Categories
just life photography

the ode to dad.

(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.

dad.

< 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.

Categories
geek

on for another year.

we are back. me and meiadeleite.
a one-day payment delay because of a forgotten email account were enough to scare me (and the occasional reader, i’ve heard – thanks for the concerns. it still amazes me that some people actually read this :P)

i’m a disaster at remebering dates and birthdays. even my own site’s. i guess this means it’s the 2nd year of me blogging in meiadeleite.com (a little more if we count the old nofundodasescadas). go me! :)

Categories
in the netherlands

the monkey’s rock.

hello.
first of all, thanks for the support, after the previous entry. the first week has passed, despite all my internal whinning and, as usual, after a while, the changes grown on us and one learns how to deal with them. isn’t it? and besides, not all is bad.

for a bit of culture, about the physical place i work on:

The headquarters of G. in Groningen has been designed with “organic” architecture in mind. Alberts & Van Huut created a building, which they see as a “third skin”; their philosophy being that in addition to skin and clothing, buildings provide man with a further layer of protection against the elements from outside.

The organic theme can be found back in the entire building, thus giving it a human touch and therefore its soul. Even the furniture has been designed with this in mind. The building offers maximum flexibility and optimum communications. People can find each other easily, with central meeting places. The building has a heart, but at the same time takes full account of flexibility and security.

There are the high-rise office wings with their short hallways leading off the elevator shafts and stairs and the low-rise structures containing the required meeting places and all central services. The central foyer with its lofty, glazed stairwell gives the building the desired focal point.

(from here, and you can check this forum thread for more pictures, or ibn battuta’s (one of rug’s student groups) pictures from an excursion there.)

i have to be honest, i don’t like it all that much from the outside. it stands out of the normal dutch neighbourhoods too much – it’s too high, to different.

but one has to give it some credit – it is amazing.
above all, there’s a certain coherence in it. every item has at least 5 edges on it, from the outside walls to the gardens, the mirrors, the desks, the doorways, the little pole with the elevator buttons, the stairs, the cupboards doors, even the control room deep in the basement has a strange spaceship-shape… and that stairwell is quite something. it ligthens up the whole building, with it’s color blue-green color gradient.

also, because the company can afford it, all the 17 floors are filled with sculptures, paintings and other art installations (one i particularly like, has the structure of a bed and lots of broken eggshells around it).
it’s like working inside a museum, in a way. :D

ps – from my desk, on a 7th floor office, there’s an amazing view over stadspark, with all the snow of the last week :P

ps2 – about the organic architecture style, from the wikipedia:

Theorist David Pearson proposed a list of rules towards the design of an organic architecture. It is known as the Gaia Charter for organic architecture and design. It reads:
“Let the design:
– be inspired by nature and be sustainable, healthy, conserving, and diverse.
– unfold, like an organism, from the seed within.
– exist in the “continuous present” and “begin again and again”.
– follow the flows and be flexible and adaptable.
– satisfy social, physical, and spiritual needs.
– “grow out of the site” and be unique.
– celebrate the spirit of youth, play and surprise.
– express the rhythm of music and the power of dance.”

Categories
in the netherlands just life

stikstof

(i’m too tired to write in english, sorry people).

estive a semana passada em portugal. tinha saudades de tudo. dos amigos, dos papas, dos ralhetes. da minha cama, do cheiro do meu quarto, das toalhas da minha mae. das francesinhas e da comida temperada com antecedencia. dos brinquedos, das lombadas dos livros, das caneladas na mobilia. das lojas a fecharem a horas decentes. do autocarro, do metro, do comboio, do fiesta, do vaivem. de perceber o que se diz ao meu lado. das festas de anos, de poder beijar toda a gente e nao ter de estender a mao e dizer o nome. das tias a falar alto.
de mais coisas que as que o meu estado actual me deixa agora enumerar.

tenho o humor moldado (colado) a uma combinacao de cansaco e cafeina. comecei o estagio na segunda, mas nem e so disso – acho que descubro agora o quanto de incompativel a minha vida de estudante tem com esta – e nao estou a falar das borgas, desenganem-se.

tenho boa vontade. mas ninguem me disse que ia estar tudo em holandes (alias, de “nao te preocupes, nao vais ter chatices” ate “pois… mas a documentacao e os relatorios estao em holandes… ate os comentarios no codigo” ainda vai um pedacinho), e que convinha eu perceber alguma coisa. mas porque raio pensei eu que ia ser facil…? os babelfish e worldlingos desta vida dao muito jeito, e ate ja comeco a ficar perita, para alem de estar a aprender vocabulario a um ritmo impressionante. devia ter ido para tradutora diz a minha mae (sim, devia maezita, podia ser que virasse uma nicole kidman nas nacoes unidas), o jeito para as linguas… enfim, nao da para seguir uma conversa, mas percebem-se algumas coisas. stikstof, por exemplo, que quer dizer nitrogenio. ou seja, e a minha vida, neste momento. prever a quantidade de stikstof (ler shtikshtof) que se produz neste pais, para fins calorificos. assim, por alto.
das 9 as 5 sou um deles. mais um, num dos 17 andares, a saltitar na alcatifa. quando saio estou demasiado cansada para pensar, para arrancar a tag com o nome do bolso das calcas, para guiar a bicicleta sem ser em piloto automatico.

dou gracas pelas poucas pessoas que espreitam o gabinete com ar curioso (sou um peixe raro, uma miuda estrangeira num departamento de tipos holandeses) e me tiram da frente dos olhos a folha de calculo, e faco conversa. eles aproveitam para treinar o ingles (ou se calhar estao tao mortos de tedio como eu), nao e que precisem, mas alguns ate parecem gostar (hoje ate frances falei!)

mas ainda ha coisas que nao me entram na cabeca. meia hora para almoco?! sentam-se, comem as sandes com faca e garfo, todos finos e executivos e deixam os tabuleiros todos desarrumados, vao-se embora. tudo em 15 minutos. nao percebo o que dizem, por muito que me esforce so apanho dias da semana, numeros, coisas soltas. e passo o resto da tarde a escrevinhar o que vou aprendendo das traducoes forcadas.
demora tempo, impaciento-me, quero fazer outra coisa qualquer. e depois reparo que nao estou por minha conta, e que tenho mesmo de me concentrar. o projecto ate e interessante, conceptualmente. na pratica… bem, adiante.

e se dantes ja me irritava o fechar das lojas as 6, agora entao…

ps – de onde veio esta onda de resmunguice agora? perdoem. o sono, o sono. mas espero conseguir aprender holandes bem rapido, tres dias e começo a impacientar por nao falar e nao perceber nada do que dizem entre eles. do que se riem? tambem quero! :(

Categories
in the netherlands

the big big city of argentina.

we couldn’t believe it at first.
argentina. tango. coffee. buenos aires. boca junior. patagonia. eva peron. astor piazzolla. mate tea. the second largest country in south america!!…
and she thought it was a… a city somewhere?!
how to explain someone from a country with over one billion people that there are other (big) countries in the world as well?

we had to do something about it, we had to introduce the world to our chinese girl!

and so, from monday on, we have cultural evenings. everyone picked a country and has roughly half an hour after dinner to present it to other floormates. a country per day. pictures, movies, music, food, history, anything goes… i predict funny after-dinners and interesting geographical researchs.
we hope it works.

ps – my day is tomorrow. egypt, here we go!

(click the image for bigger size)