Danae Suárez’s Diary

Previously, a lackluster program was aired on television every night precisely before the popular telenovela so that everybody would see it. Its main point was to nag us every week about our forgetting to turn off our lights.

Ever since I was a little girl I’ve loved to go on walks through the streets of Old Havana, strolling between its porticos and columns, admiring its stained-glass windows and the colonial roofs.

A few days ago I received a visit of a friend who works in Italy. Since she knows that I adore Parmesan cheese, she brought back a little bottle of grated cheese as a gift.

Early last Monday morning I went to the Karl Marx Theater here in Havana, the venue where the American Ballet Theatre will perform the first week of November. When I got there, a veritable “Trojan War” had broken out. People crowded into eight lines, with everyone pushing and screaming.

Wouldn’t a more rational alternative —though one also more feared— be the country’s opening up to foreign investment for the creation of small and medium sized companies?

I was elated several months ago when I read in the nation’s official newspaper that each of the Havana buses on the new P lines would have a GPS unit installed on it. “Modern technology has finally made it to the island!” I exclaimed.

Trying to submerge myself in “a thing in itself,” as Kant would say, I headed off to the “agro” (agricultural market) at 42nd and 19th in the capital city’s Playa neighborhood.