African Life

“Why did you move to Africa?” – some compatriots asked me way too many times, their voices betraying a veiled disdain, as if I had committed high treason to king and country. Twenty years after relocating at the southern tip of the African continent I keep asking myself the very same question to which I […]

The Art of the Game

Grifters. Con Artists. Scammers: plenty are the definitions associated to persons whose sole purpose in life is to relieve us from our money and possessions. In the realm of fiction, countless are the books and comics, TV series and movies centered on the figure of a grifter. Probably the earliest fiction con job was when […]

On Reading

I meet some people from all walks of life who give reading a book the same disregard and anguish as they would to the thought of crossing the Sahara Desert with no food or water. Reading is far more than just a ‘boring pastime’ — as a young fellow once pointed out: it’s a way to […]

Fiction versus Reality

In the first episode of The O.C. – a TV series from the early 2000s – we meet a wealthy family living on the Californian coastline and the character playing the part of the forty-something years old father and businessman. He wakes up – a beautiful and warm sunny morning greeting him through the partly […]

Meeting friends. Or not.

We realise we’re getting older when things that were supposed to be simple turn out to be extremely difficult instead. Take something like meeting friends for a coffee or a meal: when I was younger, it was a simple matter of picking up the phone, call one friend or another (or, a whole group of […]

What is love… baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more…

Why is that, in a time and age where everything and everyone is connected to a wireless worldwide network, increasingly more people find themselves to be single – and not by their own choice? One would assume that, by throwing ourselves in the cauldron in which simmer the various Facebooks, Twitters, dating-xyz, Instagram, and so […]