A One-sided Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day found me at home but without a wife to pamper and shower with gifts and flowers. So, what is a man to do when his wife is working in India for a couple of weeks and happens to be missing for Valentine’s Day? Humbly get myself as soon as possible to the Miami Beach Int. Boat Show and Strickly Sail. I could also sit at home and cry about it but I liked plan A better.

There was a chill in the air, unusual for this time of the year in Miami, so I dressed warmly and hopped on my bicycle to head North about 12 blocks from home. The doors to the convention center opened at 10 AM and I was there about 5 minutes after. I walked aimlessly, enjoying my music through my earphones and was oblivious to anyone around me. I was just mesmerized and the drool must have been showing when the Boston Whaler rep asked me if I had any questions about the boats. I took my ear piece out of my ear and asked “did I die and went to heaven?” He knew exactly what I was talking about. This was the best Valentine’s Day a man could have. Everywhere I looked there were toys, big and small. I think my wife should be proud that I didn’t walk out with the mortgage to a 2010 46’ Leopard catamaran sailboat, or even a credit card bill for a 16’ open bow sea kayak. I’m sure they would have put a big red bow if I’d ask, and boy, Belinda would have been very surprised when she got back from India.

Walking around in that sea of boats, I couldn’t help but think of how many people I could bring from Cuba in one of those yachts. Almost everyone I talked to during my recent trip to Cuba, expressed their desire to leave Cuba to anywhere they’d be allowed. One of them had even attempted to leave Cuba by very dubious methods and was ultimately caught, and his life saved, by the Cuban coast guard. Of course, the coast guard didn’t mean to save his life, but since they did, they beat him and sent him to jail for a few months. The stories we heard would make us drop our jaws and it would give us a glimpse of how desperate many of them are to get out, be it for economical, political or just for freedom’s sake. The feeling of not being able to come and go as you please is not unlike what I imagine being in jail is like. And then, to know that they have been under these same rules for more that 50 years! This would certainly be considered a life sentence for a crime they never committed.

Maybe I should reconsider and get myself that boat after all. I could excuse it as a humanitarian endeavor. Well, even if I didn’t walk out with a new boat I still had a great Valentine’s Day. I hope the Cubans had some sort of a good day as well and on this Chinese New Year’s Day, may the Year of the Tiger bring them all the luck in the world, and to us, greater appreciation of the freedoms that we take for granted.

Justin who?

With all the hoopla going on in South Beach about “The Game” this weekend, I had no clue about who Justin Bieber was and looking at the crowd of teen girls acting maniacally, I knew that at least for a fact I was in the wrong age group to even know about him. But since this time I was carrying my camera on our daily walk, I decided to wait around for this new teen idol to show up so I could snap a couple of pictures and wait until I get home to figure out who he was. Turned out to be pretty famous in the music world, specially given that he’s only 15 years old.

Anyhow, in case you just landed from Mars and don’t know what I’m talking about, “The Game” I’m referring to is the Super Bowl football game planned for next Sunday in Miami Life Sun Stadium. From all the media events, sports paraphernalia and T-shirts surrounding us I am guessing it will be between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts, and that’s the extent of my knowledge on that matter.

But the reason I was carrying a camera during our daily walk this morning was not to take pictures of Justin Bieber but as of regret that yesterday I could have taken my picture with Gloria Estefan, A.K.A. “The Queen of Miami”, when we stumbled upon the stage where she was going to perform live for the Early Show on CBS. Since most of the Super Bowl activities are in the evenings, this early morning show was relatively empty so it gave me the chance of moving very close to the stage and be close enough to have my picture taken with her. Except that I didn’t have my camera and can only share my memories of the experience.

Gloria is pretty famous in this parts of the country, but in Cuba she turned out to be a lot less famous than I imagined. For some reason, maybe because I was visiting my birth country for the first time in my conscious life, I found my self humming the words to Gloria’s song “Mi Tierra”. It was with me pretty much the whole 10 days I was there. In a couple of occasions I asked two Cuban family members if they had heard the songs of Gloria Estefan and to my surprise, they had no clue of who she was. How about Willy Chirino, a known Cuban from Miami that also sings strongly against the Castro regime? Nope. No clue. They knew about Juanes and Olga Tañón, but nothing about Gloria or Willy. How convenient to know about those that supported your politics, but know nothing about those that spoke against your system.

Thinking about it, it wasn’t that surprising after all. During my visit to Cuba I realized that if you could control the information that people heard (the news media), then you could control just about everything. If the only facts you were allowed to hear were anything that told you that you were in heaven, in less than a generation away, people would believe that they were indeed in heaven. All the Cuban news, in print, radio and TV, talks about the wonderful things the Cuban government does there and abroad. Any of the troubles the country may have are usually minimized or if acknowledged, at least blamed on the Imperialists to the North and their embargo.

So Gloria, if you want your songs to be more popular in Cuba, you’re going to have to do a little better at praising the accomplishments of the communist way of living and be a lot less critical. Otherwise I don’t see Gloria becoming the Queen of Havana anytime soon.

In the mean time, I’ll just continue praising the accomplishments of the capitalist’s ways and enjoy all-things Super Bowl this last weekend before The Game. And may the best team (and the best political system) win.

An updated perspective

There is nothing like traveling to give your compass a tune up. I’m not talking only about the actual, physical compass but about your overall direction and the principles that you use to guide you in your life. And if the traveling happens to be somewhere that is very different than your every day life, then the bigger the jolt your compass gets. My first activity of the year was to get one of

those big jolts in life when I returned to my birthplace after a 50-year absence.

Not that I had any memory of my last visit when I was only two years old, this was more as if I was visiting for the very first time. But, I had heard so much about Cuba from my parents and the media, that I definitely had some preconceived ideas of what I was going to encounter.

To start, the visit felt as if we were breaking our own family rules as we had always hoped to return to a renewed Cuba some time after it had undergone a change from years of being ruled by one dominating figure. But given that none of us are planning to live forever, we had to make the visit happen before all of my Dad’s siblings disappear. As it was, one sister is 95 years old but with a bad case of Alzheimer’s disease which was not expected to recognize my Dad. The only other living sibling was a 93 year-old sister that lives near the family home site but at that advanced age it would be too much of a gamble to wait until the political picture changes.

So the trip happened. The culture shock was experienced. The meeting of so many “new” family members occurred. And now I’m in the process of reviewing the pictures, digesting the information, and getting over seeing first-hand the conditions that our family lives just a few miles South of where I live, which minus well be in another galaxy for all practical purposes. To write about our experiences in Cuba would take a book not a blog, but I’m sure that having that experience now in my system, its going to color my writing from now on.