THE DAY WE MET

It was raining the day we met. I was waiting for the traffic light to turn green, when I saw her running towards me, barefoot with a smile on her face. She was holding her orange shoes in her right hand and a bouquet of flowers in the other. I was holding an umbrella and she asked politely if she could take refuge underneath. “We are going the same way anyhow.” I never speak to strangers, I always tend to mind my own way, but I couldn’t resist the confidence in her appearance. I was stunned and couldn’t even say a word, but smiled back. If you could have seen her, you would have smiled too. “How do you want me to call you?” Nobody has asked me such question before. And I really didn’t like my name. I think it's an old fashioned and I never liked it. Now I had a chance to choose. I started feeling uncomfortable, as she knew more about me than I ever allowed myself to do so. It probably took me a while to make a sound, that is when she poked me, “Let’s run. It’s green.” She took my hand and we cross the street. I wasn’t aware that she is not just taking me across the street, but on a journey I would never forget.

Date a girl who writes

Date a girl who may never wear completely clean clothes, because of coffee stains and ink spills. She’ll have many problems with her closet space, and her laptop is never boring because there are so many words, so m

any worlds that she’s cluttered amidst the space. Tabs open filled with obscure and popular music. Interesting factoids about Catherine the Great, and the immortality of jellyfish. Laugh it off when she tells you that she forgot to clean her room, that her clothes are lost among the binders so it’ll take her longer to get ready, that her shoes hidden under the mountain of broken Bic pens and the refurbished laptop that she’s saved for ever since she was twelve.

Kiss her under the lamppost, when it’s raining. Tell her your definition of love.

Find a girl who writes. You’ll know that she has a sense of humor, a sense of empathy and kindness, and that she will dream up worlds, universes for you. She’s the one with the faintest of shadows underneath her eyelids, the one who smells of coffee and Coca-cola and jasmine green tea. You see that girl hunched over a notebook. That’s the writer. With her fingers occasionally smudged with charcoal, with ink that will travel onto your hands when you interlock your fingers with her’s. She will never stop, churning out adventures, of traitors and heroes. Darkness and light. Fear and love. That’s the writer. She can never resist filling a blank page with words, whatever the color of the page is.

She’s the girl reading while waiting for her coffee and tea. She’s the quiet girl with her music turned up loud (or impossibly quiet), separating the two of you by an ocean of crescendos and decrescendos as she’s thinking of the perfect words. If you take a peek at her cup, the tea or coffee’s already cold. She’s already forgotten it.

Use a pick-up line with her if she doesn’t look to busy.

If she raises her head, offer to buy her another cup of coffee. Or of tea. She’ll repay you with stories. If she closes her laptop, give her your critique of Tolstoy, and your best theories of Hannibal and the Crossing. Tell her your characters, your dreams, and ask if she gotten through her first novel.

It is hard to date a girl who writes. But be patient with her. Give her books for her birthday, pretty notebooks for Christmas and for anniversaries, moleskins and bookmarks and many, many books. Give her the gift of words, for writers are talkative people, and they are verbose in their thanks. Let her know that you’re behind her every step of the way, for the lines between fiction and reality are fluid.

She’ll give you a chance.

Don’t lie to her. She’ll understand the syntax behind your words. She’ll be disappointed by your lies, but a girl who writes will understand. She’ll understand that sometimes even the greatest heroes fail, and that happy endings take time, both in fiction and reality. She’s realistic. A girl who writes isn’t impatient; she will understand your flaws. She will cherish them, because a girl who writes will understand plot. She’ll understand that endings happen for better or for worst.

A girl who writes will not expect perfection from you. Her narratives are rich, her characters are multifaceted because of interesting flaws. She’ll understand that a good book does not have perfect characters; villains and tragic flaws are the salt of books. She’ll understand trouble, because it spices up her story. No author wants an invincible hero; the girl who writes will understand that you are only human.

Be her compatriot, be her darling, her love, her dream, her world.

If you find a girl who writes, keep her close. If you find her at two AM, typing furiously, the neon gaze of the light illuminating her furrowed forehead, place a blanket gently on her so that she does not catch a chill. Make her a pot of tea, and sit with her. You may lose her to her world for a few moments, but she will come back to you, brimming with treasure. You will believe in her every single time, the two of you illuminated only by the computer screen, but invincible in the darkness.

She is your Shahrazad. When you are afraid of the dark, she will guide you, her words turning into lanterns, turning into lights and stars and candles that will guide you through your darkest times. She’ll be the one to save you.

She’ll whisk you away on a hot air balloon, and you will be smitten with her. She’s mischievous, frisky, yet she’s quiet and when she has to kill off a lovely character, when she cries, hold her and tell her that it will be alright.

You will propose to her. Maybe on a boat in the ocean, maybe in a little cottage in the Appalachian Mountains. Maybe in New York City. Maybe Chicago. Baltimore. Maybe outside her publisher’s office. Because she’s radiant, wherever she goes. Maybe even outside of a cinema where the two of you kiss in the rain. She’ll say that it is overused and clichéd, but the glint in her eyes will tell you that she appreciates it all the same.

You will smile hard as she talks a mile a second, and your heart will skip a beat when she holds your hand and she will write stories of your lives together. She’ll hold you close and whisper secrets into your ears. She’s lovely, remember that. She’s self made and she’s brilliant. Her names for the children might be terrible, but you’ll be okay with that. A girl who writes will tell your children fantastical stories.

Because that is the best part about a girl who writes. She has imagination and she has courage, and it will be enough. She’ll save you in the oceans of her dreams, and she’ll be your catharsis and your 11:11. She’ll be your firebird and she’ll be your knight, and she’ll become your world, in the curve of her smile, in the hazel of her eye the half-dimple on her face, the words that are pouring out of her, a torrent, a wave, a crescendo - so many sensations that you will be left breathless by a girl who writes.

Maybe she’s not the best at grammar, but that is okay.

Date a girl who writes because you deserve it. She’s witty, she’s empathetic, enigmatic at times and she’s lovely. She’s got the most colorful life. She may be living in NYC or she may be living in a small cottage. Date a girl who writes because a girl who writes reads.

A girl who writes will understand reality. She’ll be infuriating at times, and maybe sometimes you will hate her. Sometimes she will hate you too. But a girl who writes understands human nature, and she will understand that you are weak. She will not leave on the Midnight Train the first moment that things go sour. She will understand that real life isn’t like a story, because while she works in stories, she lives in reality.

Date a girl who writes.

Because there is nothing better then a girl who writes.

The Last days of Our Uni Life. [I wrote this on the final day of my graduation]

I've learned one thing, and that's to quit worrying about stupid things.

You have four years to be irresponsible here, RELAX!  Work is for people with jobs.

You'll never remember class time, but you'll remember the time you wasted hanging out with your friends. So stay out late. Go out with your friends on a Tuesday when you have a paper due on WEDNESDAY.

Spend money you don't have. Drink 'til sunrise. The work never ends, but UNIVERSITY does..!!

Will miss you guys

Peace out 

ADNAN PALIJO

The Future is here

Just 17 years ago, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they were bankrupt. This will happen in a lot of industries in the next 10 years - and most people in those industries don't see it coming.

It will happen with Artificial Intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture and jobs. Software disrupting 90% of traditional industries within 5-10 years. It is amazing to think that Uber is just a software tool, they don't own any cars, and are now the biggest taxi company in the world. Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don't own any properties.

In the US, young lawyers can’t get jobs. Because of IBM Watson, you can get legal advice within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans. Watson already helps nurses diagnose cancer, 4 time more accurate than human nurses. Facebook has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans. In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans.

In 2019 the first self-driving cars will appear. By 2022 most of us won’t own a car anymore. You will call a car with your phone, it will show up and drive you to your destination. Our kids will never get a driver's licence and will never own a car.

Cities will have 90-95% less cars, parking space can become parks. We now have one car accident every 60,000 miles, autonomous driving will drop that to 6 million miles and save a million lives each year. Many car companies could become bankrupt. Without accidents, insurance will become 100 times cheaper, the car insurance business model will disappear. Real estate will change, because working while you commute will enable people to live better further away.

Cities will be less noisy because cars will be electric. Electricity will be incredibly cheap and clean: Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than new fossil installations. The price for solar will drop so much that coal companies will be out of business by 2025.

With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant water. Desalination now only needs 2kWh per cubic meter. Imagine what will be possible if anyone can have as much clean water as they need, for nearly no cost.

One of the major beneficiaries will be health: There will be companies who will build a medical device called the "Tricorder", that works with your phone, taking your retina scan, your blood sample and when you breathe into it. it analyses 54 biomarkers that will identify nearly any disease. It will be cheap, so in a few years everyone on this planet will have access to world class medicine, nearly for free.

The future is already here.