A Japanese Lesson

Today as I was coming back home something very interesting happened. It was around 11:00pm, I get on the bus, which has half empty, and a Japanese guy (tourist I suppose) came down from the back seats all the way to the driver and stood up next to him silently while giving the impression that he wanted to ask for directions for some place.

A couple of uncomfortable minutes passed while I was observing if the guy was maybe shy to ask (as in many places, a bus driver can even make your day or blow it off depending on his mood). So once the bus stopped at a red light and asked him for the directions. What I understood, is that he was actually very conscious that as a general rule you can’t talk to a driver because you can district him from, well… driving. So I was wondering if in the mind of the Japanese guy he thought that if he distracted the driver, there were a couple dozens people’s life at risk if he got him distracted and had an accident.

Maybe I’m exaggerating or over thinking the scene, but I thought it was a nice example of a lot of respect and education since I have the stereotype of Japanese people being this way. Then as I got off, I noticed that a man was a bit lost asking for directions, so I asked him if I could help. It turns that I indeed knew the place he had to go and pointed him which bus he had to take at the stop across the street. Apart of being motivated by the Japanese lesson, I though I could also use some good karma, since I haven’t been a very nice guy lately.

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I’m Only Happy When it Rains

I love Sundays, but if there is something I love more than an ordinary Sunday is a quiet rainy one. Today I woke up not late (around noon, you judge) after a nice evening with a Mx friend walking around a very popular zone in the East of Rome  and then to a “centro sociale” near the main train station (I’ll explain what social centers are on another post).

Through him, I’ve meet a small group of Italians that are very much into in social, political and economic activism, from which I take the most I can in terms of understanding the mentality of people that are undergoing a crisis such as the one happening in Europe. Some of the conversations have to do with the old ways of living during decades of economic growth and prosperity. It’s hard as well to ask them if they have lived a crisis like this one in their lives and their answer is “no”.

This is very interesting because it helps me understand that many people may expect and desire a “change” because this is the lowest low they’ve ever known in their lives. But it’s also these times in which people need to give an extra, be innovative, learn a new language, or do new things that can help catch up with a changing world. But of course if you have never lived through an ugly period as this, how would you know this is THE TIME to do so? And this is the reality that as a foreigner I am currently experiencing. I mean, in 30 years there will be books of economics talking about the crisis in Europe, so I’m curious to see how things end like, while the story is being written as we speak.

All this sociocultural leanings in fact deserve arguments, examples and more fundamentals than what I’m willing to write and elaborate more on today, so I won’t go into details (though I’ve love to chat over a cup of coffee or a Skype call). But as anyone who knows me a bit can tell, they’re one of my favorite conversation topics and I always appreciate people open to discuss such things.

So yes, today rained most of the day, people must complain about this “tempo di merda” (shitty weather). On the other hand today I played some guitar, thought a lot about economic systems, high welfare countries vs. consumed capitalist societies that lower their worker’s quality of life at a very fast pace, etc. etc. … and even had time to write a blog entry, which I hadn’t done in weeks. I’d say this rainy Sunday couldn’t get any more productive than this. And if it wasn’t enough, I still have to call my mom in Mexico…

Besides, I saw this very nice phrase around the web, which kind of wraps up a conclusion I struggled to make for myself all day long:

Mobile Marketing Conference

This weekend I offered an online conference on Mobile Strategy to a group of students from Universidad Valle de Mexico in Monterrey. We covered a few key aspects for planning a mobile marketing campaign such as:

1. Mobile Market: Worldwide market overview, mobile penetration, mobile ads spending trends

2. Design your campaigns: Objectives, message, user interaction

3. Media Planning: Cost models for advertising online, targeting, mobile optimization

4. KPI’s: Performance Tracking

 

It was very pleasing to interact again with students as I did on my year teaching at Raffles Millennium International in India . Special thanks to Prof. Alex Omar Calvo who invited me to give this presentation to our future digital marketers!

Celestial Fountains (New Year’s Eve)

Meet me down the road right across the church
where we turned our backs to all that could have been
And promised never looking back, ’till we found ourselves
And make our way back home… together

Between the ruins of broken hearts, imperial streets and catacombs
Inside the walls of all these doubts we drown inside celestial fountains

But never looking back, you said… yourself

We kept a lot of lies that could well have been said out loud
plans we made but we were too afraid to take our chances
Now everything is gone, because you were never wrong
and if I had listened better we’d might still be together…

During the night I close my eyes and I swim across eternal rivers
the weight that holds me down to earth to lock me in majestic castles

Between the ruins of broken hearts, imperial streets and catacombs
Inside the walls with all these doubts I drown inside celestial fountains

But never looking back, you said… yourself

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 5,000 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 8 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.