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.