Relaxing in Gold Coast

After Korea, I worked for a month more or less in Gold Coast, Australia, for the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

Gold Coast is a coastal city in east Australia, close enough to the equator that it has tropical weather and with what is basically a huge continuous beach all along the coast. I went there at the end of "Summer"/beginning of "Autumn", which means it was hot and sunny and also rainy sometimes, but like in brutally intense and short showers.

What I mean is that after a cold long Korean winter, it was paradise. It was warm, calm, beautiful, and also very much occidental. It had it's peculiarities and it was not perfect, but it felt pretty much great.

We were staying in this area of tourist apartments, that had a nice pool and sun. The apartments were quite good and we were close to the tourist going out area, Surfer's Paradise (that's how the neighbourhood is called). This area was also next to the beach, although there were nicer beach sections further away.

Work-wise, we were busy and doing things, but because of the scope of the project and the previous work done for Pyeongchang, it was a lot less tense, the workload was smaller and we didn't have to do night shifts, just afternoon shifts. This means there was a lot of time to visit, enjoy the sun and relax before and after work.

The city has a region called Surfer's paradise because the whole region is ideal for surfing. There are very strong and big waves all across the coast, and inside the water the current is crazy strong. I swam several times in the sea and it was really funny, I always kept myself in areas where I touched the ground but it was fun to let waves crash against you and push you away, or notice how the current was also almost making you fall. The only thing is that the allowed swimming areas were very small, marked between two special flags. This was to avoid surfers hitting you and have a very clear supervised area, where you could be very safe. However it felt sometimes like a waste, to have so much beach unattended just for surfers.

This area might have sharks and other dangerous animals, and we were told not to swim at dawn nor on sunset, but the reality was that it was pretty safe and most people mentioned it had been decades since last time someone had been bitten. We still didn't swim outside the morning and early afternoon, but also because it was the period when the sun was bright and nice, of course. There were jellyfish and some people that I was with got stung by them, once right next to me, but I was lucky and escaped without touching one^^.

The area had also other curious animals, like ibis, big birds with big curvy beaks, or flying foxes at night (which were quite impressive since it's basically a very very big bat). We visited a local zoo (it's called wildlife sanctuary but it felt like a zoo, which can be pitiful), where you could see kangaroos and koalas (they're from this region) and other local animals. Koalas looked really cute of course, while kangaroos where actually in some open area just sunbathing and you could get close to them and even feed them. I did not see any giant spider, but I did have a green jumping spider in my kitchen for some time (it was brightly green and I checked what could it be. The bite is supposed to be painful like a bee sting but that was it, and this spider was just on my ceiling and not bothering, so I left it there)

One thing I enjoyed very much was the possibility, finally, to have fresh orange juices in bars and cafes, while being for example next to a beach area with sun and some fresh air. I did not drink this in a long time since in Korea fruits are scarce, expensive and not juicy, and then it was not that common to have a good natural juice.

I also tried some local things, like the famous vegemite (which is weird as hell and I'm not sure I like) and I had some burgers and good meat, plus I tried kangaroo sausages (and they were really tasty and apparently rather healthy). Around the city there were some public barbecues and you could cook food in there in a park or next to the beach, which was really really nice, and I ate barbecue a couple of times, even if I'm not that fond of it.

I met with friends and other people and went out or visited different places with them, like Coolangatta (an extremely beautiful and calm beach), Snapper Rocks (natural sea pools made by rocks, quite fun to notice the waves arriving in them), Burleigh Heads (another beautiful beach), Broadbeach and Mermaid Beach, some small natural park north of Surfer's Paradise and other such places. The city had newly-installed bikes that you could get an app to unblock them and use them, like Barcelona's bicing or the Itau bikes in Rio, but available to anyone for quite a low price, and we did several small trips around with them, which was quite a good way to see around and visit nearby places.

Another place that was impressive was the SkyPoint Observation Deck, the tallest building of the city that had a floor where you could check the views from up there and had an activity where you actually went outside with a security belt that tied you to the building. It was really beautiful and I was lucky to do it during a clear day, allowing for great sunny pictures and also letting me see extremely far away all around the building, checking the huge beach and seeing the waves and the currents underneath it, hypnotically moving far below.

We also went out, mostly around Surfer's Paradise. The area has a very British approach to bars and alcohol, and places were asking for an ID where it was clear what was your date of birth, sometimes only allowing it if you had your passport since others were not in english.  The process was very uncomfortable and sometimes ridiculous, because even if you went out for a smoke and they saw you, they had to check again. Related to that, one night in particular got me really really angry: Good Friday, the Friday that is a holiday during Easter. That day, bars and restaurants were only serving alcohol if you were eating, by law, and places that did not serve food (like clubs) were directly closed until the end of the day, 12 at night. I found this to be ridiculous, to implement such a religious law for everybody instead of letting you do whatever you wanted. I knew Australia had problems regarding racism and immigration and that it was a very conservative place, but this stupid limitation forced upon everyone really pissed me off and was a big stain in my opinion of the place, which was rather good with no complaints until that point, even with the ID controls they were implementing.

Of course since it has British culture, it was normal to have dinner early, drink early and go out until rather early, so even when we went out we didn't stay until very late, and then several days we could visit things the next day or even go to work if we had an afternoon shift. There were a few exceptions to closing early though, and one of them was the Casino that we visited last day. Usually I would not go to a casino, but the locals insisted it was a known and common place to go out at night without worrying about closing times since it was always open. The day I visited I saw this was the case, but still felt a bit surreal and strange, to have like a "club" area next to betting and slot machine areas.

All in all, I really enjoyed the experience and loved the place, and it was quite a necessary relaxation after Korea's project. I didn't get to visit places a bit further away from there, like Byron bay or the great barrier reef, but I'm still very happy with the trip^^. 

Last Bit of Korea

So I'm finally out of South Korea and spending some days in Gold Coast, in Australia. The Australian experience deserves another post, but I'd like to talk about Korea a bit more before that...

When I left, I felt relieved. The last period of my stay hasn't been easy, and I've grown pretty tired of the place. I think that's because a number of things that I noticed and I just lost patience over them.

The main problem that currently South Korean society needs to overcome is its deeply racist and sexist roots. Most issues come from this core idea. Not unlike Russia, the Korean men are celebrated and considered more important than women, and you can see that everywhere. Women are not taken as seriously, are not thought as smart as men, and are though to belong taking care of the house most of the time. At the same time men are pampered and protected from birth, and thanks to its good economy a lot of parents are directly buying apartments and houses for their sons. There's also a strong patriotic undercurrent, with the clear feeling that Koreans are superior, especially to people with darker skin complexion. Added to the situation there's also the fact that Korean culture has a very hierarchical structure based on your age, where being old automatically makes you wiser and with more authority, and others needs to serve you.

All this combines into a poisonous mix where there's a lot of men with a self-inflated ego and sense of worth in middle/upper-management positions, that are actually utterly useless when performing the most basic tasks. These people are rude, sexists, discriminate against foreigners and are a perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. If you're familiar with Sense8, Sun's brother would be a perfect example. They're good at misplacing blame and trying to involve others on their own faults, since it's unthinkable that they are the ones that should actually improve, being as they are the culmination of evolution on this planet. Another good example is the train company manager from Train to Busan.

The thing here is that because of the hierarchical nature of society, there's a lot of structures and attitudes that protect this behaviour and these types of people. Other societies, including the occidental one, overprotect their men, but society is more open to discuss and argument and counter comments no matter who says them, while in this society since the one saying it is an older man, he automatically is right and worthy of respect.

In this atmosphere it's not nice to work, or to live for that matter.

I have to say that this also causes that women tend to be 1000 times more competent, since they need to prove themselves time and time again to reach similar positions than men, and it's really noticeable how much better they are at pretty much everything.

Of course not everybody is like this, but enough people fulfil these patterns to be noticeable. In general, you can notice that people more open, that have travelled more, that have learned other languages, are better and don't fit these patterns. However there's a problematic number that still do.

Regarding the patriotism and racism, during the games you could notice one thing: These games were meant for Koreans. That's all good and nice, but these types of event tend to try to include all the world, and a lot of visitors mentioned they felt lost or abandoned when it comes to proper information about transport and timetables, among other things.

In general this situation made things a bit harder and you could notice everybody in this place was being drained because of these issues.

However, I also have to say that I've had really good moments in there of course. It was amazing when you met people more open, and it was really great to interact in these situations. Special mention to places like Malmi, Warehouse, Rush or Bon Voyage, restaurants/bars/clubs where you ended up almost being part of the place, where we could put music, control what happened, organise parties or just ask to cook one last meal for you even when the kitchen was closed. We survived and had fun thanks to such places and the people in there, and I'll miss that part for sure. And I hope my Korean friends forgive my previous comments, but I'd include them in this latter section as the people that made it all better :).

In this period after Japan I should also mention Busan, the second biggest city of South Korea, situated in the cost. I managed to visit it for a few days, and I have to say I really enjoyed the place. It felt more...cohesive, if that's the best way to put it, than Seoul. It felt like a more relaxed place, with beautiful beaches and parks, nice neighbourhoods with plenty of bars and restaurants, and in general a calmer attitude for being still a big city. We stayed next to a going out area purely by accident, but it was a nice addition and it was quite enjoyable overall.

Last but not least, I did manage to go back to Seoul other times, and one thing I discovered there is Hongdae, a neighbourhood close to Hongik University.

Same way that I said in previous posts that Seoul felt just like any other city, this region felt special. Maybe it was just the moment when I visited it, but it's true that this area is more "artsy", more underground/alternative, and I really liked it. I spent only 2 weekends/nights in there in this year and a half that I've been in Korea, but they were almost perfect stays and nights. In both cases all the restaurants, all the bars, all the food and drinks and people and music and atmosphere were pretty much perfect. I even found an extremely nice club (Club FF) with live rock music first and then a nice mixture of songs that allowed for a great environment to spend a night out, while at the same time being a place that is not very crowded and leaves you room enough to enjoy it while not feeling you're alone in there. I really loved Hongdae, and it may be extreme to go back to Seoul for just this area, but I would not mind that at all and would consider it.

I also have to say that after the train from Gangneung to Seoul opened, this city felt much closer. For my goodbye, I took advantage of that and escaped to Hongdae for just one night, one of the two I mentioned. I'm really happy that my Seoul goodbye was in there, almost perfect again, making me feel I was leaving a great place and countering some of the issues this stay inflicted on all of us.

Summer in Japan

It´s been some time since then, but this summer we spent 2 weeks in Japan, taking advantage that it was close to South Korea, and before I can get back on track to writing sometimes (work and schedules have been crazy for a very long time now) I wanted to explain a bit about that.

We've never been to Japan before, but it always has been an attractive destination for us, of course. As anime/Manga fans, technology fans and just travel enthusiasts, there's a lot of things that make Japan interesting for us. However, it's an expensive place and quite far, so until now we had not really organised anything to visit it. 

So this summer there was a break between two intense work periods and we booked a flight, and some places to stay. We decided to visit Osaka and Kyoto first, and then decide from there but finish in Tokyo. For Tokyo, when we talked with our friend Sara who lives there, she offered her house (for which we're really grateful, plus it was nice to know we'd see her).

The flight to Osaka had issues becasue of typhoons, and we had to reroute to Tokyo at the last minute. That was annoying, but we managed to grab the Shinkansen (High speed train) to Osaka right after the flight and we were ok. 

The first impressions we got from this arrival was that Japan is a lot more prepared for tourists/non-japanese speakers than China or Korea. It was really easy to get all the necessary information, and at any time there were plenty of indications. That is not to say that it was very very easy, since Tokyo, even just form the airport, seemed to have quite a complex railway map....

The shinkansen is like any other speed train, but it is amazing how often they pass, the one going to Osaka takes 3 hours but there was one every 5-10 minutes. We arrived to Osaka and it was raining,  of course,  but the typhoon felt mild,not sure if it was but it felt just like rain. 

After arriving to the station we had to get to our apartment, but Osaka also had a very well defined subway line and it was easy to get there. The place we got was close to the center and it was quite nice, it had all we needed, plus some touches that are very Japanese, like the sliding doors. We arrived quite late and destroyed from the trip, and we just went to sleep.

Next day we started visiting Osaka and our impressions were good. The city felt very curious, with shopping streets covered with glass/plastic roofs connecting the buildings, protecting us from possible bad weather. There were lots of people of course, and lots of flashy thingies lile giant king crab figures,including movement, in front of restaurants and other shops. The streets were narrow, and not many cars were moving around. Cars in japan are really curious, since there's a surprising amount of very square,box like cars. They looked very strange for us, but they seemed popular. Also there was a lot of people just using bikes or walking.

In this city we visited the aquarium, which was really impressive. Without considering the morality of it, it had whale sharks and other really big types of sharks and rays, and it was quite amazing to see at such close distances. We also visited an owl café,  which was pitiful but the diferent animals that were there were very cute. We also visited some playgrounds for Elay, and some small attractions, and in general he loved it.

We also went for dinner one night to a shabushabu restaurant,and we had special beef. I don't think it was kobe beef,but I have to say it was incredibly delicious. The beef seemed to melt in the mouth, and it had an amazing taste, very noticeable without being too strong,and it was also very tender. In general we also tried different places to eat, it was not always easy but we tried very good Japanese food in there. We didn't eat sushi though,that was harder to find (apart from places that seemed too expensive or touristic).

We really liked our stay in Osaka,and next we would visit Kyoto. It was around this time that,when planning what to do next,we saw that we were visiting things in a vacational period for Japan and it was hard to book places, so we decided to go to Tokyo sooner than we thought and move around from there. Sara had no problem with that, which was perfect for us,plus there is a lot of things to do in and around Tokyo anyway. We also decided to buy aa special train ticket that woild allow us to travel with no limit using most trains,including shinkansen, for a week. After deciding that, we checked what to visit in Kyoto.

Kyoto is pretty close to Osaka,and it had a more traditional feeling to it,being also famous for temple areas and some old streets. We spent only 2 days in there,but we also liked it very much. We went to one of the temples, we're not fans of them but what we visited was nice and had curious details. We also managed to walk around the bamboo forest,that we loved, and through some old districts with very traditional -looking small wooden houses all around. Kyoto felt somehow older than Osaka, with more traditional places,but we enjoyed it. 

All these days we were warned it would rain,and in the end it was sunny and hot and we kept finishing the day totally exhausted, but we kept liking what we were seeing^^.

On our last Kyoto day, that we needed to move to Tokyo at night, we decided to visit the famous deer Park in Nara, also close by. We went by train, and it was again easily indicated since lots of tourists wanted to visit it. I thought we may see some deer or need to walk a bit for them,but quite soon we started seeing grass areas full of them. They were quite calm and quite used to tourist, also clearly asking for food since you could buy special crackers for them. Of course, we bought crackers,and it was quite a funny experience. The deer when they see you have some surround you and try to eat and nibble at your clothes and have no shame whatsoever. It's even scary because they keep surprising you when you don't expect them touching your rear pocket and similar,but it was a funny moment in general. We spent a very nice and calm day feeding the deer and visiting a bit of the park, but we were mostly focused on the deer^^.

After this,we went to Tokyo. Well,actually Sara's house was in Chiba, but Chiba is part of the big metropolitan area that Tokyo is part of. This area is monstrous, full of people and with a big train and subway network that is sometimes hard to navigate. In Tokyo we spent the rest of the days, but travelling around.

On the next days we did several activities. One of the first ones was to visit the Hitachi Seaside Flower Park, which was not in a very colourful season but was really nice and calm, easy to move around with a rental bike, and quite beautiful nevertheless. There were some very funny-looking round plants, for example, that seemed to bounce with the wind. The area had also attractions, and in general we spent a nice day in there. The only problem was to get back, since there was no information in English and in general people didn't speak much of it, so we were not sure exactly about the time we could take the bus, and we used one that took forever to reach the station, since it went all around the place. It was much cheaper than the first one we used to get there though.

Another day we visited a bit of Yokohama, another city in the Tokyo Metropolitan area. Well, Yokohama alone is huge, so we visited just a small coastal area with some shopping malls and other attractions. We used again the Shinkansen to get there, and we had the luck to reach a station where only a few types of them stopped. Because of that, you could see the ones that pass every few minutes going through the central tracks, without stopping, at full speed, and it was hypnotic how fast they went. Yokohama itself looked pretty modern, and we visited the Mitsubishi museum, which had interesting machines and games, like a flight simulator where you needed to take off and land.

We wanted to see mount Fuji, so we used another day to do this very long round trip that used a lot of different trains and transports. However we were unlucky, and all the trip that day there was an intense fog covering everything. We did use plenty of different vehicles and what little we could see looked really nice. It was also eerie sometimes, how little you could see, making this nice effect for example with cable cars, where the cables disappear and it seems you´re floating in the middle of nowhere...

The rest of the days we stayed in Tokyo per se, and visited a bit of the city, although it's such a huge place it's hard to cover much. We visited Akihabara twice, and it was quite an experience. Akihabara is the "geekiest" neighbourhood, with lots of electronic shops plus also lots of anime/manga shops, weird bars (like maid bars, or gundam bars, or such other things), old arcades, some erotic shops and just a mixture of geeky things and toys of all kinds. The place is frankly overwhelming and full of people, and there's just so many things that are curious or nice that I basically got blocked and didn't really buy anything almost,just a couple of presents for other people and a few practical things. I really enjoyed the retro video-game shops, but again, I ended up not buying anything anywhere, which is a shame but oh well...I was really just blocked from too much choice and things.

We also visited a theme park area in the centre, which was a lot of fun and Elay loved it. It was very nice to go up to rides with him, and the whole day was tiring but nice. It was also good that there were not many people, and we didn't have to queue much (we still had to queue, but considering how many people live in there, it was not much).

We had some nice evenings with Sara, tried good sake (still not a big fan but well, it was definitely different), and ate quite well (although there's not as much sushi as one would thing). Finally during the last day we saw a very old friend, Lisa, one of the first persons I met when I was in the Erasmus in Sweden and that we had not seen in years. It was very nice to have the chance to talk a bit again and spend an afternoon with her.

All in all, it was quite an experience, and we really liked the trip and our stay there. Definitely not ruling out going back some other time^^.

Loud and Clear

I want to make a very short post about the famous referendum.

The results were from 43% of the voting population. However, 770.000 votes where stolen by spanish police. This means 57% of people actually voted (even with the repression).

Being very conservative and using the percentages found in Barcelona, which is the less pro-independence region, of those 770.000 votes we can assume 89.93% of those are "yes" votes. Adding those to the total gives around 2.736.000 votes for "yes", which represents 51.5% of the total population. If we do same calculation assuming the percentage of the most independentist region, we get 96% of "yes" from those 770.000 votes, which means the total gets to 52.38%.

For comparison, the "sacred" spanish constitution was approved by a 61% of the total voting population that lived at that time (and by the way, most of the current population never voted on it).

Anyone doubting this result or considering it not legitimate enough, i'd be happy to do another one without the repression and the police beating voters and scaring people away.

Meanwhile, goodbye.

Argumenting

Things are getting tense in Catalunya.

The Government has approved a law to organise a referendum on Independence on 1st of October which proclaims Spanish legislation cannot touch it. Spanish government and tribunals have reacted by indicating that anything referendum-related is forbidden and that the law is suspended.

There's more details, but well, the most probable outcome at this point seems a vote happening on 1st of October nevertheless, where "yes" wins.

The Catalan laws were approved with questionable procedures that limited the possibility to debate them....but then again it was done like this because Spain was indicating that even debating such things was illegal, and therefore there were no other options.

In all this mess, several newspapers have started a misinformation and lying war against independence, while several people have made articles or comments where they attacked the referendum.

And in all that, what I have not ever seen are arguments about why we should not vote, or vote "No", that could stand on their own. So I want to comment on some of the arguments said and why they're bullshit....but I also want to point out that there are arguments, valid ones, and it's just mind-boggling that people that I though were smart are not mentioning them....

1-Because it's illegal:

-This one is the first thing that lots of people mention that are against the referendum, and it's really really stupid. For starters, its legality is a matter of interpretation. However, let's say it was clearly and without doubt illegal. So fucking what? As lots of people mentioned, legality is not an indication of morality or ethics. People say that one should respect the law in a democratic country, but I disagree on mindless obeying. First question to ask regarding anything illegal, is to ask why is it illegal. Is it morally or ethically wrong? Is it harmful? Is it plain stupid? If you check this, it's rather evident that some laws make perfect sense. You cannot rob, kill and/or rape because it's ethically terrible. You are not allowed to do drugs because it's a danger for your well-being. Of course there's already shades of gray, and for example maybe rather than forbid drugs for that last one it is better to control and regulate them..this could be debated, and that's why some laws are a must, but others can be debated. Why is a referendum illegal? Because it would leave the integrity of Spain int he hands of Catalan people. And why is this bad? Well, here is where it fails. The only reason this is bad is if you believe in frontiers, in countries, if you feel patriotism for Spain without any other reasons than being Spanish and feel personally insulted by the though of Spain not having some piece of land that was theirs before. I consider patriotism idiotic, since where you are born is a rather random thing to be proud of, it's the same as being proud of having 5 fingers, as if you are personally responsible for them. A referendum is also illegal if you believe people should not decide things, which is antidemocratic as hell. And there's plenty of things that were illegal and should not have been, like women voting. Legality cannot limit ethical causes, and if that's your main reason, what should change is the law.

2-Because it's nationalistic propaganda/patriotism, which as you said it's rather stupid.

-First of all, Spanish nationalism is SO much worse than Catalan one. Second, while there may be some people that really want to be independent because they don't feel Spanish at all and are really really proud of being Catalan, this is also patriotism, which is stupid. However, if you check the general opinion among independentists, the nationalism aspect is not that important compared with the chance of self-governance. Currently, Spain's government and institutions are a cesspit of incompetence and corruption, unable to do much apart of behaving like a corrupt dictator, with the novelty that they do so in group. This is fairly evident for anyone not suffering from brain damage, and that includes a big chunk of the Catalan people, who want to get rid of that and be able to promote a better management and better laws. Lately a lot of progressive laws that could have improved life in Catalunya have been suspended or nullified by creating another law that supersedes them. The problem is that in Spain at the moment we do have a lot of brain-damaged people apparently, and the main parties that are corrupt, dictatorial and useless keep getting votes, so there's no clear solution for Spain. A clean break from that sure would solve the issue for Catalunya.

3-Because in the context of the European Union it makes not sense to put more frontiers, and in general frontiers are stupid.

-Indeed, frontiers are stupid. For example, the Spanish frontiers are not allowing refugees and are also kicking them out back to the sea on the heat of the moment, something that has been declared as illegal by international right. Controlling such frontiers in Catalunya would not be to close the region to the world, but to open it a lot more than what Spain is allowing.

4-Because it's right-wing propaganda and it will become a dictatorship/neo-liberalist hell worse than Spain (so what you say about making progressive laws or opening frontiers won't apply).

-The independence moment is really transversal, and if you check any demonstration or statistic you will see that people of all ideologies are supporting it. What's more, this movement has forced the traditional right-wing party of Catalunya (which disgusts me) to move toward the centre and become much more progressive (but I don't trust them at all still and I know they have corruption, but not as bad as the Spanish one). Also, the parties that have always been more supportive of a referendum and independence have always been more on the left side of the spectrum.

5-Because it's left-wing propaganda and it will become a lawless/communist hell like Venezuela

-Again, the movement is transversal and you can see that a lot of ideologies are involved. It is true the left has more supporters in Catalunya and inside the independentist movement, but the left parties involved have been very calm and rational in the last years while ruling, promoting more social justice and never advocating for pure anarchy, trying to follow a model more north-European if anything.

6-Because the law of the referendum and its conditions have not been agreed with Spain.

-This one is the most used by people more in the middle/undecided, or against the referendum as it is but not against the idea of voting/doing something political to solve the issue instead of just illegalizing it. The problem here is that this depends on Spain. Spain has a tradition of being authoritative and is not used to negotiate much. Let's be clear: The left lost the civil war against fascism because there is a lot of fascists tendencies in Spain, a lot of patriotism for the wrong reasons, and there's only one accepted way to be Spanish, and since then things have not improved greatly about this topic. For a big group of people, Catalunya is not Spanish enough, instead of thinking that Catalunya is another interpretation of Spain, as valid as any other. The current government has the support of such people and any negotiations would be considered as weaknesses. That's why in the last years the Spanish Government has never even considered any negotiations, and has just said Catalunya should shut up and behave, basically. The Catalan government has offered to negotiate until the last minute, but Spain has never offered or proposed anything. So, how can this be negotiated if one of the parts negotiate by saying "no, end of discussion"? Some of the people defending this argument say that this is now, but that we should work to change this dynamic, and vote to put into power people more open to negotiations. The reality however is that with the latest election results we are very far from having a big majority of parties open to that. One of the parties currently not ruling that is defending this argument or proposing other solutions ruled for 8 years and did nothing of the sort, so their promises feel pretty much empty. Asking to pact is asking for people to wait maybe 40 years while renovating the parties, to reach an unknown situation where maybe things improve...or maybe they don't. People defending this option are way too optimistic about it, I think, based on previous experiences. However, I can understand to a certain point people defending this.

7-Because independentism excludes and divides people.

-This one I've heard it from several newspapers that I thought were better than this. This argument, similar to the patriotism or frontier argument, assumes or tries to tell that independentism is about Catalunya being isolated and defending "proper Catalans". However, this is easily disproven by the fact that there's a lot of independentist that are immigrants and children of immigrants. This movement has always been inclusive, and you can see that people in Catalunya just love it when newcomers integrate. One of the best things that Catalan government has promoted since Franco's dead is the fact that, to be Catalan, you just need to live and/or work on the region, and this attitude is clear in all the movement. Most of the divisions come from the unionist side's attitude, where statistics show that the emotional component of feeling Spanish is the most common reason to want to avoid independence, and therefore tend to act in more emotional and extreme ways (although lately it is true there has been some extremism on each side)

8-Because Catalunya will be kicked out of EU.

-First of all, as long as people remain Spanish (which is an option available), they will be part of the EU. As for the theoretical new country, you don't need to be in the EU to have some of the benefits of the EU, as Switzerland or Norway show, but also it's unlikely that EU will not manage things to include a rich region that would be in the top tiers of GDP compared with the rest of European countries.

9-Becasue Catalunya will become poorer.

-Of course if Catalunya becomes poorer, EU may not want to accept it. However, the general consensus is that industry and business in Catalunya is strong enough that there are 2 likely outcomes: If Spain negotiates with Catalunya, Catalunya's economy will rapidly grow from the start. If Spain penalises Catalunya, Catalunya's economy will have problems for a short-term period until it regulates the situation and then it can grow at medium-term.

I could list more reasons that I heard these days, but most of those are over-simplifications of the situation or just plain wrong. The only one that might kind of work is number 6, but it ignores reality too much....which brings me to one reason I have not heard yet, but it is actually good, and I'm surprised no one has mentioned loudly yet, that I know.....

10-For solidarity towards the poor Spanish people that will be left with the brain dead, conservative and corrupt Spanish traditional parties.

Now this is a reason I can get behind to defend not separating. Catalunya is a very progressive area compared with the rest of Spain. The current vote estimation for Catalan elections indicates that  around 60% of the people would vote a party on the left spectrum. Checking the results of the last Spanish elections, Catalunya gave around 2.100.000 votes to parties from the left-centre. In Spain in total, there were around 11.700.000 votes to parties from left-centre. Almost 18% of the total votes for the left came from Catalunya, while the region represents only 14% of the total votes in Spain. Losing those votes, even if you also lose the votes of the Catalan right, means it's much harder to implement changes on Spain, especially since the party that seems to really want to change things in Spain (they're not perfect but so far they're at least trying) was the most voted party during these same general elections in Catalunya.

Basically, separating from Spain is a bit like abandoning any hopes of changing it. It's admitting that the system is too corrupt, too biased, to change it from inside. It's a bit like admitting defeat. And it's leaving all this great nice Spanish people more at the mercy of a group of bastard.

However, there's an alternative approach to this. Spanish politics are stuck in a bad place, for too many years. Breaking from that would be traumatic yes, and would leave the progressive side weaker in Spain. Nevertheless, maybe that's what is needed to make people in Spain react, and see the old parties for what they really are: A bunch of useless corrupt assholes.

Maybe a shock therapy like this can put some life into this old and outdated system....

Finally Seoul

In theory part of this blog was to talk about trips, but in the end I keep making rants^^'. Oh well...

I wanted to explain that, finally, after a long time living in South Korea, I have visited Seoul.

Seoul is not that far from Gangneung, but it is at an annoying distance: 3 hours by bus, more or less. 3 hours is enough that going there and back during the same day seems a waste, and therefore it's something to do during a weekend. Thanks to a different number of activities at work, for a long time we didn't have weekends free, and also there was people we knew around here and we didn't feel like organising a trip to Seoul during those moments.

The end result is that my first trip to Seoul happened on May 2017, 7 months after arriving to Korea.

The trip and organisation itself was not as dramatic as it seemed, and it's rather easy. It is a bit expensive, being a big city, but after the initial trauma was over, I´ve been there 2 more times and plan to go back from time to time.

The city itself is huge, and visiting every corner is impossible, but I did manage to see a couple of different neighbourhoods and places. There is a quite wide river that divides it into two sections, connected by bridges but pretty far away form each other. Apart from that, there's lots of hills and little mountains in this terrain. The combined effect is that it feels as if Seoul is just  a combination of little towns linked between themselves with roads and subway.

The subway lines, by the way, are quite good and extensive, and make it easy to move around (which is a great difference from Rio, of course). We didn't use them on our first trip, but we moved around with them on the others.

The city itself has plenty of big streets and buildings, in areas that seem a bit cold, financial-district style....but then you turn a corner a find a small grid of little streets and houses full of bars and restaurants. The result just increases this "island" effect of each city section, the sensation that there are lots of small independent areas interconnected.

One of the most famous places we visited is Itaewon, which is the "tourist" neighbourhood. In there for the first time in South Korea we saw plenty of other foreigners on the streets, and of course lots of clubs and bars. It's a pretty small area for the concentration of locals it has, and since it's on a hill its streets are narrow and very steep. It has a great selection of foods, and after Gangneung we took the chance and ate some occidental things, which were pretty good. Korean food can be nice, but well....

The city also has plenty of shopping malls and shopping streets, and it's populated enough that it does get a bit stressful and crowded in those areas. Still, it is curious to see that between these malls there is still a lot of small food carts and street shops, with very traditional things that seem to clash with the occidental brand shops.

As part of my second visit, I went to a festival called Ultra. It's an electronic music festival, which is not my thing really, but once I was there I loved the atmosphere, and it also allowed me to visit the Olympic Stadium (for 1988 Olympics of course).

It doesn't matter the location, festivals always have this nice feeling around them, of having a big party with lots of people and enjoying the experience. Here it was no different, just with more Koreans and their peculiarities^^. I did see that there is a lot of USA military people around, both in the festival and in Seoul itself, something that is surprising to me (even if it's a known fact). And I can see that USA has a big influence in lots of details, in Seoul and South Korea in general....

All in all, though, Seoul left me with conflicted feelings....

On one side, I feel it lacks a bit of...soul. Identity. I felt it has nothing special to offer, that it's just a city...it's a feeling hard to express, but well, that's my impression. It's not bad at all, it's just...unoriginal? I know, that's too much to ask for to a city, probably. Maybe it's just that it seemed to me, more than a cohesive city, a collection of small towns in a very big area. I'm sorry to my Korean friends for saying that, but that's the impression I got.

On the other side, it is a big international city. After (happily) living in Gangneung for a while, to go back to such a place, full of movement and life and things to do, is refreshing and interesting and exciting. I enjoyed my visits there and I definitely want to go back often while in this project.

Time To Go

Things in Catalunya's politics are reaching a nice boiling point.

I realise now that I did not explain in my last political posts that in Catalan elections, the independentists won but not by a big margin enough to be comfortable declaring independence, and that after some in-fighting and decision-making, they decided to defend again a referendum. However, this time they want it more concise, more serious, and the important part: Binding.

So, if "Yes" wins, they will apply it.

This is not that easy to do, as anyone can figure out. Forming part of a bigger country means that you have a lot of laws and regulations and public spaces, contracts, public workers, etc, that are actually controlled by the bigger government. Leaving that cannot mean that you don't have all these things from one day to the other.

Therefore, in order for a referendum to be binding, you need to think about these things, and if they're achievable. And so far we're told that these things are being prepared, yes, to make sure a theoretically new country would continue functioning after independence.

In order to perform the referendum, the Catalan government has tried to negotiate with the Spanish government. However, Spain has big democratic problems, which translates to the fact that they're really REALLY scared of letting people vote. I'm not talking even scared of "Yes" winning, I mean that they think voting is the problem here.

The ruling party's official twitter posted that the Catalan government should stop the referendum and instead listen to the people.  That's not a joke or an edit, they said that, publicly, and didn't realise how mind-numbingly stupid this was.

Anyway, the Catalan government has been quite clear in this: Spain can negotiate conditions regarding the referendum,, but the referendum will happen. If they don't negotiate , the next step will directly be to negotiate terms of independence. And that's the other thing, as I mentioned before in other posts, with the current numbers it seems pretty clear the "Yes" would win in the referendum.

Of course the Spanish government has refused to negotiate and is just suing everybody they can in the Catalan government for trying to defend illegal ideas, basically. That's the smart argument they're using. They also have a number of police agents and politicians actively trying to find dirt, or invent dirt, on Catalanist parties and the Catalan government.  Again, this is not a conspiracy theory or a joke, several reporters and investigators have discovered such a plot to try to condemn Catalan politicians that defended independence, and they have conversations and audio files that show precisely that, with police and politicians saying the local Prosecutors will fine-tune the case so they can have one.

The whole thing is such a clear abuse of power, lack of judicial independence and lack of democracy in Spain that it's amazing Europe is shutting up about it mostly and, at max, just mentioning they're "concerned" about Spanish authoritarian tendencies.

And the root problem is that, in Spain, the fascists won the war. They won it long ago, they grabbed power, and never released it. The transition to a "democratic" state was done to soften the regime, and indeed Spain is more democratic now...but the people in power are still pretty much of the same ideology, especially in the ruling party.

How can you explain otherwise that this ruling party protests when a city wants to change street names that references and honours the dictator and his friends?

How can you explain otherwise that this ruling party funded for years the organisation named after the dictator, which existence is based on defending his ideas and legacy?

How can you explain that there is a memorial to the dictator where he's buried, and time and time again when somebody says to move his body and, in this way, not make it in his honour, this same ruling party doesn't allow it?

How can you explain that when a teenager makes a joke about a prime minister of the dictator that was killed in a terrorist attack, she gets condemned for ridiculing the victim? The "victim", that imprisoned and executed people for purely political reasons.

If that was not enough, this same party has, every day, every single day, some member accused and/or condemned for corruption. Every. Day. This party has been formally accused, as a party, as a whole, for illegal funding.

And they still win elections. Not by a lot maybe, but there's a core group of people that always vote them, and I'm talking about around 8 million people, close to 33% of the total voters.

That's unacceptable.

And let's not mention the rest of the Spanish parties, because the situation is not much better especially regarding corruption....but the current ruling party, that's the worst. By far. In all fields.

Do you know why in Spain we don't have a new, far-right, emergent party, like in so many European countries? Well, in case it was not evident, because we are the first ones. We had the far-right party since the dictatorship and afterwards, and it's our current ruling party.

We cannot tolerate that.

And for once, it seems the Catalan government agrees. They may have their ulterior motives for it, but the reality is that there's now a group of politicians and rulers in Catalunya that want to go all the way until the referendum, even if it means they get condemned by Spain in the way there.

If everything goes well, on September/October, the Catalan region (where this ruling party has its worst results) will vote to decide if we want to be independent. And you know, independence from that? Yes, I want it, very VERY much.

The Problems Of Leadership

A friend told me I should write sometimes about USA,and especially after the last months, there's plenty I could comment or rant about...

However, there's too many fronts currently to comment on all in a structured matter in a single post...so I won't really comment on it yet.

Instead, I will rant about something I realised recently and deeply troubled me. It is somewhat related to USA, but I started to think about it regarding Spanish news.

Basically, we humans have a big problem regarding our leaders.

I don't mean that our current leaders are problematic (although that may be true for most), but that our relationship with leaders is rather wrong....

Let me elaborate.

In Spain, as most of you probably know, there has been for some time now a number of organizations and parties that have its origin on demonstrations and protests. Some are older than others, but they are groups that tend to be very democratic, with members voting and encouraging participation. In several cities they created their own party brand, usually using some word that means "together" or "possible" or both. Apart from those there's also Podemos, which is a new party at the state level that defends similar ideas and was created as well from demonstrations. A bit apart but also relevant and much older we have the CUP, a catalan party that defends independence but also very progressive ideas and full democracy (they always vote for any major decisions to take, and simple majority wins). Finally there is also related organizations defending certain rights (like the platform for mortgage victims, or PAH, that tries to stop in any way,including making human  barriers, cases where people are forced to abandon the house they live in becasue they cannot pay to the bank).

There's more,  but that's a good initial representation of rather democratic organizations.

Anyway,in Spain the traditional parties (who are corrupt as fuck regardless of theoretical ideology) laughed about these new parties and organizations, saying they had little support.

However,after some elections,the traditional parties are no longer laughing.  Oh no. They're afraid.  Becasue these new ones are gaining a lot of suporters.  So what did they do? They attacked their leaders. They started to try and find dirt on them, ridicule them, ask them to be ethical paragons when they themselves are far from it, slandered them, associated them with terrorists, etc.

This shows a way of thinking about what a leader is that matches perfectly with conservative ideals.  Conservatives are happier with strong authorities,and strong authorities are achieved when you have one person ruling the others. The Leader. The idol to imitate and compare yourself to it. The untouchable party members that is smart and handsome or pretty and is always right.

The leader decides for you what is good and what is bad, so attacks to the leader are attacks to your whole party.

So,they do the same with these new organizations. And it's stupid. Becasue these new organizations are very democratic. If one of the founders is an hypocrite, the organization just needs to get rid of it,but the ideals and thoughts of the group should not change heavily just becasue one person is gone. And the decisions are voted,so it doesn't matter if some founder fucked up some decision,it's a common thing.

However,now the sad part comes. Attacking the leader kind of worked sometimes. Becasue these progressive parties, even if they defend democracy, also tend to fixate on a leader to guide them. People who support these organizations do not realize either sometimes that it doesn't matter who's leading becasue it's a group effort. So the leader is also always right and handsome or pretty and all that in here too,and the end result is that the discussions are sometimes not which idea is best,but who said what, as if we cannot support good ideas from 2 different possible leaders....

Of course the national media has also always emphasized this,becasue it's a nice way to undermine the same efforts these organizations are making to bring politics to a more accessible area, where everybody participates. I remember some execrable articles from a newspaper considered from the "left" spectrum where they are taking about "schism " in one of those new parties just becasue 2 of the leading people are debating different postures,which will then be voted....

All this was to point to the fact that we delegate too much on leaders to take our decisions for us, to form opinions. We as a species tend to fixate on the person,and not on the idea behind. Therefore, we tend to defend stupid ideas if the right person has mentioned them.

This is a problem, becasue it means we tend to accept the fallacy of Authority, to believe that everything a person says is true just because of the person.

What we should be doing is considering ideas. For sure if we don't uderstand the idea we should delegate to someone with expertise, but we should always be a bit careful about that.

For example,  an old male Nobel -price winner in physics taking shit about homosexuals should be shamed and ignored. He may know about physics but he's still an intolerant old man. We do not publish on the newspapers when someone 's grandad does the same,so if he's not taking about his field of physics he should not be considered as any kind of authority on such topics.

On a more subtle way, let's say a political leader that you like has a program with 10 points. You agree on 9 of them and are ambiguous or dislike 1 of them. So,the fact that they may have a bad point does not invalidate the other 9. In the same way, the fact that 9 of these points are good it is not a free pass for the 10th point. Complaining about the 10th point does not attack the first 9,and defending the first 9 does not protect the 10th.

Becasue the important thing is ideas, and that's what we should be supporting and scrutinizing. In politics in particular each one should choose representatives that match your ideology better, but again this is not a free pass for them to do whatever they want,and we should discuss problematic concepts and fight them if we think it's important, no matter how much we agree on other points.

Conservatives sees this as a weakness, and lots of otherwise progressives believe this rethoric.

We should be smarter than that.

We will never have perfect leaders, and we never should consider them to be so.  And the faster we get used to this the faster we can act on their bullshit....

Gangneung: Reminiscenses Of Lund

It's been a bit more than a month since I moved to Korea.

I did visit it before, so I already got some ideas about the place, but living here has showed me a bit more of the life here.

And it heavily reminds me of Sweden....or to be fair and more precise, of my particular experiences while in Lund, Sweden.

First of all, most apartments have wooden floors and floor-based heating. This is a small but important detail. Because of this, most apartments also have an entry area where you leave your shoes and jackets. This is rather common in winter areas, but this in Korea is very very similar to the same thing in Sweden, with different tiles and height, to really delimitate that you should not step on the wooden floors with the street shoes. The apartments's style is also familiar, with thick walls and windows, quality details and big living room/kitchen areas, and then one room or more apart, a distribution based on big spaces more than in compartmentalising the floor.

Then of course there's the weather, which is not as cold as north Sweden by far, but it is similar to the weather in the part of Sweden where I lived (although Gangneung is colder than Lund), more temperate but still pretty cold, where it snows during winter. By the way, it snowed already a couple of times, and it was cold enough that it accumulated and lasted for 2-3 days each time, plus in the mornings there were ice layers everywhere. This of course poses problems, especially because I move around with a bike, and I need to be careful about this ice....

Moving around with the bike is also a nice reminder. It's not like I don't move around with a bike in Barcelona, but here in Gangneung the town is small enough to allow using it almost everywhere, while streets and roads are, if not prepared, at least open to the fact that people use bikes around. Adler was also small enough to use a bike, but the reality was that the culture there was unused to this so nobody did it...It is true that Gangneung has way too many cars, and cars are the transport of choice of most people, there's not a lot of bikes going around....but there's some. And again, this is from my point of view, and both here and in Sweden I had similar experiences while using a bike (like going towards some party in a bike, going shopping in a bike, crossing snow with a bike, using a bike while slightly drunk, etc.), in part I guess because it's the two places I've been where it's easy to have your own bike, and it's not stressful.

This brings me to the security thing...I can leave the bike unlocked in the street or just with a locked wheel and I know no one is going to steal it. I love this feeling of security, not even Barcelona has this....here I know I can have my bike to move around and I will probably be fine, and it's not a source of worry. The same applies for using mobiles on the street or having money in the wallet. After Rio, this is incredible and allows me to be a lot more relaxed and calm at any moment.

Internet is also pretty similar, with rather good speeds, although I believe the intercontinental connections and the state censorship that is applied on websites slows traffic down considerably depending on what you're trying to access....

Finally, there's also the social atmosphere. One thing in Korea that is pretty awesome is that all English teachers need to be natives, so from an English-speaking country. This, plus the Olympic travellers, means there's a big group of people from all around the world, even in such a small town. So it feels you're meeting people from lots of places, and because of that there's also a "party" atmosphere, in a way.....I really like this atmosphere, and in other projects there was also a certain feeling like this, but it was usually Olympic-related while here it's more open (well, in the sense that there's also this other group, the English teachers). There's even people who will be happy to meet to play board and card games...

Of course, there's also things that are not similar at all (starting from the population, not many tall and big, blonde, blue-eyed people in the streets here...)

For example, the culture here seems a lot more closed to foreigners and changes, and there are social issues that are light-years behind in Korea compared to Spain (and let's not compare it with Sweden which is more advanced that Spain in plenty of those...). There's a big cult for looks in here, and women are still treated really bad in general...also, work follows a very capitalist model, where you cannot get sick and stay at home to rest (which is worse for the company as well because you're less productive at work and you can get other people sick). SIM cards and phone numbers are ridiculous hard to get. The food is evidently completely different, usually spicy even when they say it's not, or very sweet. There's plenty of dishes with lots of green vegetables, mushrooms and leaves(and rice, of course), and meat is common in dishes but not in big quantities outside barbecue places (and in supermarkets it's expensive). And as I already mentioned, traffic is very car-based, even for small trips that with a bike would be 10 minutes or less, and driving is rather aggressive and chaotic (but well, I was in Russia and Brazil, nothing new or worse than that, really) , with plenty of intersections that are rather badly-designed and cause waits for everyone involved. One surprise I got was that, in general, cars do not respect pedestrians, but they do watch out for them, it's just they don't give way to pedestrians unless they're about to hit them or so...

So yeah, plenty of differences actually, and more I have not mentioned...


Still, the atmosphere has a certain similarity for sure... 

Meaningless Fun

I just realised I never wrote a really long post about Overwatch....

Overwatch is a relatively-new game from Blizzard, an online multiplayer shooter with no in-game plot. You have 2 teams competing against each other in different modes of play, but usually it's 6 versus 6, and based on controlling some area (fixed or mobile if it's represented by a vehicle), and in most modes there's an attacking team and a defending team. You have a number of characters to choose from (at the moment it's 23 but it may increase every few months), each one with a very particular playstyle, but dividen broadly between attack, defence, tanks and support. Depending on the mode you can repeat characters on your team or not (but it's moving towards not repeating caracteres outside "fun" modes). The matches are short (10-15 minutes max, usually, can be much shorter), and it's fast paced and a bit chaotic.

Since it's a Blizzard game, there's a big and rich story around it, with a science-fiction world where self-conscious AIs have appeared and technological advances are miraculous, but where there is still war and factions. In this setting we have our "heroes" (or villains), most of them belonging to "Overwatch", a type of "world police" or military that especially helped in a war against AIs. That's the general setting. Then, each character has a personal story and motivation, with complex interactions and still plenty of things we do not know about them, this world and the secret societies and factions. Blizzard has released several movies and webcomics about all this, with really high quality.

The thing is, this is not shown at all during game-play. During game-play, it's just a 6 vs 6 mayhem bullet/explosion fest, where enemies play together in the same team without hesitation, and where objectives are very bland and unoriginal, and stakes seem pretty low.

While the story is pretty awesome, when the game is defined like this it seems rather boring. The thing is, it's not. At all. It is really really fun to play as one of these characters. Matches are a exciting and dramatic and fast, while being a bit cartoonish to lower tension (when you die, your characters makes some funny comment afterwards like "hope no one saw that" and such). Each character is very unique, and it's quite a different experience to play one or the other.

To elaborate a bit, attackers are usually fast-moving and/or quite deadly in a close space, and have abilities that usually deal plenty of damage. Defenders are more specialised, and their skillset is usually good to clear areas from a static point (snipers, turrets). Sometimes the lines between both are a bit blurry, since you can have defenders with very high damage output or attackers that are better at a distance.

Tanks are more straightforward, they are big, have a lot of health and have skills to either create shields or recover the health fast. The idea here is to attract fire while not dying, but they can also be pretty deadly if left unchecked.  Finally support characters are mostly healers or providers of bonuses/perks, and sadly they're a bit underutilised, although they can also be really interesting and rewarding.

Personally my 2 favourite characters to play are Junkrat and Mercy. Junkrat is a defender with a hilariously high damage output, and I love his playstyle of littering everything with grenades and explosives. The chaos that ensues is usually quite fun, even if sometimes you don't really know if a grenade will hit the enemy or bounce back and hit you, but any direct hit you score is going to cripple the opponent  considerably, and even if you die you drop some extra grenades that may finish your rival as well. Mercy is the healer per definition, the only character able to revive others and with the higher healing output. Playing Mercy feels a bit like you're the team's "Mom", making sure everyone is healthy and fine, and jumping around the battlefield. Also, killing someone with Mercy is a bit of a waste (because you're more useful focusing on healing or powering up other people), but it's really rewarding. The only problem is that, as the local healer, the other team will make you a priority target, so if your team ignores you you will die a lot and you always feel you have a big bulls-eye in your head....

I would recommend Overwatch without a doubt, if you enjoy shooters. However, I insist on the fact that the game itself has no plot...

I have said it before, but I love plots. I love fiction in all its variants and enjoy a good setting and a well-thought world. When playing games I think the same, and sometimes I enjoy games that may not have the best mechanics but their story is great. For example, recently I started playing Pillars Of Eternity. This is an Obsidian game, similar to Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights, but with a system not based on D&D, they created their own. This is a pure Role-Playing game, story-heavy and full of nice little details.

For example, one thing I really love in Pillars of Eternity is that sometimes actions that cannot be done with the current game engine (like, for example, climbing down a hole, pulling a party member from a precipice, launching a weapon so someone else can use it, etc..) are instead narrated next to beautiful illustrations, with you choosing from some available options and using your game stats (like your knowledge or your strength and reflexes) to decide the outcome. I find this really immersive and amazing, a way to involve you in an "action" scene that would be fully scripted otherwise and in this way you can affect and participate in it. This opens a world of possibilities, and allows interactive storytelling while maintaining a different core game and not having to develop costly or even impossible game mechanics to represent this during the normal play.

Another thing that is really immersive and nice is that there's no alignment, you have reputation and your actions and choices guides you towards a certain type of RPG personality, something more greyish and not so black and white as most computer RPGs have.

I also heavily recommend Pillars Of Eternity, it is gorgeous and interesting and compelling. Having said that, it's like a complete opposite of Overwatch,

In Pillars of Eternity, you feel you have advanced and achieved something new if you play for a while. Overwatch, instead, is just mindless fun, and you can "waste" hours in it without really anything to show or gain (apart from an arbitrary level that you keep progressing).  However, Overwatch is so well-designed that it can get away with no plot and be just fun, which is something to respect too of course....

Nevertheless, I would like a bit more correspondence between story and gameplay. Overwatch has defined in it's backstory at least 2 clear factions, so I think it would be eventually possible to divide characters in 2 groups at least, and in this way have a more asymmetric competition while keeping things interesting and establishing a better relationship with the plot part...

Of course, this would require a lot more characters, to make sure both groups get enough of all types. However, Blizzard has time to develop that...