the informatics engineer turned beekeper, has gracefully introduced me to his new hive.

i dressed the whole white suit, gloves and wellies, just to get near them, and then, i didn’t even take so many pictures… i’ve never been bitten by a bee (fingers crossed) and i wasn’t planning on that, so i kept my distance and let the zoom do the work :P

it’s funny how they work – you just stack a wax frame with a very shallow pattern on the hive, and slowly and meticulously, the bees grow the pattern and fill it up with honey.
he’s hoping he’ll have loads of honey by christmas, and i don’t doubt he will. things are looking (and smelling) pretty good!

yesterday, a french tourist asked us for some directions to a nearby hill. straightforward stuff, follow us, and on that road go straight ahead till you get to the top. and then, as i visualized the answer in my head… i couldn’t say a straight french sentence without sprinkling it with chinese. my french used to be pretty decent, but every time the man asked something, my first reply was in chinese, then i stopped, switched and tried to finish the sentence in french, much to his bewilderment (and my own!). i hope he found his way to that hill.

portuguese/english are the languages i use to think, but chinese is the closest thing to my “second language” these days: when i communicate with a non-english speaking foreigner, i instantly speak in chinese. it’s unconscious and… weird.

which is why i really need to find someone to practice this with, before i forget it all. any tips?

“onde nasceu fernão mendes pinto?
jorge de montemor onde nasceu?
a mesma terra o mesmo céu que eu pinto
castelo velho o que foi deles é meu”
- afonso duarte

“where was fernão mendes pinto born?
jorge de montemor, where was he born?
the same earth, the same sky that i paint
old castle what was theirs is mine”
- afonso duarte

last tuesday, driving slowly between figueira da foz and coimbra, we came across the castle of montemor-o-velho, proudly standing on top of a small hill. we had no big agenda for the day, other than picking up the cats at midnight in lisbon, so we stopped a while to explore.

the castle was first heard of in medieval times (before the country of portugal was born), and it was successively conquered by christians and arabs and even by napoleon troops. in 1910, it was declared national monument, along with “igreja de santa maria da alcáçova”, a church within the castle walls.

the views from up there are stunning, green fields all around the castle walls and many squares of rice plantations (and some storks too) due to the proximity of the mondego river.


while the castle walls and premises are in reasonably good shape (the paths are clean and the lawns are taken care of, there’s even a little café up there) you can’t really say the same about the church. the frescos and statues could really use a hand. what battles are they trying to tell us about?

other details seem to have stood the test of time a bit better: there are beautiful tiles decorating the walls, writings and a few gravestones on the church floor.


the entrance is free and on the day we were there, there was no soul on sight. a whole castle to yourself, how about that? :)

still wrapping my head around these blue skies, the grass, the coarse salt and being able to drink the water from the tap, proper meias de leite, the politeness, not having to use a vpn to access the most basic sites… but also remembering what happened on the 4th of june, 20 years ago.

the cats arrived safe and sound (to my biggest surprise), and we’re all a bit jetlagged and trying to re-adjust as best as we can.

a lot has changed, and a lot is still the same in my little country but for the first time in my life, i am in portugal as a worker (as opposed to a student sponsored by her parents) and i am looking forward to re-discover this little “garden by the sea” with the small liberties this new position allows me.
so stay tuned for more adventures, including tons of test-tasting because the food here is absolutely unbelievable. it’s going to be a fun couple of months.

from the asian art newspaper:

During his second trip to Asia, Thomson based himself at the thriving British Crown Colony of Hong Kong in 1868. There he studied Chinese and Chinese culture while making a few short trips into Guangdong. Thomson’s major China expedition began in 1870. For two years he travelled extensively from Guangdong to Fujian, and then to eastern and northern China, including the imperial capital Beijing, before heading down to the River Yangtse, altogether covering nearly 5000 miles. In China, Thomson excelled as a photographer in quality, depth and breadth, and also in artistic sensibility. The experience he gained, and the techniques he developed, on the streets of Beijing laid the foundation for his Street Life in London, compiled five years later. This established him as the pioneer of photojournalism and one of the most influential photographers of his generation.

From 16 April to 18 May the exhibition China through the lens of John Thomson will be at the Beijing World Art Museum, so you still have a few days to catch it if you’re in the capital.

After that, it will travel to The Fujian Museum (14 June to16 August); Guangzhou Museum
(26 August to 25 September); and Dongguan Exhibition Center (3 November to 2 December), before travelling to the World Museum Liverpool in the UK to celebrate Chinese New Year 2010.

(via heading east)

in portugal, mother’s day was a week ago – but only now it reaches the rest of the world :) which means we get to celebrate it twice! today we went to the park with a mama friend and her cute kid!

lovely day, lovely park and a lovely surprise: the baby (& momma) got used to the sling we gave them when she was born last year! the first experience with it was a bit disastrous and we thought it would never be used it again… but actually, lulu says both she and her mom use it quite regularly now!

b.’s grandma takes her to the market in her sling everyday, and to the inquisitive looks she gets, she explains it’s a modern & european thing… :)

i love the concept of the sling – an uncomplicated piece of fabric that holds your baby safe and close to you. in portugal, they were made popular by the talented hands of rosa pomar, who also makes unique and beautiful dolls that make babies (and grownups!) happy all around the world. :)

(Hint: It’s not The Netherlands)

Although its capital is notorious among stoners and college kids for marijuana haze–filled “coffee shops,” Holland has never actually legalized cannabis — the Dutch simply don’t enforce their laws against the shops. The correct answer is Portugal, which in 2001 became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.

At the recommendation of a national commission charged with addressing Portugal’s drug problem, jail time was replaced with the offer of therapy. The argument was that the fear of prison drives addicts underground and that incarceration is more expensive than treatment — so why not give drug addicts health services instead? Under Portugal’s new regime, people found guilty of possessing small amounts of drugs are sent to a panel consisting of a psychologist, social worker and legal adviser for appropriate treatment (which may be refused without criminal punishment), instead of jail.

The question is, does the new policy work? At the time, critics in the poor, socially conservative and largely Catholic nation said decriminalizing drug possession would open the country to “drug tourists” and exacerbate Portugal’s drug problem; the country had some of the highest levels of hard-drug use in Europe. But the recently released results of a report commissioned by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, suggest otherwise.

The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

“Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success,” says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. “It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does.”

Read the rest of the article at Time, or the initial article on Salon.

the audacity of sneakily pushing this law in 2001 without making a fuss about it was genius. if this law had been put on a referendum 8 years ago for the people to decide, it would have never gone through… which is not to say that some things shouldn’t be put on referendums, it’s just that portugal is mainly a conservative/catholic country, with a lot of resistance to change. this was a bold step, but one in the right direction, as the studies have shown. well done!