a snowy day in ljubljana from ana campos on Vimeo.

there’s more at meiadeleite.com.

i’m happy that it still works. i missed it.

“For the first time in history, across much of the world, to be foreign is a perfectly normal condition. It is no more distinctive than being tall, fat or left-handed. Nobody raises an eyebrow at a Frenchman in Berlin, a Zimbabwean in London, a Russian in Paris, a Chinese in New York.

The desire of so many people, given the chance, to live in countries other than their own makes nonsense of a long-established consensus in politics and philosophy that the human animal is best off at home.

[...]

And yes, no doubt many people do feel most at ease with a home and a homeland. But what about the others, who find home oppressive and foreignness liberating? Theirs is a choice that gets both easier and more difficult to exercise with every passing year. Easier, because the globalisation of industry and education tramples national borders. More difficult, because there are ever fewer places left in this globalised world where you can go and feel utterly foreign when you get there. [...]To get a strong sense of what it means to be foreign, you have to go to Africa, or the Middle East, or parts of Asia.[...]

[...]foreignness is intrinsically stimulating. Like a good game of bridge, the condition of being foreign engages the mind constantly without ever tiring it. John Lechte, an Australian professor of social theory, characterises foreignness as “an escape from the boredom and banality of the everyday”. The mundane becomes “super-real”, and experienced “with an intensity evocative of the events of a true biography”.

[...]

Nowadays, you might rather say that the more you know of other countries, the more inclusive of all humanity your values will become. You educate yourself, beginning with anthropology.

Every foreigner of inquiring mind becomes a part-time anthropologist, wondering and smiling at the new social rituals of his adoptive country.[...]

[...]His enjoyment of life is intensified, not undermined, by the absence of a homeland. And the homeland is a place to which he could return at any time.

[...]

But we cannot expect to have it all ways. Life is full of choices, and to choose one thing is to forgo another. The dilemma of foreignness comes down to one of liberty versus fraternity—the pleasures of freedom versus the pleasures of belonging. The homebody chooses the pleasures of belonging. The foreigner chooses the pleasures of freedom, and the pains that go with them.”

and freedom i choose. text by the economist.

christmas seems to mean different things for more and more people these days. nonetheless, whichever it’s the right meaning for you, have a merry merry christmas!

- look, look! the sky, is so blue!
- wow! it’s really… blue!
- and so many different shades…
- and it’s like, a different kind of blue!

i missed portugal during summer time.

and they do this for hours…

words are vague to describe the insanity that this country goes through during the coming week: tons of explosives are going to be lit in the whole country. the war is going to last several days and there’s no bad time for yet another blast: every minute of day and night will be filled with loud, colourful and repetitive explosions coming from all directions possible. it’s a huge party and chinese spend large amounts of money to get it done properly. and needless to say that since their buying power is growing fast, so is the amount of explosives used.

for such a big party, they need to get ready in advance. which means, right now everyone is buying ammo and filling up their home stocks of explosives to make this new year the loudest of all. and where does one get all this gun powder? basically, everywhere. from the improvised street warehouses occupying to whole sidewalk to the wobbliest of all tables holding piles of it.

everyone is stocking up to the roof and quantity is the key, not safety. chinese see buying explosives as normal as buying vegetables, and they carry it as such: on the back of their old bikes, falling apart scooters and otherwise in their shopping bags which they hold indifferently while taking a smoke. one would hope nothing serious happens, but always does, and of course, it does so in a china scale.

i just spent the last few hours packing – tomorrow i’ll be flying back to portugal for a two week holiday. quite eager on catching up with friends and family and all the goodies i miss here in china. the food, the good coffee, the proper driving, the food. oh, and the real egg tarts!

but, can’t avoid thinking how much of a reverse cultural shock is going to take place. a year in china did change me and my view about things. curious to see how it goes this time.

merry christmas everyone! :)

- what is this word, “jesus”?

now, how does one answer that to someone who never heard about christianity before and:

a) be completely unbiased;

b) not sound just plain weirdo;

c) resist the temptation of leaving the person in the bliss of ignorance.

any takers?

for starters, a barber shop is not just that. it’s usually a hair salon and a massage parlor and a spa, all-in-one. they are all open till late in the night and that’s when they get crowded with the clients. in many things, they resemble a bar: you go there at night, it has loads of colorful lights, loud disco music playing and a very young staff crew running around. chinese love it, which doesn’t necessarily mean foreigners do too.

if i overlook the fact that communication is always an issue, there’s still plenty of oddness involved. a simple man hair cut, as i see it, means sitting down, getting it cut, possibly a quick washing afterwards to tidy up, pay and leave. but not in china.

the whole ritual involves many runs to the sink to wash: before, after and in between. if it’s a real chinese place, after the first wash they will want to clean your ears with cotton swabs. and let me make that clear, they don’t hand you the cotton swabs for you to do it. they stick them into your ears and start swirling around while they get distracted with a passer by or look at the time.

and then there’s the massage act. it always comes in the package and sometimes is good, others not really. usually it starts by massaging the hair and then it goes down through the neck and might even reach the arms and hands. one would hope it’s soft and relaxing, but it’s not when they shake you so bad that make you look like having a seizure.

the one i went yesterday had a particularity: all their mirrors had written “you are quite attractive”, together with a large yellow smiley face. is this a whole new level of head washing which also includes the brain component? no idea. at least hair cutting in china is never boring, i’ll give them that.

so was it professionally. i started by having do decide between going to the rat race of a large corporate company, or follow my passion for web development in a smaller company whose rooftop leaks in rainy days. i’ve decided for the later, and haven’t regret since.

but, life is made of decisions, and yet another big one just came by. it’s now time for me to rethink goals and trace a new plan for the future. to face the white canvas and pick the right crayons from the box.

and while the plan boils, it’s the perfect time for the geek in me to recover it’s digital life, and with it, save this long abandoned blog – more posts to come. it’s time to refresh.

and of course, a big part of chinese people believe in all that, but who can blame them? americans invented the fortune cookie and the world still believes they are chinese, so in the end who’s the folk story believer?

it could be quite a waste of time, but then we have a view over shanghai skyline that makes up for all those lost minutes.

photo by her.

yesterday she said that sometimes it’s still hard to believe we are in china. sometimes it’s not. :)

having said that, i would like to announce that yesterday we were able to communicate with one chinese couple we met in the elevator. in dutch.

feels like 40° and it’s only june.

- hello?

- wai?

- hello?, i repeated.

- do you… speak… mandarin?

- ah, no.

- ah, are you from… ah… pu tao ya^*?

- hum?! erm, yes!

- i am police man. i want to see you.

i press the button to open the door downstairs and i raise an eyebrow while i put down the intercom. a police man? and he wants to see me? at 9.30pm? did i break any serious chinese law without being aware of?

18 floors after, he appears. very skinny and young, in a blue uniform, carrying a shy smile on his face and some papers on his hands. takes off his shoes at the doorstep despite our invitation to come in with them. his eyes always set on the papers.

- are you this?, he asks me pointing my name on the papers regarding the mandatory police registration i filled some days before.

- yes? is there any problem?

- no! no! no problem! i’m in charge of you, he explained.

- oh?

- can i see your passport? oh, and this number no work, pointing to my phone number on his papers.

we offered him a seat and a few quick questions later he jumps back into his shoes and leaves, even shyer than he arrived.

we closed the door and waited a few seconds for someone to come out and say ‘smile, you are in candid camera‘. or anything. but no.

so, now we have someone in charge of us.

* pu tao ya, is chinese for ‘portugal’

Arrisca mais uma vez
Nem que seja só por arriscar
Nunca se tem muito a perder
Dá um mergulho no mar

Há tantas coisas por fazer
E tantas por inventar
Dá um mergulho no mar

E tu vais ver
Tu vais jogar
Tu vais perder
Tu vais tentar
Mais uma vez
E tu vais ver
E tu vais rir
Tu vais ganhar

Tens pouco tempo para ser só teu
Não esperes nem deixes passar
Essa vontade que quer
Dar um mergulho no mar”

dá um mergulho no mar, xutos & pontapés

holding hands with my special one, we’ll be flying this weekend to the largest chinese city. besides the new jobs, a cryptic language, new foods, new habits, a whole new culture waits for us. that and a city that has almost twice as much population as our home country.

perhaps because the cultural chock will be bigger than ever, this time there wont be an upper bound on the period i’ll be there. more importantly maybe, there is a lower one: 1-2 years. this should not only put things in the right perspective, but also be enough to properly evaluate this step and not make decisions on first impressions.

i’m going there to explore and to learn, to grow.

please don’t mistake me: i’m not about to explain the way the world works or anything. actually, the concept is very simple, i believe. but if it’s not obvious for you, bare with me a bit more.

from the couple of long term abroad experiences i had, it has become more clear to me that when one arrives to a different country he immediately goes through the this-is-strange phase. everything out of ordinary is strange. an uncommon habit, strange. an exotic food, strange. a weird bloke, strange. even the laws can be strange. it takes a while for one to realize that strange is frequently a strong and inadequate word. some never don’t.

go to a country with a closed mind, and everything will look strange, awkward if not offending. but if one does some effort to learn the why’s and how’s, the this-is-strange phase will slowly shift over the time to a this-is-different phase. and that’s when you can take the best out of that experience.

don’t mistake what i’m trying to explain with simply getting used to what is initially weird. it’s more than that actually. i believe that most of the times, it’s the tiny little bits of how a society works that explains it. all the unwritten rules, all the nuances that make a country more or less different than all the others, all the things that  the unwary tourist doesn’t know about. it takes time to fully understand a different society or culture and it’s something one can hardly learn only from books. you really have to see it from close and sometimes, live it yourself.

to sum up, there will always be goods, bads and different points of view in each society and it’s up to us to take the best out of that. i believe that by understanding those differences, one has the best opportunity to question himself about some false dogmas and prejudices in himself or around the world and to learn from that. i truly believe that this makes us better persons.

para mim, este voto é bastante óbvio: sim. sim, porque a mulher tem direito a uma decisão de consciência. sim, porque a mulher não é uma criminosa e deve ter condições quando precisar interromper a sua gravidez. e sim, porque abortos todos sabemos que haverão sempre, mas só uma das respostas pode prevenir mais mortes: e essa, é o sim.

others, just use their share of fame to spread their own mind numbness to others.

and you? how will you use your 15 minutes of fame when you’ve the chance?

“Step 5. Routers exchange DBDs listing the LSAs in their LSD by RID and sequence number.
Step 6. Each router compares the DBD received to the contents of its LSDB. It then sends a LSR for missing or oudated LSAs. Each router responds to its neighbor’s LSR with a LSU. Each LSU receives an ACK.“

sigh. could be worse… right?