yesterday was 25th of april, the freedom day in portugal, the day we regained independence from a ditactorship, through an almost bloodless revolution - the carnation revolution, called “revolução dos cravos” in portuguese, or “anjierrevolutie”, in dutch.

i wanted to celebrate, i wanted to make it memorable, so i came early to work and put a red carnation on each table of my department along with an explanation of the day. what for? i hoped i could enlighten people here on portugal’s history a little bit. give them a taste of what has been going on in my little sunny southern country, beyond the yearly forest fires that make it to dutch paper’s frontpages.
or at least, maybe a flower could just brighten up someone’s day. it was worth the shot.

well, i got huge feedback, both through emails and personal thanking. i was surprised to find out that some people even remembered the day because they had heard about it on the radio, 32 years ago. they remembered salazar, spínola, mário soares… and i learnt that yesterday was the day to remember the southern moluccas people, as well. south moluccas are a part of indonesia, a former colony of the netherlands, which tried to state their own repulic on this day, in 1950, but were re-integrated in indonesia later that year. the netherlands withdrew their support to the south moluccas after a series of terror attacks related to their subsequent attempts to gain independence (more about south moluccas here).

i’m happy to see that today, one day after, everybody still keeps their red carnations on their tables, in little white plastic cups.
it feels good to know that at least 60 people remembered the day here, that maybe they even told something to their wifes or kids in the evening. that it wasn’t just another day :)

viva a revolução!

“When dealing with any threat, two questions must be answered. Is it real and what should be done about it?

The threat from Gazprom, which supplies a quarter of the European Union’s gas, is real. Russia’s state-controlled gas monopoly can turn off the tap and was not afraid to do so during this year’s dispute with Ukraine. The profitability of Gazprom’s exports, compared with traditionally lossmaking domestic supply, mitigates against too hardline a stance with western customers – particularly now there are signs Moscow is more concerned about inflation than continuing to allow real gas prices at home to rise.”
from lex colum, on finantial times last week.

russia is now in the presidence of the g8, and the theme for it’s presidency is energy security. there’s a clear conflict of interests here.
the g7 wants to diversify their energy sources and routes, “liberalizing the access to pipelines and stopping countries from unilaterally suspending gas supplies in a price dispute” (as the one that happened earlier this year, between gazprom and ukraine, and the one going on now, between gazprom and belarus. anyone see a pattern here?).

russia thinks otherwise and is looking forward to get a firm grasp over their pipelines and monopolies. a possible bid on an uk energy company has recently triggered english/european fears and raised the possibility of a law change that would directly stop their intentions.
moscow didn’t like it - last week gasprom warned the world “not to mix gas with politics”. but how not to, now that they are thinking of buying a couple of pipelines to china and start to export their western siberian gas that way?
note that gas from europe also comes from western siberia*, which means the both the markets would have to “share the gas”… and that disputes and agreements would have to be settled between china and europe, from now on.

the danger the gas/oil demand growth is very real in the next few years as russia is not ready to cope with such growth, and prices will inevitably rise.

the future? a cold, expensive question mark.

(i’m starting to like all this energy markets dynamics, i must confess. research is needed, for full understanding and clearing the dodgy points. more notes on gas will follow, sparingly. no intentions of turning the meiadeleite.com into a gas-blog, rest assured, but if you know of any interesting articles on the issue, send them my way please. :)
)

* there’s also gas in eastern siberia, but not the infrastructures to extract it and they don’t really want to build them. it’s cheaper to buy it from their asian competitors and therefore eliminate the competition.

the queen’s day is a big holiday in holland, with many parties and activities. it’s the day to celebrate the dutch pride: they dress up in orange and wander around town, having fun.
one of the activities going on is the “free market”, where anyone can sell anything they’d like on the streets.

now, everybody has always said to me i should try to sell those little wallets i make out of milk/juice cartons, but i never really did because i thought it was unfair. i’ve learnt it from rosa, which learnt it from someone else, and though there’s not really a patent on these things, it just doesn’t sound right.

what changed? well, not much i suppose. but me and joy, we just thought we could give it a go and sell them this one time, since it is actually legal on that day. for whatever (though always low) amount we charge, people get a tetrapack wallet and a recycling lesson to teach their kids. we have some neat ideas to make them unique and special, and we think it’s worth the shot.

in the end, we plan to buy something for everybody in the floor - they’re all very commited in helping it work. that’s what i like in these people. you set something up and all of a sudden you’re surrounded with enthusiasm and helping hands.
i love you all!

anyway, phase one is now set: we’ve drawn and painted some papers to spread on the 13 kitchens on this building, hoping that people will help us collect as many cartons as we can. wish us luck!

ps - i drawed the cows, joy, heye and levi painted them and joy took the picture. :)

update: in the first day, i gathered more 14 cartons, all around the building! :D plus one this morning. this is going to be fun!

* today i got to work under a snowstorm that lasted for 15 minutes. snow in april? yes, i wouldnt believe it as well but it was true. i hadn’t put my rain trousers on, so i got all soaked. at least i brought capuccino and brazilian music today.
if i can’t have the trousers dry, at least the heart is warm ( of course now there’s hardly a cloud on the sky. )

* in the office, there’s a map on the wall that i’m facing, when i’m at my computer. it shows the netherland’s national and regional gas grid, with its pipeling accross the country, transfer stations and other bits and bytes. it also shows what is called the Groningen gas veld - the biggest gas field in the netherlands- which, you might have guessed, is sitting somewhere under my butt, miles deep down in the ground. scary? well, no. by a lucky quirk of fate, this natural underground storage has enough gas in it to keep the netherlands working (and i mean factories, homes and exports) for at least another 20 years - and that’s a lot, specially if you think it has been being explored since the 70’s.

* i secretely hope they’ll take me to the control room, deep underground, one of these days. or (even more daring) to one of their drilling platforms in the northern sea. that ought to be fun (though not very likely).
meanwhile, i was invited to the company’s birthday party, more than 2 months away. (the dutch plan with their lunch with months of advance. everything must work perfectly)
no one knows where it will be, or what will be done. a well kept secret, with the promise of dinner and party afterwards. looking forward, though slightly scared.

* i read somewhere on the wikipedia quotes that “dutch is not a language, it’s a throat disease”.
i apologise to my dutch friends, but i couldn’t agree more. it hurts to speak (amazing, i can actually say a couple of things by now!) and to hear. making out a few words per phrase is a hard exercise of concentration. today they put a poster on the wall by the koffieautomat, something about a workshop by the ict department. due to the high concentration of technical words (which for me are much easier that the others), i could actually make out what it was about. another victory against the forces of evil!

* it’s been a month i’m working here now. yay to me. i survived the indifference, the unberable language wall, the age gap. i also survived the amount of new information and methods, vb code produced by a non-programmer and windows.
you gotta have a sense of humour, i’ve learned, and you definitely have to have the nerve to make a lot of questions and fuel as many conversations as you can. it doesn’t matter that everybody speaks english - most of the time it’s just too troublesome for them to bother. i can tell they have never been in my shoes.

* last sunday there was an openday in the company, and we were encouraged to bring friends and family to see a photoexhibition they have on the ground floor. it was rather nice. first of all, because i got to show part of my workplace (and i’ve always liked to peek at people’s work place) to my friends, and they got an oportunity to enter the building without having to show their id or other burocracy.
and then, by the exhibition itself. it’s about “golden oldies”, and the beauty in the 3rd age. a lot of wrinkled closeups and old madonna’s statues mixed with funny one person sequences (from waking up to ready-to-go). some rather unexpected works involving not-so-dressed grannies. :| that must have been fun to shoot.

tenho o quarto em escombros. de tecido, de meias pelo chão. de restos de música, recibos de visitas curtas, carimbos, flores a murchar, postais, café, linhas de esquemas e colunas de valores bem alinhados, livros, pacotes de sumo lavados (para um armário de pequenas portas), a revista da cidade, as canetas preferidas da stabilo, a caixa das aspirinas das dores de cabeça contínuas e desgastantes dos últimos dias. a música espanhola animada que passa pelas paredes do quarto vizinho, ou as discussões apaixonadas, do outro lado, que às vezes se sentam no meu colo, em soluços, e me lembram que ainda tenho muito para aprender.
algumas visitas marcadas, as reuniões em letras grandes, para não me esquecer mesmo, as calças da chuva a secar.

mas tenho tido ideias. escrevinho, desenho, desarrumo um pouco mais. todos os dias me vêm aos olhos pedaços de projectos, de coisas que quero misturar e que acabam misturadas em cima da minha minuscula mesa, pelo “sofá” improvisado. em cima e por baixo de outras coisas, esquecidas, re-descobertas.
sempre para dar a alguém, sempre com gente em mente.
imponho a mim mesma deadlines, mas não era preciso: quando se abre a portinha das coisas que gosto, elas acabam depressa demais.

andamos assim.

goed goed goed.
this blog has been suffering from severe lack of inspiration. i have a few things i want to blog about, but when the end of the day comes, i can’t seem to find my way in my own keyboard (the one at work has a dutch layout, and i have to use the windows shortcuts all day)… so i either sleep, fix bugs on webpages or recover a bit of my social life.

when the weekend comes, it all changes. i miss my “publico and a café” ritual a lot, but i found an equally thrilling replacement for it: the saturday market, in vismarkt. the purple bright aubergines, the goat cheese with herbs and garlic, the kipananas schnitzel, the freshly baked bread, the “twee kilo banaan!” shouted across the street… everytime i find something new and i stuff it in my bike’s basket (by the way, i finally fixed the brakes this week!).
and on my way home i stop for some tulips or daffodils…

so now the fridge is full of healthy colorful things and my batteries and patience are recharged.
i’m working on new stuff and on new posts to schedule throughout the week.

(the photo is from g., which is now working in a’dam. he has a new camera and likes to bring it around to groningen on weekends. it’s pretty neat and he’s a cool photographer, so don’t forget to check the rest of his flickr gallery.)

hello.
first of all, thanks for the support, after the previous entry. the first week has passed, despite all my internal whinning and, as usual, after a while, the changes grown on us and one learns how to deal with them. isn’t it? and besides, not all is bad.

for a bit of culture, about the physical place i work on:

The headquarters of G. in Groningen has been designed with “organic” architecture in mind. Alberts & Van Huut created a building, which they see as a “third skin”; their philosophy being that in addition to skin and clothing, buildings provide man with a further layer of protection against the elements from outside.

There are the high-rise office wings with their short hallways leading off the elevator shafts and stairs and the low-rise structures containing the required meeting places and all central services. The central foyer with its lofty, glazed stairwell gives the building the desired focal point.

(from here, and you can check this forum thread for more pictures, or ibn battuta’s (one of rug’s student groups) pictures from an excursion there.)

i have to be honest, i don’t like it all that much from the outside. it stands out of the normal dutch neighbourhoods too much - it’s too high, to different.

but one has to give it some credit - it is amazing.
above all, there’s a certain coherence in it. every item has at least 5 edges on it, from the outside walls to the gardens, the mirrors, the desks, the doorways, the little pole with the elevator buttons, the stairs, the cupboards doors, even the control room deep in the basement has a strange spaceship-shape… and that stairwell is quite something. it ligthens up the whole building, with it’s color blue-green color gradient.

also, because the company can afford it, all the 17 floors are filled with sculptures, paintings and other art installations (one i particularly like, has the structure of a bed and lots of broken eggshells around it).
it’s like working inside a museum, in a way. :D

ps - from my desk, on a 7th floor office, there’s an amazing view over stadspark, with all the snow of the last week :P

ps2 - about the organic architecture style, from the wikipedia:

Theorist David Pearson proposed a list of rules towards the design of an organic architecture. It is known as the Gaia Charter for organic architecture and design. It reads:
“Let the design:
- be inspired by nature and be sustainable, healthy, conserving, and diverse.
- unfold, like an organism, from the seed within.
- exist in the “continuous present” and “begin again and again”.
- follow the flows and be flexible and adaptable.
- satisfy social, physical, and spiritual needs.
- “grow out of the site” and be unique.
- celebrate the spirit of youth, play and surprise.
- express the rhythm of music and the power of dance.”