Single or in a couple

I just read this very nice article on the BBC News about being single or being part of a couple. I loved this piece. It is honest. Or I felt it is.

I have been there. I have been asked what was wrong with me for not being in a relationship (although now I am again part of a couple), why do I not want to settle down, why do I need to be so independent to make so difficult to be with me as a couple, why...why...why.....like if being alone instead of being part of a couple is a curse.

Understand me. I love being in a relationship with a person I love. But I do also love myself a lot. This has been a problem already in the past. I recognize this. But I do love myself and my life. And being part of a couple has never been (and I doubt it will ever be) the center of my life, nor what defines me as a person or for who I am.

Certainly, I would rather be alone than with a person who does not love me as much as I love myself.
Certainly, I would rather be alone than with a person who does not love me for the way I am.
Certainly, I would rather be alone than with someone who think he should be the focus of my life.

And this does not mean that I am unable to love or of being part of a couple. It means that it will take a little bit more effort for me to find someone who will respect, understand and appreciate than in my life being part of a couple is something that make me happy, yes, but it is only part of something that makes me happy.

...and this fear of being alone that often (at least for people I know) urges a person to be part of a couple, to not spend the week ends alone, to not have to face the pressure of the world that points the finger at single people, to just be with someone......well, in my case, it has happened that I felt lonelier in a couple sometimes that when I was truly alone, single.

When it comes to me, it actually freaks me out quite a lot the idea of being in a couple, and especially the idea of long term commitment, the idea of making decisions not only based on what it is best for me and my life, but based on what it is best for "us" as a couple, the idea of something becoming a routine rather than the true pleasure of being with someone......

I can say for experience that people relax a lot when they can fit you in one of the "standard" boxes (in couple, married, straight, gay, weird....), when they stop seeing you as a threaten to their stability and their securities of what it is known........

.....I do feel very very lonely sometimes and I am happy to be in a relationship with a person with whom I have no problems to think about myself as a part of a couple, but I hope that I will never forget to love myself first. It is my own duty to make myself happy. And if this will mean to be single again at any point in my life and have people looking at me as "poor her" or start asking uncomfortable and rude questions again, I hope that I will be able to be true to myself and not settle down for what someone else from the outside expects from me.

In any case, enjoy the article on the BBC.

I am an immigrant

I am living abroad, away from Italy since 10 years. It is a long time. I have been living in a lot of different countries and only in few of them I didn't feel that I was different, not belonging.

Here in Portugal, despite the cultural differences, none ever made me feel like I was "different" because non-Portuguese. People in general are doing a lot of efforts to understand me in my mixed mostly-spanish-a-bit-of-Portuguese spoken language...well of course, except for my landlord....but I can live with that. This until this morning.

I went to the farmers market as I do every 15 days on saturday. I love going to the farmers market here, it is one of the things I love more of living in this small Portuguese village. I like chatting with the people there, they all know me by now. They even remember my mom. They know what I like. It is a familiar environment. I really enjoy it and since there is only every 15 days on a saturday, I always look forward to this regular appointment.

However, this morning I had a not too pleasant conversation with one of the vendors. He was telling me that just a bit before me there was a Spanish girl who bought something and that he was surprised that there are so many foreigners, Spanish, Italian, etc living in this small village, because we are not here just for the holidays. I told him that we all work together in a research center nearby. He was surprised, but not pleasantly surprised. I like to state here that this guy is normally extremely nice and friendly, so it was not that he is rude or anything like this.

The first thing he said was:
- I hope that the money to pay your salary come from abroad or from the European community.

I stared at him......and only said "sorry?" I was not sure I understood well.

- I mean, why should Portugal pay someone who is not Portuguese? and even more, why should Portugal pay so many foreigners?

I understand that this may be a difficult concept for people who are not familiar with how the research world functions and that the foundations of our work are based on shared knowledge, independently of the nationality or race of the people doing research. I understand that with the current economic situation people are less tolerant. But the thing is....I have a salary, I live in Portugal, I pay my rent in Portugal, I do my shopping in Portugal, my life is in Portugal.....so, it is not that someone is paying me to bring the money to Italy and spend it there. I am part of this economy, I am part of this country until I work and I live here.

I don't understand this growing intolerance toward giving a job to a foreign person. I am not talking here about an illegal immigrant. I am talking about a person who is legally allowed to work in the country, who lives in the country, who may even pays the taxes in the country, etc. It is not that the money that the country invests on me are thrown away.....I just don't get it.....

The guy actually only chilled out when I confirmed to him that yes, a large part of our salaries come from the European community......

I am not very favorable in general to globalization, but local and narrowed thinking is a very dangerous thing, I feel.

Neither here nor there

......I wonder where is the place for me in the world......

One year I am in Portugal and I still don't get the way of doing things in this country. Procrastinating is a world that must not exist here, as it is such a common attitude that here it would lose its meaning....yeah, yeah, I know, I generalize too much.......The thing is. I am sure that there are exceptions to the general trend, but my experience living in this country for a year already shows me that I can't expect anything to happen in a reasonable time.

Three things I noticed in a year and that people who visited me got (all of them) noticed in a matter of just a couple of days.

- Service here generally sucks. Portuguese people are nice, no doubts about that. However, it seems that selling you something, serving you or whatever other interactions especially including food service could not happen in what I consider a normal service....no, instead either the person serving you does not even pay any attention to you for a randomly but generally quite long time span or if he/she does, you can bet that it will be a rather unfriendly exchange, like if they are doing a favor in serving you....no matter if I am actually paying for the service.
So, up to now this is an example of things that happened to me (and this is not a complete and extensive list, but just a few examples):

- At a restaurant, the waiter left me waiting until a soccer game action was over to get my order
- At a restaurant, my friend and me were left unattended because the waitress owner left and none else was in the restaurant except us and another customer.
- At a restaurant, the waiter shoveled the plate with the food to a friend of mine, so that most of the olives that were in the plate ended up on his pants, on the floor, or on the table.
- At a restaurant, the waiter kept smiling at us for long time before actually come to get out order, when it was clear that we were ready and she was not really busy.
- At a restaurant, the owner/waitress would not bring us the bill because she was too busy eating (and this not at the end of the service, but in the middle of opening hours).
- At a restaurant, the chef, waiters, and waitresses would sit at the table to eat when we were still there and would have liked to leave....but since everyone was eating at a table next to us, they couldn't stop to bring us the bill.
- At a cafe', we had to wait 15 minutes even if the cafe' was almost empty before someone would come to ask us what we wanted....and this after we got told 15 minutes before to sit that someone would have come (of course....they didn't specify when they would have come).
- In my apartment, I still have water on my kitchen floor every time it rains.....today I had to stay at home another day and work from home to wait someone who was supposed to come to look at the problem....only, as always none showed up and my landlord not only didn't call to tell me something, but he also didn't reply to my calls. I have no idea how many days of work I have already lost staying at home waiting for someone to show up.
- At work, my student has the philosophy that either something can be done quickly, no matter how badly it is done, otherwise we could do it together so that she could do something better with her time.

I feel that in this country, respect of other people time must be a very fuzzy concept.....
Now, considering my very organized mind and way of doing things and my kinda-of-German mentality, I can't stop struggling and being frustrated all the time.

And it seems that it doesn't matter what I can do....nothing change, nor if I try to solve things nicely, nor if I get angry. Nothing.

Too bad it is a lovely country and I love the place where I live, because otherwise I would have already had a break down.

On the other hand, I am applying for plenty of jobs in the USA, where my boyfriend is and where there are more job opportunities. Unfortunately, the fact of not being American and not having presently a working VISA in the USA, makes any of my application becoming a nightmare, as I have to keep sending email to ask if I can actually apply to the position and my application will be considered or as I am currently an "alien" I cannot even dream of getting a job in the USA.........

The older I get, the more I get the impression that I should just stop caring about things and try to abuse of any system I am in and not even bother trying to do things in a proper and efficient way, because most of the times the only one getting completely frustrated is just me.............................

The art of effectively protesting

I love my native country, Italy.....but there are things about Italy and Italians that I don't understand.

In this moment of deep economic crisis, in every European country facing more strongly the crisis, Portugal, Spain, Greece, there are massive protests, with an incredible amount of people of every age participating to it. In Spain and Greece the massive protests against the measures proposing large cut in public sectors like health or education were even violent. Maybe these protests will not help or change anything, but it is the only power that a normal citizen has to complain about decisions of the government that we didn't agree with.

And what about Italy?

Every single day, I get news from Italy about friends or family losing their jobs or having problems to get to the end of the month.....and yet, not longer than five-six days ago hundred of people waited in long cues in the major Italian cities to buy the new iPhone, l'iPhone 5 the price of which in Italy almost reaches 1000 euros!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1000 EUROS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and the most impressive thing is that the people waiting in line for hours to get this iPhone were young people, under the age of 30......how can they afford it??? I don't believe that all these people are either selling drugs or their bodies to make money to buy these gadgets......

It just doesn't make sense.....as it doesn't make sense that in my home town little family run shops are closing one after the other, because they cannot afford the expensive rents with the low income that they make now. And yet, beauty centers do not feel the effect of the crisis.....When I was in my home town this summer, I spoke to a friend of mine working in a beauty center and she told me that this last year they sold more beauty packages (expensive beauty packages) than any of the previous years....

my question is.....in a moment of economic crisis, I understand to keep the market running and flowing, but wouldn't you limit your expenses saving on things like going to a beauty center??? It is good keep spending money to not stall the market.....but still.....

maybe because for me these are not necessary things.....

In any case, today I read on the Italian news that high school students protested on the streets of Milano and Roma........high school students??? most of them will be under 18....I don't want to diminish their impact and the value of their protests, but I have been an high school student too and these protests were always at the beginning of the semester and at the end of the semester, when the desire to go to school was almost zero and any excuse to spend the time doing something else was good......

I would really suggest to Italians that if we really want to learn how to effectively protest and do a strike, we should attend a couple of protests and strikes in France and then maybe we will effectively manage to send a strong message of disappointment and disagreement to the govern.

Being bullied

If I should define myself in a couple of words, among the first ones coming to my mind there would be "determined", "responsible", and "just".

Now, not having worked in Italy or in countries where things work similarly to how they work in Italy (meaning that hierarchy is extremely important, much more important of what it is right or of working things out together), I am not used anymore to not be able to discuss things in a civil way with people who hierarchically are "above" my status. Not only I cannot discuss things in a researcher-to-researcher way with someone who is "above" me in the research center where I work, but I should just zip my mouth, as I have been invited to do.....

Basically the way things are currently working is to spend as less as possible, to invest as less as possible, to not care about safety and safety rules, and in general to do things "alla carlona" as we use to say where I came from.....It is not my way of working, especially when I am responsible of someone's else work and I have to set up the good example.

Because I asked to organize things in the lab so that everyone has some space to work and store things and because none of the people who should be in charge of this organization and cleaning got back to me or did anything and because together with other people after spending 5 months politely inviting the people in charge of this to do their jobs nothing happened, we decided to clean and organize things by ourselves......the result has been that instead of someone "high up" thanking us, one of the someone "high up" has been complaining openly about me stepping on other people feet and doing things that should not compete to me. The thing that disturbed me is that instead of telling me his complaints straight on my face, he went to tell this to students...so he didn't even have the gut of coming to me. And this was one.

Then, I tried to organize a space to do something with toxic reagent in a way that none could have to breath the toxic substances. Of course, someone else, still "high up" went straight to the responsible of the group where I am working here and complained about me wanting to change things....I just arrived and I am so arrogant to change everything.....well, for safety reasons, yes...especially considering that this guy sits at his desk and doesn't even know what he is talking about.....fortunately, the person with whom I am working and who is responsible for me working here, is an intelligent person and basically told this guy to shut his mouth since he had no clue of what we were talking about....again, none said anything directly to me.....only complains to others.

Today I got an email from the secretary of our research center saying that the second person in charge of the center wanted to see me. As I was not there at that moment, I contacted this person to know when we could meet and of course, he ignored me as he has always done when I tried to discuss with him the cleaning and the safety measures to do our work.

As if this was not enough....It is three months that I look at the fight between my landlord and the man in charge of the building where I live on who should pay the reparations to avoid that every time it rains, I have the kitchen full of water....it is obvious that because these are expensive reparations, none wants to pay for them. The end result is that my landlord who is a judge decided that he will file a legal complaint to the tribunal against the condominium for not doing the reparations....thing is that legally he could do whatever he wants and file a legal complaint etc., but as I am paying the rent to him every single month, even if this problem is going on since forever, he should send someone to do the reparations and then deal with the condominium on who will pay what....of course, at the end the one who is losing instead is me.....and if I leave, my landlord will keep the deposit.....

Lastly, they renewed my contract for another year and without saying anything they decided to cut 700 euros from what it was established on the original contract. Of course, this is also illegal, but they did it....not just to me, it is not just me being unlucky....

I feel that any of these things mentioned above is just ridiculous and I am bullied around because I am none at work and I am a foreigner here......I hate this.

Moglie e buoi dei paesi tuoi

And this is another common say that we use in Italy...literally it reads : wife and beefs of your country.
More in general it means that it is wiser to chose someone with the same background for a long-term commitment, being this getting married or something else.

I thought that this say wouldn't make too much sense today and that it would be totally outdated....I recently discovered than instead different backgrounds and cultures are not always easy to melt....especially over serious matters.

Traveling as much as I do and living and moving from one country to another, my two last relationships have been with non-Italian people. Not a big deal I thought. As long as we are all open-minded we can overcome any issue....I still stand by this thought, but I have to add that overcoming cultural difference, which most of the times one doesn't even know to have, requires a lot of work and a lot of patience, from both sides when the people involved are in a relationship.

Things that for me are completely obvious for the other person may not be at all. I remember when during my first relationship with a non-Italian person, the olandesino, he always freaked out when my family would scream and yell at each other in the middle of a "normal" conversation....before being able to understand Italian, he always thought that they would end up killing each others...considering that for my family this is the normal way to communicate and to talk and that discussing with animosity can happen even for small things like where to have dinner, without anyone actually being angry at someone else, you can understand how many times he had to experience this kind of situation before realizing that it was not the end of the world and it was just a cultural difference from his own (Dutch).

Now that I am in a very committed relationship to my ex-now-new-again-boyfriend I am facing cultural differences on a regular basis......it can be quite frustrating and it requires a lot of communication, patience and compromise from both of us. It is worth it. But it is also quite some work......

We may be all connected by internet, facebook, and whatever else, but cultural differences are still there....and despite the work and the stress that the may cause in a relationship between two people with a different background, I am happy that they still exist and globalization didn't wipe them out yet!

Let's preserve differences and work to learn about them and understand what it is unfamiliar to us!

I don't understand how this keeps happening

...people getting on the street, in a mall, at a convention and start randomly shooting and killing others.

I don't get how in a civilized country like the USA this keeps happening. What is it? is the third time this year already?

I don't understand how someone can just freely possess a gun and use it to randomly shoot around.....Yes, it does happen also in other countries, but how often? once every many years? yes, the USA is a big country, so statistically the chance of something like this happening is higher than for smaller places....but still. It is unacceptable....

I am so sad and shocked for this news that I just read about what happened in NY. I am not American, so I am probably not able to understand the gun law and I am a pacifist, so of course anything having to do with violence is very far from my way to look at things.....but how can something like this be normal or be part of normal life? how can a crazy person possess a gun and shoot people around??? how??? can someone explain this concept to me? because I really don't get it.

Btw....and today they also decided about another crazy, evil person...21 years in prison is nothing...they should put him there and throw the keys away.....at least they judged him "mentally normal" so that he could be convicted to these 21 years in prisons, which is still better than nothing....

And about this general topic, I just saw a good movie with a good message Runaway Jury

Farinha torrada

I just had this cake that a friend of mine brought me from a place South of Lisbon...

Fantastic!!!! I have to force myself to stop eating it. I love everything with cinnamon and this is so good!!!!! I should try to make it....

Mazza che puzza!

I am definitively clumsy. This is not something new to me.
However, burning something and have the whole kitchen smelling so much that I still cannot close the windows even if this happened hours ago, it is something I would have warmly avoided.

I am not new to burning things either just because I forget about them.

Once I put a moka machine on the stove to make some coffee.........thing is that I totally forgot about it and I went to take a nap. When my sister got to my mom's place (where I was staying at that time), the kitchen was full of smoke, the smell of burned coffee and plastic was unbearable and the plastic parts of the moka machine were melted.

Another time, when I was living in Germany, I baked a cake and left the oven half open to cool down but forgot to switch it on. I went with the cake to stay at my boyfriend's place and then I left for Italy for a few days...when I got back to my apartment, the whole place was probably around 230 degrees C, the temperature at which the oven was set up. I don't want to mention the electricity bill I got that month, because it was not as important as the fact that I was lucky enough to not burn the entire place down.

After these episodes (and these are just examples of how forgetful I can be), I turned out to be little maniacal about checking to have switched things off million times before leaving my place. However, when I am relaxed, as my mom uses to say to me all the times when I am in Italy in vacation "I send my brain in holidays".....so these episodes of me being especially clumsy they mostly happen when I am relaxed.....

This evening I was in fact very relaxed watched a movie after dinner, when I realized that I was still hungry and I wanted to eat something more...so without paying any attention I put a pot on the stove, without realizing that there was something in wood under the pot, which of course, got placed in between the stove and the pot.....the result is that it is very smelly here.

Still about bad smells.....I am not a sherlock holmes, but on the first floor of where I am staying it is since 3-4 days that there is a smell of something rotten....something like a rotten dog.....it is so strong that we have to keep the windows of the building all open to be able to breath while on the stairs...the smell is so bad that we can smell it even from the outside......now, nobody seems to be at home. There were people during the winter, but not the whole place looks without anyone inside, windows closed, curtains down......ok, I read too many thriller books maybe...but what is someone got killed in there or just died in there??? it certainly smells like something rotten....

Now, of all the people living in this place, why does it have to be me who doesn't speak a single word of Portuguese to call the guardian of the building to ask him to just check that everything is ok in there??? I guess that if in some months we will see worms crawling out of that place, we will know that something is definitively wrong......

42nd parallel south

It doesn't happen often, but when it does, I am shaken to the bottom of my soul.

I got this book from my mom as a present, I cannot remember if it was last Christmas or for my birthday last year. In any case, when I got the book is not important. What it is important is that some of its pages touched me so much that I just had tears in my eyes. 

I have always dreamed since years to go traveling and wondering around in Patagonia. Without a schedule. Without a goal. Just to live the place and feel it. I still don't know why Patagonia. It is just that any time I read something about it, I feel like it is my place. Maybe I am becoming too much of an hermit. I don't know. I don't necessarily think so. But I dream of the solitude of walking around in a place like Patagonia. Of being in a place where nothing can be given for granted. I have to admit that I would be too scared to go there and spend months there alone....but I always hope to find the right company to share this dream with.

In any case, I enjoy travel books. Books about places in the world. This is why I probably like so much B. Bryson's book (together with the fact that he is an amazing writer!). But this book, this specific book I am reading is not only about Patagonia and traveling below the 42nd parallel south of the world. It is about encounters with people who love this place. It is about a hard land, a difficult solitary place where people still live in a simple way, without the pressure that we have in this kind of world instead. I just read a chapter of this book about a solitary 95 years old woman living in this solitary place, in her isolated little house, drinking mate. But she is not alone, she has her dog, her sheep, her garden. I was reading about it, but I could imagine the whole place, the old lady, everything like if I was standing in front of the scenario. And the book tells about the appeal of this land to people with a lot of money who cannot appreciate the wind, the steppe, the nothing and want to use this immense space to build something on it, to change it, to destroy what it has been until now, as it happens for many other once uncontaminated places on earth. And reading this and thinking that Patagonia too will face the advancement and progresses of our civilization and most likely lose all what I ideally love about this place, the isolation, the lack of the globalization pressures, the scattered living things surviving there, the natural environments, made me extremely sad.

I love starbucks and I always enjoy getting an ice soy latte when I am in the USA. But I also love the fact that it is a treat for me, that I cannot have it all the time, because here, in most of the places in Europe, we still have little coffee places, which are one of a kind. I am not against globalization, but it shouldn't be so widespread. I like characteristic, traditional things and there are places in the world that shouldn't be bought just because someone has the money, that shouldn't be destroyed in name of making more money and making a world that looks all the same, no matter where we are. I am definitively for diversity.

Please, let Patagonia be and stay as in my dreams!

I am not superstitious

Friday 17.

I should have known better and spent the whole day in bed.

I instead decided to wake up, get out of bed and live it like a normal day, because I am not superstitious....

But what a major crappy day it has been today!

I had a major drama-like situation for work, with panic, phone calls, everyone worried.....and the thing is not solved yet....it even included someone telling me that my career after this may be over...I thought it didn't even fully start yet.....

Then I had a major fight with my ex-now-current-again boyfriend, which made me wondering why I am not just staying on my own....

Good thing that I live in a little corner of paradise, so that I escaped the two things first by biking along the sea for long time and then in the evening, by walking on the beach at the sunset looking for animals left behind by the low tide.

Second good thing is that I have many episodes to watch of BBT, which I love and which still makes me laugh even if I watch the same episodes over and over!

But gosh if this was a very harsh day!!!

Love and hate

This is how I feel for my apartment in Portugal.

Most of the times, I love it.

Some other times, generally when it rains, I hate it.

It is a beautiful day today and I just spent my morning sitting in the part of my kitchen surrounded by windows and with an ocean view. Then I went for a walk on the beach, for which I need to just cross a road, and then I got back to my place to have lunch at the window while staring at the ocean and its big waves.

This is something I have been dreaming about since I can remember. Living in front of the sea...in this case it is the ocean. The same. I don't have too much choice in terms of choosing the country in which to live...generally, I have to go where I have some chances to get a job. But in this case, I feel pretty lucky. I don't necessarily like where I work, but I love where I live, and my apartment is just perfect.....

......actually, I should say ALMOST perfect.....

The pond that I have on my kitchen floor when it rains, it is now a lake....it was a pond, a manageable pond, until I realized that if I don't dry continuously the rain leaking in from the outside, I have water advancing and advancing. Yesterday, I had to wait for the person in charge of repairing things in the building to come over and look at the problem before drying the water from the floor. In about eight hours of rain, I had 1 square meter of the kitchen floor, if not more, completely covered by water, which was scarily enough continuing to advance.

Good thing that I was here and not in holidays.
Good thing that I was at home.

My frustration for this problem was not so unbearable, even if I have problems of rain leaking in the kitchen since I moved in, until the man of the building came, look at the problem and told me that a) repairing what needs to be repaired is going to be expensive, b) it is the responsibility of the building and not of my landlord, and c) IF THERE ARE NO MONEY ON THE ACCOUNT OF THE BUILDING WHO KNOWS WHEN AND IF THIS PROBLEM WILL BE TAKEN CARE OF.

Now, if the rain would come in and occupy just a spot on my kitchen floor, I wouldn't be that worried, because this apartment is so amazing for anything else, that I would never move out. However, thinking that if this would happen one of the times in which I am not here, since I travel so much, probably:
1) the furniture of the kitchen would get ruined (and this would be a problem for my landlord)
2) I would have to move my furniture away to another room any time I leave
3) and that there are electrical things in the kitchen which could be dangerous if they get in touch with a lot of water......

all these things made me thinking of what I should do in case they will really not repair it soon. If this would have been a place where it rains once in a while, I could live with the risk, but since it could rain without stop for weeks in a row.....well.....

Easy thing would be moving out. But moving is stressful and more than anything else, my apartment is very peaceful, I don't have noisy neighbors, I can sleep well, I have an ocean view, I cross the road and I am on the beach where I can do sport and relax, I have a bakery next door and the supermarket just in 5 minutes walk (important point since I don't have a car), it is big so that I can host anyone who wants to visit me without anyone feeling packed like sardines, it is not too expensive, I have a garage in case of need....I can keep going on and on with all the positive points of this place.....

so, how can I solve this problem of the rain coming in and invading my kitchen if they will not fix the problem in some way?

My little corner of paradise

I had a very bad, with a very down mood day today.
It would have been even worst for sure if it is not that I live in a fantastic place.

Yes, I still have a pond on my kitchen floor every time it rains hard.
Yes, I still have problems at work and no close friends.

Yet, I love being here. I love living here.

Yesterday I went to the farmers market, just near my place. And not to a fancy farmers market, where things are double the price than at the supermarket. This is a real farmers market. With people who actually clearly cultivate their products. People who sell only seasonal products. A farmers market where I could get tomatoes that still taste like tomatoes and not just like a water bomb, where I can get many many lemons for 25 cents, where I can get cucumbers that taste like something.......

I love it.

And then yesterday I went for a long walk on the beach. I saw the little birds playing with the waves, I saw all the seagrasses on the shore, and I enjoy the feeling of the sand under my feet....and today I went running. First I tried on the sand, and my heart was pounding like crazy and I was out of breath after two minutes, but then I continued running along the beach and then I did stretching in front of the sea, on the evening light....and my mood got much better and I felt in love for this place.

And at the end I also saw shooting stars from the beach!!! Isn't it great?

Se non son matti non li vogliamo

My mom always used to say this to my sister and I to highlight the amazing talent that we both have in attracting or meeting weirdos....

I already wrote a post about my recent encounter with a weird man.....but yesterday I met another weird person....a taxi driver/philosopher....I just got back to Portugal from Italy and since I was deadly tired, I decided to get a taxi to come back home from the airport.

I woke up at 4am yesterday morning, so when I got into the taxi I was definitively not in the mood for a chat...especially considering that after 6 weeks speaking Spanish, English or Italian, any little knowledge or understanding of Portuguese that I may have had is basically gone....

In any case, I get into the taxi and this guy proposes me to make a deal...paying a forfeit for the drive to my place but I would let him chose the road to take, as he didn't want to be stuck in traffic....when he told me how much the forfeit would have been, I immediately accepted the deal as I almost never pay so little for the same ride, except if done at 5am. However, just to understand that he was proposing me a deal, it took something like 15 minutes.....

After that, instead of being discouraged by my little understanding of Portuguese so early in the morning, he decided to share his philosophy of life with me...He started by telling me that the worldwide economic crisis is real, but for sure there is also a world-spread mafia who wants us to believe that the situation is worse than how it really is.... (?) ....something like a world conspiracy....and we shouldn't care about what people or the media tell us about the crisis, we should live only according to what makes us happy and works for us, and as much as we can, we should behave independently of what happens around us...

since I was not sure to follow his line of thoughts, he decided to explain his theory to me by using a fitting example.....his example was the following....

- Couples exchange, which is a really common thing in France.....

Ok, now, beside the fact that I have been living in France for three years without realizing that couples exchange is such a common thing there, my ignorance on the subject may be due to my being very naif....However, since I didn't want to encourage him to give me further details on how he got this knowledge about couples exchange being a common practice in France, I just nodded with my head, hoping to continue the rest of the trip in silence....

But he must have read in my eyes that nothing he was saying made any sense to me....

So, his further explanation was:

- According to the church and the religion, we shouldn't cheat on each other. However, let's say that I am married and you are married (you was me in this case) and that I like you and you like me and that my wife likes your husband and vice-versa and we are all happy in having an open relationship in which we swap partners from time to time, as it is very common in France (again....can please a French person tell me if this is so common in France??? I was a bit surprise to hear this...), then we should go for it as life is short and we will all end up dead anyway....

Ok, I may agree on this one, but I still couldn't get the relationship with the economic crisis....which he further explained like this....

- So, if the media or people tell us that there is an economic crisis, it doesn't make sense to try to have a wise behavior to help things getting better, as they suggest, because since there is a world-conspiracy, we will lose anyway....therefore, since life is short, we better enjoy it as much as we can, spending money if we feel like and doing whatever we want.....

Right....it may be right that the media exaggerate the situation of the economic crisis and that we should keep the market going without completely stopping buying things and living....but spending money that most people do not have, so that they get indebted to the banks to which they ask a loan, without being able to pay them back after, will only increase the loop and the crisis.....stopping the economy is not a solution in my view, but also not being wise and keep consuming without restrain is not a solution either.....

In any case, independently of the measures to fight the economic crisis, I loved the example he used to explain his theory to me........

Killing noise

My mom has a beautiful house that I love. I have always lived there until I left Italy to live and work abroad. It is still "home" for me, even if it is now about 11 years since I don't live there anymore.
I love it. It is cozy. It has a lot of light. It has a lot of space. It has a nice view on the hills. It has a lot of happy memories.

It is just impossible to sleep at night or during the day in my mom's house. Especially in the summer, when it is so hot that it would be nice to sleep with the windows open.
I am very sensitive to noise and since I started to live in a small village in Portugal, I am even more sensitive. I wake up at the minimum noise or I can't fall asleep if it is not very quite. Here, it is basically impossible to have anything close to something quite. The house is on a very transited road, so there are many cars passing by every single minute at every hour of night and day. And since we are in Italy, everything must be noisy, so people need to drive fast, speed up even on a town road and of course use the car honk any time they have a change. Plus, motorbikes and scooters are everywhere. And these can be even more noisy than the cars.

Basically, I got back from the Galapagos after two days of traveling. I spent two days completely jet-lagged in Portugal, during which I had so much work to catch up with that I couldn't really properly recover from the trip....I thought that, oh well, I will have plenty of time to sleep in Italy....and instead here it is so noisy that I am going around as a zombie all the time.....(I am not saying that people in Portugal do not shout or that they are quite....it is just very quite where I live most of the times...)

The thing is that I am really not used anymore to people speaking laud, laud noises, people shouting...I love living in a small, quite village in front of the Ocean right now. I love my mom's house, but I definitively miss the peace of my apartment, sitting in the kitchen and staring at the Ocean.

PS. I just read an article on the New Scientist today according to which women's brain may age faster than men's brain....the authors of the finding speculatively proposed that this could be correlated to the higher levels of stress observed in women.....  isn't that a lovely news??? I am sure that the lack of sleep and all this noise which I stand very badly will not help my brain's anti-aging process, unfortunately....

Forget or forgive

...or maybe I should title this post "sometimes they come back".....

I get hurt very easily by people I care about. I have a lot of problems to trust someone, but when I do and when I let this person become part of my life...well, I would like this person to stay there as a part of my life forever.

Things do not always work the way we wish they would. Sometimes people don't mean bad and they don't want to hurt anyone, but the end result may be different than what planned....So, sometimes it happened that either because I hurt someone or either because someone hurt me, people to whom I was very closed to and in one case I even deeply loved (and will always love in some ways) are not part of my life anymore.

Today I got an unexpected call on skype.

Completely unexpected.

I was busy, so I couldn't answer to it. But it was actually a good thing that I was busy because I wouldn't have known if I wanted to answer to it. The person who called me today is someone whom I considered a friend, to whom I grew attached to, someone I miss sharing things with, someone who also really hurt me very recently.

The thing is that even if I believe that this person didn't purposely want to hurt me, he showed me that I cannot trust him and that he did not care very much about me or our friendship, which to me instead meant something. I don't know if given a chance, he would behave in a different way this time. How can I know that this time he wouldn't hurt me again and keep me around as a friend according to his needs to throw me away when he didn't need me anymore?

I forgive very easily.

Or I should say. I used to forgive very very easily.

Lately instead, I decided that sometimes it is better to keep people at a distance, if they may hurt me.

Friends are precious to me.

But true friends are rare to find. I wouldn't want to lose the chance to have a true friend in my life. But how many times does it happen that people learn from their mistakes and actually would behave in a different way compared to the past given a chance?

So here the question that it is persecuting me over and over for many different reasons and situations, beside this specific one.


Is it better to live a calm, steady, simple life (well, in my case the terms "steady" and "simple" are already much more adventurous than what it is considered "steady" and "simple" by many people) or take some risks and see what happen but at least try to live as fully as possible?


Years ago, I wouldn't have had any doubt and I would have gone for the second option....right now, at least many times, having something steady, simple and well known is also incredibly appealing and desirable.....

Creepy men

I have a special talent. The one of often, way too often, attract creepy men.
I may smile too much.
I may be too friendly.
I may look too innocent.

I have no idea why this keeps happening to me, but no matter where I am, I almost always manage to find a creepy man.
I was just in the Galapapos for work. Walking on the beach on a very early morning. This 70-75 years old guy was also there with his brother in law. There were not too many people on the beach. They approached me and asked if I wanted them to take a picture of myself there. Why not?

One of them took the picture and started to tell me all about his life. That he is Ecuadorian, married to an Italian woman and they live in Canada. That he loves Ecuador and any time he can, he tries to go back to his country and especially visit the Galapagos....that his brother has a tv station....do I want to make a movie?

no?

a documentary maybe?

no?

his brother in law has also a radio station, the only one you can receive also in the Galapagos. Do I want an interview?

no?

while he was keeping tormenting me with questions, I was politely trying to walk away.....and he kept following....finally, considering the age difference, I was much faster than him and I managed to put some distance between us. He left the beach.

On the way back from the beach to the main road, I found him again. He started to talk to me again and he followed me to where I was staying. I told him that I had to work and I was very busy. He took a taxi and left. I thought that my encounter with him could be considered over after that.

Not really....he came back to where he left me and asked about me. A woman came to look for me and I asked her to please tell to the man that I was too busy with work to stop doing what I was doing. He left his card, demanding to this woman to please give the card to me and to remind me to contact him.

I got the card.

I went for lunch with some colleagues and he was there. As soon as we sat at the table, he appeared from nowhere......did I get his card?

yes, I did.

Am I going to write him?

uh?

please, remember to write me.....

Was the guy stalking me? how could have been there too?

I met him other two times after this day. Fortunately, I was never alone when I met him. Fortunately, one of these times I made him understanding that I wanted to be alone with one of the guys who was with me....which luckily, even if happily married, played along to help me to avoid this insistent man.

The thing is....why wherever I go I always meet creepy guys?
maybe there are too many of them out there....or maybe I have something special to attract them.... :-(

Dangers of being lost in translation

A small little misunderstood word can do some damages....some unexpected damage........

The fault is due to the fact that by speaking Italian and Spanish most of the times I think to also be able to understand Portuguese...and most of the times in fact I do....but some other times I don't.

I went for a bikini wax. It is summer season. I live right in front of the beach, so for me it is bikini time. And bikini time requires waxing. Up to here no problems. The problem started when for the first time since I am here and for the first time since I had other bikini wax here, the girl asked me a simple question, which was

"Tira"?

I don't know if in Spanish "tira" has any meaning, but in Italian has a meaning that would have perfectly fitted in the context....basically, I thought that since it was the first time I was taking a bikini wax there, the girl was asking me if I was feeling any uncomfortable....So, I replied with a "no"....which overall I think it was the right answer in any case, even if the meaning of the word "tira" in Portuguese was something else.

Anyway, she then said to me "no?" with a question mark at the end.....

I got that I gave her the wrong answer.....so, without having any clue of what actually she was asking me with "tira?", I replied "yes".

She said "yes?"

I mean, I felt that I couldn't give again the opposite answer....so, thinking that how much damage can you do by giving the wrong answer while doing a biking wax, I decided that "yes" sounded like a good answer.....

....she went for the yes.....

I am not going to write here what she really meant with that question....I just want to say that since she was not even happy with the first result of her work, she tried to improve it (she must have had a very artistic soul) and the end results was not only very painful, but also something totally unexpected and not what I had in mind when I entered the place...

oh, well....nothing to do about it now, except for waiting.


I just discovered a new music group now....The Traditionalist...I am listening to few songs now.....it doesn't seem bad...

Never ending

...et voila'....after only 7 months living in my apartment here in Portugal, I still have rain leaking inside on the kitchen floor.....

Before it was coming in from the windows (and not only in the kitchen). Now, after almost 6 months of dealing with this problem (which mostly meant me cleaning the floor in every single room many times a day every day we have rain with wind, which here is not uncommon), the rain doesn't leak in anymore from the windows, but passes inside from the floor...

Anyway, I can already see that it will take a minimum of a month for my landlord to find someone to come to see the problem, then he will send a couple of other people to get a second and third opinion and find out who could fix the problem at a cheaper price, then it will take another month before the selected person is available and then we will be in the fall, when it will start raining seriously and by when I would need this problem to seriously be fixed.

As I wrote in a previous post.....pole pole....

Hogwarts School is right here in Porto

I love the official outfit (uniform?) of the University of Porto students. Every time I see one of them, I wonder if I just popped up on the set of one of the Harry Potter' movies.

I was in Porto just yesterday morning and while I was waiting for the metro, there was a girl next to me dressed in such a way that for a moment I really thought that suddenly she may took out her wand and perform some magic (but of course, magic tricks are not allowed in the muggles' word)....

Anyway, the official outfit of the students of the University of Porto is fantastic. They are all in black, with a black long mantel. Skirt and black tights for girls, black trousers for men. White shirt. Some girls even wear a black tie. I tried to find a picture on the web, because no description can really replace the image in this case, but I couldn't find any (don't know why on google images I kept getting pictures of Asian students...I don't see the relationship...)

Honestly, when you see a lot of them dressed like that all together, it feels like being at Hogwarts and it is a pretty cool feeling, at least for the Harry Potter's addicted like me.

My mood and the music I listen to...

After many articles telling us that we are what we eat, now also that what we are depends on when we eat...I can make my own motto, which is I am what I am listening to (in terms of music, of course)....

....it doesn't really work this way, but for sure the music I feel like listening to is highly correlated to my mood at that moment and what I am doing...

I am a music addicted....meaning that one of the things I couldn't live without is music. I am into discovering new singers/groups and I love to share my discoveries with others (and that others share their discoveries with me). I recently met an extremely interesting person during my stay in Montpellier. He was completely taken by Gretchen Parlato. It is not the kind of music I am used to listen to, but she has a wonderful warm, caressing voice. Little by little, I am trying to appreciate also the arrangements of the music she is singing on.

Anyway, in my always looking for new music to discovery, I just visited the blog of inkiostro, which I always find very inspiring and entertaining, and I found this very nice post taken from another blog, on the most indicated music to improve the productivity at work/work better. I did it...I mean, I followed the signs to discover the most appropriate music for my work. Beside that my work is quite atypical as I sit in front of the computer most days, but it is also a creative job, but I don't work with numbers and I am not a programmer....anyway, I looked at the music suggested according to these different options....but I think that I will stick to my playlist as if I would listen to classical or jazz music I wouldn't be able to concentrate and think properly (come on, this is not a background music! this is a music to listen to), if I would listen to ambient music, depending on which kind of it, I would feel like I am in the waiting room of the dentist (which of course wouldn't make me feel any productive in terms of work), if I would listen to polka I would feel like moving and dancing, etc., etc. The only music I actually listen to most of the time, which is indie-rock, is not considered in any of the working categories closer to what I am actually doing....

I think that I will keep my productivity at work as it is and keep enjoying the music I like, no matter of the final results...work productivity is not everything in life after all!

Getting ready.....

....for The Avengers....

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I am looking forward to watch it. I am not as addicted to the sci-fi movies as I am for Harry Potter, but still.....I really like them. So, I started to re-watch the X-men movies and now I am going to watch the Incredible Hulk...

I enjoy watching different types of movies, from the ones that are very artistic, to the classic ones, etc. But the sci-fi movies, in a similar way to what happens to me when I watch Harry Potter, for a couple of hours completely take my mind off from any daily thing and transport me to a fantasy world. They are not only very relaxing, but also therapeutic in some way....

I hope that The Avengers will be as good as I expect it to be!

the nightmare of wanting/needing to make new friends

I just came back from France a few days ago. I have some very good friends there. I enjoyed being there and being myself around my friends so much, that I feel even more then desire and need to make new friends here where I live now. I understand that meeting the right people with whom to build a good friendship is not automatic. I am aware of the fact that it took me quite some time to feel comfortable and be myself with my friends in Montpellier...I was actually quite worried about bothering them since I stayed at their place for many days....so, I have been moving around from one place to another since longtime to know that meeting the right people with whom to feel a ease and become friends is not something that comes in a day.

I know this. I know it, I know it, I know it.

But still, knowing this doesn't necessarily make my life easier here. I miss the kind of relationship I built over the years with my close friends, in Italy or somewhere else and I miss having something similar in the place where I am now. Instead, I keep walking on eggs all the time. I feel like under exam, because when I meet someone I like and I like to spend time with, I strongly wish that this person would feel the same way about me, so that hopefully we could become something more than colleagues or acquaintances....unfortunately, it is not just because I like someone that this person will certainly like me back and will want to spend time and do things with me. On top of this. Portugal is another culture. Different from France, different from Germany, from Italy, from the USA. Something different again. And so, I have to start over. I find Portuguese people very polite, but at the same time also very direct to the limit that they may seem hurtful sometimes in the way they say things. As always, I assume that people are good and nice, so I try to not take things said in a direct and sharp way as hurtful, but still...it requires a lot of understanding, as I am not used to this. Plus, not all the people I interact with here are Portuguese....so, I feel that I have to use one measure with one person and another with another person coming from another country....it is so tiring....a lot of work!

Just an example. Meeting point to have a picnic on the beach with two girls: 8pm at the supermarket to buy something before going to the beach.

I am generally late, but since I am new here I try as much as I can to be respectful and show up on time. So, I did everything in a rush to be at the meeting place at 8pm. I did. I was alone. I waited until 8.15pm, then, not sure if I misunderstood something, I called one of these girl. She told me that she was leaving home right then and that she would be at the supermarket in less than 5min, since she lives next to it. End of the story is that this girl arrived at 8.30pm, because when she told me that she was leaving home, she actually just woke up from a nap (why not just say so???) and the other girl arrived at 8.20pm.

Yesterday, I had a meeting with these two girls plus a couple to do something together. The meeting was at 5pm. We were at a festival and it was very crowded. My mom (who is visiting me) and I were there at 5pm. At 5.10pm I sent a sms to these people saying where we were standing, thinking that maybe due to the crowd we were all there and not seeing each other. The couple called me saying that they couldn't find a parking spot and they were late. For the other two girls, they didn't reply to the sms, so I called them and they were late. We met half an hour after the planned time.

Since I am someone who is almost never on time and since I know this and I find this behavior quite disrespectful, when I realize that I am being late, I always always call or send a sms to say that I am late, how late I am and apologizing. I find extremely annoying this attitude of being late without even acknowledging the fact that someone was standing in a place doing nothing else than waiting. Of course, none of these people do it in a bad way or because they don't care about me, but it is still very annoying. The thing is that because I like all these people with whom I met yesterday, I have to force myself to be extremely tolerant, hoping that with time we will become friends enough to find a common ground that will make everyone happy. It is really not easy.

It is so much work to always try to understand how other people work and decipher their behavior....some years ago, when I was at the beginning of all this moving, I found discovering places and people very interesting and challenging and I highly enjoyed it. Now, I mostly find this same thing extremely frustrating and destabilizing....sometimes I wish people would come with a manual......at least sometimes....

sitting at a French cafe'

I had an amazing time in Montpellier. I just got back to Portugal today.

I was so afraid about going back to where I have been living for so long and finding things changed, relationships that were not so strong anymore. Instead, everything was even better than what I could have hoped for. I spent a lot of time with my friend and it was quality and fun time.

There is no comparison. I regularly talk and exchange emails with my friends who don't live where I currently live, but in these occasions it is more about sending and receiving updates. Having the chance to actually live things with my friends, normally, talking about whatever we feel like, it is all another story. I enjoyed it so much.

And the best thing of all, the thing I realized that I am missing a lot about France and especially Montpellier, is the chance to sit outside in the sun at a cafe' with my friends. I had quite a lot of that in these days and I enjoyed any minute of it and I wished I could transfer the whole atmosphere (including my friends, of course :-)) here in Portugal. I don't think that there is such a thing like the French cafes anywhere else in the world...at least not in the parts of the world where I have been living so far. In the spring, in the summer, it is just a perfect set up for spending a nice moment chatting with friends.

I am missing that already!
 

Happy and scared

I am not sure what really happened, but for the first time in a long time, I am really, truly, deeply happy. I feel the kind of happiness that makes me walking around with a smile.

I am back to Montpellier for a short work stay and I am spending a lot of time with close friends, who keep showing me how happy they are to have me here. The same for the people I used to work with. It is a nice feeling. Plus, I found the strength of stopping a very unhealthy and painful interaction and even if this decision still makes me sad for a lot of reasons when I think about it, overall, it makes me also feel lighter and happier for having taken a step toward my own happiness, instead of always putting someone else in front of me. Last thing, I think that finally, after long long long time, I feel able to love again. I just can't stop smiling.

Unfortunately, I am also quite scared....It has been so long since the last time that I felt this way for more than just a short moment or one day, that I am afraid that this feeling will end soon......

Totally predictable

....it may be totally predictable to an average Portuguese man, but it was not totally predictable, nor expected to me.

Let's start from the beginning.

After waiting for two months for someone to come to repair the windows in my apartment from which I had water leaking inside in any room any time that it was raining, after missing many work days to be at home because some imaginary man should come to repair my windows, after getting very angry at my landlord, after a lot of frustration, finally last friday afternoon someone came to fix the problem.

I was working from home while he was doing what he had to do to solve the leaking problem. I have to state here, up front that I am very very naive.....but sometimes I think my being naive is very close to be stupid and unaware of things.....I don't know how someone could theoretically not trust anyone, but at the same time believe that every single human being is a good person.

Anyway, back to the story. I was working and this guy started to talk to me.
I thought that it was bored, so I politely replied. The conversation went more or less like this (in a mixture of Portuguese/Spanish language):

Him: since how long I lived in Portugal?
I replied.
Him: for how long will you stay in Portugal?
Me: none can say it, with this economy......
Him: do you live alone?
Me (starting to feel very nervous and politely smiling very nervously): mmmmmmm
Him: alone...I mean, no husband, no boyfriend....
Me: eh????
Him: do you like Portugal?
Me (feeling kind of relieved because I thought that we shifted the topic of conversation): Yes I do for most things.
Him: and Portuguese men?
Me (blushing from the toes to the top of my head): eh?

......it must be said that sometimes I thought that I misunderstood the Portuguese and that he really didn't mean what I thought he was asking me....but no....he was really hitting on me....

Me: I have to work, sorry.
Him: you are at home.
Me: yes, I am at home to let you in to finally repair the windows, but I have to work.
Him: You have very beautiful eyes.
Me: uh?
Him: so clean, like the eyes of a baby.
Me: ok enough.....I really have to work, sorry....
Him: are you on facebook?
Me (and I was actually telling the truth): no. I hate facebook.
Him: you should get on facebook.
Me: sure, after I am done with work, ok?

Finally I think he got the message....but I was feeling very very uncomfortable. I mean I don't like to be rude, but come on.....
I told this story to a couple of Portuguese people I know here and the guys who listened to the story told me that it was obvious and totally normal......Normal??? I mean, someone comes to repair something in the apartment and I should expect that he is going to hit on me? normal according to which planet???

But at least it looks like that while he was bullshitting with me, he also did what he was supposed to do and the windows are apparently (and I really hope so) fixed.

Pole pole

A friend of mine is currently learning to adapt to a different life style and culture and she often needs to repeat to herself this thing "pole pole" that in Swahili should mean something like "slowly" or should indicate that things come gradually to the ones who are able to be patient.

Well, I keep repeating this to myself too in these last days. I don't know. She wrote this "pole pole" a couple of times to me and now it is stuck in my head. Maybe because this motto is made of two repeated words and sounds like a mantra and has really the effect of reminding me to breath and slow down....so "pole pole" to myself.

"Pole pole" to the fact that I will be in France in less than a week to work with one of my ex-boss and he forgot that it was a National holidays exactly on the day that we planned our meeting. Pole pole because I still don't know when I will meet him and I am going there to meet him and work with him. Pole pole because I still don't know where I will be staying, except for the first two nights, and how long I will be stay, because it all depends on when I will be done with the work I have to do there and because I don't want to just abuse of my friends' hospitality. Pole pole because it looks like I will be leaving my place and after two months, I still have water leaking in every single room from the windows every time that it rains strongly. Pole pole because I am excited and I look forward to go back to the last place where I have been living, seeing my friends, etc., but I am also very scared because things will be different, as I don't live there anymore since already many months. Pole pole because my family is facing a lot of economic problems due to the general crisis in Italy and not only I don't know how to help them, but I get frustrated by sitting without being able to do anything when I see the country collapsing and sinking. Pole pole because some days I wish I could receive an hug from someone special to me and I know that I have to wait for that.

Pole pole for all this and much more.....and thanks to my friend for telling me these two simple, but with quite an effect on me, words.

PS. I just saw this movie and there is one sentence in there that is just brilliant. It is "I don't need to think, I am catholic". Brilliant!

jumping contact lenses

My current week started in this way:

- Monday. After one month and a half we got the decision about a work we submitted.....more, much more work is still needed...considering that this specific work has been started some years ago...well, it is a never ending story.

- Tuesday. I received the response to a job I applied to and for which I strongly hoped to at least make it to the interview. I didn't. My previous boss wrote me to say that he cannot imagine what was wrong with my application that I didn't make it to the interview....neither can I.

- Wednesday. Today. I woke up to find water in the kitchen and a lot of water in the living room. The water in the kitchen was to be expected, as when it rains with wind, the rain leaks inside the windows and accumulates on the floor. I have this problem only since two months now....which I guess for Portuguese standards is too little time to deserve to be fixed. The water in the living room instead was a new entry. I was lucky enough to have a lot of water but which didn't got to touch the furniture, which are all in wood of course.....So, my morning started with drying the water here and there and moving the furniture in the only place with no windows where for now it seems to be the smaller risk to have rain also there.....The landlord came to my place, got angry at the person who did the work with the windows recently (15 years ago??? 20 years ago???), made many phone calls and solved nothing before leaving again.....

- Wednesday. Still today. Around 10.30am I got an email from a collaborator of mine. The subject of the email was "bad news". Just what I needed. Apparently the experiment that he was setting up for our work went very very bad...none fault. Actually, the poor guy was feeling very sorry. But it was not his fault....just bad luck....

I would say that so far the standard of bad news that one can get in a week is already pretty high.

To cheer myself up, I went for something that I want to do since very longtime, but I was actually too scared to try until now (and I am still too scared). Trying contact lenses. I don't mind wearing glasses, but I like my eyes and I wish I could show them more. But this is not enough of a reason to push me to try the contact lenses. No, it is the b-boying course I started. Even if I suck so far in b-boying, I enjoy it a lot and I want to continue it. And doing that with glasses is a nightmare. So, I forced myself and I went to try the contact lenses. I didn't succeed. I am just too scared of damaging my eyes and I can't stand having anything remotely close to my eyes....I tried to put them in for about 5-6 times and then I decided to take a break and try again another day. My approach to the contact lenses is to get them on my finger and close enough to my eye, but not too close and hope that something will happen (like my eye sucking the lens in???) to put them in place. After trying this strategy many times without actually any success, I decided that my stomach was already upset enough from the whole effort and to call it a day for now.....

Can someone invent some jumping lenses that op! can fit directly into the eye with the minimum effort and without nothing having to get too close to the eye and op! same thing for removing them???

good timing

Just as yesterday I wrote a post about the need I have for finding the right people (especially girl) with whom building some close friendship here, today I read an article on the NYT about sisterhood.

Girl friendship is very important and not only to me. I miss my close girlfriends who live basically all across the world. I hope that I will find someone to feel connected too also here. It is very important to feel mentally balanced and to not make a drama of every little daily difficulty.


I just read a quote from the movie Detachment that I consider very truthful and beautiful in a sad way.

running running biking biking

I am doing a lot of sport. Push ups, biking, walking long distances, push ups again, abs.......

and this is not because the summer season is getting closer.

I just need to get rid of my anger, frustrations, sadness, whatever negative feeling I have at the moment. Why? because here is beautiful. I love my apartment (still with problems of finding water on the kitchen floor...maybe one day they will manage to fix that). I love the ocean. I love walking along the ocean, on the sand or just staring at it. There are many many loving things. But I don't get the mentality. Every single day it takes me an incredible amount of energy (which I honestly feel wasted) just to manage to get things going. Anything I may need from someone else takes ages, with many meetings, many opinions exchanged, many meetings again to get nowhere and start again......some days I really feel it is the never ending story and it will go on like that forever.

How can people work here without feeling frustrated all the time is something that I still don't know. Maybe you have to be born with the right DNA to be able to deal with this system of doing (or better doing only after long long time) things.

As if this would not be already hard enough, I feel very lonely. I do like spending a lot of time alone. The week ends for example are just for me. I like to have them for me. But this doesn't mean that I wouldn't like to have friends to do things with when I would like to and especially to have people to whom I feel connected too.

My ex-boyfriend lives very close to me. He totally ignores me. He doesn't even try to keep it polite. He acts as if I would be invisible. Saying that this hurts me incredibly, especially considering how much I like and admire him still (as a person, not for his behavior toward me), is a very little expression of how I feel about it.

Then the working environment, the one in which I work most, is composed by a small group of people with some leaders. And I don't mean leaders in terms of bosses. I mean leaders in terms of some dominating characters. I unfortunately seem to have stepped on the wrong feet, as clearly one of these leaders, who is a girl, doesn't like me at all. I have no idea of what I did to her or what provoked her behavior, but it is like that. And when it comes to her to decide or to organize something, of course I am not going to be invited. Considering that unfortunately I still know a very limited group of people here and that most of these people belong to just one group to which this person belongs too.....well, it is not a nice feeling at all.

It is a new experience for me. I mean of course there have been people who didn't like me also in other places, but her aversion toward me is out there, very open, very hostile. Not when it happens that we are already all together in a group. In these occasions, she is instead extremely nice and acts totally normal. She just makes sharp comments or keeps me out of things when she has the occasion.

It wouldn't be a big deal at all if I would know other people, some right people, with whom I could talk to openly. Some close friends to talk openly. Instead everyone here is best friend of someone else and so I find myself all the time walking on eggs to avoid hurting someone's else sensitivity, to not say the wrong thing because since everyone talks a lot about other people business, I am always afraid that anything I say can be misunderstood and twisted.

I am a very sarcastic person. I don't think that Portuguese people in general are big fans of sarcasm. I am not sure that it is part of their culture. So, often, they just don't get me. This is definitively not the first time in which I move to a country and sense of humor is so different that I have to measure what I say and how I say it (which is a very difficult task for me).

I am a very enthusiast person. Translation: I am arrogant.

and so on and so on....Some days it can be so frustrating that I feel like just being by myself, not even going to work, because I feel lonelier there than at home alone. I hate this feeling. And it keeps happening, because I move all the time and I keep getting to places where there are already hierarchies, networks, groups, etc. And I am the outsider.

On top of this here I am a disturbing outsider. Because all the girls here have a boyfriend and I don't. Because a lot of them also have kids and I don't. Because despite all this, I am even older than them. I just often feel that I don't fit and I don't have so much in common with them.

Today is my feeling negative day. It is normal to meet people who don't like me. I just need to balance that with people who really like me and with whom I can just be myself!

What a jerk

I know. Jerk is not a nice word to use in a blog. And it is not a nice definition for a person....but what can I say? I met someone recently who was a real jerk.

Let's start from the beginning.
I just got back from the USA. I am totally under jet lag effect. I do really bad with jet lag....and I can't afford being lazy and recover my normal biorhythm because I have a coming deadline for work.....

Being in the USA, in my old lab, meeting my old boss, etc. brought back a lot of memories and mixed feelings. Did I like to be there again? I liked to meet some of my friends who are still working there. My ex boss was very nice to me, which was a good thing since when I was there she was not my biggest fan. We may manage to start collaborating again for work, which I guess it is another good thing.

anyway, good things and bad things....

What I didn't like of being there again was the arrogance of people who think of being on top of the world, to best the most knowledgeable in the world....I like to discuss about my work, I like to collaborate (with people I like), I like to discuss about scientific subjects and possible projects. What I don't like is people looking at me and talking to me with arrogance, listing me all the amazing things they did and how good they are and how amazing is their work and what they are planning to do and how useless my work and my knowledge are. Of course, not everyone there is like that. But I would say that the average level of arrogance is much higher there than where I work now.

The top of the whole thing has been a Brazilian guy who was there for a short work visit who offered me a job in Brazil. The whole thing went like this:

Him: I may have a job for you in Brazil, if you want it.

Me: A job? which kind of job?

Him: A permanent position there. I am going back there and I can find you a position.

Me: to work on what?

Him: vector diseases (or something like that, I don't even remember, as it is not at all my field of expertise).

Me: but I know nothing about it. It is not my field at all.

Him: well, you can change.

Me: how can I get a permanent position to work on something I know nothing about?

Him: Brazil is the future. We are growing. Our GDP is very good......and so on praising Brazil.

Me: Yeah, I heard that despite the world economic crisis Brazil is doing quite well. But I just read a book in which the author highlighted that the GDP is not really a good measure of wealth of a country.

....and here he got very angry at me and he started saying that I don't understand anything because GDP measures the wealth of a country and I don't know anything about Brazil and that I shouldn't talk about things I don't know, etc.

I tried to explain to him that my point was not about Brazil, but that it was just a comment about something I recently read on the GDP. It is true that I don't know anything about GDP and economy and Brazil. I was not making a statement neither about GDP nor about Brazil. It was just because I finished a book on the plane in which the author pointed our that use of the GDP as a measure of how well a country is doing may be misleading.....that's all.

The whole conversation was already quite weird and it didn't end very well....I couldn't understand why with all the people looking for a job someone should offer me a permanent position on something which is not at all my field of expertise and not even close to it........

Things got clearer the next day when I spoke to a friend of mine who was present there during the whole conversation.

Apparently, after I left the room, the Brazilian guy started complaining about me, about how unpolite I have been with him, saying bad things about Brazil (which not only I didn't, but anyone who knows me also knows that it wouldn't be at all in my character to say bad things about a country I don't know. I was actually telling him that I know someone who works in Brazil and he is very happy......), insulting his country......

....but the most amazing part of the whole thing is that apparently he offered me a job to show himself off to me, to show me how powerful he is to be able to get me a job if he wants to. He wanted me to admire him and to think of him as an influential and powerful person.

Not only I didn't realize at all that he was trying to impress me (I am very naive....btw he is also married), so his attempt was completely unsuccessful, but I also didn't realize that he felt so badly offended by me.

...what a jerk.....there are still men in this world who think that they can impress a woman just by showing some power.....well, he certainly picked the wrong person for that. Too bad that I am sure that he didn't learn anything from the whole thing.

......just to conclude with a note about men......

I was sitting at a Starbucks working and a guy started flirting with me. This time it was a nice guy, fortunately. Very nice and very mannered.....but come on, I am there just for two weeks....what did he hope for when he invited me to meet for a coffee later after his work (invitation that I refused)?

.....he said that he has rarely met someone so interesting as me......

come on......lame attempt.....but at least he was a nice guy to talk to for a bit.

Honestly.....can men really get some women with so little such as showing some power or by flattering them???? maybe I am too cynical, but certainly it does not work with me......

Just what I need now

This place is just what I need now.

I am spending a lot of time alone and this is what I need now. I met a few people I really like here and from time to time I hang out with them. But I mostly need to be on my own, do things I like, and especially walk and run along and on the beach. It is like when I was in Costa Rica....long walks on the beach, just me, the sea and the beach. I can feel totally isolated from the rest of the world, focusing only on the sound of the waves, the feeling of the sand under my feet.

I don't know, I still have quite some issues with work, with some of the people at work, I still feel very insecure of what it will be of me and my work next year, etc., etc., but when I go for my long walks, I just feel in peace and I feel relaxed and I feel that I am doing exactly what I need for my mental and physical health. And it feels good. Totally good. It doesn't matter how much stress I pile up during the week, the week ends are just for me and I love the way I get to spend them here.

So far, this place, the long walks along the ocean, my apartment (I still have some issues with it, but I just love it) are exactly what I needed.

I don't want to let you go

My closest friend just sent me a nice email with written: "I understand how you feel, but I just want to see you happy".
It was nice. It is nice to know that someone wishes my happiness and look out for me, to try to protect me from suffering and being hurt. But sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes the same people who want our best are the ones who hurt us. I did the same too to people I deeply loved. Sometimes we don't realize how our actions can hurt another person. We don't mean bad, but the result can be very damaging for the other.

Anyway. My life in Portugal is not settled and I keep having huge mood shifts depending on the days, depending on work, depending on my interaction with the others, etc. I am constantly frustrated here because there is no way to get to the end of anything or have an answer to anything in a reasonable time. I am spending my time doing actually nothing for my own work, but just talking to this person and that person and this other person to try to figure out if we need to buy some materials, if we already have it and where it is, etc. It is a continuous loop in which people just talk, talk, talk.

I am definitively more a person of actions instead of just talk, talk, talk.

And I am Mediterranean, but I don't share the tipical Mediterranean mentality of "don't do today what you can do tomorrow". My motto is more "do what you have to do as soon as possible at least that thing is done and you can move on".

From here my deep frustration of living in this country so far. To get anything done, I need to ask the same thing over, and over, and over. I am already sick of it.

On top of this, there is my personal life, which is not at the top either. I always have huge problems in letting people leaving my life. When someone matters to me, either a friend, a colleague, or a past important boyfriend, I like to keep these people in my life, because they are the people who make a difference to me. My friends are few, but they are the same since longtime and when I meet new people, I keep only close friends when I move from one place to another. And I try my best to keep them as a part of my life, no matter how much time and energy I need to invest on it. They are the ones who make my life meaningful and much better.

Love and friendship mean a lot to me and to my mental health. I can't do without those.

The thing is that I don't get close to too many people. I am very protective of myself, because I know how vulnerable, sensitive, and how easily I can be hurt by people who get close to me and became important in my life. But the ones who make the cut, I wish they would stay there, in my life, forever.

I know that this doesn't work well with past boyfriend, especially if the relationship has been very intense and meant something to both. I know that this is also not easy when people live in different countries. Also because I am not able to go from a close relationship to someone to something very superficial. I have never been able to deal with people close to me who faded away in some way from my life. I always, always suffered very much because of that.

And it keeps happening. I never accept this as a fact of life. I am not the kind of person who thinks "we had a great time together and I am happy to be left with the memories of the good time we have". I am more the type of person who thinks "we had a great time together and I don't want this to be over".

But of course, this does not depend only on me...so what is the solution since I am clearly not able to let people go out of my life if they had/have an important role in it? I don't think that at this age I will ever learn how to deal with it. Should I close myself off even more to get close to people until I am 100% sure that they will play a role in my life and stay there? how can I know that in advance?

How can you avoid to get hurt since you cannot predict the future?

On cars, ecology, environment and an healthier life

It is not a secret what I think about the topics mentioned in the title of this blog, since I wrote about them many times on this blog.

Just to resume: we should drive less, have a better, cheaper and more efficient public transportation system, and take better care of the environment.

I just read one of the opinions on the NY Times who just shares a similar way of thinking to mine when it comes to these topics. It would be wonderful if everyone would start just contributing a little to live in a greener way.....I believe that little by little in every day life of most people of Earth could make a difference even on a global scale.

Me.....I guess I should fly less often if I wanted to be "greener"....I try to use the train as much as possible within Europe, but it is true that sometimes taking the train is either too long and too stressful, impossible (e.g., if I have to cross the Ocean), or too expensive.....

I try to make up to this very polluting behavior by walking a lot, consuming little, recycling anything I can.



......about walking....I just use this post to write that since I love walking because it helps me to calm down and clear my mind, today I went for a long walk on the beach (really on the beach, on the sand). It was beautiful, because it was windy and the sea was very rough. I love walking on the beach in these conditions, it makes me feel very alive!

Moving sensor light

I understand that technology is a good thing. That technology improves our lives, etc.
But I hate the invention of the lights that switch on and off according to movements. Yes, they are great, they help in saving energy. But the point is that if you don't move, they switch off. It doesn't matter if you are there doing something. You don't move, so there is no need for a light.

This is generally annoying. But it gets even more annoying when it happens while you are in the bathroom to do something that generally does not require a lot of movement. So, I am there, doing my things and puff, the light goes off because I don't move and suddenly it is all dark.....I don't know who had the brilliant idea to put these things in toilet rooms, but I really find it very impractical!

this way...or the other

I spoke to a friend from France this evening. It was nice. I miss hanging out with my girlfriends so much. That was a nice thing that I had in Montpellier and that I came to strongly appreciate and highly value in the last months I have been there.

I also went rollerblading with my IPod and some good music in it. The wind was strong and so I got a very good exercise. I needed it. My mood is really on a roller-coast....one second is up, one second is down. I am trying to find new things to do here, so that I can meet people outside work. The town/village where I live is nice, very nice, but a bit boring for a person of my age. I found an hip hop school in Porto, where they seem to have all sort of classes, from "normal" hip hop to bboying, to other styles. I hope to make it to try one of their classes this week.

But I have no patience lately and I am easily irritable. Thing is that in this economy, I know that I have a salary this month (and it is not even a good salary if we look at European standards considering my position and my experience), but who knows if I will still have it in three months from now...so I just moved here, I am restarting my life over, I feel pretty lonely here so far, I am struggling and all this maybe for having to move again somewhere else in some months....so a lot of investment for what? and of course...all of this always on my own, thing of which I start to be pretty sick of.

The other way to look at things is to live day by day and take the best of every day. I had a friend visiting me for few days and even if he thinks a lot and he has a lot of paranoias, overall I think that he is quite able to live a lot on a day by day base. I envy him for this capacity. I am not saying that I would like to be just like that....but it is also true that I analyze everything from every single angle. Maybe I am too of a scientist and I apply this to anything in my life.....I have a system, a situation or whatever, and I look at it from every possible angle (generally in a biased way toward the more positive or negative angle depending on my mood), until I find out how to deal with that (or not deal with that at all and escape it) and move in some direction. But before that, I stress and wear myself out over any possible consequences that could come out of the situation I am looking at and any possible causes that generated the situation itself.....

This friend of mine who was visiting me just told me that I analyze things too much, and he said as a negative feature of me. I guess he is quite right. Now I probably do it even more because I am unhappy with my current life, but it is really a typical feature of mine....and I don't necessary like it.....so, how can I learn to look at things, at least sometimes, in another, possibly lighter and more based mostly on the present, way?

An algorithm will not find me Mr. Right

I have never had any idea, until very recently, that our world and many things in our world are based on algorithms. To be honest, I didn't even remember what an algorithm is and until the moment I met a colleague of mine who told me to be "not a mathematician, not a bioinformatician, but an algorithmician" (first of all, try to pronounce this word.....it is already a task!), I couldn't care less about algorithms and what we could do with them. Thanks God there is wikipedia!

Exactly...what can we do with them? basically, a lot. Algorithms will not make me a coffee in the morning (at least not for now), but they are used for a lot of things. From developing new computer games, to predict the movement of the stock market, to find your Mr. Right (or Mme Right, whatever is needed). Really? yes, really.

Enough about the algorithms that for me still remain a foreign world.
I just read an article, the sunday opinion of the New York Times, about how an algorithm, even if as we saw above they can be used to do many extraordinary things, does not guarantee finding the best mate to be happy with.

I have always doubted about the use and success of the online dating, which reminds me more of something like shopping at the supermarket than actually of anything to do with romance, but this article supports my view that not because an algorithm matches you with another person, you have an higher chance to be happy with this person than if you would meet someone at a cafe'.

I know that in the last years is getting more and more difficult to meet new interesting people without being connected (Facebook, Twitter, online dating, don'tknowwhatelsebutIamsurethereissomethingelsethatneedsaninternetconnectiontowork), but isn't at least a little bit more exciting when someone come to talk to you and you actually don't expect that (of course, I am not considering here the drunk guy who barely stands on his feet)? isn't much more fun to be out with your friends and meeting new people in this way?

For some things, I am not sure that the progress and technology improved our lives so much (and science proves it!)!