colorado is one of those places on earth where you can’t say, for instance, “it’s a sunny day“. you can’t, not the day part. because on a single day, it may rain, hail and even a flooding may ocorre. and still, it might be hot and sunny by the time you have to go out.

“if you don’t like the weather here, stick around, it will change” they say, and it couldn’t be more true. colorado is where being a weather man is about knowing a bit of black magic and where making plans for outdoor activities is a bit tricky.

nonetheless, i’m getting used to it; the everage summer day here is sunny and warm*, with temperatures rising up fast very early in the morning and followed with an ocasional thunderstorm by tea time which doesn’t stop having warm, but always dry, nights.

* meaning: hail, intense rain and floods can occur any time, in a just matter of minutes. really.

from all aspects i could stand out from my trip to san francisco, clearly the most relevant one was visiting chinatown. not the tall buildings with all the concrete and the mirrored windows. not the bay and it’s infamous golden gate bridge. not pier 39 with alcatraz closeby. not even the very sloppy streets that gives the city it’s strong character along with the victorian houses. nop, it was chinatown.

right in the middle of a crowded city a completely different one; like if the crosswalk had a teleportation property, and suddently, everything is different. different people, different stores with different articles, different restaurants, different culture, different music, even the smell was different. different.

– did you grep the cvs diff patch for the 7200 and the 3745’s sev4?

– yes, and for 1700’s too. now, the dns and tftp csc’s about ttl on vrf will make this pi ready for rpc and rcp/rsh pdu’s on all uut’s.

this is how (my) technical team meetings sounds like: as if someone was trying to start world war three by launching hundreds of acronyms over the table.

and poor of the guy who decides – god forbid – to expand one single acronym: he will have a whole room of raised eyebrows. like if he was speaking in some cryptic and incomprehensible language.

dois portugueses a viverem numa cidade americana de 100.000 habitantes durante 4 meses, sem nunca conseguir avistar qualquer outra alma lusitana; e o que vão encontrar depois de chegar ao aeroporto de são josé (california), logo no primeiro semáforo? um açoreano, de camisa cabas ao volante de um mustang amarelo e com vários símbolos do sporting pendurados no espelho retrovisor. é bem, é bem; e eu nem sequer sou do sporting.

mas ainda assim, há que admitir: tem muito mais charme ser 50% da população portuguesa de uma cidade.

a couple of days ago, during an airport check-in, i found out that yahoo travel had been kind enough to sell me two (e-)tickets for the price of one; that would be really cool, if they weren’t both for that same exact flight. anyway, it wasn’t a too serious mistake, until my flight companion (we booked together) found out that yahoo didn’t got any ticket under his name at all. he was not very fond of that.

and me neither, when the same exact thing happen to me on the return trip. hurray to e-tickets.

ps: san francisco was great though: more on that soon :)

mas que tinha eu na cabeça quando me lembrei de ir a um museu de arte contemporânea nos estados unidos? e ainda por cima, no colorado.

three months later and the line between strangeness and difference is finally thick. dryness and high altitude quickly turned to be trivial details and, instead, trying to understand the other sides of things became the real deal, as expected. with 6 months more to go here, life is finally going under my own pace, rather than dominated by the constrains of a just arrived foreign with no luggage or a place to call home to. after some initial hurdles, new goals are set, and i’m making my way to them.
having said that, i hope to continue posting on a regular basis again from now on. here are some bits and pieces to catch up.

• boulder has revealed itself as a cozy, beautiful, living city; in general, people are nice and friendly, and with a relaxed attitude. it’s completely away from the concrete madness, and makes the best out of it: it’s calm, full of green spaces and places to ride a bike or just for a stroll. people here keep repeating to me that boulder is not a good sample for the country, on a good way that is – i start to believe that.

• work has reached a new phase now: time to take a full breath and take the best out of the few months i’ve ahead; more than the present, my future depends a lot on how good i use my time here. must use my head on this one and not let the boat float it’s own way down the river.

• the postcrossing project has celebrated its first anniversary a few days ago. yep, 365 days of postcard sending and smile firestarter around the globe. but 365 is just one of numbers on this equation:
  • 2 times the bbc network mentioned the project;
  • 3 different servers;
  • 49 users believe their gender is ‘other’ than male or female;
  • 106 postcards were sent to me congratulating for the project anniversary;
  • 125 countries joined the project;
  • 2968 replied emails to users questions;
  • 10500 scanned postcards and displayed at the flickr gallery.
  • 11764 users are participating in the project;
  • 135000 posts in the forum;
  • 163073 postcards were successfully received;
  • 965121098 kms were travelled by postcards;

  needless to say that i’m still amazed how big this grew. how many times did i say this anyway? well, that’s just another number.

from all the things i could hope for on this adventure in the united states, i did not expect to be given a car. but i was, and there is nothing boring about this particular car. no sir, nothing. riding it is always an act of exploration. of the car, i mean.

nearly every time we drive it – me or my friend joão -, we find a new noise in it. either an original one or a funny combination of old ones, random irritating little noises that make our journeys a true symphony, humming, buzzing and hissing all the way.

it has an inside rear mirror that shakes proportionally to the need of using it at that specific moment, a speedometer that oscillates between an interesting range of speeds – no matter how constant we move, and a gear stick with a inner calling that demands, periodically, someone to hold it still. oh, and an exhaustion pipe with an extra-loud feature which asserts us that our presence is always noticed – at least one block away.

the windshield has a few cracks on it, but luckily, it’s still waterproof, we think. on the dashboard, most of the gadgets don’t work at all; the cassette player doesn’t play, and the radio – just to be supportive -, doesn’t give a single sound either. basically, all the car bells and whistles are dead. hum, well, that’s not completely true: it does whistle frequently when driving fast though.

the driver side mirror is reduced to 1/6 of it’s size, plus, it’s now broken in two – a very good way to get different (but tiny) perspectives of the road i must admit. but, not everything is bad: our car has something that no other car has: a special semi-automatic window opening mechanism that is applied to both back doors. it’s ‘automatic‘, because one of them slowly opens when in motion; ‘semi‘, because the other window doesn’t open at all, not even if we want it to.

but, hey, other than this tiny minor details, it’s a great car and it actually moves! and, as it’s known around here, mazda is the asian porsche. for us it sure is. and for all others, it sure sounds like one.

start with a 10h flight and a 24h delayed baggage. then mix jetlag with altitude sickness and constant thirstiness. put new currency, new traffic rules and a new timezone together, and add, slowly, the automatic gears, the suv’s and a breathtaking view to the rocky mountains. cook on a very large pot and keep adding water all the time.

strangeness has been settling in since i arrived and i’m having trouble focusing lately. i’m having an hard time learning how to enjoy all this the best way, i think. emptiness has been a recurrent feeling and above all, i’m not being myself here. and that is killing me. must work on that asap.

standby.