After another very interesting Friday evening

Yesterday evening was another very interesting one. I was invited to have dinner at a Rabbi's place. Arriving there I found out that he organizes these dinners almost every Friday (when he is around) and invites as many people as he can fit in his house. The conclusion is that I met many different and interesting people. I've even met a medical doctor that has been to Brazil multiple times. He was even invited to work there at the Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein. He started mentioning all the family he has there and some names even rang the bell as people that I might have met. Small world!

Not only that, I met a Brazilian guy that works at Microsoft right now. He was a little tired (he is one of those people that work 12+ hours a day - and imagine that, he is from Rio de Janeiro!), but we still had a very good conversation.

All of the people there were older than I was (well, except the Rabbi's kids). It is interesting to see how many things in common I can find when I go to these events. Especially when there is a Brazilian Jew around! I guess now I have new possibilities for Friday events, and a whole new group of people to get to know.

The last thing I wanted to talk about is that sometimes human nature is sad. Creating excuses in order to hide evident facts just doesn't get you anywhere. But it is not a person's fault, it is the way we operate. If it is because of culture or if it is genetic we will never know. I'm betting on a little of both, because of the wide-spread nature of this problem. It is that our brain needs negative reinforcement to learn or un-learn. Synapses have to be made stronger and weaker. And that's what our memory is all about. We can be made to believe whatever we want, as long as we know how to lie to ourselves.