Death Letter

This letter might not lift your spirits at all. Don’t even look at it if you are looking to find happiness.

I think if you plan to find something that you really want, especially if it’s abstract, you will have a hard time finding it. So, don’t look for happiness or money (money is abstract if you paid attention in your macroeconomics class). Just do and optimize you actions with the options you receive in life.

I say that based on what I’ve learned from a Mexican named Carlos Slim, a really hard working man.

With that said, I wish for every Dreamer to hear me out! Especially those that are 30 and above, and who might have a degree that they got from the US (I even heard some of you have Master’s already); don’t be discouraged if things don’t turn out as you wanted them to happen. If the Dream Act doesn’t pass, please, intelligent, multilingual geniuses, there are definitely other options outside the U.S. You have no idea how your degrees are needed outside the U.S.! I am not saying you will be a king once you arrive to your home country (or a different country if you are not able to go back to your native country), but you will definitely have a HUGE chance in becoming big.

THE BRAIN DRAIN:

It is sad to see many people in third world countries move up to become educated and then flee, leaving their countries with no brains. Seriously, you don’t have an idea of how many people are needed out here to exploit resources. I hear many of you having degrees in engineering, but few of you actually work them (obviously, because you are ILLEGAL!). Many of your home countries are diamonds in the rough, and I bet there are many of you who are capable and smart enough to make a business out here with your degree. Of course, it is something that is easier said than done, and you might not have as many commodities as you would while working for a company in the U.S. However, I think it is on everyone’s interest to one day have your own business running successful. The Dream Act not passing could be your share of luck at becoming big.

BUT…BUT…THERE’S NO CAPITAL!

Of course there isn’t! So, I think it is a good idea if you save up some of your money, and really explore options outside the U.S. (that if you are either legal or illegal). If you are from a country that might too dangerous to go back (i.e. many that have political problems, or are just down-right communist), think about other countries where you can speak their language and be able to live.

 In the real AMERICA, growth is happening in Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, not only in the United States of America. So, consider yourself lucky if you are from these places and have a degree, you will definitely be making money there.   Sometimes, I just wish I was from the countries mentioned above, because it would be a lot easier for me to reach my goals. But at the same time, I still have a future ahead. In my country there’s just this huge demand for human capital; it just makes me somewhat overwhelmed, and frustrated (just a little), that I don’t have a degree yet. I mean, it’s like being a good artist and finding a canvas and oil paint on your doorstep.

Also, if I had thought about my return long before I actually decided to take my flight, I had worked and saved like crazy to open up a business right away, because that is, beyond any doubt, a good investment here. There is definitely a market growing here in Latin America (and other places of course, but I can’t really speak about them when I’m not there), and the coolest thing about it is that the whole Latin America is working together to grow together, while the US. has more competitors really. That brings me to:

GOING GLOBAL:

I feel like that might be pure BS you might be hearing in the States (well, at least the part about making things more diverse, etc). To me, it’s just a term describing that there is a pig to feed (the huge consumer market in the US), with the food that the neighbor is making, as it is more expensive to feed it with food one would find where the pig lives. Plainly, neighbors are needed to do the job, which means YOU! are needed to be working out here. This also might mean the neighbor earning less than anyone doing work at the pig’s place, but they are certainly helping in turning the coin around. In 30 years, I definitely want to live and have a business in Mexico.

Perhaps, all I want to say is this:

Don’t commit suicide, and become rich already.

Thank you for reading,

Hermes Des Ailes.

PS: I know some of you know where I’m from. This frog might give you a clue for the ones you don't know.

UPDATE: 

So, today I felt like reading the NYtimes and I found this great article that explains my thoughts better than what I wrote above. It's called :

The Age of Possibility:

Although there’s talk in the West of a new Age of Anxiety, the neurosis is in fact fairly narrowly confined. True, the unease lies in what is still by far the world’s largest economy — the United States — and is shared by the European Union. The problems there — of soaring deficits, high unemployment, aging baby-boomers and sporadic anti-immigrant anger — are intractable. Excess has given way to distress. Yummy money has dried up. But the vast bulk of the world’s population lives outside these enervated and overextended enclaves. For billions of human beings opportunity is expanding rather than contracting, if very unevenly. This is in fact the new Age of Possibility.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/opinion/global/02iht-GA02cohen.html?pagewanted=1&ref=iht-year-end

The Overwhelming Beginning.

Well, well…

It has been around two weeks since I left the states in order to find a path towards freedom. As some of you might know, I was an undocumented student in the state of Kansas, and after many weeks of having “nervous breakdowns” I decided to move back. This move is something I thought I would never do in my own will, but now I am sitting here typing my story miles away from Kansas.

First, I want to say that I definitely regret my trip. I regretted this trip before I had quit my job, internship, and school in the states; even before I had even bought my airplane tickets. But to tell you the truth, I didn’t/don’t think I could have made it in the states by the end of the year. I was facing a situation where I had to either cut school, or live somewhere outside a roof. Personally, when I figured that I had the chance to go back before my 19^th birthday and be able to apply in three years, it seemed like it was a perfect risk. I could not think about cutting school when it is my ultimate goal for the next four years, and living on the streets just to go to school is something I consider extreme in my undocumented life in the US. Plus, just to give you an idea of how things were turning out, when I sold my car to leave the states, I used the money to pay traffic tickets that were on their root, planted on the fact that I did not have a driver's license. 

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Funny how a mentality can change; in the states, for example, my mind had been focused in solving problems by optimizing the best solutions physically or mentally, meaning, I had kept so little attention to how pretty and developed my surroundings in the states looked. But once I landed and started navigating one of the most developed cities of my home country, two words came into my mind (and please pardon my vocabulary, but I want to be honest):

-“OH SHIT!”

I expected trash, I expected extremely poor street vendors, and all of these things, but for some reason I could not stop from being shocked by the streets. The houses, the dust, and the street signs, which so many throw the buzz words “luxury” and “comfort”; they just gave me this feeling that is between pity and fear. Don’t get me wrong, I am absolutely opposed to the idea of comparing third world countries to first world countries, and despise the poor ones for being poor. I was just shocked. With that said, I traveled a distance that in the states would have taken less than an hour, but here it took six hours because of the road conditions and the maximum speed limit of nearly 30 mph.

Once I arrived to my village, I was so happy to see how much it had advanced. Now, I could see the recently put traffic lights and the growth in housing (there’s a boom here!). But at the same time, I was welcomed to things that are not common in the states. For one, the tap water can sometimes run brown after a storm, and it is very common for the electricity to go off for an entire day. I still have to adjust to those, but I think one of things that might be hard to adjust to, it just how business hours are defined here. It seems like businesses start opening at 9:00am, have a two hour break from 12:00am-2:00pm, and close at 4:00pm. Things I would happily find at Wal-Mart in the US, are not available here after 4:00pm. Ugh! My brother emphasized that point to me the night before my flight, but to me these things had been things that I didn’t have to have as a priority in the states.

With the laidback attitude towards life here, I can sincerely declare that I might turn out crazy(ier). I am just not enjoying taking a day as it comes. I clearly remember the energy I got from being pressured and having to plan schedules that would cover whole weeks, with breaks in between for the meals. There’s none of that here, productivity can be so low it makes me nuts. For that reason, I think I should just start doing some project of my own. I mean, school just ended here, and I will have to wait until February to start attending college.

I am nervous about attending college here, especially when I am not really good at writing in my native language. Another, and primarily, the reason why I’m nervous is that I will have to face a high rate of crime once I go back to the city where I landed in order to attend school. People could easily get away with stabbing you because they might want rob the $5 that you have in your pocket. Also, like I said, that 6 hours drive won’t be fun at all, or even driving on roads where most are not following any transit rules. I just wish there was a school that had dorms, but from what I’ve seen, none of the ones that offer engineering do.  

For now, I can’t say I will have a structure for this blog because I am so overwhelmed with things I want to tell you. But I think as time passes by, it’ll be more organized and perhaps, have a stronger theme. I will leave you here, and keep writing later on. I have to catch up on my internet life, as it is today that I finally installed the internet in my house. Talk to you later, bye.

Hopefully,

Hermes Des Ailes. 

PS: I will add pics!