domingo, 1 de octubre de 2017

#CatalanReferendum

For people not from Spain, here is a little summary of how we got to the current situation: a portion of Catalan population (nowadays it is a region of Spain) wants to be independent from Spain, become a separate country. For years there has been an increasing tension between Spain and Catalonia, and an increasing number of citizens have been joining the independence movement. Today, a referendum with no legal validity, according to current Spanish constitution, was set by the Catalan government. The Spanish government has been issuing warnings about this referendum not being legal, according to the constitution from 1978. The Spanish government didn't have a problem modifying the Spanish constitution in 2011 to make external debt the priority of state payments. But modifying it so people can cast a vote is a no-no from central government. The other way around would be issuing a national referendum. I doubt the current politicians would make this happen , even less so get a positive result in the voting.

Anyway, we are at this point: Catalans wanted to vote if they remain in Spain or not, Spanish government did not want to let them take that vote, but they went ahead and decided to do it anyway. Today, October 1st 2017, was the day set for the voting.

In response to the polling, the Spanish government deployed more than 10.000 police officers, that were posted in the docks some days ago. Because that seems like an appropriate response to people casting votes, right? But you wouldn't take them so seriously in those boats, because Spain is a joke of a country.

"Let's see how do we explain to someone not used to Spain that there are 6000 police officers in Looney Tunes boats to stop a referendum."
"The new Looney Tunes movie will be "Police Academy" in collaboration with Spain."

The police is deployed and they have been using force all fucking day around:


Destroying public property. You can see them breaking the doors of a school, where students are supposed to go tomorrow.


Using force against peaceful people, hitting and throwing people away.

En el instituto Pau Claris, ahora. Mi hermana llora y yo con ella desde Madrid. pic.twitter.com/USE5FHkPxA
"In Pau Claris Highschool, now. My sister cries and  I cry with her from Madrid."

Taking away the urns with the ballots:


Do you want to know what is not illegal in Spain?? Being a fucking fascist and praise Franco, sing hymns from a regime that killed thousands. Look at the happy fascist troupe:

HORRIBLE. Madrid, 2017. 
Youth and seniors doing fascist salutes and happily singing "Facing the Sun" at Cibeles. 

But let's see what happens when Catalan people sing their songs:


And of course, the media is on the payroll of the political parties. Here we have a reporter from the national TV:
As a reporter from TVE I feel ashamed by the treatment that RTVE has given to the 1-O. Again, public television servicing the gorvernment #SOS
One case is this woman, who got her fingers broken one by one:

She had her fingers broken one by one and was thrown down the stairs. There still will be people justifying this. 
Transcript translation: "What did they do to you?" "They threw me down the stairs and among other aggressions they took the fingers in my hand and purposefully broke each finger one by one. They kicked me out." "[Something by the reporter I don't get]" "Yes, and show them how the stairs are"

The same woman again:

Audio from the girl that got her fingers broken and they groped her breasts.
Transcript translation: "Laura, listen well to this and tell everybody. I was defending elderly people, with my arms open, I wasn't doing anything else than defending elderly people because they had hit kids, they had hit elders, and they grabbed me, they threw me downstairs, they threw me stuff, they broke my fingers on purpose one by one, in the middle of the stairs, with mi clothes pulled up they groped my tits and laughed, and they hit me. All of this while everyone was recording. Tell, tell everyone, Laura, tell what they are doing. They broke my fingers one by one on purpose, that is plain evil, plain evil, plain evil..."

I have been discussing with a LOT of people during the day. And it surprises me the amount of people thinking that the problem is that the people broke the law. They don't see their own government using force against their own citizens at this scale as problematic. If it was the military and not the police doing this, we would have been suspended from the European Union already.

What is wrong with those people? Something being illegal does not mean that it is punishable, let alone a justification for police brutality. Settle the matter in the European Court, talk with the citizens, I don't fucking care, but this? How deep is your head in your butt to not see that this is a fucking huge problem?? How can you justify violence like this because people want to vote??

I don't consider myself Catalan or Spanish, I don't care what country I belong to, but this pieces of shit on the government have to go. And I am super fucking proud of how Catalans are fighting for their rights, our rights, today. They are amazing and brave. Keep up the fight!!

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viernes, 4 de agosto de 2017

How to jump into the void (with no parachute) and stick the landing

A few weeks ago I was in a software development bootcamp in Barcelona, trying to figure out what will I do with my life after that. Then Maria barged into our bootcamp, pitching her company to us. She was gonna change the world*. And she spoke about how she and her team were going to solve the pain that it is to be a bioinformatician and how analysis of biodata was going to be changed by them. Of course, having studied biology, I knew the issues are 100% real, and she was giving us a chance to be a part of that revolution.

I always wanted to be part of something big, change the world around me, explore and research, go were nobody has gone before, do what no one has done before. Of course, I got excited about the idea of being in a team joining two fields that I love (biology and computer science). And not only that, their startup was selected in one of the finest startup accelerator programs in the world. Imagine that, not only working in two fields I love, but in a city I adore. As downsides, I would have to share a flat with all my coworkers (this could end extremely bad), I would have to work as a mule, I would have to abandon my life for 3 months, minimum. Things that I didn't care much about, to be honest.

I am not a senior developer yet, I still have lots to learn and I was not qualified at all to be the main developer they were looking for to kick-start their software. But as soon as Maria left the classroom, I jumped after her "I want to work with you". It was impulsive like that. My guts were telling me to go for it, go, GO!. We connected, and she told me to send her what we talked about as a cover letter and attach my CV. I did that. I waited a week and asked about the selection process. It didn't look good, I was too junior, they didn't have a lot of money, they were going to hire someone more experienced... I replied "I don't need much money right now, I just want the job, I really like this". I waited. Then they contacted me. Maria wanted to hire me, the rest of the team did not. They had another concern: they didn't want to babysit a junior developer. So they proposed a technical test. I had to build a full-stack application in a framework I did not know and in a language I did not know. In one week. If I managed to do that, they would hire me. 

That week I almost lost my sanity, but I managed (mostly) to do it. One Monday I was in, on Saturday I was flying to London. WHAT. It's been almost one week and I can't believe this is really happening. Me, a nerd that has been jumping careers for her whole life, who has struggled on daily basis to overcome tons of shit and always be better, get better. A nerd that had lost hope on what she could accomplish, and was about to settle for just good quality of life. Thanks to an impulse that took a fraction of a second "You want this an you can do this, you are worth it". Now that nerd  has been for a week in London, in a startup accelerator, working with amazing scientists and getting to sit at meetings with Google and Amazon, meeting renowned lawyers, investors and tons of other amazing professionals from around the world. And not only that, the senior developer that was going to be hired, finally was not. So I am the main developer, just under the CTO. He is developing the most complex parts of the technology we are developing, I will be developing the full web application by myself, in technologies that I don't know or don't know that well. Maybe some other senior developer gets hired, maybe not, meanwhile, I have to learn React as fast as Neo learned kung fu. 

I really love what I am doing here, I love the people. I really love the project, IT IS AMAZING. It is based in Nextflow, that it is already incredible, was developed by them, is open source and revolutionary. I can't explain more because it is confidential, but oh, believe me, I would love to. This week here has been intense, crazy as hell. I am so tired, excited, afraid and happy. All at once. Even if I was fired tomorrow, this week here has been completely worthy for me.

I sent pictures to the area and building where I work to a friend and he asked me: "Are you working in the future?!?" Of course I am. 😉

* And she is, she is an amazing woman.
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jueves, 27 de julio de 2017

To every woman colleague I’ve ever had

Dear all,

Lately I had some conversations with a few female fellow students. And they all felt the same way, so bad about themselves, so little. It made me really sad, so I just want to direct this words to every woman colleague I’ve ever had, as it is a pattern I’ve been observing for years now. I get you. I get your feeling of frustration, I get your feeling that you are not good enough. So I want to share my experience with you and give you some advice, so maybe you start feeling better, and maybe you start feeling like you are not alone.

BROFLAKES BEWARE: some generalization ahead. I know that what I describe it’s not the case for every woman and every man, but in general lines it is what happens for most of us. If there is a chance of your ego being hurt by generalizations, don’t continue reading. 

 For years I was reading and learning about how to be successful, tricks and hacks to be excellent in whichever field I was trying to succeed. But still, I always felt like I was not enough, that other people was always achieving more than I was. And that, of course, had to mean that I was not doing enough, that I was lazy, dumb or both. I had this constant feeling that I was an utter failure of a human being. It’s not like people around me was actively feeding that feeling. It was my own self-concept.

Then I discovered feminism. Oh, yeah, I’m a feminist to the bone. Don’t get scared by the word, please. Feminism saved me. Feminism showed me that I was not being fair AT ALL with myself. I was always comparing myself with successful white males, because, of course, if you are a white male you can become whatever you want. I realized that almost any advice out there is made by men to men. But that’s not fair to women. It does not apply. Not because we are less able, of course, but because the mental load we face is definitely worse. I was truly convinced that me and some other guy my age were starting the race in a leveled field, but somehow I was always behind, and that was my fault. Always my fault. But that is far from true.

We start being told that we are dumber, that we must look pretty, that we didn’t earn fairly whatever we achieved (we probably fucked someone to get that, it’s impossible that we are good enough to get that for ourselves!). We get criticized constantly by our looks, we are either prudes or sluts, too fat or too thin, our butts and our boobs don’t have the exact shapes that society allows. We use too much or too little make up. If we have like three hairs in our legs, what a shame! How can we go out to the street like that? Most of us (cis) feel sick for 2 or 3 days a month and have to deal with bloody underwear, stained sheets, blood clots coming out of our vaginas. But still we have to pretend like we feel great and nothing is affecting us, because having a period is something dirty and shameful. God forbid a guy noticing us carrying a pad to the bathroom with us, the trauma he, poor thing, can face! We get shamed and isolated if we do want sex, we get shamed and harassed if we don’t. If we are nice then we are too soft, if we are assertive then we are crazy aggressive bitches. We HAVE to be caretakers, we have to take care of our relatives and our friends. And I won’t even get started on what being pregnant or a mum represents socially and occupationally.

Then, the white guy next door comes and tells you “Why don’t you just do this! It’s easy! I did it!”. And you can’t, because of course you are so down, feeling so little, feeling so incompetent, so insufficient, so inadequate, that you get paralyzed by the mere idea of trying. You think you are not good enough. But you are not taking into account that this kind guy next door can walk into an interview all scruffy and with poor hygiene, with half the qualifications they are asking and just with a bit of charm and the interviewer feeling identified with him, he can get a job and a decent salary. He can forget about everyone’s birthdays and just get by with a joke, “How oblivious Tom is! But he’s a good guy!”. He probably does not cook or clean at home and has his mother or girlfriend doing that for him. He probably “helps” his wife with the care of his children, if he has any, while he is regarded as an exemplary dad for taking the kids to school on Mondays. He does not even know his child’s shoe size, and he asks his wife what his own underwear size he is. He does not care for his elders, that’s what other women in the family are for! He never thinks that his help is needed in organizing the family holidays, his grandma alone can manage cooking for 30 people!

So, of course, this guy can focus on just being productive in his career! We, as women, have a mental load 10 times bigger (and it gets way worse if you are non-white, non-straight or trans). The social shaming we would face if we did not take proper care of the ones around us, if we did not care about our looks, about our home: it would destroy us. But still we feel fucking useless when, after balancing twenty tasks, we are not able to focus on our career goals. You know what? FUCK IT. WE ARE WORTHY, WE FUCKING FOUGHT FOR EVERYTHING WHILE TAKING CARE OF OUR BELOVED ONES AND FACING PREJUDICE AT EVERY STEP. We are able to eat proper meals, take care of everyone around us and still be amazing at our jobs. And even if we end up being an average worker, that should be fine too! We should be allowed to be average and not getting trampled over for not being excellent at every single aspect of our lives.

So please, please, please, start realizing that as women we are not in a leveled field. I realized that I had to overcome a thousand mental and social blocks, that I had to fight harder to being regarded as a professional. Of course, logic and assertiveness are not feminine traits, and I’ve had colleagues and bosses feeling threatened by me. But if I dress or act feminine, I am superficial and I can’t be that good, I must be cheating somehow. But I overcame all of that successfully, while taking care of people and pets around me, while I took care of myself and my surroundings, while I kept on growing. When I realized all that, I felt free for the first time. I started regarding myself with love instead of hatred.

We have to realize how amazing we are and start believing in ourselves. I do believe in you, you are my sisters in this shitty world. I support you. I’ve seen woman around me work their asses off while caring for everybody, studying, working. Being in abusive relationships and surviving that. We are all overachievers, but we are defining our own value in a utterly unfair manner. So please, believe in yourselves and your own value. Go with scruffy looks to interviews were you don’t cover all the requisites. Be excellent or be average. Complain about your period out loud. Don’t take care of people around you as if you were the only one responsible for their wellbeing. Kick parasites out of your life. Focus on you and how amazing you are. Ask for more money. Appreciate how many things you’ve come through in all the facets of your life to get to were you are now. You are able to do whatever you want to do. Shame to whoever makes you feel like you won’t make it, tell me who they are and I will kick their asses. And please, be patient and kind with yourself, it’s not an easy path. And you are not alone.
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