Roll Vitacora

Through a friends' blog about another friends' graduation (congratulations!) I got to J. K. Rowling's speech at Harvard Commencement. I'd read somewhere she was the speaker, but hadn't got to try and find it. I confess that in my own Commencement I didn't attend the "afternoon" speech some famous actor (forgive my memory) gave, the "afternoon exercises" I think they call that part of the ceremony.

Rowling gave a great speech that weaved her life story with ideas of failure, imagination and somehow compassion. I didn't quite get how she linked the latter two.

She started by remembering her own Commencement and life at age 21. Then came failure and it pushed her forward. She doesn't invite Harvard overachievers to fail, but invites them to think of themselves as a lot more than academic achievement or a CV. This definitively resonates with my doubts about going for a doctoral degree... I doubt it so much, I think I just admit I don't want it or really need it.

Then came imagination... somehow connected to compassion. I didn't know she had worked at Amnesty International. She talked about this stage of her life and invited the graduates, privileged citizens of "the world's last superpower" with an elite education to work for those who suffer war, torture and discrimination. No one (and Rowling herself said it) expects a commencement speech to change someone's life, and a few will probabaly just remember the mention of a "gay wizard" in 20 years, but the speech is wonderful example of her witty writing and the life lessons someone who has been in the "rock bottom".

You can watch it, read it or download it here: http://harvardmagazine.com/go/jkrowling.html

I saw this video last year in the ICA in Boston. It's incredibly funny. That squirrel from "The Ice Age", Scrat is so much fun!

Thanks to the two friends in Boston for the invite about a year ago.

Aprovechando que estoy estrenando horno (y para calmar la fiebre de panadero) hice el ponqué de la abuela con la recete que me dio Luisa hace rato, pero con escencia de almendra en vez de vainilla. Creció bien, desmoldó sin problema y parece que quedó bastante rico... ya veremos; no lo he probado. ¿Será que publico la receta familiar?

This blog comes and goes. To make it come a little, I'm gonna try and post shorter and less elaborately (yeah, right, it's been elaborate). So, today, updates on geeky-life:

I got myselft Leapard as a Christmass-birthday present and have been running it for about a month now. I like it. I don't feel preview is slower, as some have pointed out, and everything I use has worked well. No problems. I am glad Apple learned from Linux about multiple desktops.

I got an iPhone, thanks to bluei and the coming of my birthday. It's great. Activating was easy with the many online guides (www.hackthatphone.com, especially), but unlocking was a little bit of a problem. Bootloader 4.6 before the 1.1.3 update. I bought a StealthSim and it worked wonders. I haven't touched the baseband and it works perfectly. I also managed to configure voicemail, thanks to a comment in this forum. Easy: dial *5005*86*yourcompletecellphonenumber#. Now you can tap the Voicemail icon and actually call Voicemail (my carrier is Movistar, don't know if works with the others).

That's all for a geeky update...

"Tenaz", decía el mensaje con que me informaron. El Pasquín dice: "Los turistas secuestrados fueron identificados como:  Alf Onshuus Niño, profesor de la Universidad de Los Andes de padre noruego y madre colombiana;".

I had some blood work and a CAT scan to show to Dr. Restrepo. The things he had ordered in our last appointment. As far as I (and some doctor friends) could tell, everything looked fine in both of them. But there was something that kept bugging me in the scan. The radiologist reported seeing some sort of calcification somewhere around the left tonsels. Everyone said it was totally unrelated to the Hogkins, but it still kept bugging me. Probably 'cause I'm not a doctor. Why the hell would that be there? Was there a chance it was some sort of tumor? The doctor friends had no answer to why and said they were quite sure it was no tumor. However, one of them suggested my oncologist would order a biopsy. I was sort of between calm, optimistic and... working on trying not to freak out: keeping busy with so many things in my head.

Me and my blue companion got there a little before four and had time to take it slowly, not like last time. We walked slowly out the parking garage, took our time to get to the elevators and I even stopped to go to the bathroom. The doctor was running late, as he usually is, so we played some Tetris on our computers while we waited. Finally, after losing about 20 games, the nurse called my name, we stood up, and walked to his office. He was as cheerful and smiley as he usually is.

We sat across from him at his desk and I started passing the tests one by one. Keeping the offending CAT scan last. He said the blood looked fine and I passed the radiologist's report saying I was worried there was something weird in the neck section. He read it carefully and took a while. It seemed like forever. We waited in silence for him to pronounce his judgment. His pen scribbled on my history, his eyes went over the short paragraph a few times and finally he said it was nothing to worry about. "It is very probably a consequence of the radiation therapy."

I retorted. "The left tonsel was outside the radiation field," and started rummaging in my folder, looking for the drawings they'd copied for me in Boston as part of my history. I found one, just a generic skull with a square and some measurements, and he said, "It's inside the field". I found a PET scan that showed the field somewhat better and he showed me how the area was inside the radiation field. I was still not satisfied... Still worried. "It was not there last year, in the April CT scan." Here, I have images from then.

I produced the slides from April 2006 and the ones from three weeks ago. He put them up on his light box and started looking carefully. Passing from one to the other. He thought the radiologist who interpreted last year's was less of an alarmist than this one. His words were close to that. He found the offending white spot on both slides and showed us. He was right: it was on both. He insisted it was nothing to worry about and the previous radiologist didn't mention it because it was insignificant, meaningless. He said he himself wouldn't have. I asked about a biopsy and he said he felt certain it wasn't necessary. I believed him. I chose to believe him. It is nothing to worry about. If it were, he would have ordered a biopsy.

Science works! We smiled. We thanked him. He left his office exchanging the usual Merry Christmasses and Happy New Years. Right outside his door we hugged. We laughed. I felt a huge burden had been taken off the back of my head. I know my blue companion did too. Now I have about 4 more months of calm, before I have to go back and get checked again.

So... all's well. Again. Smile if you wish, laugh as we did if you feel like it. Toast as we did. And feel free of that particular worry pulling down the back of your head... as I did.

Alias blue girl: thank you for caring, thank you for coming by, thank you for kicking my ass in Tetris, and thank you for really holding my hand.

El lunes fui al médico. Le llevé los exámenes que me había ordenado. No escribiré largamente hoy sobre lo que fue y lo que me dijo, pero lo diré luego. De pronto esta tarde lo escribo. Pero en corto, todo está bien. Sigo bien. No de qué preocuparse.

Monday I say the doctor. I took him the test results from everything he'd ordered. I won't write long now about what it was like and what he said, but I'll write about it later. Maybe later today. But in short, it's all well. I'm still fine. Nothing to worry about.

So, smile if it makes you smile and toast to my health if you feel like it, because well... I am healthy... still.

Ayer llegó la Navidad a casa de mi padre. Con la maravillosa ayuda de la chica azul hicimos el pesebre y ayudamos un poco con las demás decoraciones navideñas. Jacinto hizo el árbol con mi padre.

El pesebre, este año, tiene cancha de fútbol en un estadio en algún lugar del altiplano (supongo que en Boyacá), Beethoven dirigiendo la orquesta con Papá Pitufo, un avión volando sobre Belén y el mejor paisaje pesebresco de muchos años. Abajo las fotos.

Yesterday Christmass came to my father's house. With the marvelous help of the blue girl we made the manger (word I learned thanks to her) and helped with some of the other decorations. Jacinto made the tree with my dad.

The manger, this year, has a football (soccer) court somewhere in the area near Bogotá (Boyacá, I suppose), Beethoven conducting the orchestra with Papa Smurf, a plane flying over Bethlehem and the best landscaping in years. Pictures below.

El proceso.The process.	Beethoven y Papá Pitufo.Beethoven and Papa Smurf.
Cancha de fútbol. Football (soccer) court.	Jacinto y el árbol.Jacinto and the tree.
	.
Los ninjas. The ninjas.	.

The blue girl asked me to watch a documentary with her. She needed to watch it for the course she is designing. It didn't surprise me to be invited to watch a documentary: "I have a documentary..." is a common phrase in her discourse. However, last time it was "The World According to Sesame Street": it was optimistic and after watching it I was excited again by the ideas behind it. This time I expected something related to war or reconciliation, but I didn't expect what I got: Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard), by Alain Resnais.
It is a disturbing, incredibly sad documentary about concentration (death) camps in Nazi Germany, shot in 1955, relatively shorly after the end of the war and the discovery of those horrors by "the rest of the world".
I won't try to summarize or recreate with my poor writing ability what I saw or what I felt, but I will try to at least say something. I can't stay quiet. I shouldn't. I should say more. How can I stay quiet after hearing: "Je ne suis pas responsable, dit l'officiel", "Je ne suis pas responsable, dit le Kappo", ... "Alors, qui est responsable?"  ("I'm not responsible", said the officer. "I'm not responsible", said the Kappo. "So, who is responsible?" Asks us the narrator).
With tears in my eyes and barely able to speak, I just kept asking myself: how can we, humans, be capable of such cruelty, of such lack of consciousness for the suffering we cause? What brings people, people like me or you, to be so INhuman, so cruel. How can someone not shed tears after watching "Night and Fog"?
I know, this is so plainly shallow, so bluntly ignorant... but, that's what I am, and I don't feel like I can say any more. Anything else would simply be commonplace.

Yeah, Monday I had good (and blue) company to go to the doctor (Castro is his name) and it was as uneventful as it has been since I finished treatment. Which is, of course, really good! This guy I've seen only twice, but he was well recommended and is a lot nicer than the previous one, Dr. Restrepo. He started by asking how I had been feeling, or rather, if I had been feeling great. And well, I have. He asked the usual "have you had fever?", "have you lost weight?", "have you had any pain?" questions, and then listened to my heart, noted my blood pressure, poked around my lymph nodes and we sat back down. I suggested he ordered some labs and a CT Scan. It's been about a year since I got the last scan. He agreed and ordered blood tests: blood chart, LDH, creatinina, and a CT Scan. I'll get the scan sometime next week and get back to him the following one. I was satisfied with the outcome. Now I would get some tests and come back later. Appointment over. But the blue person sitting next to me tends to ask good questions: "how certain can you be now before the tests?", she asked him. He said the interview gave him lots of information. If something were wrong I would feel it. He said he could be pretty sure (85%) I was fine just by the way I was feeling, but the tests will confirm and let us all rest lighthearted (for six more months, I guess). It was all good news! [U2's "A Beautiful Day" soundtrack]