the exam season is now over and i can start to breathe again. i feel like this little fellow on the beach, with the wind blowing on my scarf and the feeling of freedom that comes with it.

it’s time to catch up with the world, with my emails, with the feeds left unread, with all the letters and postcards long overdue, with the half-finished projects, with friends and hugs, with what’s left of winter… i’m happy!

this new years, i’ll try to photograph what i’m doing at 3pm, 6pm, 9pm, 12pm and 3am. a sort of “a day in the life of”.
we’ll be staying at home, i believe, so you won’t get any grand party pictures, but we’ll see. this entry will be updated around those times.

if you can, do it too, and then link back to binary bonsai (the author of the idea). let’s see what people come up with. :)

here’s the first one. 3 o’clock, joão was showing me how to control the tv+dvd using his qtek. troy is playing on tv.

at 6pm, mom and i are cooking “mexidos”, a typical portuguese dessert, for those days around xmas. look at the mess in the kitchen :P

at 9, i was on the phone with my nanny, who has a terrible cold. :)

well, fireworks and champagne at midnight, naturally… happy 2007. and i guess that will be it, at 3 i think i might be sleeping… :)

i like new years. not so much for the party, or the new figure on the date, but more for the excuse to wipe our whiteboards clean and start again. i like these fresh days, where you can begin something, a project, a vision, just a new set of rules. people reinvent themselves each new year, on better people, on new motivations, on fresh wishes. suddenly, there are more smiles out there, more willingness to improve.

this year was such a full one, and a good one at that. a year of discovering countries and people, of crossing the ocean, of finding what i wanted - and a year of waiting for it.
it feels strange, it feels funny. in a way, it feels like being a pregnant woman, waiting for a baby for 9 months. all those months patiently dreaming of that special day, of that life changing event in the future. 22 days left now, and i know, with all the tiny atoms of my body, that it is worth every second of the time i spent waiting.

i wish all of you a happy 2007. may you be able to embrace your challenges this year and look in the bright side of them.

ana

(i saw rita made a post about her dad, and i suddenly felt like doing something similar here too. thanks for the idea :) )

my family was always a different one.
mom worked a lot. more than 30 hours in a row, at least twice a week (and amazingly, she still does). when she was home, we weren’t allowed to make any noise - a rule which later was responsible for us listening to music much lower than most people, i think.

so, anyway, how did me and my brother end up normal healthy kids?
yes, you might have guessed it, the trick was my dad. he woke up early, fed, washed, drove us to school, went to the teachers meetings, took us to the hairdresser and the dentist, invented new foods (pasta with sausages was his and our favourite!) etc etc etc.
on top of it all, he still had a semi-normal job with some degree of liberty and he helped my mom with the housework. wait, i know what you are thinking - “helped with the housework” is an ironic expression that is often a sinonym of joyfully washing the dishes once a week.
well, that wasn’t the case at all. the proof is i’ve never seen my mom ironing any single piece of clothing or vaccum cleaning.
that’s just the way it is.

we’ve had our ups and downs, but some people are special, i guess. my most treasured memories are from a period in which my mom was finishing some sort of degree or post-graduation and she had to study a lot. my dad would take us two to porto on the train with a kilo of rice and we’d spend the afternoon there, feeding the pidgeons.

on the picture you can see him and nani, my little cousin - who we took there a few years ago, just for the fun of doing it once again. we still love it. and i love you dad. :)

ps - paizito. já sei que não percebes o que eu escrevi ali em cima, mas não tem mal. já te disse tudo quando te liguei hoje. resumindo, gosto muito de ti. continua a fazer massa com salsichas e tudo, que a gente adora. beijocas.

"Estou farto de conversas, farto de compreensões, farto de conveniências de serviço. Nunca vi namorados tão embrutecidos, tão cobardes e comodistas como os de hoje. Incapazes de um gesto largo, de correr o risco, de um rasgo de ousadia, são uma raça de telefoneiros e capangas de cantina, malta do "tá bem, tudo bem", tomadores de bicas, alcançadores de compromissos, bananóides, borra-botas, matadores do romance, romanticidas. Já ninguém se apaixona? Já ninguém aceita a paixão pura, a saudade sem fim, a tristeza, o medo, o desequilíbrio, o custo, o amor, a doença que é como um cancro a comer-nos o coração e que nos canta no peito ao mesmo tempo? O amor é uma coisa, a vida é outra. O amor não é para ser uma ajudinha. Não é para ser o alívio, o repouso, o intervalo, a pancadinha nas costas, a pausa que refresca, o pronto-socorro da tortuosa estrada da vida, o nosso "dá lá um jeitinho" sentimental. Odeio esta mania contemporânea por sopas e descanso."

Miguel de Esteves Cardoso

when the density of greek symbols per page exceeds the reasonable… blargh. i feel sick. maybe i’m allergic. mmm…

the campos brothers are a bit in the middle of a crossroads. we don’t know very well what the future holds or what exactly we want it to be. anyhow, little brother, hang on, there’s always a solution. today i read this piece of advice here. it fits, doesn’t it?

"Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life (…) Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do."
Steve Jobs, CEO Apple