” If all the Smarties eaten in one year were laid end to end it would equal almost 63,380 miles, more than two-and-a-half times around the Earth’s equator.”

From 100 things we didn’t know this time last year.

Happy 2006 :)

Assegass amegass, boldog karácsonyt, bom natal, bo nadal, bona pasca’e nadale, bon nadal, bon natale, buon natale, chrismas joon wadhayoon, christmas nay hma mue pyaw pa, christmas sameakh, c pождеством, djoyeus noyé, dobro dedek, eguberri on, eydet mobârak, felix dies nativitatis, feliz navidad, frohe weihnachten, geseënde kersfees, gëzuar krishtlindja, glædelig jul, gleckika wïanachta, gleðileg jól, gleðilig jól, god jul, god jul, gojan kristnaskon, häid jõule, hyvää joulua, ia manuia le kerisimasi, jénwèl, joyeux noël, jwaye nowel, kala christougenna, krisimas yakanaka, krismas ki subhkamna, maligayang pasko, meri kirihimete, meri kurisumasu, miilaad majiid, milied hieni, mừng chúa giáng sinh, nadolig llawen, naragsak a paskua, nedeleg laouen, noela we pîroz be, noeliniz kutlu olsun, nollaig chridheil, nollaig shona, priecīgus niemassvētkus, schéi chrëschtdeeg, selamat hari natal, selamat natal, seun-tan chu-ka-hae-yo, shuldyr ymuśton, souksan van christmas, srecan bozic, sreken bozik, sretan božić, sretan božić, subho baradin, su kaledoms, tratry ny krismasy, un crăciun fericit, vesel božič, veselé ránoce, vesele vianoce, vrolijk kerstfeest, vrolik kersfees, wesołych Świąt, z rizdvom hrystovym, весела коледа, З Божым нараджэннем, สุขสันต์วันคริสตร์มาส, 聖誕快樂.

just came from my internship presentation. i am now officially a graduated engineer.

why does it always feels so empty?

• Do you still remember how fun it was to run after a bouncing ball? Now imagine 250.000 multi-coloured bouncy balls running down the street. That’s the new Sony commercial and even has an website for itself with the full length commercial, making of, mp3 music and lot’s of goodies – a must see (via ensaio geral).
• In my blog feeds I’ve a special category for blogs that I only visit for the pictures. Cute Overload is my lastest addition and match’s exactly that section, but be warned: you might be tempted to run to the nearest pet shop after visiting it.
• And speaking about cute things, if you think a rabbit is no more than a fluffy little animal or that at most, it can be a pet: you are completely wrong. They can do a lot more than that. Rabbit hopping seems to be quite a popular sport in Denmark which holds the honorable world records for rabbit long and high jump, 300 and 99.5 centimeters respectively. If you think it’s a joke (I did at first), have a look at their performance, and if you ever consider getting into it seriously, here is a place to start.
• And to end, two brilliant ads for some reality check.

jeezz, what a weekend… it has been some years since the last time I had to attend to someones wedding, and I nearly forgot why I hate it so much. Not that I have something against weddings itself – I couldn’t care less about it -, but the celebration afterwards, in particular the traditional lunch-dinner is quite something. Wedding celebrations are probably one of those things that vary a lot from country to country; the only ones I know are the typical portuguese and I like to call them: eating marathons.

The starting line is at the bride and fiancé houses (depending with whom you are family or acquaintance with) over some appetizers. There, you’ll find cheese&ham, general pastries, pâté, random cookies and whatever fits in small dishes to fill a large table with them. After everybody had his own full-body photo with the yet-to-be-married by some nifty corner of the house, and the table is nearly empty, everybody gets packed in cars and heads to the ceremony. The event, itself, lasts from twenty minutes to one hour, and always ends in a “surprise” rice shower over the newlywed *.

That done, the new checkpoint is by some greenish background where each couple or person takes another full-body photo, now with new couple and their new hair decoration; this lengthy session is proportional to the amount of guests and is not optional to anyone. Photographer happy, time to head to the next checkpoint: a carefully prepared food fest where the main event takes place.

From my experience abroad, I’ve learned that portuguese people typically eats, well, a lot; and when one starts to eat in appetizers as much as his typical meal, you can guess where he’s going to. Imagine an all you can eat restaurant but with no medium-low quality food: only with bold, tasty, delicious, yummy, i-must-have-a-bit-of-that-too, nobody-dislikes-this kind of dishes. When I said earlier it was a lunch-dinner, it wasn’t because it can be either, but because it can be both: it can last for hours non-stop. It actually gets to a point where it can be disgusting (to me at least), seeing all that ingestion having for finishing line, the physical limits of the body, with everybody trying to cross it.

Of course my opinion is biased due to my limited experience (thank goodness) on this events, and I’m sure this is changing although there are still a big amount of them like this, the old way. Oh, nearly forgot: it’s normal to include some car honking along the way and for the fearless, there’s some dancing by the end (don’t ask me how).

I hope no one else in my family is thinking about getting merried anytime soon: I’m not going, not even if I have to apologize to the whole family. Thank you, but not thank you.

* If one day I get married, I’ll do it in an hot-air balloon; thus, I’ll be the one throwing rice over the guests, when landing :D

Getting home soaked from the rain or being almost run over by swarms of bikes are things nobody wishes for their vacations. Well… I do. And if I add to that the wandering through the streets, the walking by the dutch canals, driving a bike to everywhere, witnessing and feeling a different culture – that can give me a natural high, and no – I didn’t went to the coffee shops. :)

Moreover, to get to know people from all around the world and live with them, again, in an exchange student spirit, swapping awareness of different realities and ways of thinking, stretching and breaking the boundaries that a settled mental string can easily create, both in the differences and the similarities – and smile at how well everything mixes… Oh, and vla! Vla was the cherry on the top of an already perfect vacations.

Hokey, an houseboat dinner, stroopwaffles, homemade vla, crazy Italians moo-ing on their bikes, v&d, stubborn bike locks, vla, dark mysterious toilets, snel trains, strippenkaarts, vla, tips.NL, tschuess papa and vla – I told you before about vla, right?

Twelve days scattered between Groningen, Amsterdam and of course, Utrecht, were enough to make a breakpoint on my life and put myself together. I believe I needed this to strength old convictions and decisions regarding my future; there seems to be an haze in this country that gets into my head and changes it’s pace and granularity. Finding a way to move abroad is becoming an even higher priority.

If it wasn’t for my lil’p thread, this blog might have been buried some time ago. I’ve set so many stupid restrictions on myself regarding this blog – no lyrics, no poems, no “fast-food” posts, no general geekness, no general linking, no triviality of the day, no yet another blog talking about it – that it ended up being a no posting blog.

This is a cease and desist letter to my self-moderation skills; a wake up call to start a rescue operation on a numb blog; and also, yet another post about a dying blog to start the rule breaking around here.

Stand-by.

Tomorrow by this hour, I’ll be on the Netherlands, having my first real vacations in four years :-) After five exhausting years fighting to finish my graduation, I’ll finally have a break, now that my six month internship is over. And I can tell you this for sure: postcrossing has been helping keeping myself sane and to keep my goals intact all through this last months. More than ever, I really needed something to give a meaning to all the bits&bytes, and the huge stack of cold mnemonics that I have to deal daily on my profession. Postcrossing has made this for me – it kept me smiling in the end of the day, nonetheless the constant time juggling to find bits of free time for me and my friends in the between. It worth it all the way.

So for next days, I’ll be on a far far away country visiting friends, places and reviving the old erasmus spirit that I long for so much. Altogether, I’ll be displaying again mine and ana’s photo exhibit tips at the Groningen University. (I miss shooting, me and my camera, – we’ll get even this holidays :D)

On my return, I’ll be starting on a new job, hopefully, more interesting than the previous one – I’m still firm on my decision to go work abroad, but until I find something suitable, I must have a way to pay my bills. (gosh! I start to sound like my father on this one.)

It’s been almost two months since my last post around here. Two months since I’ve launched postcrossing, two months since my concept of free time has been redefined, two months since my life changed a lot. Not just due to postcrossing, but about that, I’ll write on the next posts.

Postcrossing status? What else can I say, it’s a success – much bigger than I ever expected. If someone two months ago would have told me that it would reach where it is now this quick, I would have laugh at it. But now, things got too serious to be laughing about it.

Initially, I only had set two objectives for postcrossing:

• to expand it to more countries than the initial small set;
• and that the total of received postcards would be bigger than the registered users;

Seventy two countries and seven weeks later, I’m up to much more serious objectives and demands now. What was just a personal project turned into a worldwide community of users who share common interests and are connected not just by 0’s and 1’s but by something more.

I can tell you this much: time does not expand. I tried, I failed, repeatedly. I really wish I had more free time to work on postcrossing but I don’t – my internship is still two months to go and a huge bunch of my free time has been to postcrossing alone. But… I must be honest on this – it’s been such a delight to make things work this far, that I’m not abandoning this project any time soon, that’s for sure. I cuddled this idea for so long and now that it has born and is growing so damn well, I just hope I can keep it straight and on the right path for a long time. So many ideas, so little time to implement them…

Finding a new hosting for the website is a priority for the moment has the current solution will eventually be scarce for such amount of hits. This might be a surprise for some, but the server where 2800 users have registered is located in a small storage room in my home, just next to the kitchen door :). It has been doing an excellent job so far, but it’s time to start thinking on a more stable solution, specially because my internet link isn’t appropriate for this anymore. What this implies is that I’ll need to find a way to support the project financially and that’s where the tricky part comes. Let’s see how things go in the next weeks. Please let me know if you are interested in supporting the project.

Note: don’t expect to find on this blog more posts like this one about postcrossing. From now on, I’ll keep postcrossing subjects to a minimum. I always aimed on this blog to keep my geek side apart and I intend to keep it that way.