Author: ana

about me

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in portugal

…

não sei o que é mais triste. se a precariedade de um país a recibos verdes, se o deixar-andar de quem está nessa situação e não tem coragem de lá sair.

olhem para nós. estamos aqui há 7 meses. com contractos de trabalho. com impostos pagos. com o almoço pago. com seguro de saúde. com férias, bónus e regalias. onde somos apreciados pelo trabalho que fazemos. a ganhar suficientemente bem para pensarmos em investir noutras coisas, em viajar, em virar freelancers. (o mindthisgap tem mais exemplos como o nosso).

não, nada disto foi sorte. foram escolhas construídas.

eu percebo que nalguns casos estes cenários não são possíveis. há família, há a idade, há profissões difíceis de encaixar noutros contextos.

mas e nos outros casos, como os das pessoas da minha idade, recém-licenciadas, que se sujeitam assim, durante anos? porque é que não saem daí?

expliquem-me lá esse amor à pátria que vos atraiçoa, que eu sinceramente, já não percebo.

Categories
foooood

rabanadas! bolo-rei! mexidos! leite-creme! :D

consoada

it’s the pre-xmas season again. we can’t really feel it here, because the chinese are not very keen on that holiday. no xmas lights on trees (well, not more than usually anyway), no window shops decorated with red and green.and yet, we have our own subtle reminder: moms.

“so what do you want me to cook for you when you come?” is the question following “how are you?” nowadays. to which we happily answer with the roll of our favourite dishes and as many xmas desserts as we can remember.

it’s not like we’re starving here, but you know, mom’s food will always be the best – and i can guarantee that it tastes especially delicious after a few months abroad.
we should start dieting now, to make up for all the extra kilos we’re going to put on those 2 weeks.


Categories
in china

ting bu dong! (i hear you, but i don’t understand!)

flickr

you know tones, right? the way we rise our voice in the end of a question, for instance? that’s a rising tone. mandarin has tones too, 4 of them plus a neutral one. and they use them in every single syllable!
it might be hard to understand what i mean. so here’s an example:
* bīng (spoken with a flat and slightly long ‘i’) means frozen
* bǐng (where your voice ‘i’ starts in the middle of the tone, takes a dive and then rises) means cake.
* bìng (spoken with a sharp falling ‘i’) means sick.

the consequences? a foolproof recipe to (a funny kind of) frustration. you want to say chicken and you say “how many” (jī and jǐ). you want to say country and you say fruit (guó and guǒ). you want to say fish and you say rain (yú and yǔ). *sigh*

speaking chinese is like playing a memory game. is this the word i want? did i remember the right tone? naturally, they don’t understand you if you don’t pronounce words correctly (except in specific contexts). i mean, why should they – to them it’s a different word!

we have a little game going on: saying our street name so perfectly that the taxi driver understands without us having to repeat it. which is a hard task, even after hundreds of taxi rides. this is the tipical scenario when we enter a taxi (dialogue without tones, too much work!):
us: nihao! (hi!)
taxi driver says: nihao! qu nali? (hi! where to?)
us: dong xin lu, wu ning lu. (dongxin road, wuning road)
taxi driver confused: wuning lu… shema lu?* (wuning road… what road?)
us: dong xin lu. dong xin lu. dong xin lu. dong xin lu. dong xin lu. dong xin lu… (dongxin road! dongxin road, dongxin road… – all spoken with minimal tone variations, each time slowlier…)
taxi driver: ah! dongxin lu!
us: dui! (yes! with a very happy face)

and off we go, feeling more or less proud according to the number of times we had to repeat it. one day we’ll be as good as dashan, just wait and see!

* wuning road is very big and easily recognizable. dongxin road is not.

Categories
geek

to the (mostly) incognito 200 or so daily readers of this blog:

thank you


thank you! i mean it, i wanted to say “welcome, and thanks for coming around!” even if this is your first or last visit to this site.
i declare today “meiadeleite.com visitors’ appreciation day”!

(edit: yes, feed readers are included as well. :) )

Categories
in china

the olympics are coming to beijing.

olympics games

we hear that sentence everyday.

you turn on the tv, and *pouf!* the new stadium is completed, the torch is now somewhere being carried by somebody else, the theme song is released. the logo itself is omnipresent in every advertisement, on every metro station, on the most unexpected places, including milk cartons and name cards.

(if you’re portuguese, you probably remember we went through the same thing when we had the expo98, or when we hosted the euro2004. )

and that would be ok, if things weren’t touching the surreal. examples:

* thousands of babies have been named “olympics”

* the air quality headache

* migrant workers being persuaded to return home during the games

* the the tickets fiasco

* breaking the spitting habit
* Smog and Mirrors: China’s Plan for a Green Olympics, on Wired

just to link a few headlines catching my attention. for me, the cherry on top of the cake is this movie from cctv (removed the video player because it seemed to be crashing in IE, weird).

and what is that, you might ask? it’s a sketch teaching “olympics etiquette” to chinese people, being regularly broadcasted in the state television. a sort of “how you should behave next year when all the foreigners flood the streets of our country”.
it seems quite inoffensive, but to us it’s very amusing because none of what is being taught there actually happens.

for instance, i’d still be at the crossroads if i were to wait for cars to stop to let me pass – even when the light is green for pedestrians! (try this video for the real picture of what happens at a crossroad in china).

and the other day i felt off my bike just at the entrance of my home complex – stuff in my bag all spread on the floor around me (luckily i got away without a scratch). do you think any of the guards standing 5 meters away came to help? right… i guess they haven’t seen the ad yet!

seriously, i believe people coming to china are in for a big eye-opening surprise… which is good.

ps – by the way, someone came up with a cartoon to explain the way the olympics logo was created :D


 

ps2 – i can’t wait for the 2010 world expo craziness here in shanghai! “better city, better life” being the theme. *insert pollution-induced-cough here*. how appropriate :)

(rant prompted by joão ‘s post on the 2008 olympic games’ other side).