1. To never worry for money… basically live from your partner: To be fair, this is less common nowadays because really, who can survive with just one income? Let alone in a developed country when women work not because everyone believes they are entitled to, but because otherwise they would be starving… and well, taking into account that millions of households depend on just a parent, being a parasite is not really an option anymore. Though, I have known  many cases…

2. Just because your parents really want to see you married: and as in your very traditional family your own wishes worth nothing and you are brave as a snail, well… you do what you have to do.

3. Because you want a visa: Yeah globalisation is right here, and it doesn’t only mean that we can enjoy an Italian risotto with Spanish chorizo and an American Coke for dinner. It also means we can marry foreigners, and we can scape our own developed countries. I know sometimes love just strikes and the most sensible thing to do is marry to stop the stupid immigration office to curtail your love. But as cynic as I am, I reckon most of the international marriages have little to do with love and more with finding a scape route. Ask the Cubans! So, if you really really want to scape from your  reality, you can spend all the money your parents have been saving for years to go to Europe under the false pretence you are going to study, but with the firm resolution (thank you mom, for always supporting my decisions) to marry a European. It doesn’t matter if s/he is a loser, a drug addict, a drunk… s/he is EUROPEAN! It doesn’t matter either if you go and live in the middle or nowhere… (think for example on all those weird Ryanair destinations) and you spend the rest of your life pocking your eyes out of boredom… is EUROPE!  It doesn’t matter either if your parents are newly poor… they will have EUROPEAN grand-children for God sake!

4. You are reaching certain age: Well, I’ve met people who have always dreamt of  getting married before certain age. I don’t know if they internalised Disney movies or some American TV series, but they would consider themselves losers if they don’t get married before their 20-something birthday… and they think they are almost having their grand-children if they don’t procreate before 30. Well, there’s people who is very persistent, you know. They may not have found the love of their lives, they may have been using their parents’ mortgage to pay for the wedding, they may even amidst complete desperation being marrying a member of their family: but at least they have accomplished their ultimate goal. They are getting married before they reach 20-something, pewww!

Just a few minutes ago I saw something that boiled my blood… I found disgusting porn comics mixed in what supposed to be an archive of newspapers. At first, the porn stuff was pretty conventional, sexist and violent still but nothing comparable with the horrid comics I found later. All of them depicted women tortured by men and some of them showed another women condoning the whole thing. Most of them portrayed women with jawbreakers, tight rings around their breasts, weights attached to the genitals or breasts. One showed a girl about to have her right breast cut by 3 weirdos and a crazy monkey. Several showed women about to be sold in auctions or just recently “purchased”. Others showed a woman about to be marked as “slave” with a red hot iron,  a woman with swollen breasts that apparently were just filled by a man with a green syringe, naked female soldiers walking through the snow, etc. The worst I found was one that depicted a woman with a jawbreaker, chained, with bells on her breasts, wearing what seemed a dog tail, crawling on the pavement while a man pulled a dog lead. The titles of the stupid comics, of course matched the level of hate and sexism of the pictures: ”White Slavery Ring”, “Road to Horror”, “Weird Family”, “Cheerleders in Chains”, etc.

Seeing all that stuff filled me with horror and sadness. It really makes me feel sick how men can actually feel some gratification from torturing women. I get some people have childhood traumas, are sociopats or have another mental illness and  hate women. I can accept that the brain of some people just don’t work well or is so fucked up that they are cruel. What I can’t get is the fact that this kind of pornography is nothing isolated, it is pretty mainstream. I found that crap mixed with PDF versions of GQ, Glamour, Easy Living, The Guardian, and other pretty minstrem stuff without really trying. This think is targeted to thousand and million of men (and possibly women) who enjoy watching women being tortured, being treated as animals, being terrorised. In a world like this, I don’t feel  bullied “just” in the public transportation. I feel violence when I see that stuff not only in the comics but in real life.  All of that is not just a creepy fantasies, it happens in reality every single day, every single minute: there are sexual slaves, teenagers and children are abused by members of their “weird family”, female soldiers are raped by the enemies or by their own troop, just because they are women.

It really makes me feel terrible people don’t realise how even little stupid things  make a difference on the quality of life of men and women. When someone asks my boyfriend if it’s ok to dance with me it feels like I am in the middle of a transaction between men who take decisions and I only can obey their wishes. When my boyfriend gets the check every time  and gets to try the wine is like saying: “hey, he has a penis, so he must have the money and of course, the knowledge to spot a good wine”. And well, of course, that’s not solved by simply stop using public transportation… (as if it was the solution to anything).

Remembering my previous talk with my friend keeps me thinking that  I just can’t get how people, and men in particular can’t realise that something is wrong when we normalise women being verbally abused or touched without their permission on the public transportation, when men can feel aroused by tortured  and terrorised women, when we think that making sexist jokes is ok… (and if you are not ok, you are a “crazy feminist”… as if being called “a feminist” was an insult). I’m sometimes just sick on how insensitive people can be and just can’t bother to realise their mistakes and dare to change. I’m always trying to spot and challenge those behaviours, but I have to admit sometimes being treated as the party-pooper doesn’t feel that great, so several times I just have to shut my mouth while I dream of the day we can put on the glasses of feminism and realise we can make this world more welcoming for 52% of the people on this planet.

Tools

• Food processor
• 2 large baking trays lined with parchment paper
• Mixer

Ingredients

Servings: around 24 macarons

For the macarons:

• 110 g. almonds (bleached, silvered or preferably ground)
• 200 g. icing sugar
• 100 g. egg whites (approx. 3 from medium-sized eggs)
• 1 vanilla  bean, split likewise
• 1/4 tsp. vanilla extract
• 50 g. caster or granulated sugar

Steps

Beautiful macarons

Tools

• Non-stick baking paper
• Cling film

Ingredients 

Serves 3

• 220 g. lemon and garlic couscous

  

  Ingredients

  
  
• 400 ml. hot vegetable stock (I made it with 1 lt. water, a bunch of parsley, 2 carrots, 1 onion, 2 potatoes, 2 cloves of garlic, salt and pepper)
• 2 tbsp. olive oil
• Two handful of chopped fresh herbs (I used thyme, parsley and tarragon but you may use also coriander, dill, chives, sage, rosemary…)
• 6-8 spring onions thinly sliced
• 8 chopped sun-dried tomatoes
• 3-4 salmon fillets
• Salt and pepper

Steps

Almost done!

Cost: around £4.60 per person

You may not remember me but my boyfriend introduced us a few months ago. He’d met you more than a year before and he always talked about you: how beautiful you looked, how exciting you were, how chic you behaved. I must tell the truth, I was am quite jealous. I’m sure he dreams about you, I know he thinks about you constantly when he is at the front of his computer singing that annoying song. He even introduced you to his parents straight away, but from a good source I know his mom didn’t like you quite much. On the other hand, you made quite an impression on his father. I must have seen it coming: all men fell for flirty girls while all women feel the urge to bitch about them.

After months of hearing about how wonderful you were I agreed to meet you. It was a kind of lucky strike: I wasn’t even intrigued about you, I’d seen your pictures, I’d seen you in movies, in TV shows, and frankly… I thought you were somewhat average. Anyway, I decided to meet you and of course, my boyfriend agreed to go with me, ecstatic with the promise of being with you again. I was gonna spend two months with you, so even with all my bad feelings I started to convince myself that you were special, that you must have something hidden, that you might be beautiful in person after all. I went to you with the mission of being allured, guard down. I was like the snake that waits to be enchanted by the music.

We arrived on a Monday night. I expected to see you at the airport. I didn’t but I was patient. Forty minutes later I was at a filthy place, “a dodgy flat,” as I dared to call it, all tired, cold and frightened. Nobody understood me well then, nobody understands me well now. At least I know I didn’t arrive to a “dodgy flat” but to a “sketchy apartment.” Still, no sight of you and your legendary sequined dress. It was just a tattooed hipster girl with a Latin name and a Southern accent who came to greet us. Not the best day of my life.

Next weeks are kind of blurry and foggy, just as he stupid weather. I guess I brought the weather with me, never mind. I met you but it wasn’t exciting. I knew about your reputation, but frankly you made quite a bad first impression. You were dirty, aggressive, laud… not quite my type, to be honest. You made a second and a third and a tenth bad impressions. Everybody asked me if I liked you, puzzling around why I didn’t. I learnt some simply love you, from the beginning to the end, like hypnotised freaks; others don’t quite like you but they bear you and are used to you; the most are simply masochistic enough to hate you but being unable to leave you because you are like their drug. The least are like me, who see you bare bones, how ugly, depressing and pathetic you are. Don’t deny it, you are like any filthy whore, who only want others to pay for your $14 dollar drinks, who make love to those who can afford you, but always flirt to those who cannot. You love to show off all you have, so everybody feel like they need to keep up with you, with your rooftop parties, your picnics at the Park, your daily expensive lunch breaks, your manicured hands, your weekly sessions of cupcakes and double macchiatos.

You daily dress all fancy, in your legendary golden-sequined black dress, ready to impress with all your womanhood and your chicness. But underneath the surface you are an unhappy, depressed and lonely girl. A filthy little child who lives in a tiny flat, who sleeps with her bent knees in a bed-bugged mattres trying to scape from the rats and flying roaches that live around you. You talk all day on your last generation iPhone, you move by car, paying $16 for half and hour parking, but when you come home you know you have no one to hug and kiss. You rush to the Internet in purse of another lonely soul like you. You find thousands, all as rotten, but no one wants to connect with you. They pass you by, pulling you on the streets, spitting on you, ignoring you, and yet, loving you.

My time with you had finished, and still I remember you with a mix of disappointment and nostalgia. You introduced me so much nasty people, but as cruel as you are, you kept your best secrets for last. Oh girl, I write you today from the comfort of my lovely and ample house, from the tranquility that you can only find in a small town, without missing your cramped $2000 apartment (plus bills) or your rushing everywhere. I write you with the hunt that I’ll see you again… sooner or later. And even after all those fights, our mutual uneasiness, your viciousness and my repudiation… you, of all girls made quite an impression.

Right now my life is not extremely easy. I just came back from NY after just a couple of months and a lot of things have changed around here. Stress started to build up precisely at a time when I should be relaxed. My new housemate is not the best in the world, my other housemate took over my room, I have a progress review around the corner, I have to solve the problem of a Skype scam, I discovered I gained a few pounds in NY, my bf is going far far away very soon, and of course I have to write a thesis!

My usual response, of course, is start panicking: cry, over-eat, over-sleep and procrastinate! But I cannot afford it this time, otherwise my mood, my body and my guts will suffer a lot… thus, I decided to follow a different approach: acting as everything was easy. I just got inspired from a quote of Mary Anne Radmacher I saw on a magnet. Yes, right now a magnet is dictating my approach to life, but whatever… I’ll document of this worked for me during next week! I hope to have some good results and let the stress slip away.

——————————–

Day 1:

Challenge 1: My first challenge is completing a progress report. I start feeling guilty as I think I didn’t do as much as I should… anyway. I tell myself: this is easy; you just need to gather all the info from other documents, amend them, keep truthful and voila… probably in 2 hours it’d be done.

…Yeah! After 2 hours I indeed completed the report! It wasn’t enjoyable at all but it wasn’t hard either.

Challenge 2: My second challenge is my housemate: She fries EVERYTHING and you can imagine how smelly all the house gets. I don’t like her at all and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t like me either, or in fact, any other human being… I’m annoyed that she AGAIN didn’t turned on the fan. So… well, the easiest thing after the option of killing her is just tell her to “PLEASE TURN ON THE F*** FAN AS I’VE TOLD YOU BEFORE SEVERAL TIMES!”

…When she saw me she immediately turned on the fan, so I didn’t have to kill her…. That’s bad. I still don’t like her but for 3 months I can’t do anything but learn to live with her… poor me.

A couple of days ago I was walking in Times Square with my boyfriend and something nasty happened. Something that even though is plain stupid and repulsive happens too frequently that has become a normal thing: a woman was called a “slut”. She was called a slut simple because she dared to dress as she wanted, she was called a slut in a busy street of a liberal and cosmopolitan city because few people give a shit about the violence the act involves, she was called a slut because WE LIVE IN A SEXIST WORLD!

They guy in question was  talking to a woman about “the place America has become and the type of woman it was fostering”:  ”A SLUT” he shouted while he laid his big furious black eyes on the woman who was the object of his hatred: a blonde young woman in her 20s dressed in black trousers, a bustier and a lace shirt. When my boyfriend and I heard that horrible comment we couldn’t help but looked astonished to the man in question. He, surprised and offended of our judging look started shouting at us that he wasn’t referring to me. He clearly didn’t feel his comment was utterly offensive and stupid, he didn’t feel ashamed, and he obviously didn’t understand why 2 random people with no connection to the “slut-looking” woman were offended, particularly in the city where no-one-gives-a-shit-about-anyone-else. What still amazes me is that no one else seemed to bother about the very stupid and sexist comment, that the woman to whom the guy was talking apparently didn’t see anything wrong with his attitude, that a black man who, I’m sure, still suffers from racism cannot have any sort of empathy for other “minorities” (if we still dare to consider women as minority). All of that still amazes me because it takes human insensibility to the limit, but it does not surprises me because unfortunately, it happens too often.

I’m angry of how we, women of all ages, all nationalities, all status, all professions are still mistreated. I’m angry of the insensibility and the lack of commitment from a lot of people to end this discrimination based in our gender.  It makes me angry that women bash ourselves, that we normalize sexism, that media supports sexism, that we consume sexist products without even thinking about it. I’m angry when people cannot recognise their sexist attitudes, when people is offended when you tell them they are being sexist, when people get tired of fighting the sexist conventions.

Nonetheless, I see some light at the end of the tunnel with important initiatives like Slutwalk, which tries to fight the stupid idea women almost provoke being sexually assaulted, the idea that we shouldn’t be dressed like we want without the risk of being molested or insulted. I hope we will have a better future for women. So you, black-man-on-Times-Square, should know that I dream of a place without people as ignorant as you. I have a dream that one day, down in NY and in the whole world, with its vicious sexists, with men assaulting women as a sport; one day right here in this rotten world, all girls and women will be treated with equality and dignity, and won’t be discriminated anymore.

Black-man-at-Times-Square remember you and your race have come a long way. You may not know it, but on December 1, 1955, a woman called Rosa Parks defied racist conventions: she refused to give a white passenger her seat in a time when people just like you: men, women, children were discriminated because of something so menial as the colour of their skin. Fortunately times have changed and today just 66 years later the US has a black president.  So, I cannot understand why, if you and your family have suffered from the immense hatred ignorance provokes, you act as dumb as the white people acted less than a century ago. I really  hope that you will live for the day women and men are treated equally, for the day people don’t think is normal to call a woman “slut”, for the day you will feel so ashamed that you won’t dare to insult anyone for the way they dress, for the day that you will understand why what you did on that corner of Times Square was bad, for the day you teach your grand-sons to respect women and you teach your grand-daughters to have respect for themselves.  For the  time being, nonetheless, some women will be our own Rosa Parks, we’ll stand out and we’ll fight to end something that is clearly wrong.

Black-man-at-Times-Square, I feel offended as you should because it’s not right to insult a person for the way she dresses, because if you say a women who dares to dress as she wants is a slut, then, I’M A SLUT TOO!

Like a month ago I missed a dinner with my fellow UN interns and I have to say… I was so glad I did it because I had the opportunity to visitthe fabulous Tacombi at Fonda Nolita in Soho, NY. I saw the recommendation in Time Out a couple of weeks before and I just wrote the address in my agenda waiting for the perfect time to visit this place. I had already been in  a few taquerias in NY with disappointing results, so I had not very high expectations about the place…. what wrong I was!

The first thing I noticed was the place itself…. it looks soooo Mexican. It makes you feel as if you were in a “mercado” anywhere in Mexico. The setting is livened up by cheap tables and chairs, praying candles, “Lupita” funky coloured sodas,  beer ads, and of course, the “combi”. The decoration is quite kitsch but fun, and it all adds up to create a quite relaxed and joyful ambience.

Crispy fish tacos and agua de horchata

When I entered the placed I was greeted by a nice hostess who explained me how the system worked at Nolita. First, you buy as many tickets as you want at the counter: each ticket costs $4 (tax included)and you can exchange it for any food item: tacos (cochinita, tamarind chicken, tinga, picadillo, tomatillo….) and tamales (cochinita or chicken) at the “combi”, or tostadas or rice with beans at the other counter. You can also buy there a glass of aguas frescas for $3 each (tax included). It made me remembered my childhood years at the annual “kermess” in elementary school.

The first time I simply wanted to try everything: I had a taco de cochinita, a tostada de ceviche and a crispy fish taco. The taco de cochinita was delicious but a bit salty and the tostada de ceviche was quite good but nothing spectacular. Though, the fish tacos were simply AMAZING. As a revision in Foursquare rightly says, they simply blow your mind! The fish is fresh and fried to perfection: it is crispy but it doesn’t feel greasy , the tartar sauce brings out the fishy favour, and for the last touch, a bit of shredded red cabbage make this taco the BEST TACO I HAVE EVER TRIED. Yes, I  lived in Mexico for 22 years, I had been in many taquerias, I had eaten in many restaurants and my grandmother used to cook delicious tacos de guisado, but these tacos are just OUT OF THIS WORLD!  I also tried orchata and tamarindo flavoured watersand both were simply amazing: tasty, refreshing and for a change, not super-sweet.  I feel almost sad when I finished my tacos because they are so delicious I just want to keep eating them forever.

I honestly had tried to order other items from the menu but I seem to stick only to 1 taco de cochinita and 2 fish tacos with a glass of agua de orchata. For me, that’s simply the perfect balance. Overall, I think this place is amazing: the food is excellent, the service is good, the toilets are quite clean, the prices reasonable and the environment is friendly and relaxed plus you have free wi-fi. Two thumbs up!

My internship started on April 18th 2011, in the middle of the spring internship session… why? I’ll tell you in a later post. For some reason I could arrive until the 19th at night, so the 20th first thing in the morning I had to be at the UN.

So all jet-lagged and not too rested I arrived at Madison Avenue to pass through Human Resources… one hour early!! So, as I never had been before in NY I spend an hour wandering around. I’ll came back but as I didn’t arrive in a typical day I had to find someone to pick me up to get through security. I asked the person at the front-desk for the person in charge of the new interns but he didn’t have a clue! I start calling my supervisor… but he wasn’t at his office yet.  So I was clueless of what to do, fortunately I had access to the Internet so I found the contact point in human resources and the security officer let me search on the directory for his number and I call him. After a couple of no-answers he finally pick up the phone and  came downstairs.

Half an hour later I was meeting a nice girl (intern as well) who gave me some instructions on how to get my blue UN badge and collected my documents. I went to the office she told me, grabbed a pretzel on the way (I missed street food!),  I filled in some forms and in minutes I had my UN badge… with (finally) a good picture of me!

I went then to meet my supervisor to the Global compact office at DC2 (the name of the building) who -I don’t know why- wasn’t expecting me that day, but a day later. Anyway, he greeted me and the awful part of the internship started. He explained me that he wasn’t actually my supervisor but that he will transfer me to another person in another office of the Global Compact in the 3rd avenue. He explained me as well that my duties would be (and I quote) “TEDIOUS TASKS” nobody wanted to do…. GREAT!!!! You can imagine how was realising I was rushed to cross an ocean just to find out I was selected to do tedious tasks. Well, I couldn’t believe what I was being told: if nobody wants to do them… why should I? Thank you for the appreciation and respect for me and my fellow interns.

I should have said something, but I thought the tedious tasks will become more interesting tasks int he future. WRONG! I thought as well that even if I had a boring job I could learn something else from the Global Compact. WRONG! I thought I might find interesting literature or like-minded people interested in corporate social responsibility or human rights WRONG, WRONG, WRONG again!

Well, in the middle of my shock I walked to the new office and my new supervisors greeted me. I explained them I was doing research on corporate social responsibility for my PhD and that I had a good idea on the efforts of the Global Compact and what was it about. They just nodded, so I thought they had understood I knew a lot of stuff about the office, so I maybe I wouldn’t be spending so much time familiarising with the work of the GC. WRONG! For the rest of the week I was asked to read basic literature on the Global Compact that I had read before… you can imagine my boredom and how pissed I was for rushing so early to read thinks I already knew! I was told I would be assigned other duties but as the responsible person of setting up the e-mail accounts wasn’t around (in the UN there is always the same excuse), I couldn’t start.

So the first day I just went briefly through the booklets I was asked to read and the rest of my day I just checked e-mails… hurray… I’ll never forget my first day at the UN.

I recon all experiences are different and they vary from one department to another, but I think some of the issues I have observed are widespread and I would like to share them. When I first applied to the internship I tried to find blogs, comments or stories from former interns but, surprisingly I could hardly find any. I think the most famous is the blog of Darragh Murray, a former intern, but apart from it I only found websites that basically  repeat the official information from the UN. I’m still in the middle of my internship and while the most of my stay in NY has been a bit disappointing, I have also had wonderful experiences and I’d met very interesting people from all around the world. So, if you are looking for an uncensored, honest and sometimes cinic view on how is the UN internship from the inside, keep reading my next posts!