Life changes

So long that I don't write here.
So many things happened in my life in the last months.
So many different emotional states: stress, happiness, excitement, being scared, freaking out, sadness, anger (lot of it), more stress, feeling lonely......I don't even know from where to start.
Maybe from the fact that things in life, at least in my life for sure, never happen when they are supposed to happen or when I wish they would happen or in the way I would like them to happen. I constantly feel like being at the right place at the wrong time.
I can't have things figured out. Even when I think I do. I just rest thinking that wow even if in a weird and unexpected way things are turning out quite well, when suddenly something new comes up to mess everything around again.
It may be considered a good thing, sure. But sometimes I also feel that it wouldn't be bad to have a vision for a bit longer than just the current day.
Since November I have been traveling between Ecuador, the USA, Italy, Portugal, France and in a few days I will be in Holland and then in the USA again.
I have applied to many many jobs and I also received many many rejections.
I have hoped and get crashed and hoped again.
I have been excited and miserable and excited again and miserable again for the same thing over and over in the past three months.

Part of me would like to learn how to be immune to other people. Part of me would like to learn to not care so much. Part of me would like to learn to not be polite when people do not deserve politeness, when they are not nice to me, my country, my family, or my culture. Part of me would like to learn how to be able to still be positive when surrounded by a tick layer of negativity that oppresses everything and makes everything grey.

I have a lot of beautiful things happening to me and in my life. But there is always something or someone who feels the need to ruin everything, to make things more difficult than they are so that they become an unbearable wall.

Sometimes I feel that it doesn't really matter what I do or I don't do, because things keep happening on their own, because life is just this way, and the only thing I can do is to try to get the best out of all these things, no matter how hard other people only try to make me see only the negative aspects on any of these things.
It is really not the way I am, or at least I have never been this way before. It may be a change due to aging or it may have something to do with the fact that some days I am really tired of thinking over and over about this, but I often find myself taking a decision more on "why not?" than based on over-thinking as it usually was.
Not that the end product of the two different modes of action is any different anyway.

I have been proposed. And I accepted.
And someone tried very hard to kill all the enthusiasm and expectation I had for it.
And I felt lonely and rejected.

I waited for something to happen for years. And when it did happen it was completely the worst possible timing.

I received a job offer for a job that overall I thought it would be cool. Not perfect, not ideal, but overall cool.
And someone tried his best to make me see only the negative aspects of it and how it will only make my life even more solitary.

It must be the yin and the yang. Nothing can be just good or just bad.....it must always be something in between apparently......at least in my life lately.

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........