Retrovisor

           

The opportunity to visit Paris appeared unexpectedly. Andrea and I decided a while ago that we were going to see Arcade Fire (AF) live this summer following the release of their latest album. The most obvious venues were the Reading and Leeds festival but the tickets sold out sooner than we expected. After those two dates, AF were going to fly south to play in a festival called Rock en Seine in Paris. One of us half-jokingly suggested to follow them to there. We had never been to Paris before so it was a good opportunity to have a look around.

Paris itself is beautiful, possibly my favourite city at the moment - which doesn't mean necessarily much as I haven't visited many. Whereas London is very large and busy but more utilitarian, Paris is smaller - its population is four times smaller than London's - but most of its landmarks are pure exhibitionism and they're truly impressive. It was of course impossible to see everything in four days and there was still much left to see, but we prioritised feeling the pulse of the city and the parisiens first and going indoors secondly, possibly because we prefer to avoid crowds and big queues (no way of escaping from that at rock concerts). We still managed to visit the Museé d'Orsay which is great if you're into Impressionism/Post-Impressionism. Many refer to London as a multicultural melting pot but Paris is not far behind. I wasn't aware there were lots of immigrants coming from French Indochine ex-colonies. Vietnamese restaurants - something that I would definitely try but we missed as well. Anyway, we were there for the French culture. Again comparing with London, it felt cheaper in our wallets but your mileage may vary, especially if you go there for shopping or drinking Veuve Clicquot.

The festival was in a park located at one exit of Paris, pretty much like Parque da Belavista, the venue of Rock in Rio in Lisbon. Nothing new about the activities in the perimeter itself: corralling as many youngsters as possible in the same place to bombard them with targeted advertisement. The food looked edible though. Before AF we watched Beirut at 6 o'clock, which was another reason to come to the Rock en Seine. They seemed a little out of place despite the good intentions, being probably better suited for a world music festival or something with an older audience. We were in the back but we were definitely not disappointed, having more fun than the guys in the first row. The feedback from the audience was terribly cold. About AF, we were lucky to watch a band of this caliber at the peak of their form. Confident and well-practiced, the musicians took turns swapping instruments, alternating songs from old albums with new ones. Unfortunately, with around 20 minutes to the end, it started raining torrentially and the concert had to be cancelled due to safety reasons. What we've seen was amazing but we were denied the whole experience and that was a bit frustrating.

Why do we always have amazing insight about other people's lives and give great advice but, when it's about us, we're always so clueless? Are our problems much different or bigger? I don't think so.

Does it help having a more distant perspective? Do we analyse things coldly, without any pressure or anxiety, if it's not our problem? Possibly.

With the end of the fourth season of 30 Rock, here at home we started watching another comedy show to replace it and, so far, we are enjoying it a lot. Parks & Recreation follows the same mockumentary format that was so successful with both versions of The Office. I don't know if it's due to tiredness of six seasons of The Office (US) but I think P&R has more potential. Amy Poehler absolutely nails it as the lead character, whereas in TO(US) Steve Carrell was a bit over the top sometimes. P&R gets a Retrovisor Sign of Approval™.

I recently came across with a list of 20 points called Why Intelligent People Fail, here in Michael Anissimov's webpage, apparently taken from a book called In Search of the Human Mind, by Sternberg, R. I'm not going to transcribe it to here because it is a bit long but I wanted to make a quick comment.

The list shouldn't be taken religiously but it is a good attempt at summarizing the most common pitfalls everyone usually tries to avoid in their line of work. It shows that there is much more besides talent and talent itself is not enough to be successful. I don't believe one can avoid all 20 points but it is good to have a reference to remember from time to time.

7. Inability to complete tasks. For some people nothing ever draws to a close. Perhaps it’s fear of what they would do next or fear of becoming hopelessly enmeshed in detail.

Between others, I confess I suffer from this one but in a different way. I feel some resistance when finishing documents because it is very stressful to think that those words will be definitive and you will be evaluated by what you wrote for the rest of your life. Therefore, to get the fairest and most precise image of you out of those documents, you must squeeze all your value inside those sentences, in a reasonable time frame. That, for me, is a bit violent. The only way I can keep going while writing is labelling everything as work in progress or else I would be paralysed by fear. Closing it is always painful.