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....