Radiohead

Right after Queen, Beatles and A-ha, the band that I'd loooove to see in my life is Radiohead. 15.7.2012 in Lisbon. If I have an exam that day I'll skip it. Thom Yorke is more important.

Busy cat me

I have four groupworks to be delivered by next Thursday. None of them is not even near to ready. This week is going to be aaaaaawful.

But I still need to eat. A restaurant recommendation of the year: Chien Qui Fume (Cão que Fuma). My new favourite place. Beautiful meat, not so expensive and very cosy. And no tourists.

But now, back to my SWOT analysis.

Fado 2

I just noticed now that Fado, the Portuguese most traditional music genre, was added to UNESCO’s list of World’s Intangible Cultural Heritage yesterday.

Some news in Finnish here.

More Fado here.

Oh, melancholy. How I like it. Unfortunatelly Fado is much more common in Lisbon than in Porto. I need to go to Lisbon soon, sit alone in a corner of a fado place, have a glass of red wine and listen someone sing this beautiful speciality of Portugal.

Fado

Some fado for a gray Sunday.

Strikes, buttons and braces

I spent the whole day at the university yesterday, so I didn't see any demonstrations or anything cool relating to the strike.  Metro was kind of running and one of the cafeteria in the campus was open so no big drama. Quite disappointing.

One of the things that I'm wondering here is the men's shirts and buttons. And how they're not buttoned up the whole way. Even some professors have their shirts half-way open.

Another thing is the amount of people with braces at the University. Don't know what would explain that.

Btw, it's ridiculously warm in here, got some freckles today. Can't believe that it's the end of November.

Salt

Is there anything more amazing than salt in a salad, is there?

Flu and strikes

Yesterday I woke up with an awful headache, sore throat and pain in the ear. I went downstairs to get some breakfast before going to the University, my flatmate had one look at me and told me that maybe it's better to go back to bed. So, I stayed there all day. So boring. But seems like tea and ice cream cured me, I'm feeling a lot better today. Well I still had to take 3 hour nap between classes.

I'm curious about the general strike tomorrow. If the metro is not running I'll need to skip the lectures. I'm more worried if I can get any food anywhere.

Things you don't see in Finland 2

I went for a swim this morning. The hydrobic class was about to start, the traditional Portuguese techno music was already playing and some old women were hanging out in the pool.

Suddenly a man in his 70's comes to the pool wearing his bathrobe. First he dances a bit to the music, then he starts STRIPPING off his bathrobe and flirts with the old women standing in the pool. I almost choked on the chlorine water when seeing this episode.

Then I joined them for the hydrobic class.

Puppies

They're selling dogs in the pet shops. How sad.

No wonder there are so many dog shelters in this country :(

Meat and hula hoop

My friends asked me what I wanted to eat for lunch, I said "meat". And that is what I got. All kinds of it. It was the kind of a place where the waiters go around and cut the meat for you from a skewer, the meat was great and there was a LOT of it. I heart salty meat.

If you want to look like an idiot, play hula hoop with xbox kinect. It's good fun, though.

Portuguese in practice

This is how I learn Portuguese these days. The clothing vocabulary is under control, and of course I need to know what the stars are promising for 2012.

Bacalhau

I found this bacalhau codfish thing a bit funny. Because there isn't a day when I don't see it or eat it. I like it a lot (I like salt), but the Portuguese are a bit obsessed. Depending on the source there is either 1001 or 365 receips in Portugal alone. And it's probably the only fish that is not consumed fresh. I remember that in Norway I saw places where they dried the fish. This is how they look like in the supermarkets (check the pink ribbon, how cute). I'm already used to the smell now:

Blond me

Today my haircolour was described as "dark blond". It's so relative.

Studies

Yesterday I spent 15 hours at the University. Today I mostly slept, and that means that I have the evening shift doing our groupwork. And tomorrow another 12 hours at the Uni. Pffff I kind of need a holiday.

Hair 2

I was going to the faculty yesterday at 8pm for a team meeting by metro. Suddenly this woman in her 50's on the other side of the metro car smiles and waves to me, and I smile and wave back to her and think who in the world is that. Luckily she didn't come over to talk to me, because I really could not remember where I had seen her. Well then when I walked to the faculty I rememberd that she is the mother of my hairdresser, and she was there to witness the amazing day when the Girl With Short Hair got a haircut.

This reminds me of a finnish saying about everybody knowing the monkey...

Exam...revisited

I had the exam today...what a nightmare. The Finnish person in me just cannot understand that when I go to an exam, there is no room for everybody (like it's a surprise that all the people in the class might want to show up for the exam...) and that the exam finally starts 45 minutes late. And then when the time is up and I'm ready with my bad answers that I did in the hurry, they give you more time to finish the exam. Unreal. So this extra time I spend writing feedback to the professors about their organizing skills.

I think I just made sure that I won't pass the course. Not this year, nor the next one.

Slideshow

I started to read for an exam that I have on Tuesday. The course is Information Systems I. This is slide number 28:

 I'm very curious about the questions in the exam.

A weird night out

I went to a rock club last night. A portuguese man asked me where I'm from. Finland, I said. His reply was a bit unexpected - statistics of the suicide rates in the Northern Europe.

This guy needs to work on his pick-up lines.

Bad bad day

I hope that I wake up tomorrow and realize that today was just a bad dream. The only good was that I finally saw Porto's famous 2 meters tall transvestite.

Freedom

I had my last Portuguese class yesterday. We got the result of the exam and I gor 18/20, which was far better than I thought. We were drinking wine, eating Portuguese cakes (I have tried so many cakes in this country that I have lost count), watching videos and listening to music. I wonder what I'm going to do in the evenings now when the class is over.

Today I got a new radiator, yei! And I noticed that my bathroom roof is leaking :S

Hair

I went to fix my lashes today. This girl who does them is very sweet, but I miss the one who does them in Helsinki, it was so handy to have her working downstairs of my flat, and the fact that she doesn't speak so much is great. The one here is very happy to practise her English with me, and she speaks half in Portuguese so it's not all that bad.

Then she said that they have a special promotion of haircuts of 25%. Before I knew, I was sitting in the chair and was getting my hair washed. She was so happy to cut short hair, but the first weird moment was when she brought a dummy head that had a haircut that she wanted me to have. Then she said that I should get a perm. After that comment I should have ran out, but it was all too entertaining to escape from. So she started cutting my hair, and all the other staff came to look at my short hair. I was once bored in the class so I made statistics of the hair lenght in our class, and I'm the only one with short hair. Anyway, after the show I went to pay, of course there was lot of kisses when I left the place with all the staff (it's still weird, it really is), and this girl at the counter said "you look amazing". OMG she is probably hired just to say that to people, but it made me so happy that I almost wanted to pay again.

The new haircut is actually quite nice.

A typical conversation

- Emilia, how old are you?
- I'm 31.
-WHAAAAAAT?? You don't look like you're 31. What do you study?
-Services engineering.
-WHAAAAAAT, what is that? How long are you going to stay in Portugal?
-2 years.
-WHAAAAAAT? WHY? And how does your MOTHER feel about that???
-???

Ode to the bouncer

Yesterday night I went to a pub, in many places here they have a system that when you enter the place you get a paper where they mark the drinks you buy and then you pay everything once you leave. And if you loose the paper you need to pay like 100 euros. Anyway, I just needed to use the toilet in the pub and I asked the big and grumpy bouncer if it was OK. He didn't speak English, but at some point he understood and he let me in. Once I got back he suddendly smiled in a friendly way and said "Welcome to Portugal". He looked so proud of himself and I think he was practicing that sentence the whole time I was inside. This city and the people keep surprising me.

Lazy L

When I was young I had to go to a logopedist, because I had problems with letters L and T. If they didn't fix my lazy L, it would be perfect for the Portuguese language.

Exam

I'm studying for my Portuguese exam (which is tomorrow, not on Monday). Desentupidor. Esquentador. Items that I never saw in Finland.

Sister Act

Today I learned why there are so many pastries in Portugal that are based on egg yolks: it was the Portuguese monasteries who developed many sweet receips based on egg yolks, because they needed a lot of egg whites for starching clothes. And the egg whites were also needed for clearing the Port wine. That is why so many egg yolks were left over, and they made pastries. Live and learn.

Weekend report

We arrived to Geres Friday evening, first night we were six people. The house that we stayed in was amazing, only upstairs there were four bedrooms and a huge living room and kitchen, we didn't even use the space downstairs. There was a pool as well and the most amazing tenis court that I've ever seen, on the mountain side with an amazing view. Well it was too cold to use the pool, but the tennis court was a perfect spot to watch the stars and it was really amazing with the Milky Way and shooting stars.

On Saturday two more people joined the fun, we drove up the mountain and went for a small hike, saw a waterfall and followed the river up the mountain. In the river you have small pods where to swim in the summer, now the water was freezing cold. During the whole weekend we are a lot, drank really good wine (chosen by the wine specialist), played cards and chess and sat in front of the fireplace. Total relaxation.

                                                              (photo by Joana M.)

On Sunday we got two more friends joining us, and after a delicious lunch in a local restaurant we went here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peneda-Ger%C3%AAs_National_Park. Very beautiful place with mountains and water, just next to the border with Spain. Unfortunatelly we didn't have too much time to stay there, I need to go back and get a bike to drive around the park. We were then driving up and down another mountain, really cool roads coming down the hill, the view was amazing the whole way. In the evening we naturally ate more and had some nice conversations, I was telling stories from Finland and made some people jealous when telling that I saw Aurora Borealis, taught them some Finnish and I finally learned how to swear in Portuguese! And practiced how to pronounce "põem". Difficult. I also saw a LOT of bugs. And spiders. Creepy things and they love me.

It was a great weekend and LUCKY ME having met all these nice people!