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just life weeknotes

weeknotes, 36/26

september! it’s back-to-school season and the supermarket shelves are filled with colorful notebooks, all ready to be filled with knowledge. speaking of which, i’ve finished the first ChinaX course on china’s political and intellectual foundations and jumped into #2, about first empires and the rise of buddhism. still going well, and i really like the teachers and the format!

i also had my first swim class of the new season, and it felt really good to move again and be in the water.

speaking of swim classes, little niece had her own first class with the 3 year olds… and a meltdown when she realized there was not going to be a grownup on the water to play with her, which then morphed into an epic tantrum when we got home (very mazeukeru). poor bunny is back on kindergarten and they’re now doing shorter naps, which doesn’t help. it’s hard being 3!

the carpenters came and started replacing the floorboards that were damaged by the leaking tap! we’re still missing a bit of skirting board and doorframe, but then the place will be as good as new. when the work was done, we stepped outside briefly to say goodbye and suddenly the wind closed the front door of the apartment… leaving us outside with no keys and no shoes.😱 a milestone of sorts: our first time getting locked out in the new place!

what else? on a random afternoon, we checked out a nearby beach in vagueira and also the local ceramics factory outlet, in search of a big dish where we could put all the fruit we bring back from the parents’ farm on the weekends. we did find one, and they had so many other nice things there too! 😍

we also checked out aveiro’s bookfair and i got a couple of books for the little one. i was most excited that the university had a stand there too, and got myself a very cheap university-branded tshirt! i am a student of university of aveiro, after all, if only through the confucius institute classes. :)

we watched a couple of movies this week: hero (about a group of assassins who want to kill the king of Qin) and margin call (about the 2008 financial crisis) — the latter was better than the first.

i finished the book of eels and learned more about eels than i ever thought possible. i hadn’t realized they were so mysterious, or that nobody really knows how (and where exactly) they reproduce! i also finished down to earth, and lots of kids books from the library (elmer, the orchestra and a snowy day).

Categories
one second everyday

august 2026 — one second everyday

ah, what a month… as usual, august is a frenzy of activity and friends on holidays, but this one was extra special with a trip to spain to see the eclipse! there was also lots of family time, good movies, library, live codfish, pizza (and a pizza tshirt!), and a yellow ukelele! :)

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weeknotes

weeknotes, 35/26

a busy week — and the week that i finally made it to the local library! i had been there before moving to aveiro, but now i actually went to make myself a library card and get some books.

i also registered for a mail art workshop they were doing this same week, and so i went there twice! for the workshop, each of us had to create a series of 16 cards, to be included in a kind of time capsule. i picked a kind of industrial theme, with technical manuals, stamps and geometric rubberstamps that the teacher provided. it was hard to make so many specimens in a couple of hours, but i managed! i ended up loving the ones that the children drew most of all.

but i guess the most surprising news of the week is that i bought a ukelele! i’ve been thinking of getting one for years and every time i heard amanda palmer sing the ukelele anthem, i would sing along with her “they’re only $19.99, that isn’t lots of moneeeeey! 🎶“.
so when the music shop down the street put up a sign saying their last units were on sale AND they had a yellow one (!!), i couldn’t resist. for now, i’m stumbling my way through the major chords and strumming patterns, taking it slowly until my fingers get some kind of callus. but i can’t wait to be able to play and sing at the same time — it’s a silly little thing that makes me happy. :)

what else? there was a nice vietnamese place we tried and also lots of pears from the parents farm! pears make me a little wary, because in order to pick them, my dad has to don the beekeeper’s suit and brave the asian hornets buzzing around the pear tree. one of my uncles ended up in the hospital after being bitten by one of those, so…

the pears are lovely though, and as usual, the village is full of small religious festivities on the weekends. whenever we go to one of these, we always find multiple family members there, either participating or just watching!

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links and ideas

only i used to know you were a fool…

years ago, russian postcrossers were having a spat on the forum. someone said something silly, and someone else replied “up until now, only your mom knew you were stupid — now we all know!” 😳🙈😂 naturally, someone reported the comment and we moderated it… but i laughed so much that i cried, and the sentence stuck with me.

awhile ago, i decided to research it to find out if it was perhaps a russian saying… and what do you know, turns out this actually has something to do with portugal!

from wikipedia:


(photo by A.Savin, Wikipedia)

The Arseny Morozov House is a historic building located at 16 Vozdvizhenka Street, Moscow. It was designed by Viktor Mazyrin for his friend Arseny Morozov. The pair had toured around Portugal and been impressed by the Pena Palace in Sintra. An eclectic building with Neo-Manueline architecture, the Morozov House was constructed on the land presented to Arseny by his mother Varvara. Mazyrin built the house between 1895 and 1899.

According to the city legend, when she saw the finished mansion, Varvara Morozova exclaimed: “Only I used to know that you’re a fool, now the whole of Moscow will know!”

i love this whole story so much! from the alien look of a manueline building in moscow to the mother’s perfectly expressed exasperation… i hope i can see arseny’s house someday!

Categories
weeknotes

weeknotes, 34/26

a quiet week in aveiro. little niece has 2 weeks of holiday from kindergarten, so she’s at her grandparents in celorico. we came back from there with a trunk full of produce, and as usual, struggle to eat everything before it goes bad.

it was a quietly productive week too — the first week in a long time in which we didn’t have to take some hours from the holidays to run errands. we saw the odyssey with friends, and it was as epic as promised. other than that, nothing special, mostly work, study and food. we went to bertrand and fnac and found some nice books for kids.

the chinese political & intellectual foundations course continues, now with a lot of confucian and daoist philosophers making an entrance. this is the first of five harvard courses on china, and i’m really enjoying the format. the assigned reading is the part i struggle with the most, but it feels manageable for now.

i also got a cool new pizza-themed jason polan tshirt that uniqlo just launched… and promptly made it dirty eating pizza… so it was sad but also felt somewhat appropriate.