28th Jan 2012 News Tip-Bit: T-10 & T-11

Not sure how other European countries cope with the seeming long and ongoing economic crisis but in Spain, it's just about everywhere you look and everything you see, read or talk about are to do with this theme. Apart from the hundred and one ways proposed, advised or suggested, the following is one I think is quite a sensible idea to put into practice, especially if you are a tourist.

There's transport ticket for bus, tram & metro in Barcelona called the T-10, for €9,25 (normal one way fare is €2,00) which entitles you for 10 journeys on the city transport system in any direction, and is valid indefinitely within a given year.

 

Today, somebody suggested, that if you find you have done your last journey and there's another one or two left on your ticket, just leave it somewhere easily visible, to benefit somebody else, baptising this a T-11. A good turn that costs you nothing. Great idea! 

 

Tags: t-10, t-11

Prev: 28th Jan 2012 Learning To Be Alone

28th Jan 2012 Learning To Be Alone

During an interview, a Spanish actress suggested that there should exist within the educational system a class of solitude. To learn to cope with solitude, or even to value and enjoy it. It might at first sound strange, but I think it's rather an intelligent idea.

I am not sure whether is viable to establish such a class as part of the elemental education, but I feel that children and teens ought to learn to be comfortable alone as well as being sociable, a fundamental and excellent formation.

 

Excepting few problematic cases of isolation, most youngsters are, by definition, sociable, communicative, easily establish relationship with companions, and have tendency to the formation of groups. All that is evidently positive and an instinct of the human species. Unlike animals; some enjoy living in groups, others choose solitary existence.

Most modern day adolescents don't seem able to be solitary, maybe don't even know how, much less enjoy it. They want to be popular, defined by the number of 'friends' they have, they want to be constantly communicating even there's nothing new to communicate, they want to belong to a group or several, whatever they are ...

 

I think certain doses of silence and solitude are necessary and beneficial, not to say indispensable, for personal growth and reflection, time and space to pursue one's own ideal, hobbies, goals. Only when there are hollows and gaps to fill, can one strive and advance.

 

Tags: education, solitude

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