tripu

Esta noche me encontré volviendo a casa en el metro y sin ninguna lectura. Lo único que tenía encima es el cuadernito que suelo llevar en la mochila cuando salgo de casa, así que me puse a hojearlo. Ese Moleskine fue también mi cuaderno de viaje en Japón el año pasado. Así que releí algunos pasajes que tenía olvidados, y fue muy gustoso. En concreto, me alegró revivir las sensaciones del día en que fui a visitar la ciudad de Nara (奈良), antigua capital de Japón. Fue un Instante de Felicidad Pura delante del templo budista de Tōdai-ji (東大寺). Copio aquí el apunte sin cambiar ni una coma. Las fotos son algunas de las que tomé ese día, y corresponden exactamente a ese momento.

Miércoles. Dos cosas que tengo que apuntar antes de olvidarlas.

En información turística, aquí en Nara, una mujer japonesa me explicaba en inglés el recorrido recomendado x la ciudad (pueblo, más bien). Yo solo había dicho «Konnichiwa. Do you have a map, please?» Y le había dicho, cuando me lo preguntó, que era español pero vivía en UK. Estaba asintiendo a sus explicaciones, cuando de pronto se para y dice: «I don’t like stereotypes, but you don’t look Spanish. You are very reserved. How long have you been in the UK?» Me sorprendió, pero no pude por más que reirme y darle la razón. Serán las artes adivinatorias milenarias del sintoísmo… [Ahora me pregunto qué clase de españoles habría encontrado la mujer antes…]

La otra cosa ha pasado aquí, en las escaleras delante del templo de Todaiji, el más famoso de Nara. El día es soleado, y de camino al templo he ido viendo grupos numerosísimos de colegiales japos, todos uniformados, haciendo fotos y siguiendo a los profes. Hay muchísimos ciervos mezclándose libremente con la gente; son muy bonitos. Se supone que esto es un parque, pero parece un bosque. Hay árboles muy altos, y la hierba y la vegetación están muy verdes, para ser ya finales del verano. Estaba justo delante del templo, que es enorme, admirando la arquitectura (hay fotos). A unos 150m, en unas escaleras que hay justo al inicio del paseo que lleva a la entrada. No hay edificios modernos a la vista; todo es verde, templo, y los edificios anexos. Entonces ha pasado una pareja occidental de turistas, con una niña pequeña preciosa, rubia. Un grupo de colegiales japoneses [no, coreanos] la han visto cuando ha pasado cerca de ellos, y, sobre todo las niñas, se han acercado sonriendo y han empezado a hablarle en inglés. La madre se ha acercado al grupo sonriendo y en un momento la niña estaba rodeada de niños mayores, haciéndole fotos, preguntándole su nombre y su edad. Todos sonreían, y la niña estaba un poco intimidada, refugiándose a veces contra su madre, que la cogía de la mano y la animaba a hablar. Parece que tenía 2 años, y tenía un pelo rubio precioso, con unos rizos grandes. Mientras observaba, más estudiantes me rodeaban a mí, según llegaban y se dirigían al templo. Cuando la niña occidental se ha ido, los colegiales que le hacían fotos han desplegado de pronto una pancarta y han posado detrás de ella, con el templo al fondo (hay foto). Todo parecía gente alegre y sonriente a mi alrededor, sin preocupaciones. Junto con la vista del templo y sus jardines, ha sido para mí «overwhelming». Yo mismo me siento ahora tranquilo, libre. Puedo hacer lo que quiera ahora, y mañana… Y solo observar a la gente en sitios como éste ya es una gozada.

Esta misma tarde, cuando salía de casa para ir a la City, que es donde tenemos nuestras reuniones semanales de trabajo (sí, ahora trabajo desde casa :¬) vi en mi propia plaza a la mujer de mi vida. Y me enamoré. Porque es el arquetipo que condensa los valores más sublimes. El epítome de la belleza juvenil femenina, inglesa y suburbana.

Era rubia de pega, concretamente rubio #FFFF80. Un poco más joven que yo. Estaba en la calle, hablando con otros chicos. Una panda de NEET’s, a juzgar por la hora que era y porque estaban todos ociosos y relajados charlando en la calle. Hablaba a gritos y con cara de rabia; desplazando la cabeza lateralmente, moviendo el cuello. Con una pose chulesca y poco femenina. Llevaba un chándal rosa. Rosa-rosa. Fumaba. Y estaba embarazada de once meses (por lo menos).

Para que luego nos quejemos en ¡Espiña! de canis, mantequeros, chanos, calorros y kinkis.

— ¿Qué tal el nuevo médico de cabecera?

— Bien…

— ¿Es otro Rabindranath Tagore?

— Sí, pero a este se le entiende lo que dice… y… ¡me ha dado la receta impresa con el ordenador!

— ¡Oooh…!

— Claro, pero ha usado una fuente de médico, ¿no?

— ¡Ja, ja, ja, ja…!

— Ja, ja, ja… claro una que no se entiende nada, ¿no?

— Usa «Medical Sans».

No we can’t. We can’t vote Obama. Not this side of the Atlantic. I like his approach. For what little I know, he seems a good candidate, and I would probably vote for him. If I could. I like politics, and I acknowledge the importance of American politics at a planetary scale. But to recite campaign slogans as if they were true is naïve. It is naïve in our own country, with our own politicians; but it is even more naïve when we are just a passive audience buying a distant show. Besides, they don’t care that much about us anyway.

You don’t wave flags because you know nationalities are coincidences, there is no pride in toponyms but geography and history. You don’t repeat toothpaste slogans because advertising slogans are void. Why then repeat slogans of political parties? You know they are designed by the same people who write slogans for toothpaste, and for very similar purposes. Believe in ideas, believe in policies, believe even in politicians.

I understand the excitement in Europe about Obama, but I think it’s a bit exaggerated. For three reasons. First, we can’t vote in November. Second, even if Obama wins there will be far less change in the USA than we would like to see. Third, blogging for Obama in Europe has an impact that is almost nil in the USA (remember how Europe voted for Kerry four years ago but its ballot sank somewhere in the Atlantic half-way to Washington).

So it seems that Yahoo will not fall to the Dark Side, at least not for the moment.

In these days it has been interesting to watch the reactions to Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo. Especially among passionate users of some services owned by Yahoo, like Flickr [the partisans, the moderates, the attention seekers]. Suddenly everyone was talking about it, in most cases expressing their concern.

Many people sounded very clear in their positions, even if I didn’t hear nor read many clear reasons to be for, or against, the bid. Why is it so controversial?

Is it a matter of size? MS is a huge company that would become even more huge after buying Yahoo. There is a natural opposition to massive, global companies; I guess in the same way that we are wired to reject massively powerful governments and stronger rival tribes. Specially when such conglomerates tend to pile data (our data) and control the raw materials that are building the digital age, whatever that be. But even so, what’s the big deal? Yahoo is not small, neither, nor are Google and Apple (incidentally, both are companies that many people who criticise MS’s bid seem to love). The revenue of the world’s largest company is almost seven times bigger than Microsoft’s — are we watching it even just as closely as we watch MS?

Do we think that evil Microsoft is going to corrupt and pervert for the sake of destruction all beautiful creatures that sprout happy in the gardens of Yahoo? I don’t think so. MS is not trying to buy Yahoo to kill it and then kick it out of its way. In other cases, MS would pay whatever is necessary to buy a small or medium company that is itching its neck, competing in a common area. But that is not the case with Yahoo. Yahoo and Google are competing against themselves in their market, while MS plays in a different arena. MS wants to buy Yahoo to use it, to learn from it, to inherit its base of users. MS is trying to enter the Internet through one of the tall doors by bribing the bouncer — its intention is not to brick the door up. My bet is that MS will not alter things too much and that it will try to avoid clashes with the established community of Yahoo users. Besides, we already saw cases of small companies being acquired by giants in which those deals didn’t break the original spirit of the company but instead remained almost transparent to users (Google buying YouTube, Yahoo buying Flickr and del.icio.us, CBS buying Last.fm).

Is it because we hate Microsoft software and their lack of moral principles, in particular for what regards to standards, open source and GNU/Linux? Oh, hell, yes. We don’t like Microsoft’s products and practices, and there are plenty of reasons for that.

But hang on a minute, isn’t MS just a company? And aren’t they playing fair this time? So why are we that indignant about it?

Shall we get indignant if MS buys Yahoo?

Short answer: “No. The web is a free market too. Companies get sold, bought, liquidated and merged every day. Six Apart bought LiveJournal and then sold it to SUP Fabrik. As long as Yahoo and all its services keep honouring their ToS you should be fine. There is no base for angriness.”

Long answer: “Well, sort of. Feel indignant if you please. After all, registering an account in Yahoo Mail or sharing your precious sites via del.icio.us is not like buying a bicycle. Internet services are radically different from tangible goods, and even from software. Internet services are kind of subscriptions. They evolve. They grow as your network of contacts expands and as you move more stuff in them (be it pictures, CV’s, sound samples or routes on maps). Derived applications, mashups and bridges to other services and communities are already features that we take for granted. More importantly (and I think this is what, almost subconsciously, bothers most people) Internet services have styles, and souls; probably much more than traditional services or products. It’s not written anywhere, but you definitely expect Windows Live Spaces, MySpace and WordPress.com to progress in different directions and to do things in very different ways, even if they actually provide similar services. And that distinctive touch is usually clear from the moment the service is launched, because for web companies that provides their identity. Their style is the USP for the users who believe in that particular style. Take Flickr. Because we know how Flickr behaves, we assume that it is going to do things in a certain way. We assume that it will be friendly to mashups using their open API, make the most of Flash for their GUI, protect their sober design against distasteful CSS by users, keep their orientation to tags, geolocation, multiple taxonomies, etc. That is why Flickr users should feel betrayed if after an acquisition of Yahoo by MS all that good stuff turned into things like ‘click here to export this set as a PowerPoint presentation’, ‘download ActiveX to display the notes on the photo’ and ‘it looks like you’re trying to upload a landscape photo of a big zebra among green bushes. Would you like to tag the photo“big zebra green bushes”?’”

Now, which is the right answer?