about me
lilo has been featured on flickr and anitanachina. he’s the lazy cat, our own garfield, the one who manages to stay still (ie., to resist the urge to attack the lens) long enough for me to shoot a picture.
grub is the hyper-active one (“what is this? can i see? can i see? come here!”), the one that always comes to the door when we arrive home, to promptly lay on her back and receive some patting on her belly. acting cute works everytime and she knows it :)
so finally, after 1 year or so on the works (and the meter getting close to the “1 million postcards received” mark), there’s a fresh new face on postcrossing.com, and a ton of new features.
(congratulations!, maybe now we can enjoy a bit of free time? :P )
valentine’s day. i know, some people love it, some hate it. personally, what i like about it is the global brainstorming. it seems that it’s always around this time of the year that i see the most unusual, original or super-kitschy objects, carefully crafted to show your other half how much you care. if valentine’s day is the excuse for these objects to exist, then let it be, i don’t care.
this prelude leads, naturally, to a cheesy example: the 8-bit dynamic life tshirt, by the brilliant people at thinkgeek.
i’ll let them do the talking:
“Staying healthy is the key to keeping yourself alive. Video game characters know this all too well. When your red heart gauge reaches zero… you die. For non-bitmap humans like you this is more of a challenge. But luckily after extensive study at ThinkGeek labs we’ve determined that people feel best when they are in close proximity to something that they adore. Don’t understand? Well luckily for you we’ve created this amazing 8-Bit Dynamic Life Shirt to illustrate.
Buy one of these glowing shirts for yourself, and gift one to your significant other (boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, fembot 2000…). During your normal activities two and a half pixelated hearts will light up on your shirt. Hey… you’re depressed and in need of a recharge. But get within hugging distance of your significant other wearing the matching shirt and suddenly the hearts on both of your shirts start to light up until you’re fully powered up. Go too far astray from the source of your affections and you’ll drop back down to two and a half hearts again. Got it?”
suppose you’re a geek, and your other half is too *hint hint* – wouldn’t this be perfect? :P
and since the theme of the day seems to be “love”, i guess someone thought it would be a sensitive time to raise awareness on sexual dysfunctions – valentine’s day is also national impotence day in some countries. it’s a serious issue and it deserves its attention but… valentine’s day? hum…
anitanachina.com é um projecto novo: uma foto por dia durante o ano do rato, para ajudar a mostrar a (nossa) vida na china nos dias que correm. vem na sequência das muitas vezes que nos fizeram a pergunta “como é a china?”, e da vontade de a mostrar, de forma mais coerente e explicada, aos amigos e família.
é ao mesmo tempo um exercício fotográfico (para me obrigar a saltar da cadeira e ir fotografar) e uma maneira de me obrigar a escrever em português – tarefa complicada nos dias que correm.
o nome surgiu de um comentário no flickr, pela joana. :)
anitanachina.com is a new project: a photo a day for the year of the rat, to help portray our daily life in china.
it’s a photographic exercise, but at the same time, it’s written in portuguese because i miss writing in my mother tongue (a task that is becoming increasingly difficult). english readers should find it quite easy to navigate though.
the name “anita na china”, literally “anita in china” is a play with some portuguese child books that used to feature a character, anita, discovering the world around her: anita in the train, anita goes to the farm, anita in the theater, etc. the idea for the name was given to me in a flickr photo comment, by joana. :)
… of christmas chinese new year, it’s the “god of fortune and wealth” birthday. to invite him in, what do you do? fireworks, of course.
because p.’s company wouldn’t pass the opportunity to attract wealth (and having fun firing some big artillery), we were invited to join the party on the boss’ house rooftop, still covered in snow.
for a couple of hours or so, we marvelled at the view from the 40th floor: everywhere we looked, fireworks and strings of firecrackers exploded loudly and bubbles of color filled the air. it’s one of those sights that really takes your breath away. (but if you dared to close you eyes for a second, i reckon the noise around you and smell of gunpowder would certainly prompt imaginary visions of armageddon)
anyway, all in all, it was fun. i don’t know how to efficiently photograph fireworks (especially with frozen hands and toes) so these are my humble tries.
you can find a lot of better pictures of it on flickr.