Blogs

Back home and getting used to the newsroom routine again, I am still reflecting on the experiences I had during the WPI fellowship. The tasks are the same, but I am different.

After two months trying to explain my country in forums and social meetings and investigating another country, USA, I see things in Rio with a kind of foreign eyes. And everything is a comparison for me.

I wrote for this blog about how I saw the Occupy Wall Street movements in Chicago. I also published a story about it in my paper. So last week I went to cover a very similar story in Rio.

 Last month, soon after a visit to the Liberty and Twin Tower Memorial, I was having my favourite flat bread sandwich at Subway with my Pakistani and Argentine fellows, when a sudden march of more than a dozen New York policemen and women, gigantic by all standards, turned everyone’s head.

Junior seemed to be doing well, but he is not happy with the American style of work and doing business. He wants to do business, but he never finds appropriate clients and partners here in America because he thinks people do not want to work and be part of a business here.

I have been collecting book recommendations along my journey. Here are the top 10:

1. Paul Krugman: The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008

2. Thomas Friedman: That Used To Be Us

3. John Pring: Longcare Survivors - The Biography of a Care Scandal

4. Robert Reich: Aftershock: The Next Economy and America´s Future

This is Scott Shellady. 45 years old. He works at the Chicago stock exchange, for ICAP. Everyone inside there has a code. A color code. And they yell. And make simple signs. Five fingers on the chin mean five million contract. Five fingers on the front head - 50 million. They communicate like this from a corner to another and they can't be wrong. The transactions have to be accurate. But is all about being fast and visible. And the main weapons are voice and hands. This is the place where in 1,5 seconds you can loose 60.000$.

Rich! Being this. Wanting to be this. Envying this. But what if Rich is a who, not a what?

Well, I met him!

He could have been a farmer and spent his life in the field or among cattle. But he makes millions of dollars on the top of a 40 stories building in Chicago. And he was generous enough to host 6 journalists he knew nothing about in his house in Miami.

You all know the legend - Sisyphus is rolling up the boulder towards the top of a mountain and by the time it reaches the end of his struggle the rock falls back down so he restarts his journey. Over and over again. Maybe you can see here an overwhelming frustration. But you can also see the struggle of getting your job done as well as possible. In these terms would you imagine fireworks for Sisyphus just before the boulder rolls down again?

Well, in modern days this is possible. Here's how:

 When I arrived in St Paul, two months ago, I was terrified by the nightmare that I couldn’t understand a word of what  Minnesotans speak.

One of my weak points in journalism is that I don´t understand economics. Well, I do understand my own microeconomics quite well and that a Gucci store is a no-no. And a five star hotel is out of questions when I go on a holiday.