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!)!

If I want to have an happy relationship......

..... I have always to keep in mind to be with someone who loves me at least as much as I love myself or more.

I can't settle down for someone who makes me feel bad about myself.

I can't settle down for someone who makes me feel worst than how I would feel if alone.

I know myself and it doesn't matter how much I can like or love someone. I am not going to be happy in a relationship if I am happier or equally happy alone.

Portugal- the poor, the rich, the car, the waste

I am getting more and more stubborn.

I don't know if it has anything to do with getting older. If there is any correlation between the two things. Or if it is just a coincidence. But not only I get more and more stubborn on certain principles of mine, but I also get more and more allergic to certain crazy behaviors...basically, to anything that has to do with an access of materialism and with a continuos research for other people's approval.

I moved here and everyone told me that I needed to get a car to have a life here. This has been giving me a lot of headaches in the last months, because while I have nothing against cars in principle, I think that we abuse of them, we rely too much on them, and in general I don't like my life to have to depend on a car.

My general philosophy is: I have two legs that function well, I am healthy, so I can walk and when I cannot walk because of the distance, I can take a bike and when I cannot take a bike, I will use public transportation.

It took me some weeks to realize that I actually don't need a car in my daily life here. I can have a life without a car. It is more complicated probably, but I can live nicely without it. I can use the metro and a bus to go to work. Yes, it takes me about an hour between my place and where I work and every day I have to walk for about 20-25 minutes (if I walk fast) on each way to get to the metro. Yes, if I would have a car, it would take me half of the time and I could sleep longer. But I actually don't need it. And while when I moved here I considered the possibility of buying a second hand car, the incredible amount of fancy cars going around here makes me wanting to puke. It is just too much. It makes me allergic. It makes me feel that I want to make a difference.

I have this thing. I cannot explain why I feel this way. But if I am in a place where everybody or the majority of the people values something too much in a way that a normal thing becomes a status symbol, then I immediately don't want that thing. I never wanted something because "everyone has it and I must have it too". Here I have this feeling mostly about cars. In the USA I have it about kids. I never feel so strongly against having a kid as when I am in the USA. I actually would like to have a kid in my life. But when I am in the USA, people praise pregnant women and kids so much that I became immediately allergic. Come on, they are just kids....yes, they are cute (and for sure not all of them), yes they can bring a lot of joy (but also an incredible amount of sleepless nights), etc., etc.....what I am trying to say is that I like to give the right dimension to everything.

....and something on which I get more and more stubborn, more and more allergic is how much we waste. We waste so much. We continuously buy new things. And here it is incredible. The times I have been to the mall to get things for my apartment, people were just buying and buying. And it is not only here. I don't know. Maybe I am making my life more complicated, maybe I don't enjoy things enough, maybe being a scientist doesn't help in living in a "lighter" mental way.....but

- when I was in Costa Rica I couldn't stop thinking of how badly we are destroying the place, making it similar to anywhere else in the world, with big hotels, big swimming pools, malls, buildings next to the beach.....

- here, it is a continuous of seeing people looking very poor on one side and people with expensive cars, clothes, jewelery....every day depending on where I look to or at, it seems to be either at Hollywood or in a very poor place. I have never seen in any European country so many people with bad teeth or just a few teeth. Here it is very very common. And then at the same time, next to these people, there are people dressed up in very expensive clothes from top to bottom. Yes, there are many places with poor and rich people living next to each other....but here it is different, because my impression is that some of these people just want to look rich to show off, but at the end, there is not so much difference between the two types, except in the outside.

My point is....why don't we all try to have a good life but living in a simpler way??? it wouldn't be just much better for the environment, it would also be better for us. Why don't we go back to value things for what they really are? why do I have to listen to someone commenting that my apartment looks too empty and "cheap" just because I didn't want to fill it in with many furniture that would just stand there without any function?

Just to avoid misunderstanding. I don't live like an ascetic. I am not Gandhi. I just hate the waste and this continuous buying and collecting useless things that will be kept for a short time and then be thrown away to be replaced by the newest thing. I got a present today. A book that someone whom I met while in Costa Rica strongly suggested me to read and said that the book changed his way of thinking. The book is Thinking in systems. I look forward to read it. I got it today....the same day in which I read the news that in the USA, in Georgia, it has been approved to build two nuclear reactors. If we would learn to waste less energy and be less dependent on oil, maybe we could avoid building new nuclear reactors......

Getting married - better sooner than later?

I am not getting married. Better to state this upfront to avoid confusion. I am not even engaged, nor I have a boyfriend.
It is not about me.
But my cousin is getting married soon. She is very excited, her future husband is very nice, we all like them together very much.
Since how long she is with her fiance'? a year and a half. He proposed to her after less than a year and a half. Too soon?

I would say that at this age, one year is enough to understand if you could, if you would like to spend your life with the person you are with. I actually lately developed the strong conviction that when it comes to getting married to someone, better doing it sooner than later.
I saw a movie last night, Rear window, and almost at the beginning of the movie, the woman of the insurance who helps James Stewart states exactly something similar to my previous sentence. That when it comes to marriage, we think too much. I am not suggesting that it is wiser to just jump into something without thinking, but sometimes we do think too much and analyze things until the bottom, so that anything magic about it gets examined so much to lose all the magical effects.

All the thinking about "will he/she be the right one?" and "what if...?". I don't believe that after a year with someone, spending more time together will help in answering any of these questions. On the other hand, many couples get to the point that after many years together, getting married is the following natural step...and at that point the relationship is already "mature" one of these relationships in which your partner is more your best friend than the person who still gives you the electric feelings. Nothing bad with mature relationships, if the partners still like each other and enjoy being together. It is a natural process. All the relationships get to that stage. I just think that it is better and nicer to get married when everything or most things about the other person still look fantastic, the encountered problems never seem so serious, and the enthusiasm of being together is still there and strong.

I got to think that when it comes to marriage sooner is better than later based on my personal experience. I analyze things and people so much, and I am so allergic to commitment (how can I know if I want and enjoy waking up next to the same person in 10 years from now???), that I let fade away the enthusiasm of being with at least one person that I would certainly have married if he would have asked me at any time during our first two years of relationship. Instead, since then, since that experience, I always feel so much fear to commit to someone, to change my life for the unknown that I end up, or ended up, pushing and pulling anyone who I like or I loved.

Will I ever be ready for the "big" step even if I would have a Mr. Right in front of me?
Will I be able to stop seeing any possible problem that I would need to face or live with and just for once jump into something which is not only about me and something that doesn't only depend on me and therefore I cannot predict and control?

Portugal- always waiting for a technician

Saturday morning.
It was so warm and nice in my bed that I didn't want to get out of it.
But I have a technician coming to my place this morning.
Why?
Because I rented this place at the beginning of December 2011 and I still have problems with finding water on the kitchen floor.....I had to apply a scientific method to find out from where the water comes from, how often and how much. Now that I tackled down the source of the problem (the same that it was repaired over a month ago....how did they repair it???), I have to push my landlord to actually do something to fix it.
It is not pleasant to wake up every morning before 7am to go to work and have to dry out the floor because of the water. It is even more unpleasant when I have to get out of bed in a very cold morning, because old Portuguese houses don't have heating systems, and the first thing I see is a pool of water on the floor.......

Lately, often on saturday morning I have someone coming to just see what to do to fix some problems in the apartment. It is very funny the proceeding adopted here when there is a problem to fix: we look at it, we discuss about it for a couple of days or even weeks, then the landlord sends someone who try to fix the thing but apparently don't fully fix it, and after three days the problem is there again and we start over with the whole thing.

Patience, patience, patience....