The Alchemist

I have heard a lot about this book which is an international bestseller. Frankly I thought I would not like it (alchemy is not my thing) that is why I did not read it until now. But since many people encourage me to read it, I finally did.  
The book tells the story of Santiago, a young shepherd from Andalucia who wants to pursue his dream of finding a treasure and travels to Egypt. It was written by Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian author in 1988. The novel describes the whole journey of Santiago and his encounters with different people who teach him lessons along the way. 
In my opinion the book is amazing, easy to read and gives you a lot of tips how to embrace life in a simple way. Some of my favorite phrases of the book I would like to remark are: “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure” , “The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them”, “The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times” and “It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting”. People try to find their destiny all the time, it is like an endless search. Maybe it is wrong to think that we will be happier when we discover it, since we can be happy the whole time we are searching for it. Have you found your destiny?  Do you think you ever will? 
Nevertheless I think it is essential to have dreams to pursue, it is the motor of life. Human being needs projects and dreams in the future horizon in order to keep moving forward. Imagine how our lives would be without dreams, we would be like machines, just doing what we have to do everyday and fulfill our biological necessities. I think dreams are the fuel for our soul. I would rather be a happy dreamer than a person too much down to earth.
Although it is a little pessimist I do not agree with this phrase of the book: "when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it”. Many times in my life I did almost the impossible to achieve what I want and many times it was not enough. Life is not a movie nor a book, the universe has more important things to do than helping me (us) apparently. It is a romantic exaggeration, almost mean: follow your dreams and they will come true...Don't you think? 
Hopefully we will enjoy and learn all through the way and at the end of our lives we will be wiser and discover which was actually our destiny. One thing is for sure, you will feel better if you follow your dreams and make it your path through life.

Life in the "digital now"

I agree pretty much in all that Abha Dawesar says in her TED talk. It was quite an interesting subject that she developed and it made me think of the considerable time that I spend using technology. Actually I am surprised that I am not such a big fan of 24 hour connectivity as a computer science person should be(?). In fact, it rather stresses me to keep track of all the messages and feeds from Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, mails, etc, etc. I see every day how my friends and family (including my mother lately) have these digital meetings in WhatsApp or Facebook and then they consider unnecessary to get together to talk because they have already exchanged news. Also, some people goes online and makes public all that is in their minds or everything they are doing, almost minute by minute. I do not like it.

It would be better if people used these applications as a way of making an appointment instead of actually realizing the appointment online. Being wired all the time is not healthy, we are living in a digital now which takes the moments of our present lives from us. We are more concerned about our digital life than the real life and we cannot even cope with all the information that our eyes see on the internet. We cannot handle it and we should not. Let's be unplugged once and then and enjoy a real moment with real people instead of digital avatars.
"Time doesn't flow in the digital world in the same way that it does in the natural one ... Not just is the digital now far from the present, but it's in direct competition with it ...The digital world cannibalizes time". We have to be aware of the impact that technology has on us. Of course, it is a good thing and it brings us a lot of improvements to our lives. What would we do without technology nowadays? But like everything else, it must have a limited use, excesses are bad.

Cities without cars

Nowadays it feels like an utopia to have car free cities to me. People are used to have and utilize cars not to mention the power of the oil companies which will not let their business sink.

But of course we can have a sustainability in our conscious and improve the effectiveness of cars. The not so new tendency of cars run by electricity is a good start. Setting a fee to the use of cars in the city center is another good alternative.
Using other means of transportation is healthier and more environmental friendly. There are a lot of cities who promote the use of bikes and have as many bike paths as streets. Also taking public transportation is a way of saving energy and pollute less.
I think it is possible to have cities with less cars every passing day. The people should be shown that there are other alternatives that are as comfortable and cheap as driving your own car. And if the new option is even better for the ecosystem we live in and our life, then that is a plus!
Hopefully we will be more and more aware of the problems caused by cars for the sake of the environment and our own. And who knows maybe Hamburg indeed becomes the first car free city...

Here some interesting links I found regarding this subject in case you want to dig deeper:

World Carfree Network

Institute for Sensible Transport