Commuting in Miami

As of next month, I will reach the milestone of having been working as a medical writer for 2 years.  Coming back to the 9 to 5 workforce was not an easy decision after being accustomed to setting my own schedule for almost 9 years of entrepreneurship and travel.  Now I’m expected to be at an office every day and to tell someone if I’m taking off the few vacation days for the year.  It takes some getting used to. 

Even though it may sound as if I’m complaining, don’t take me too seriously because work has brought a new sense of meaning and impact to my life.  After a while every job becomes just a job, but scientific writing has added a new dimension to my life.  Every day I write about cancer.  And every day I count the blessings of having to deal with it from this side of the fence. 

What we do to those poor souls in the name of medicine is almost inhumane.  In the hopes of destroying the cancer, we ask patients to destroy themselves trusting their bodies survive the train wreck.  Most clinical studies I work on will see only patients that have exhausted all other possible therapies and at that point, they are just hoping and praying for a few extra months of life, even if the extra time could include terrible side effects.

For me writing about cancer is difficult when I keep thinking on the patients, but I try to stay focused on the science and with the thought that what we learn in the process will help future patients and maybe eventually eradicate the disease.

Some of the perks from work are all the technology I have at my fingertips.  When I get a new assignment, I usually spend a few days reading and learning about the disease and the proposed therapy.  For someone enamored with reading and learning, this is a dream job.  After that I can spend a few weeks or months writing, editing and consulting with all the experts in the different areas needed to conduct the clinical trial.  So even though writing is usually perceived as a lonesome job, I consult and seek input from so many people that it would be difficult to do as good a job in isolation.

Just when I thought the job couldn’t get any better, two months ago I manage to do just that.  I added bicycling to my mix and now I could stay here until the cows come home.  My commute is less than 3 miles from home to work but not having to deal with the stress of driving makes it all worthwhile.  When I used to park my car at the University’s parking deck, I would find myself racing with others to the spot closest to the elevators and then racing out of the building after 5pm as if someone had announced a fire emergency.  Now, I pick up my bicycle in a bike cage to one side of my building and wave goodbye to all the maniacs cuing to exit the parking decks on their way to the highways and byways.

When a friend asked me what is my motivation for bicycling, I had to think about it a bit.  It is not for health reasons as 2 miles does not even break a sweat.  It could be environmental somewhat, after all, I live in Miami, the ground zero for sea-level rising.  But the real reason turned out to be mental peace and joy of living.   Being able to bicycle has truly made such a difference to my daily experience that instead of regretting it, I look forward to Mondays -as long as the weather continues to cooperate-.    Looking forward to many rides in 2018!

Different shades of the American Dream

In my landlord duties, last weekend we were dealing with an empty apartment that needed cleaning in between tenants.  We were rushed for time and a little desperate so hired a couple of recent Cuban immigrants to help us with the painting.  We got to talk to them a little in between trips to Home Depot.

Roman and Sergie are two 30-something guys that arrived in the USA about 2 years ago by different routes. I’m not sure how they met but I believe they knew each other growing up in Cuba.

Roman, is an Afro-Cuban born on the island but from Grand Cayman’s father.  He’s the more outgoing of the two because he started working on his English during the last few years while in Grand Cayman.   He has been able to move around our at times complicated maze of rules and regulations and how has a bank account and knows a thing or two about running his own business.  Roman has a 16 year old daughter still back in Cuba, the product of a previous “relationship” and now has a 15 month old boy with his wife.  Apparently he left Cuba to Grand Cayman a few years earlier and after helping his father in Grand Cayman for a while he “got sick of the island life” and decided to move with his pregnant wife to the USA.

Roman said that if he was not able to leave Cuba in a legal way, he would still be there acting as if he was a fan of the Castros because taking on any of the “adventures” his fellow Cubans take to leave the island nation, would have been frightening to him.  Luckily for him, his Grand Cayman father came along with a British citizenship, so he never had to do anything illegal.  Sergie had a much tougher migration.   After exhausting all his savings in a one-way ticket to Ecuador, he landed and started the more that 3,000 mile journey to the USA border.  Journey is a nice way to put it as he was harassed, robbed, beaten and locked up along the way.  He said that it took him 37 days in route.  He left Cuba with 150 pounds and arrived to the USA with 90 pounds.  He ate 3 full meals in the whole 37-day odyssey.  A very sad story to listen to.  A few months after being here, Sergie’s wife arrived with his two kids legally because she has family in the USA.  Sergie wanted to arrive first to have something for the time the wife and kids would arrive, very sweet, but by the sound of it, he barely made it.

Both Roman and Sergie worked as electricians in Cuba so when it came time to find a job, they decided to get into that field again.  Both of them work full-time for construction companies and are also taking classes in the evenings at local technical school to legitimize their professions.  It’s taking Sergie a little more effort because in addition to the electrical training, he’s working on his English in the same school.  Classes are M-F 6PM to 10PM.

I did the math, 40 hours full-time work, another 20 hours of school attendance, and then any other job they can find for the weekends, adds up to a busy week.  No time left for homework, family or entertainment.  I don’t think they have caught on to the work-life balance idea.  In Miami, I do personally know and know of several new-generation Cubans.  Folks that have grown up under communism and used to doing what they can to survive and to get the most with the least effort.  Many of them arrive here and are known for sitting around to wait for the government handouts and other benefits they get as refugees.  Not these two.  These guys have something that I wish I could bottle it up and sell it at the corner grocery store.  I was very impressed with their work and hoping that I can hire them again to help them out in their goal to successfully integrate themselves into their new home and achieve their piece of the American dream.