Walking into Teatro alla Scala brought back childhood memories pushed away and almost forgotten. We would gather around at the playground at the observatory. We talked about different things and imagined the world that we didn’t have. In the summer, we would stay out past midnight, looking at the stars, talking, thinking, being children. We must have been no more than ten or twelve at the time…

I cannot get my childhood out my head in the past couple weeks. Nostalgia is an old acquaintance of mine whose visits are no longer welcome. This time my cousin’s death prompted it to pay me a visit. This clever magician has its distinguished seat at the table of our worst enemies such as worry, greed, hate, dishonesty, and fear among others. This one pretends to be a close friend, one who has only good intentions, but under the elaborate disguise is a ruthless controlling pig with the singular objective of getting in our way of living the current moment to its fullest. I have seen most of the tricks this one plays to trap us in its web. Once captured, it infects our lens through which we see life, the world, and ourselves and causes all kinds of distortions…

The year before my mother passed away, she taught my son a song about a little boy and his toy ship. Every time I hear the song (“Im pokrik navak” here), I remember my childhood. I remember my mother and her words here and there that in hindsight seem to all have had a purpose. She would sometimes make a comment about something that seemed irrelevant or unimportant at the time…

I was the summer intern at Eaton Vance, in the Strategic Income Fund team a few summers ago. Taking my job very seriously, I did everything to make sure that my duties were carried out to absolute perfection with attention to every detail. After a few weeks, the team got used to having everything in order; and I realized that I had created a process where…

I was thinking during my commute how quick the integration of new discoveries is these days. Perhaps it’s another side effect of easy information that new products, new inventions, new processes and new methods are analyzed, internalized, and digested so fast. Take the iPhone…