Defeated, and so far away from Ithaka

These last few months have been hard on the soul. You may have noticed if you were a regular reader: writing was scarce.  Perhaps it was my subconscious dealing with the reality of exile.  I had written that discussing Venezuela from afar was somewhat a hypocrite exercice. It is up to journalists to visit Venezuela for a few days and then bomb us back with supposedly knowledgeable articles from their safe desks at home. But a blogger who made his name writing in situ, from some Podunk like place in Venezuela?

There was something else at work, the grief of having lost home and memories. I suppose that grieving in a span of 6 months the loss of my life partner, the loss of my father and the loss of my health distracted me from grieving the loss of my country. Oh! I knew Venezuela was lost for a while, but as long as I was there it did not hit home the way it does now that I have left and start realizing there may be no return.

Two recent articles, unfortunately in Spanish and too long to translate, helped in my efforts to come to terms with my new reality.

What mattered in 2019

For yours truly, of course, no objectivity here. (1)

I pick as the marking moment of 2019 the burning down of Notre Dame in Paris. Why? Because it was infinitely more than a Church going down in flames, it was a hit on one of the main symbols of Western civilization. Period.

On the right the newspaper cover that is my "cover of the year", by Liberation, a progressive newspaper that was able to put aside any religious content to convey all the meaning on the moment. Notre Drame means our drama.  A truly national drama in France.

Other marking moments.

Welcome 2020

Dear readers, it has been two years in a row that the best wishes I received were the prelude of horrendous years of grief.  I am thus quite weary to partake in the ritual wishes.

But one needs to pick up the pieces, dust off, stand up and walk.

So there you go, have the best possible 2020.

2019 in review part 1: all changed

2019 should be a year to forget, not only for me but for Venezuela.

Becoming French

So here I am, facing my condition since April.

Exilium

I have been absent for over a month. I did not write even though all hell broke lose in Caracas, and the ridicule of many an item should have been inspiring.

But something happened.

Irregular writing ahead

When you read this I will be flying above some ocean.

2018

To tell you that 2018 has been the worse year of my life sounds almost like an understatement. Things can always get worse, and in Venezuela it certainly seems so, but 19 years of love, my moderate belongings, my hopes for a stable future, all that went down the drain.

A new life

Never has it been so long between two posts. More than a month!  Who knows whether I have readers left.

Writing about Venezuela is sort of senseless anyway.

But really, a recurrent mention in this blog will be no more. My S.O. has passed last week after a long and painful cancer. November was awful.

The search for a new meaning has started.

Maybe getting back to blogging may bring some solace. We'll see.

Goodbye Ivan, thanks for 19 wonderful years, and the most happiness I had in my life. Until the very end we still managed to laugh a little bit, the secret of long lasting relationships.

And thank you for all the meaningful details you found for us in this blog over the years.

Logarithmic hyperinflation

So I got my latest condominium bill.  Needless to say that I was flabbergasted.  I ran a graph of this year payments.

In blue, the amount paid monthly over the year on base 100 as of September.
The red square was an extra payment for some stuff that broke down.

To lighten up the graph I decided to consider as 100 this September payment and thus the other months are a percentage of what I paid this month.

But of course this is not clear. Since I am a scientist I immediately saw the logarithmic scale representation potential on what is an exponential hyperinflation.  Here below.

Now you can see by yourself how fast inflation goes. You can see better than the previous graph the real payment for February (reddish square) which was the normal condo plus an extra payment for elevator water pump repair (I think it was). Not that it changes anything, just for full disclosure.

And yet the monthly fold increase is not quite clear from this graph. So I added an exponential trend line.

So there you see it, condo is multiplied 10 fold every 3 to 4 months. Though that rate was lower early in the year (4 month) and is speeding up now (every month and a half). I tremble as to what will await me for the 3 months end of the year.

So now you can feel my pain, at ground zero of hyperinflation.

An empty world

The overbearing feeling these days is not quite palpable. We can suffer inflation, we can endure robberies, we can see our lights go away, we can drain the last drop of water in our pipes.  But there is one thing we cannot do anything about, that feeling of emptiness that we all live in Venezuela.

I have been wondering a lot about why I am feeling emptier as days go. Not lonely. Not quite isolated. Not lost. Not bored. Just empty.

Apocalypse tomorrow

It has been almost a month I have posted last.  I think it may be the longest time ever in between posts.  I guess tweeting as taken over.  I can tweet anytime, like in some medical waiting room that I am visiting a little bit too much these days.  And trust me, in Venezuela there is nothing as

depressing, after looking for food, as looking for medical help.

But it is Sunday, the night of the "reconversion monetaria" and all is still. Caracas died a few hours ago as banks web sites went down to adjust for the "new" currency tomorrow.  By 2 PM almost everyone open a Sunday had closed. No grocery stores open after 2 PM, even the convenience stores normally open until 6 PM on Sundays. And even if some joints were to dare to risk their earnings tonight, why would you want to go out and drink? Better to pass out at home as many must have done, witness the amount of people buying booze yesterday.

Miscellanea

A few things.

Medicine for the rich, or how to postpone some genocide for a little while

So I had an event due to stress that had me hospitalized for two days and that will change a lot of my life. No details necessary, the stress under which I have been subjected for the last 4 years is the real explanation. But the damage is done and now I have to rebuild what I can from my old life with all the same problems as I had before. And even worse as my S.O. health is not doing better the more so that his support is not shipshape.

It is all about humiliation

The world is starting to notice how Venezuela is collapsing. What did the trick is the flow of refugees crossing the borders, travelling by bus all the way to Argentina, drowning in front of Curazao, or simply picking up their one way ticket at the airport.

There are so many reasons to leave the country and yet the one that I growing is our daily humiliations, something that is, no doubt, a welcome side effect for the regime.  Like any totalitarian system, the more so if tutored by Cuba, one way to control people is to humiliate them so they get grateful when the level of humiliation relents.  Leaving because you are hungry, or your health is threatened, or because you know that you are in the list for an upcoming middle of the night arrest is a clear decision. Leaving because you are humiliated is not a clear decision. Leaving because you are humiliated is what the dictator wants. When you leave your country because you cannot endure humiliation anymore becomes your own acknowledgement of failure. You lost, the dictator won. For the dictator it is the sweeter because the memories of your humiliation may haunt you forever and bar you from returning home, not wanting to walk where so many perceived personal failings will taunt you back.

I live daily such small failures, mine or the ones I see.

A Christmas from hell

I know, I know, I should be wishing all of you a merry Christmas...  Good for you if you can, my heartfelt wishes. But here, it is hell.

I am not going to bother you with summaries from around the country. Just among one of many I received, one from the Washington Post awful enough to spoil your eggnog, about how even Caracas Santa is skinny.

"esos son los que se quedaron"

On the evening of Chavez 2006 reelection I did write a wistful note that somehow made it to the Wall Street Journal.  Then this blog was in the news as the other news were not yet on all of Chavez horrors.  Years went by, the news caught up and thus I could become again an amateur blog, more a stream of consciousness than a true need to inform the world.

Valencia

Lots of things going on. One, a couple of weeks ago was a trip to Valencia.

Paro civico 2017

I have not gone into the details of what the opposition plans to do. Then again it is not quite clear, the people are upset anyway and act like crazies and thus the MUD leadership sorts of goes with the wind instead of leading it as it should. Then gain, can anyone lead the country today? Certainly not chavismo for that matter. But I digress from today's sole objective, to let you know how was this beautiful day.

Stopping a country...........

France mourns one of her greatest

Sometimes we are not aware that we live in the times of heroes. And they die and we remember.

When she faced a 95% male audience
to regulate abortion in France

Simone Veil was probably the lone France hero alive.  She died last week and the outpouring came from all fronts, except as expected from the far right Front National who could not forgive her among other things that Simone Veil was one of the 2.500 survivors of the 75.000 French Jews sent to Nazi concentration camps. Or rather, that she answered only too well to what Le Pen and daughter are all about.