full speed ahead!

As a student I was always the kind of guy that prepared ahead for trouble to come. This was my way of being, but I also wanted to avoid those stressful nights before the exams. Here at UCSD, however, I have been forced to do both :) Not only I need to prepare the course material at an early stage, but I'm also bound to study until the very last hour before the exam. There is really no other way to do it. At least one that works for me! And speaking of the devil, I have a midterm next Thursday!

Fortunately the courses I wanted to do are almost done. After the two I'm taking right now, I only expect to take one more in the Winter quarter. Unless my adviser suggests some more, I'm not thinking to take any other courses. Although I have to admit I've learned a lot just by taking courses, there is no doubt that, in the way they're taught, they tend to consume a lot of time...
Oh well, that's life! Or at least grad-life, and nobody said it was perfect.

private joke

Não resisti à tentação de publicar esta pequena performance de alguns funcionários públicos da autarquia de Portimão(?). Especialmente dedicada a alguns amigos...
Prestem atenção à letra; sobretudo àquela parte em que fala sobre os objectivos :)
Afinal a diferença entre o público e o privado não é tão grande assim!

2 out of 3

After my debut in baseball, now it was basketball's turn, and I'm still missing American football were our very own, San Diego, Chargers seem to be a good team!


Currently we're in the pre-season, and the Lakers played against the Nuggets in San Diego (an exhibition match, since none of the teams is from San Diego). I went there in a tour organized by the international center of UCSD. Here is a video with some of the highlights of the match. Hope you enjoy it!

By the way, the Nuggets won by almost 20 points difference!

Almoço de Domingo

Para acompanhar as eleições autárquicas fiz um arrozinho de pato que partilhei com o casal Amirali. Acompanhado de um Vinha Grande 2002 (Casa Ferreirinha) comprado no World Market (10 USD).

Para segundas núpcias ficaram os jaquinzinhos fritos com arrozinho malandro de tomate!

my first baseball game

Baseball is not the most famous sport in San Diego. Their team, the Padres, are not one of the nation's top teams. However they were able to beat the LA Dodgers. A team far better, from what I was told, and with a much bigger budget. This was my first live baseball game ever; and with the help from a Korean friend, Jong, I was able to understand the rules of the game.
It was a rather fast game they said... still it lasted 3 hours (!). Most of this time Americans just spent it socializing; eating, drinking, talking, sometimes even outside of the stadium were food and drinks are cheaper. They really only start paying attention to the game around the 5th or 6th inning.


This "baseball field trip" was organized by UCSD's School of Engineering. There is a whole ritual before a baseball game, which we religiously fulfilled: people arrive one or two hours before the game; they arrange for small barbecues in the parking lot just outside of the stadium and drink as much as they can so that they don't spend a lot of money inside. Alcohol is allowed within the stadium, but prices are not friendly. Normal beer starts at $8 USD, and you can get an hot-dog as low as $4 USD.

School's up!

that's right! Classes will start this Thursday. Behind us is now week zero: the orientation week for new students. I've volunteered in the International Center to welcome Exchange Abroad Program (EAP) students, visiting Scholars, or simply new international students, as I was last year. It was nice to see myself in those scary new faces :)

(me at the office, carrying my lunch)

I've talked with my adviser and we've agreed that there are two good courses for me this quarter: Statistical Learning II and Parameter Estimation. Again, the Fall quarter seems to be always the most interesting one in terms of courses taught in my area. The latter was one that I was actually enrolled last year, but that I have postponed so that I could prepare better (taking a pre-requisite undergrad course: Introduction to Linear and Non-Linear Optimization). Although taking courses is always interesting - undoubtedly one learns a lot - it is also very time consuming. And my primary objective for this academic year is to have some scientific article published in a relevant journal and/or conference proceedings: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV) or Internation Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV). I need to check the deadlines for submission on those. For CVPR it's going to be virtually impossible, since the deadline is somewhere in November...

Surfin' USA

Again I have to apologize... I've not been kind to my friendly followers. But I can assure you that I've been putting to good use the time that I'm not posting news! I took the generous offer of my roommate (6f.10'' South Coast surfboard) with a couple of lessons from a more experienced friend in the art of surfing (thank you Tilman!) and "surf's up dudes!". "Awesome" people would say around here :)



I have to tell you that the (really) good weather started one or two weeks ago. In such a way that I was getting up around 6am just because of the heat. So instead of finding new ways to overcome the heat and have some more sleep; I just started going to bed earlier than usual and, like any good Californian, wake up around 6am. I grab my surfboard and hit the water before hitting the books!
Water has been crystal clear, especially during the early morning when there's not that many people in there. I can see stingrays swimming below me, and a friendly seal shows up every morning! The temperature is around some very nice 23º celsius. Which makes it all even more pleasant!


I'm still surprised with the amount of "grannies" and "grandpas" that you see in the water here in La Jolla. You look at them and you can't stop thinking: these folks can barely walk, how on earth are they gonna stand on a surfboard? Then they go into the water and show you some tricks... Awesome!