before, the EU approved a new approach to the stability pact, one that is less strict, the president of the EU commission is Portuguese. But there is more, the European economy is starting to show signs of improvement, and the same thing is happening with the Portuguese one.
The government is made by new people, some of them didn’t have anything to do with politics before entering the government. And the ones that wore pointed has probable ministers before the composition of the government was announce didn’t enter the government, as the new prime-minister was able to understand that the Portuguese people didn’t want the same old people running their country.
But they’ll have a very hard job, Portugal is far behind the old countries of the EU and needs to catch up with countries like Greece, Spain or Ireland. There is virtually no time to waste, they need to take some harsh measures in a very short period of time.
I’m hoping that they get them right, we’ll be here to see.

New Year, new life… is it?

Probably not. There are always a few New Year resolutions that we never follow, most of them are the same from last year, and the other, and the other… We don't need a change of year to change our lives, we don't need a new year to get ride of bad habits and start following the good ones. We definitely don't need a special day to shout: It's today that I'm changing, today that I'll watch less TV, do more exercise, quit on bad food… We just have to try that all the days in the year, so that next new year's resolution is: continue my life the way I've been living it.

And if you've done all this the last year and still have New Year resolutions… well there's just one thing I can say to you: Welcome to the real world, where nobody has a perfect life and everybody has unachieved dreams.

I like having unachieved dreams, it's what keeps me going on, it's what makes me want to wake up the next day, to battle to make true one of them… and when that one is achieved the next step is to elect a new dream to chase… I really hope that I'll always have al least one unachieved dream… cause without that I can't imagine how I would be happy.

What can we do? This is a recurrent question in the European countries in the last days. The tsunami killed thousands, affected millions and seven countries need help rebuilding. As Kofi Annan said today “we have to help the poor that lost everything”, there are more than 2 million people without clean water to drink. Help is needed and now. People in UK have already donated around £25m, I don't know the value in Portugal but it's lower for sure. I donated €15. If each of us donates this small amount the global total will be enough to help everybody, but if we're all counting on the neighbour to donate for us… then I'm afraid no one will get the help they need.

Friendship.

Solitude is one of the greatest problems on the actual society. Some people stop meeting new people at their early 20s and during their life, lose all their previous friendships. There are some reasons for this, but the main one is the routine that rules their lives. They get up early, go to work and came back in the evening. Their job doesn't involve contacting with other people. Their spare time is spent watching TV and they don't have any other activity, and as they don't have friends and don't go out, they end up lonely without interacting with other people.

All this could be different if we kept more of our childhood.

Yesterday I was in a shopping mole and there wore two young kids that obviously didn't know each other. After 5 minutes in the same shop one of them was begging their mother to invite the other over for tee. In five minutes she had made a new friend, without needing excuses to talk to her, without needing a middle kid tbhat would introduce them to each other.

I think I can say that my Christmas wish is that we learn how to meet knew people with children, so that next year there less grownups living monotones, lonely lives.