Categories
just life

where do you think you’re going?

where do you think you're going?

the campos brothers are a bit in the middle of a crossroads. we don’t know very well what the future holds or what exactly we want it to be. anyhow, little brother, hang on, there’s always a solution. today i read this piece of advice here. it fits, doesn’t it?

"Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life (…) Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do."
Steve Jobs, CEO Apple

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in the netherlands just life

part 1/813 – catching up.

2005.
it’s no time for looking back anymore, because 2006 is already here, but this year that went by was one of the best so far. blues and electronic concerts (and concert photography), working, quitting the job, a photo exhibit (twice!), moving to another country, the radio, all the people i now know (the ones i met this year and the ones that stayed close to the heart)…

as for 2006… we’ll see.
i was presented with the much wanted possibility of staying in the netherlands for another semester and doing a master thesis in groningen (which will give me the equivalent to an internship and not a master thesis, but i shall not begin to whine about the bologna treaty and how the portuguese are still not complying to it… another post, perhaps). problem is, i don’t want my parents to pay for it and i have no money myself (as a good student i am…)
so i guess i have a bit of a problem, hein? well, we’ll see how it goes. i guess i’ll find a way to sort it out somehow. (if you have any brilliant plans or proposals, ship them my way, s’il vous plaît! i’m quite available for html & design stuff or any other colaborations.)

but enough of that. as for life, i’ve been enjoying my time in portugal very much, being spoiled by all family members in every possible ways. i’ve spent the past week and a half roaming around celorico de basto, and porto, and now i’m in braga for a few days… finally i have some internet :)

had a couple of css and web standards related books for xmas presents, along with a japanese doll, a 512mb memory card, postcards, a dinner by the douro, one of ana ventura’s bookmarkers, a van gogh museum moleskine… speaking of which, i guess the whole 2-day trip to amsterdam prior to my arrival can itself be considered a huge xmas present.
i roamed around the city and got lost over and over again, until my feet refused to move and my head went strange from the lack of sleep. i absolutely loved it, despite all the tourists like me and all the others that were there just for the coffeeshops and red light streets.
amsterdam is gorgeous, cosmopolitan, urban without losing the sight of bricks and canals. and i must go back there for some more, some other time. 
specially now that i’ve noticed that my minolta tricked me and decided to ruin about 40% of the pictures i took there… something with the shutter i think, but it needs further investigation. now i’m just afraid to develop the rest of the films i shot when i was in gronigen. great.
(to be continued…)

Categories
in the netherlands

vogelgriep

thanks to rtp taped emissions, we see the evening news from yesterday on our lunch break. feels a little bit more like home when we ear the sound of the beginning, and feels good to actually know more than publico’s front page news.

for instance, the parliament is still pretty empty. i can’t understand this. if that’s the deputee’s job, how dare they not show up? i mean, here we are, cycling half an hour in wind and rain to have a 2 hour class… what are they doing? why can’t they focus on it only?
and the bird flu? market people forbidden to sell live chicken, ducks, etc and the panic of those who have done nothing else all their life. or the dozen dead ducks who showed up dead in a beach in the center of the country and the general media histeria around it…

[ oh! as is wrote this (and was starting to change subject to other ways of knowledge), there was a short sketch on work over the internet and i saw ana, rosa and hilda there :) how nice! ]

anyway, as i was saying, we have been learning a lot more about other countries, which is turning this erasmus experience into something rewarding beyond words. ramadan, for instance, is now a word with a meaning. it means “holy” month, a month without eating or drinking during daylight (at all), a month for the introspection and meditation.
being here makes us search for the countries in the map and attach the stories to the places. romania, syria, vietnam, turkey… and even germany, italy or belgium. what did i know of these places before coming here? and what do i know now?

reading, researching, living in those places for a while, talking, listening, moving, starting it all over again. i think i have a plan. :)