Pictures Lost in Time

       As many of you know in the summer of 2008, I went on a tour across Europe with my mom. We got the opportunity to travel through Spain, France, Germany, Austria, and Italy. Now as luck may have it, when I came out of the plane and grabbed my camera to take a picture, the screen of my camera was completely wrecked. I was able to take a few pictures, but I couldn’t see what I was taking a picture of. After a while the camera was so wrecked it wouldn’t even turn on. Something like this would happen to me! So my mom and I were forced to buy disposable cameras and take pictures with those. It was the only possible alternative we had at the moment and for the most part it was okay. Eventually, we came back home from our trip with tons of luggage and bags. Because everyone and their moms wanted a souvenir. We ended up misplacing the bag with all the disposable cameras and all the pictures inside it. At the moment it was okay because the memory card in my broken camera had salvaged a few good pictures, Ignoring all the awkward floor pictures, and it was enough to show our friends and family. Unfortunately, bad luck struck again and a computer accident led to all my documents, pictures and all, to be wiped off of my hard drive. With those pictures being lost and the disposable cameras never to be found, those pictures and memories were lost in time. Today we were finally brushed with good luck; as I was going through some old boxes I came across a very old looking book bag. What did I find inside you may ask? None other then the disposable cameras I had lost long ago. I found a few old maps, pamphlets, and nine disposable cameras holding 27 pictures each. That’s 243 pictures of Europe that I thought were lost forever! Now, because times have changed and developing film is actually kind of expensive, especially for the 243 pictures, I decided to make a project of it. Why not every week or so develop one camera at a time? That way I could make looking through those pictures an experience. It will give me the chance to extend me reminiscing for a couple of weeks and allow me to value the pictures much more    

Marketing Books

Since I made the decision to go into marketing pretty late in the game and don’t have access to the marketing classes in the business school, I have decided to go about teaching myself. That it what a liberal education is really about isn’t it. Learning from a variety of fields and about subjects that interest you. So I took to the Internet and went through tons of books recommended for people thinking about going into marketing and I finally got my first three. The first is “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion”, which focuses on what influences people to say yes to certain things. It teaches you six principles of persuasion, how to persuade others, and how to not be persuaded in return. The Second is “Made to Sick”, which teaches you about what makes an idea “stick” or become popular. It goes over the five key elements that one can apply to their idea to make them sticky. The last book on my list is “Guerrilla Marketing”, which focuses on different strategies for marketing across the Internet. This book emphasis the rise of new technology, as well as how you can use it to improve your marketing strategies. My goal with these books is to gain more of a fundamental knowledge behind marketing and improve on marketing strategies.

Career Path... Maybe?

For a long time I had trouble figuring out what exactly I wanted to do with my life, and what direction I wanted to go into career wise. You know typical college student problems. I had originally come into Fordham with the intention of going into Pre-Law. However, as I got further into my studies and spoke about the future with my professors, I realized that law was something I enjoyed but wasn’t passionate enough to get into years of debt for. While in college, I had also stumbled into a few computer science classes and realized that I really enjoyed this new material and found it thrilling to create programs. Trust me its extremely fun building your first program. I ended up switching into the Computer Science department and declared my major as information science. Which for the most part was great, the workload was difficult but I was learning a whole bunch of material that would be really essential in a future career involving technology. This seemed perfect for me because I strongly feel that we should all be improving our skills in technology because we will only be using more technology from here on. Although again, as much as I really enjoyed the material, I couldn’t imagine myself spending hours sitting behind a desktop solely working on a program and having no interaction with anyone. For me that is difficult because I have worked customer service practically my whole life. So while I can work quite well independently, I needed something that was occasionally much more interactive. I needed something that brought together my technical skills, my creativity, and my social capabilities. I explored through different career options until I finally came across marketing.

I had always secretly thought about a career in marketing, because I believe I hold skills that would fit well in marketing role. I have used basic marketing strategies to increase members in my club on campus; as well as, used those same strategies at work. Although, even though I had always thought about this possibility I always ended up steering away from it because “I wasn’t a business student”. I know crazy right? However, as I dug more and more into a career in marketing, I realized that it was the perfect career path for me, even without a business degree. A marketing position has all the qualities I was looking for: it is interactive and requires good social skills, demands creativity and coming up with innovative ideas, and with the rise of technology it is requiring many technical skills that weren’t necessary before. So I’ve decided to get rid of that “not a business student” mentality and work to use the skills I have gained and apply them towards a possible career in marketing. I’ve created a sort of game plan for myself, where I specified the skills I already have and the ones that I need to work on. This summer will consist of gaining the adequate skills that would potentially make me a more desirable candidate for a marketing position.      

Cuban Artist: Rafael Villares

While on my trip to Cuba, I had the opportunity to meet an amazing Cuban artist named Rafael Villares; his work was both evocative and naturalistic. Villares presented one of two ideas in his artwork: the idea of creating function out of something that appears to be without function; and the relationship between Cubans and Cuban Americans, in regards to the Cuban migration. In one of his function pieces called ‘Breathe’, Villares installed a light box in the center of the floor and created a layer of cracked dirt above the light box. As the observers came into the room, they would immediately be greeted by the rhythmic sounds of breathing that was matched by the intensity of the light shining through the cracks. This would eventually cause the observer to sync their own breathing with that of the “earth” creating the idea that they are one with the environment. Another function piece with a similar idea was ‘Flight’, this piece consisted of a room that had air blowing from the ceiling to the floor, and from the floor to the ceiling. These two forces of air hold up tons of loose bird feathers that were collected for the piece, giving the observer the feeling that they are flying with these feathers. The feathers had already fallen of the birds they belonged to; so this piece emphasized creating function in something that had lost function.

One work that I personally got the chance to see was Villares piece on the Cuban Identity and Relationship. As many know, after the Cuban Migration following the revolution that led Communism, tensions arose between those that remained in Cuba and those that fled to Miami. Hostility has caused many Cubans to disassociate themselves with the ones that fled and consider those to not be “authentic Cubans”. Villares, who holds a different ideology, installed a lamppost in the middle of the central city known as Havana Vieja. This lamppost was split into two, holding two light bulbs, and intertwined with each other to represent a unity. One light bulb was from Cuba; the other was brought from Miami. This symbolized that the Cubans and Cuban Americans may seem to be different but they are in fact intertwined and are one. Villares was a phenomenal artist and I connected deeply with the message he was trying to present. Feel free to check out his website to read more about these pieces and see any new work he may create. http://www.rafaelvillares.com

Las Manos Pa' Arriba

       This is a short video I made of my trip to Cuba. Hopefully this gives you the chance to see a bit of Cuba through my eyes. Although this video gives you an inside look, it only gives you a taste of what I experienced there. Although, I hope it gives you a but more motivation to travel to the marvelous island that is Cuba. Sit back, enjoy y suban las manos pa' arriba!

Cuba Pictures

How was Cuba?

            A lot of people have been asking me this question since I got back from Cuba. It is honestly an extremely difficult and loaded question, which is the reason why I’ve been delaying this post for so long, that, and coming back to a million assignments. I can sit here and write about what I thought about Cuba; but the truth is, Cuba is such a unique travel experience and it’s different for every person that makes it there. Not to mention that it’s really hard to put my whole experience into words. Now that I’ve actually been there, I understand why I couldn’t get an idea of what my trip would be like from the online forums I had looked through. I’m going to try my best to tell you about my experience, but just know that its completely possible for you to go next week and have a completely different experience from what I had.

            Being that my trip was a rather short one, at least I thought so, I didn’t really have a chance to get to know any of the people I went with, except for a couple class meeting here and there. So we all jumped into this brand new country with no familiarity of one another, and no Internet if I might add. Although in the long run, these were the best circumstances. It allowed us all to get much more intimate with each other without the distractions of our devices. We spent almost every night drinking bottles of Havana Club on the porch, talking about subjects that actually mattered. This was especially convenient for me because: sometimes I find myself trying to bring my friends on my trips with me, through my devices. However, this allowed me to really disconnect and focus on what was in front of me.

            Due to all these circumstances, Cuba became quite the ultimate trip for me. With the new mates, I went out exploring and got to ride through Cuba as more of a local and less of a tourist, which is always my main goal. It allowed for plenty of reality checks and recognition of my privilege living in the U.S. It gave me the opportunity to see a country that is constantly criticized in the U.S. for what it is and not what it’s made out to be. Not that it’s perfect, but lets be honest, neither are we. It allowed me to recognize that we are just as brainwashed as every other country we criticize. While exploring the old city, we got the opportunity to meet a local member of the community who took us out and about to the real parts of the city. He showed us what was real and what was commercial, and he even went out clubbing with us. Cuba is honestly filled with so much beauty both internally and externally. The Cuban people are so embracing you can’t help but fall in love. The amount of times I was confused as a Cuban was too many to count. When I told them I was Dominican they embraced me just the same and labeled me as an hermano. I can truly say Cuba influenced my perception of the world, as well as my own personal life and going was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. If any of you guys get the opportunity to go, TAKE IT!! You may have a different experience then what I had, but it will be too unique of a trip to ever regret taking.