Category: just life

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in portugal just life photography

back home

montemor-o-velhomontemor-o-velho

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.
montemor-o-velho

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.

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in china just life

updates, a promise and a curse

hello little blog, i missed you, as i always do when i go through a dry spell in posts. there have been projects to finish, trips to far away cities, restaurants visited, emails piled on mailboxes, friends sleeping in the couch and many many pictures…

so there is much to tell – and i’m starting to think that i’ll be leaving china before i have time to tell it all. soo… here’s the deal: one post (at least) per day till the end of the month. ok? ok! :) there, much better.

first things first, the weather forecast:

shanghai weather curse

why does the bad weather always comes on the weekends around here?! i’m starting to think there a shanghai curse nobody told me about…

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in china just life traveling

the craziest of plans


(image by the flickr commons)

the china adventure is coming to an end: another few months in the middle kingdom and we should be flying to our next destination. no, nothing happened, we weren’t victims of the crisis… but 2 years is enough. there are a lot more countries to explore out there!

i’m not too fond of tags like locating independent or digital nomads, but i love the crazy plans that involve hopping between destinations. food, travel and photography – these are the things that make me happy. so we plan on hitting the road, keep a roadtrip log book, take pictures, blog, look for geocaches, taste all the local specialties and send postcards from a number of different places – while we soak on the wifi and work a bit from the places we stay in. we have a gps, sort of an online business and some freelance gigs, and as soon as we get our mei backpacks and ship the cats home (a whole new adventure), i think we’re good to go.

until then though, i’ll try to fit in as much of china craziness as i can – be warned! :)

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in china in shanghai just life

suan nai… men kou.

this morning we were ejected out of bed by a phonecall.

to me, it sounded like the alarm was ringing and since it’s p.’s responsibility to turn it off, i muttered my plea for the extra snoozy time. he answered the phone, barely being able to speak, while a lady on the other side shoved chinese sentences on his ears. his “hello? do you speak english?” were met with more chinese, so he passed me the phone. confused and sleepy, i only got the words “suan nai” and “men kou” and it took me a while to shuffle my memory for those meanings.

errmm… wait… “yoghurt”… “doorway”? what?!

and then my brain must have jump-started. i jolted out of bed, dressed and ran to the door, where a smiling girl in a white lab coat was holding a box with 8 small yoghurt jars. our first yoghurt delivery had arrived and they sure came early!
we had breakfast as soon as i closed the door and the yoghurt (unsweetned, unflavored, plain and natural) was really yummy.

despite the rough wake call, what sticks out is all this spoiling convenience that characterizes our life in china. some days, it’s so surreal.

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just life

my dip

it’s been so hard lately to do some of the things that i like the most – like writing or taking pictures. things that should be easy to do because… well, i am in china! there are lots of things to write about and an infinity of things to portrait, but for some reason or another, the results always look so mediocre to me. i know i can do better than i am currently doing, and the fact that i am not doing these things good enough just seems to bring me down.

and then some weeks ago i stumbled on this short clip from ira glass (from this american life radio show) giving advice on story telling and it really hit home to me, especially because it sounds true for most creative work.

so what i am trying to do right now is figuring out what i want to do next. exploring possibilities and producing more, giving myself assignments, even if the result is not so good – just pushing me to keep going and stop whining about stuff.

one day my work will be as good as my ambitions.