David Acevedo's Blog

My college buddy just cancelled hanging out with me because it was going to be after 8pm and he didn't want to go out that late because he was worried about crime. He didn't excuse himself for feeling this way, or explain why being worried about crime would be an issue, he just texted me: Ok. Puerto Rico. Crime. A reality. I'd rather reschedule. Sorry to be an old man 8( And we're the same age! (By the way, as a close friend I understand what he means. He's got a young daughter and would rather stay at home with her than leave her alone.) I've been encountering this over and over. "That's just the way things are here." Or the much worse: "It's like that everywhere. " (The Japanese got "shikata ga nai", "it's no use.")   I'm still not sure why people don't see the huge trap going around like that is. Let me make a parallel. This morning I was watching a TED video from Lisa Bu , who talks about ...

How do you know what restaurant is good? As I was walking through the food kiosks at Luquillo, a beach town in Puerto Rico. I realized that you look for the crowded one, because if the locals frequent it, then it most be at least decent, right? At least that's how the thinking goes. While food-poisoning looks imminent in that lonely restaurant with nobody in it. This is a type of group think. You crowd-source your restaurant decision because you don't have time to check each restaurant for cleanliness and audit their food, you go where others have gone to eat and trust in the wisdom of the crowds. Now sometimes you go off exploring too, and go check out that restaurant you haven't tried or that new place that opened. But when you're in a hurry, in an unfamiliar place, need to eat quick the lonely food kiosk just feels sketchy even if it's totally fine and the crowded one is just good. Why is this important? It isn't but it's a cool way of thinking about ...

For the past two months I've been in Puerto Rico, the island I was born in. I frankly feel conflicted about Puerto Rico. In a weird way every time I've come back since I left for college, it's felt like a different country, and I've suffered reverse-culture shock every time. Even now. Now however I'm seeing a Puerto Rico that is in a worrisome state. NPR has been doing a 4 part series that's worth checking out here  called "Disenchanted island." Puerto Rico is called "la isla del encanto" or the "island of enchantment" so the title is a play on words. It's worth a listen. Like children you don't see grow up because you see them everyday, the people that live in Puerto Rico become essentially blind to the changes that happen in the island. While I who feel at times like a strange uncle that comes to visits sees them starkly. So much so that I get a push back. It's very strange to see consistent responses from people t...

The bitter sweet sensation, is like a drug for those that've felt the scorn of being condemned for daring to speak what others don't want to see. To cover ourselves with the knowledge of being right and comfort ourselves from that scorn is but a poor substitute. It's easy to be right. If you've ever felt the scorn of being rejected for seeing the truth you know the seductive ecstasy of hiding behind the "I told you so." It's easy to be right. The drug-like effects comfort you in the cold loneliness. You feel vindicated, the lone-hero, the one who saw where other failed to see. Yet it's a sad song to hear, a bitter comfort, for the real power lies in being convincing. Lately I've heard interviews with Paul Krugman, nobel prize winning economists, about how he is mostly right about his economic predictions. I thought to myself, what a way to go for the low hanging fruit. The dare, the challenge, is to be convincing. To not just say what's ...

This past month has been fun. Univision declared a celebration for Puerto Rico's independence, an event that hasn't happened. And the Huffington Post shared a racist tweet from the adviser to the speaker of the Puertorrican House of Representatives. In other news Canada has the same crime rate as Puerto Rico . No, no, I mean the BBC reports Canada has less number of murders ( 598 ) for a population of around 35 million that Puerto Rico has with just 3.5 million (around 1,000 ). But what's a factor of ten between friends? Yet friends of mine on Facebook still defend Puerto Rico as if it wasn't that bad. It was bad in 1993 when I finished H.S. and we had almost 1 murder per day. Now it's at over twice that. What's going on? From afar you have a different perspective that from inside. But all I'm seeing is the fulfillment of trends that have been a long time going. 1. Brain Drain . This was a problem 15 years ago, but it was pretty much ignored. N...

Una de las ventajas que tiene la sociedad de hoy es que uno puede usar los avances mas recientes para hacer "leap-frogging" o dar un sobre-salto en varias áreas de la sociedad. Por ejemplo en vez de crear una red de internet usando cables se puede ahora crear una usando conexión wi-fi y así llevar el internet a lugares sin el costo del cable. En Puerto Rico el énfasis ha estado en crear un progreso copiado en vez de uno innovado. Y eso de be cambiar. Lemas como "Puerto Rico lo hace mejor" asumen que los problemas de la isla yacen de una falta de confianza en vez de unas limitaciones reales. Lo que hay que hacer es el "leap-frogging." En vez de buscar el progreso paso a paso con soluciones linear , hay que buscar maneras de sobre-saltar lo linear buscando soluciones que usen la tecnología y el conocimiento del dia de hoy para adelantar de sopetón al país en una manera exponencial y no linear. Como un coquí dando un salto, el país debe dar un salto ...

I'm starting a Non-Profit in Puerto Rico in 2012 that will revolutionize entrepreneurship on the island through the use of mentors in the broad Puerto Rican diaspora and the Hispanic community. I don't know how to do this, and I'm doing it anyway. There is a Buddhist story about a man that is poor and living on a hut. Underneath the hut is a large cache of gold but the man starves for lack of money; not knowing the wealth he possessed. This is so true, for there is no worse poverty than the poverty of the mind , not seeing the options that could be taken is far worse than having no options . And this is what I want to see impacted directly by my Non-profit. Entrepreneurship is a state of mind . It's how one approaches life, failure and risk. It's not about making money, the same way the human body is not about eating, shitting and sleeping. Money, profits are necessary like food is to the body, but the Olympic marathon runner doesn't run to eat ...

In the movie From Hell about Jack the Ripper, the killer entices the women with a promise of grapes . A treat so rare in dreary London and so sweet that even the most weary street woman would be tempted. Grapes grow in Mediterranean climates and myself having grown up in a tropical weather where fruits were abundant I didn't catch on to how rare grapes must be in England. They don't grow there. In the times of Jack the Ripper with no refrigeration they would have had to been shipped there by boat. Grapes would be a sign of great wealth, but also an incredible treat. With sugar being so expensive since it had to be extracted from sugar cane, fruits like grapes were the candy the era . There is another movie, Grave of the Fireflies where a tin of candy plays a prominent role. The older brother uses the candy as treats for his hungry sister as they fight starvation in a World War II Japan. They ultimately loose the fight and the tin of candy now empty is in a way symbolic...

Brain Drain happens when the opportunities in a country or place for educated people favors them leaving permanently the area. I've noticed that Puerto Rico suffers from a Brain Drain since I was in college fifteen years ago, but now finally the unseen consequences of this brain drain are being felt. With the downturn in the economy many professionals have left (many to Texas) and Puerto Rico for the first time lost population in the 2010 census. Brain drain has seen and unseen consequences. For example due to a lack of internships many doctors are leaving the island to complete their training abroad and never return. In my family alone four doctors trained in the University of Puerto Rico Medical School are now abroad and likely will stay that way permanently. While moving outside of Puerto Rico involves becoming a minority in the larger US, that is not as much a concern for English-speaking professionals who are already familiar with American culture since they were kids ....

Today I heard on the radio how the economy has so drastically turned on the former Irish Tiger that people are being pushed into the security industry since that seems to be one of the few growth industries. Ireland copied a version of the development program Puerto Rico followed out of the forties under operation bootstrap . It gave tax breaks to American Corporations that set up in Puerto Rico, similar to the way Dell set up in Ireland. Puerto Rico also made these tax-breaks subject to being located outside of the capital to encourage development in the country-side, which was a brilliant idea. Since Puerto Rico was mostly undeveloped in the rural areas and only the capital of San Juan and surroundings had been developed. This development program was abandoned in Puerto Rico by pro-statehood government because these tax-breaks would result in an obstacle towards statehood. This had an adverse effect on employment, though I think this was small considering the effect of the brain-drai...

In Puerto Rico there were a few movie theaters: one in each mall, a few independents here and there, and the occasional chains. City theaters which didn't have access to parking died out as they did in most of America, but overall the segment was doing well. Then Plaza decided to build a lot more theaters. I remember when the theater in Plaza was only on the third floor next to the food court close to Sears and on the opposite side from the Gonzales Padín/Borders area. After college in those blighted days that I was unemployed in Puerto Rico with my Princeton degree (It looks so nice on the wall...) and lacked money to gas my car sometimes I begged for car rides from friends. One time a friend of mine, his girlfriend and I went to catch a movie, and I asked him for a ride since he lived near me. I ended up saving his car from getting robbed that night but more on that later. So Plaza las Americas the central mall in San Juan, decides to double the movie theater capacity even though...

NiNis are the youth segment of the population 16-35 that neither study nor work ( Ni estudian, Ni trabajan). They are the Spanish and Latin-American equivalent of the slacker. They typically live at home with their parents or other family and are sometimes referred to as leeches on family resources. I posit that the NiNis like the slackers before them are mislabeled as lazy by society and incorrectly perceived as leeches or drains on normal society. Slackers were of my generation. Smart people that seemed unable to focus and apply themselves to take work seriously; they spent a lot of their time on seemly wasted hobbies like video games, making videos, or writing blogs (many of which are now rather decent careers). But thinking of them as lazy is wrong. These are people that want to work, sometimes desperately, but they just don't see the point. They're not lazy, just unmotivated. I recently got Jane McGonigal's book 'Reality is Broken' and I agree with her. It is ...

Queremos Ganarnos la lotería. Queremos Que nos resuelvan el problema. Queremos Una Universidad exclusiva para todos. ¡Que mucha cosas quieren! ¿Y que cosas están dispuestos a hacer para realizar esos deseos? ¿Protestas? ¿Huelgas? Así cualquiera... ¿Trabajo? Ni lo pienses. El mas ridículo es "una Universidad accesible a todos y todas." Empezando porque la oración no es gramática... osea todos incluye mujeres y hombres pues al contrario del ingles en español el plural es masculino cuando son los dos sexos. Y continua con "que se vea como derecho y no privilegio"... osea que quiere que sea como la escuela superior... ¿Como es eso diferente de lo que tienen ahora? ¿Y que de que sea de excelencia? ¿Quieren que sea pera y china a la vez, también? Mientras el peligro real es la autonomía de la universidad, se merma esa importancia con tanta queja. El gobierno no se debería meter en los asuntos de la universidad pero los estudiantes tienen que dejar de pensar que la univers...

Here is a very short video that speaks of the importance of entrepreneurship in life and compares it to the epic win mentality of video games. Fora.tv

When I was young I couldn't stand my uncle's hippie friends. They'd sit on the afternoon, drink a beer and spout a continuous stream of complains. The government this, society that, and on and on it went. I just looked at them, adults with the power to drive, with money and time enough to drink lazily one afternoon away and I'd ask them "Why don't you do something about it?" Organize a group, write an article, campaign, run for office something. I'd always get the same response. "There is nothing I can do." I didn't get it. I was young, penniless and locked in a high-school most of the time. They were none of that: adults, had money and had transpiration and power. I didn't get it. Till it happened to me and I became one of them. I remember the vile frustration that was my first year out of college. It seemed that no matter what I tried to do nothing bore fruit. Temp jobs that never materialized, interviews that brought about nothing,...

The Caribbean is a small place. I mean not if you're trying to swim it but geographically the countries are small. At one point the best University in the Caribbean was in Cuba. People went there to study pretty much any advanced degree.  The University of Puerto Rico opened up at the beginning of last century. At the beginning through enlightened leadership it became a premier institution. My grandfather who graduated from the UPR had a tiny class of around 200 students. He was always ever so proud of his university. My grandfather, played guitar, recited Shakespeare from memory, read French for fun, and had a rather extensive workbench, which I'm told he used a lot when younger. A very educated scholar, he was typical of the university's first years. However since them the UPR has become (all pardon me) a joke, a shadow of it's former self. Both physically and spiritually it has become a factory of students cranking out people in a quantity is more important that qual...