Going with the flow

Basel has been a great place to live. It probably has the best weather in Switzerland, a very big international community, good food and many places to have fun. I normally say Basel is a very comfortable city to live in. The Rhine is very famous for its strong stream and eventually we all let ourselves go with the flow.

After one and a half year of non intense blog writing, the day to live Basel arrived. I'm not sad about it. I loved Basel, it brought me a lot of learning, was a great experience.

I have moved already and at least for the first couple of months, I'm living in Luzern. This city has natural beauty all around it. It has a huge lake, amazing mountains and gorgeous places to enjoy a relaxing moment eating some specialty or just watching Japanese people passing by while taking pictures ;)

Stop by and follow my adventure in Switzerland!

Simple things like Alentejo

In the last weeks I have been busy with several things, personal projects, work, sports, friends, world cup, you name it.
So I have had no time to watch the portuguese news. Today I watched again the news and found myself fixed on the monitor. I was just enjoying so much to watch news from my country, to see what is going on, missing my country so much!

After the news were over, they showed a report on people that live in far villages, hills in Alentejo.

Alentejo is an area in the south of Portugal that is normally dry, very agricultural style and many people have deserted it and went to Lisboa or other big cities. But there are still some important cities and villages in the region. In Alentejo is produced some of the best portuguese red wines. They are my favorite red wines!

The report was about some hills that still don't have electricity. They showed some families that produce a famous cheese, that produce sheep meet and many other things. And these people had no electricity.
There was the case of a family that lives 15km from one of the world's biggest energy solar panels central and still.... had no energy in their homes.

This made me sad. But at the same time, this gave me more strength to go to Alentejo as soon as possible and to have a farm producing several goods, to give jobs to some people in the region, to put most of the profit back into the region, to electrify these hills, to bring internet to many of these houses where most of them have teenagers living. Maybe, together with the city hall to bring some of the nicest teachers from important universities from Portugal and maybe from other countries to teach for a day or two a month, to show their passion and feelings about what they teach: about maths, about technology, about history, about social development, whatever people wold like to learn about. Maybe about agriculture, some training to the local farmers to learn and improve how they can work together, how they can improve their production, how they can have better living conditions.

I have a dream. One day I want to live in Alentejo and have a farm. To grow fruits, vegetables, to raise some animals, to have people working there with passion because I want them to feel the farm is their farm because it will be their farm. I want people to go to work smiling, to leave work tired but happy.

Now I'm worried

Tonight I decided to stay at home with my flatmate. She got a kind of operation to a foot today, a little thing, nothing to be worried and she also stays home.
So, the question is: why am I worried?
The next picture is kind of understandable :)







So, today "they" predicted the minimum of -11º C, but actually they got it wrong and we have now -14ºC. This is great to practice... what is this great for? I forgot.

So, we had a nice dinner cooked by her and the desert by me. So I made some "Natas do Céu", my first ones. In English it's called, Heavenly Cream, but actually I prefer to call it Cream from Heaven, I think it makes better justice to the portuguese name.

Here is the final result!

 PS - Actually, the final result was in our bellies but I could not take a picture of that! ;)

Sometimes, like this

Friday night, after a long week, I feel like this.
I didn't write here, but I made some actions to cut with the past. I started by shaving my hair. After this little step, even though I was told today it was not he best thing to do because of... many things.. it is done and there is no return, I slept better these last evenings. Maybe the hair was bothering my sleep or I have simply been feeling a somehow lighter.
But, tonight, tonight I feel like this. I feel like nothing and like something I cannot define. So, I decided to write, maybe while I'm writing, I find the answer. I think it has to do with the great world we live in, so crowded with people and at the same time, so empty, sometimes.
Friday night. In my normal world, I would meet my friends, I would leave home late because I would know no matter what time I would meet them, they would still be there. I would go very quickly because once I leave I can't wait to get there :) and once there, with them, we would drink, talk a lot, discuss life, cats, drinks, politics, rain, last year's rain, the end of the world in 2012 or even discuss why it is possible to feel like this sometimes.

So, I wrote before I would try to find the reason why I feel like this. And I found it meanwhile. But I guess I should not write about it.
It's just that I'm here.

After a long time, back with a nice concert

After a long time and not keeping my promise of writing more about Vietnam, I come back again to leave some words about life in Basel. Eventually I might drop few more pictures of Ho Chi Minh City.

I changed some plans, I moving to a shared apartment. IT's a good opportunity to make new friends.
I'm moving next weekend, still couldn't rent the van (bad website implementation ;))

Few days ago I've been to a concert. She is called Lena Fennell and she is a very talented song writer, you can check out her musics.
The concert was very nice, she played together with a drummer and a bass player. There are some movies on youtube, I'm sure you will enjoy them.

I will follow her concerts and take some pictures next time.
Stay tuned!

Ho Chi Mihn City

After a looong way flying and stopping, I got to Ho Chi Mihn City. The city of rushed people, motorbikes, no traffic rules (almost) and a lot of happy people.

First step outside of the airport and hot! 22:45 and it was really hot. Not like dying hot, but enough heat to make me start sweating in three minutes.
I traveled to the apartment that the company where I'm working these weeks, arranged for me. Little problem: they had no record whatsoever that I would arrive. I guess they are needing some software :P

No worries, after talking and having the reception person calling 5 people, he said he would get me a room. It was also my fault of course, because I should have printed their confirmation.
Anyway, they put in a temporary room that luckily happened to be the one they had booked for me.


Sunday, with a bit of jetlag and the bad idea of starting to watch a movie around 3 in the morning (The Transformers... I had it since long, so it was time to see), I woke up a bit late.

I went to the city with a new colleague from work, he showed me a bit around, taught me how to cross streets (no, not so simple as waiting for the green light and cross) and introduced to a nice Vietnamese soup. It was kind of spicy, or I had put too many red chilly stuff there. I tend to sweat with chilly food, so for me it was like I was swimming there! :D

Later on, a nice coffee, really good. But he warned me that it would be strong. Well, the fact that I only slept at 5 in the morning and woke up at 8 to go to work, proves he was right.

Later on, other guys from the company joined us in a bar tour. Very nice streets, food everywhere and a lot of people. Of course motorcycles are everywhere.

I forgot to take my camera on the first day, my fault :| but I will soon post some pictures here. No worries! :)

Probably tonight I will take some already.

Preparing Vietnam

In one of my last posts, I referred that one of the good things of being in Basel is that it is easy to be in other places, quickly. In Germany, France, Italy, which is a very nice to have.
When I wrote this, I was not referring to Vietnam, of course, it is a bit further from here :)

But the truth is that I started to prepare my traveling to Vietnam. So my preparation had in its list:

1. Finding out what to take in terms of pills, diseases, shots. I know I might get malaria so some pills are required, as well as yellow fever, pink fever, big toes fever, hair growing on the eyes, and a lot of other things. The best thing to do is to take a knife and kill all the mosquitoes that come in my way!
2. Second thing on the list is shopping. I must take "special" kind of clothes. Actually they are not special, it just happens that I don't have them. Anyway, this item passed to first place because it's done now. Shopping with friends is much easier, they chose, they say it's always great and that's it, 30 minutes shopping for special Vietnam clothes
3. Get some nice presents for the team in Vietnam. I will meet some colleagues for a work project and I must take something nice. I heard chocolates might melt... hum, that spoils all the fun!
4. I know there should be an item 4...I wonder what it is!
5. Prepare luggage. Boooooring! But not so hard, I'm used to prepare it every few weeks.