mental string

snow showers, redefined

time never seems to be in the right amount to update this blog. still, she is doing a great job documenting our snowy days here in ljubljana. a snowy day in ljubljana from ana campos on Vimeo. there’s more at meiadeleite.com.

canon ae-1 program

today i took my old canon for a walk. it’s been over 3 years since the last click. i’m happy that it still works. i missed it.

awaking up in austria

today i woke up to this view.

on being an alien

“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 [...]

merry christmas

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!

a different kind of haze

being back to portugal after 2 years of shanghai is sometimes, a bit like being on drugs. a sample: - 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.

chinese new year: see to believe

if you need to see to believe, here’s how shanghai looks from our 31st floor: and they do this for hours…

chinese new year

while the world sets their eyes in the middle east, there’s different war silently being prepared by 1.3 billion people: the chinese new year. 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 [...]

leaving on a jet plane

i’m not very good at packing bags for long trips. i always take ages doing it and go over the items way too many times to double-triple-check everything. on the good side, i usually don’t miss anything important for the trips. usually anyway. i just spent the last few hours packing – tomorrow i’ll be flying [...]

what is “jesus”?

picture a language exchange session. in this particular one, her with a chinese colleague which was practising her english. suddenly, this question arises: - 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 chinese haircut

so yesterday i went for an haircut. wanted it short and simple, but it never is around here. having an hair cut in china is everything but trivial. chinese have a whole cult around cutting their hair for which i still don’t have a good explanation. for starters, a barber shop is not just that. it’s [...]

press f5 key to refresh

one year and a half ago we arrived in shanghai eager to learn about a different culture and experience how is to live in a city with 15 million people. coming from an european country with little over 10 million – total, it was quite a change of scenario. so was it professionally. i started by [...]

chinese serendipity

according to my mandarin teacher, destiny – or mine at least -, fits in a tiny little post-it. and it is easy to predict: my birth date and time, some page flipping on some mysterious book, and there it is, my faith on a piece of paper. and of course, a big part of chinese people [...]

petit fleur

0.50eur for a large flower bouquet. it’s easy to be a nice boyfriend in china.

elevator time

we live in a 31st floor. on a good day, the elevator takes a full minute to get up here. but that’s when it doesn’t stop every other floor, so in average it takes a lot more than that. and of course, this goes at least twice a day. it could be quite a waste of [...]

early birds

it’s 6am. the sun is out and about for one hour and outside it’s already 30°c. down in the park i can see a bunch of old timers doing tai chi or playing badminton. and on the streets, streams of bikes and scooters ride in every direction. yesterday she said that sometimes it’s still hard to [...]

ik spreek een beetje nederlands

despite we are both having mandarin classes, none of us dares yet to speak it: even the very basics take a long time to grasp; and, since in general chinese people don’t have any english skills at all, we haven’t been talking much with locals here. having said that, i would like to announce that yesterday [...]

shanghai weather

feels like 40° and it’s only june.

are you from pu tao ya?

ding-dong, ding-dong. said the intercom for the first time since we moved in. - 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 [...]

há tantas coisas por fazer

“Dá um mergulho no mar Dá um mergulho sem olhar para trás Dá um salto no ar Só para veres do que és capaz 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 [...]

“oops!… i did it again”

for those who don’t keep an eye on my synapse bar on the right side, i’ve been working on this last months on relocating to shanghai. after my abroad experiences in the netherlands and in the united states, the obvious step is… asia: my mom and i don’t exactly agree on this detail though. holding hands [...]

strange vs different

it’s so easy to classify something as strange. or odd. nothing is wrong with the act itself, but i’ve learned through time, that strange is most of the times, simply different. and that’s not the same. specially, when you are in a different country. please don’t mistake me: i’m not about to explain the way the [...]

sim, claro.

muito se tem dito em relação a este referendo. dito, discutido, gritado, mentido, ignorado, insultado, enfim: polémico quanto baste. nesta altura já todos vimos os vários pontos de vista possíveis – e até alguns impossíveis; alguns numa tentativa de esclarecer, outros tantos apenas baralhar. isto, de ambas as partes. para mim, este voto é bastante óbvio: [...]

how do you change the world?

some people use their 15 minutes of fame to change the world in a positive way. the kind that has the nerves to stand up and shout to those who are blind, making the world step forward in a better direction. even if that can be dangerous to their own life. wafa sultan is one [...]

my acronym is bigger than yours II

snapshot of what i’m studying this days: “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. [...]