Me,
Paolo Brumat
62 years old. Citizen of the world.
A young old man without peace
I was born in Turin in 1963, with a degree in Computer Science. A thirty-five-year career in IT consulting, over twenty years as a manager, has taken me around the world: Denmark, Finland, the United States, Argentina, South Africa, and many other places. A solid career, at least from the outside. From the inside, at a certain point, it just wasn't enough.
I like to call myself a computer scientist by mistake, a traveler by insatiable curiosity, a late-arriving DJ, convinced that if I'd started earlier, I'd be better than David Guetta today. And, moreover, I'm a passionate poker player and a self-confessed professional loser: at the poker table, I learned that losing with dignity is an art. A proud father of Camilla, and, finally, an Inter Milan fan, therefore accustomed to suffering.
Obsessively precise, convinced that every goal is achievable and that one should never give up. With a difficult but honest character, and an immeasurable hatred for injustice, for those who take advantage of others, for the ignorance that chooses to remain as it is, and for the stupidity that prides itself on being ignorant.
Born old, but with a biological clock that worked backward. At twenty, I looked like a retiree; at sixty, I experience the restlessness of a young man. Unfiltered, politically incorrect, never satisfied. Rarely at peace with others, almost never with himself.
In the year and a half before leaving, I worked every Friday night in the bakery of the best master baker in Turin. Not to learn a trade, but to see if a dream could come true. I met extraordinary people who do incredibly hard work with passion, and I rediscovered the value of things made with hands. Then, at sixty-one, I gave it all up. To finally give myself the freedom I'd always dreamed of but never dared to take.
I've always been captivated by the landscapes of Central and South America. But above all, by the people. Their history, their culture, their authenticity. In the markets of Guatemala, on the buses of Bolivia, on the dusty roads of Peru, I rediscovered a humanity I thought lost: real, direct people, without masks.
This book was born from there.
