Going Hybrid

Hello everyone. I'd like to say that I like the fact that people from other countries occasionally visit my blog, and I thank everyone for that.

However, sometimes I feel more comfortable writing my posts in portuguese. The reason for that is simple: it's my mother language, so I'm much more used to expressing myself in portuguese than I'm to doing so in english. Also, I'm very aware of the fact that my english is far from what I would consider satisfatory, especially when it comes to vocabulary. So, I'd like to ask everyone who visits here to please be patient, because a few posts from now on will be in portuguese. I will try to keep writing most of them in english, because it's a good way of practicing my written english.

That'll be all for now. B seein ya!

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A7V600-X, R.I.P.

My motherboard has died, but I feel fine. And that's... odd. The usual reaction would be not to stop yelling for a few weeks.

I think maybe I've changed more than I thought, because not only don't I feel upset, but neither do I feel the urge to fix it. Eventually I will buy another mobo to replace the dead one, but that's not one of the first items on my to-do list.

To be honest, it's quite relieving. I don't like being upset like I used to be about things like this. As everything in my life goes forward, I am acquiring new interests and more important things to worry about - things that I believe deserve my attention much more than a computer.

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So what?

There's a lot going on, actually.

I just don't feel compelled to write about it.

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Happy New Year!

Ok, so here we are. Tomorrow is New Year's Eve!

Last year I was on the beach for the new year. It was fantastic; the place is wonderful (Pitangueiras beach in Guarujá). That night I didn't make any new year resolutions: I delayed that until the next day, when I made three promises. Learn to drive, exercise my own patience and not to spend the next new year's eve alone.

Number one was the one I managed to avoid the whole year: I had the chance, more than once, during 2006 of doing it. And yet, I did not. Shame on me, 'nuff said.

Number two was the subjective one; I'm not sure how much I accomplished in doing what I proposed to myself: patience was just a word I used for many things, including patience itself, tolerance and so on. Virtues I am aware I lack, at least a bit.

Number three was the one I wasn't sure I was going to fulfill. And yet, it is just another example of how our expectations are mistaken sometimes. The first one, learning to drive, was the one I was completely sure I was going to get done. Oh well. I can't say I was actually alone, of course. Not last year, and not now. I mean alone in another sense; without a girlfriend. There, I said it. This time, Sam is with me, in thought. She's very far away, visiting her mother for the holidays. I can't wait to see her again, I miss her very much. Anyway, before I get too far away from my point here, I just want to say that life has much more significance when one has someone like I have Sam. There are a lot of words I'd like to use to describe her and what I feel when I'm with her, but I don't feel comfortable talking about that like this. So, I'm gonna end this post right here.

Happy New Year.

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Oh well.

Sometimes I catch myself wondering if I say too much in posts like the last one.

I think it cannot be helped. Sometimes we just have a lot to say, and not necessarily we know the best way to say it. So we say it anyway, as best as we can.

The last post was something like that. I began writing about something and moved on to another subject almost without noticing. Sometimes it happens - I just keep writing, and whatever comes to mind ends up being transferred to the keyboard. This time, I'm keeping track of what I write, mostly because my main impulse was to write about a few things I said in the last post, which didn't turn out the way I thought they would, mostly because I didn't think very hard about what I was writing. Am I making any sense here? Oh well. My point is, sometimes I wish I could do more. I am very afraid of being mediocre, so I try to justify everything I do, regardless of necessity. However, and I just thought of that, I am glad I'm not perfect. Actually, I'm pretty far from that, which makes it even better, because that means I can get better in a lot of ways.

In other news, I'm happy. 2006 was a fantastic year for me. More on that later on, in the "happe new year post". See ya.

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Merry Christmas

Thanks to Daniel I decided to post something here. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and I think it would be nice to have some message here.

Sometimes I am truly amazed with how people are so driven to always be successful in everything they do. I know success is important. But hey, what good would be light if there wasn't the dark? A life based on success is, in my point of view, meaningless. If there's nothing you can't do, then why bother? We should always have something we are not able to accomplish, at least at first. That makes the taste of victory even better.

I know that from personal experience. In the last years I've been through a lot, achieved many victories and had many failures. Yeah, I'm not afraid of saying it. I failed. Thank god, I'm still human!

I have already posted a comment in your blog, Daniel. And I say it again: Success is a journey, not a destination. So stop running. I have to be honest: I got my BS, but I am quite aware that I don't know or understand a lot of what I should have learned during my undergraduate times. It bothers me a lot more than I let show. Every now and then I wonder if I am going in the right direction, if I'm truly satisfied with the path I've been trailing. My conclusion is that, even if there were a few bad moments, weakness moments, there were also good moments, times when I was stronger than everything that worked against me and moved on. I persisted. I may not be the best of the best. But I do everything I can, I give my best because I like the sensation of accomplished work. Even if my best is not enough, I'm proud of it because it is my best.

I'm well aware of all my mistakes, and of all my vices. They are part of who I am, as much as my accomplishments and my virtues. It's not settling for mediocrity. It's accepting myself.

I could go on and on here, ranting and ranting, explaining myself until I went green. But I'd rather stop here, while I'm still making any sense.

So, it's Christmas again. I still can't believe a year has already passed since last year's tumultuous ending - not the holidays, but the end of that semester, which almost beat me. I still find myself sometimes wondering how I didn't go crazy with all the pressure and stress I went through those weeks. The good thing is, I did, and I graduated, and here I am, on to a next step. The bad thing is that, obviously, The pressure and stress didn't go away - they just changed faces a bit. I have to say, though, that I deserve that. It's been almost eight years since freshman and I still didn't learn to organize myself to avoid getting myself in trouble in the end of semester. Until now, I maganed to escape. I just hope I learn my lesson before it's too late.

Oh well. I went through a lot this year. But it's still not the time for that - there's a week left. I'll work on a nice retrospective post about everything that happened this year...

Last, but not least, I finally would like to post a few words here about christmas, since this is my last post before Dec 25. I do not see this date as the mystic moment when God's Son was born unto this Earth to save all of mankind, even if I believe that Jesus existed sometime in the past and was probably a very charismatic and intelligent (and maybe wise) man. I do celebrate christmas, though, in my own way. even if this date begun as a religious celebration, I think its significance is much more important: it's the moment in the year when people remind themselves (or at least *should*) that they are not alone in this rock and that maybe they have something to do with it. That, even if we are just the result of evolutionary probability, here we are. We happened to achieve a state of awareness no other being in this planet was able to. We may not be the smartest of species, but intelligence is not the only pre-requisite for being human.

My message, though, is not the usual one. I do not think that people should get all together and be happy ever after. I don't believe in fairy tales - I'm much more practical. I believe we are what we are today because of evolution - we followed the course of natural evolution, within certain boundaries, established by our environment and by a few random variables. Homo sapiens has a very distinguished state of awareness and sentience. Mankind, on the other hand, does not. It is the mixture of all human beings, and as such, it is just like other mixtures. People are very different, even if we are the same species. It's just like adding up a lot of different musical instruments. Without a maestro, there's no chance a music will come up from the mess. That's mankind: an orchestra that tries to play a song without a maestro. Well, maybe not completely without one: our environment is a kind of maestro. We play what we see and hear and feel.

Every single person is an instrument. And every instrument has a defined role in an orchestra. I doubt everyone has ever seen the violinist trying to tell the pianist how to play his piano; we're just the same. These days, people are so concerned about the others that they forget themselves; they become lost in collectivity and forget individuality.

If every person took more care about her own life, the world would be a better place. I'm not saying we should simply ignore other people. I'm saying the exact opposite of that: our maestro is what surrounds us. People should pay attention to everyone around them. It's through seeing what happens around us that we trace our own road to the future.

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It's Dec 17... wow!

It's been a while again, I know. Probably no one even comes here anymore. But I intend to keep this anyway. I like to read things I wrote in the past; that gives me a sense os continuity, and shows me the differences between what I have been and what I am.

One thing that never ceases to astonish me is how I become a lot more "present", in a way, when things go wrong. It seems that there's a lot to write about. Or, to be honest, rant about. I guess I just don't have what it takes to comment about good things that happen to me. I've always been like that, often ranting about anything and not talking about other things.

Anyway, let me try to make a "short version" of what has happened since Nov 20, the date of my last post here.

First of all, my semester is over. Well, not quite, since there's an itsy bitsy report waiting to be written... anyway, it's not that urgent, so I consider my semester finished. I think I've done good enough, and my grades are undoubtedly better than last semester's.

It's been three months with Sam now. The best three months of the year, I should say. I expect (or rather want) this relationship to last a long time. I never know how to talk about people I like this much, things I like in her, and that stuff. I fail to comprehend completely why I fell for her, but the point is, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that a care about her a lot (love is a big word, but it's been around for some time now).

The year is nearing its end, and I can barely believe that 2006 is almost done. It seemed like yesterday that I was in my first class, freshman year. Boy, it's been a long time...

Well, I think that's it. Obviously it's not, but anyway, I wouldn't remember everything or, even if I did, I wouldn't have the patience to write about everything. I just hope I can update this a little more often than I did in the last two or three months.

See ya.

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It's been a while.

It's been a quite long time since my last post. Unfortunately, the end of the semester is beginning to show its effects on me, as usual. My free time grows thinner and thinner.

Thanks to Yoshi I had a glance at GHII last thursday. Dude, it rocks. I can't wait until I get the chance to play with it a bit more. Unfortunately it wasn't possible to check out the ending song to the game (Freebird)... from what I've seen on youtube, it's gonna be hell. But it's gonna be good... =)

I just hope my stipend comes along some time soon... =S

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Never let anyone fool you: grad school is nowhere near a joyride. That's what I believed when I got my bachelors; not anymore. Now I realised that my undergrad days were, in factm quite easygoing, so to speak. Now I have no less work than I had when all I had to worry about was reports and exams.

Today, there is a lot more in question: for starters, my whole project, and my thesis. Obviously I don't know exactly how to handle everything - what questions I have to pay attention for, what pieces of the whole thing demand more work, and so on. I;m not complaining - that's the whole point of a grad course, I think. Gradually I am realising a broader view of my work and of what I have to do. I think that's the most important thing to learn when in grad school: how to work by yourself, without leaving other people out.

Unfortunately, on a more practical approach, I'm quite behind the schedule. Gotta work on that...

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Good bye tagboard.

The tagboard have been bugging me for a long time, and it became evident that no one was giving a shit about it - me included. So, I removed it.

I have also updated my picture, take a look on the left. Sam is in it with me.

Everything seems to be finally getting to the right places.

Everything seems to be going in a good direction - although I had to drop Statistical Mechanics, at least my advisor's course is going well. What worries me now is the seminar I'm supposed to present next month...

Apart from that, I have been quite absent from the internet these days. I'm completely disappeared from all the forums I am a member of, became only a casual player on online games, even in the instant messaging it's unusual for me to be online. It's expected, to be honest, since I'm adapting myself to what matters to me. Needless to say, the thing that matters the most has a name, and she's in the picture up there on the left.

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Right then.

Okay, so it's been ten days since my last post - which by the way wasn't exactly long...

I'm still not sure about what to write here. But I try.

Well, there's the setlist for Guitar Hero II. It seems cool, although I don't know many of the songs in it. And I'm pretty pissed due to the fact that it does not include a single song from Led Zeppelin. Pathetic. I don't care whose fault it is, this should not have happened. There are some pretty cool songs, though. YYZ (Rush), Monkey Wrench (Foo Fighters), Sweet Child o'Mine from (Guns), among others. And, of course, Freebird (Lynyrd Skynyrd). I knew it wasn't just a lame joke... =P

In other news, she is far away. I confess that I don't think about her all the time. But when I do, I just can't stand waiting until sunday, when we're going to see each other again. I'm so happy with her I can't express it in words. A lot of thoughts cross my mind these days, many of them about the future. I try not to worry too much about it, but sometimes I just can't help it, and the reason is simple. I'm falling for her.

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Happy.

I've had no time to post here recently, due to several reasons.

I don't know yet what I'm going to write about, so I'm not going to write anything here yet. It is enough to say that the last two weeks have been the happiest period of this year for me. Thanks to her.

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No problem. Just... thoughts.

I'm not sure what to write about here today. It's been a while since I last updated, so I thought I should do that.

I'm again in the LNLS, taking new measures, at the small-angle x-ray scattering line this time. It's very different from XAS, since a measure takes about 15 minutes, so we can't just simply leave it running and go to sleep. It's almost 5 in the morning and I'm beginning to get tired...

My thoughts are not here with me, though. They are dwelling around someone, a beautiful girl from the south, actually. I gotta say, I didn't know what to expect when we first got together. However, as the current week went by, something has changed. And it is still changing. I think I'm falling for her.

I'm glad about it, but as usual my mind simply doesn't know when to stop working. I wonder if she feels the same way I do and I call myself ridiculous for having thoughts like these, for a number of reasons, but I can't help it. I think I just really want this to work, because she's such an endearing person.

Every single word I exchange with her makes me happy, every single moment I think about her makes me feel good. Every minute I spend away from her, I can only think of the next time I'll be seeing her.

I could go on and on here, ranting away about this. About how we have similar opinions in certain matters, stuff we like, words we say. But I have said enough, I think, so I'll stop here and have a good morning of sleep (since the night is almost over).

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'nuff said

It's amazing how certain things happen. Last night the little disaster of a couple weeks ago turned out to be just an opportunity which I happened to seize.

I'm glad I did.

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<insert witty title here>

Procrastination is taking its toll this week. After some time of doing little (mostly because of circumstances out of my control), I realize I need to take action. There were things that could have been done in this time, which I didn't, not because I don't think they are important, but because I simply forgot about them.

My advisor is absolutely right, I need to have more initiative; to be pro-active, using fancy vocabulary en vogue.

Anyway, I just hope I can avoid procratinating too much for the time being. Exercising my willpower and initiative will be my focus for the time being.

Soundtrack: Coldplay - +

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That was a good weekend. Now, back to work.

As things slowly get back where they belong, I begin to think what I'm going to write here about. I'm honestly not sure yet about what to write. It's easier to think about stuff when you have some subject that takes most of your thoughts during the day.

My new tow (the iriver ifp-790T I got last thursday) couldn't make me happier. I have not let it go for more than a few moments since I got my hands on it. I begin to wonder how have I lived until now wihtout it...

It has surely been a great help improving my humor on the last few days. It's capacity is not that big (only 256 MB), but it's enough for now. I won't complain: I consider myself a lucky guy.

After a few days of easy-going life, I think I'm going back to the crazy routine. Work is beginning to come in again, and I have an activity report due soon. Not to mention courses I'm taking.

If someone's wondering about the butterflies incident, I'm not fully healed yet. And I don't think I will be for some time. I tend to take my feelings to seriously and therefore it takes some time for me to accomodate all I have inside me. But I'm sure I am going to get over it eventually. Truth is, I just try not to think about it - my problem in these situations is precisely that: I think too much.

I'll stop here, before I stop making any sense. C ya.

Soundtrack: Deep Purple - Perfect Strangers

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And now, something completely different.

Estou cansado, é claro,
Porque, a certa altura, a gente tem que estar cansado.
De que estou cansado, não sei:
De nada me serviria sabê-lo,
Pois o cansaço fica na mesma.
A ferida dói como dói
E não em função da causa que a produziu.
Sim, estou cansado,
E um pouco sorridente
De o cansaço ser só isto —
Uma vontade de sono no corpo,
Um desejo de não pensar na alma,
E por cima de tudo uma transparência lúcida
Do entendimento retrospectivo...
E a luxúria única de não ter já esperanças?
Sou inteligente; eis tudo.
Tenho visto muito e entendido muito o que tenho visto,
E há um certo prazer até no cansaço que isto nos dá,
Que afinal a cabeça sempre serve para qualquer coisa.

(Fernando Pessoa)

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Not saturday night yet. But...

There's nothing like having good friends at times like these. Saturday and Sunday were simply wonderful: both days I spent with my friends trying not to ruin their fun.

I don't know if I succeeded at that, but at least it gave me time to think. Getting at home after meeting many friends and realize you're all alone is not easy, though. For me it's tough as hell - but I must do though with it. I'll emerge stronger on the other side.

She knows I like her. I'm not sure she understands how much, but it's a beginning. Now comes the really hard part: letting time take its course. I will certainly try to get closer to her, but by hard part I mean what I will do to myself. I think too much about this kind of stuff, measuring every action, pondering every word said, every possible hidden meaning, every minimal action, trying to make everything make sense. But, that's the way I am. It can be changed, but it's not easy nor is it fast. For example, here I am, writing my ass off, trying to explain to myself why did things come to this...

I just wish I could turn off my brain sometimes.

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Not that viewtiful

I'm not sure what to say, or think, or do.

I was expecting something like this. I'm not sure how, but my guts told me to expect that.

But I'm not prepared to write about how this week has been heaven and hell to me. I'm just glad it's over. 'nuff said.

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Life is Viewtiful

Ok, so I skipped my classes today. Both my advisor's and japanese. For some reason I thought I wasn't in the mood to go. I know, I know, it's not something one should have a mood for. But I just didn't want to go, so I didn't. It was wrong, and maybe reckless, but to be honest I don't give a damn. Not today.

Sometimes people should do just that, simply forget about things like "okay, so I have to do this today" or, "I'm doing this because I have to". Obviously I'm not saying people should forget about their responsibilities, ever. What I'm saying is that, sometimes, people should just take a break and do whatever they want, because it maintains their mental sanity. Works for me, at least.

Surprisingly I'm quite inspired to write here today. And I know exacty why: Today I've done something I've never done in my life. In fact, I was going to write down here everything that happened and why I did what I did, but in the end I think it's better not. There are things that are too personal to be spoken of (and written about) in a blog. The right people will understand if I say that I took action (thanks Pivo!).

The butterflies are not gone. But they are a lot happier.

Live is Viewtiful.

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