Gospel choir

Finally I was able to see a live performance from a gospel choir.
Special guest: the Holy Ghost!

This is far from being "the real thing" and the sound is not that great, but you get an idea of what it's like :)

some memorable dates

Two years have past since I step foot in American soil. It was Sep 9th, 2008, still very well in time to live all the economic crisis and the full epic '08 presidential campaign: Obama vs. McCain. The US Government had just placed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under conservatorship of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. At this time, these two companies owned or guaranteed more than half of the US's $12 trillion mortgage market. Any event this post is not to highlight past dates, but future ones!

With no doubt, living abroad is an enriching experience. It has been so, to me! However, it is not without some drawbacks...
For instance, next Saturday a dear friend of mine is getting married, and I won't be able to attend. Therefore, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you, Miguel, all the best. Certain that you're going to have a wonderful ceremony surrounded by family and lots of friends. Although I won't be present in this starting point of your "new" life, you know I will always be there in the road to come!

In this picture, from right to left: Keemosabe's birthday is today (17th), Garrett as recently celebrated his wedding's 4th anniversary (where this picture was taken); and standing is the big man, Miguel is getting married this Saturday ... uau! So many reasons to celebrate :)

thank you!

I just got word, that my funding was renewed for academic year 2010/11. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all Portuguese tax payers.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you!! Will try my best, not to disappoint you.

San Francisco (CVPR 2010)

I have to say, at this point I am pretty annoyed... I had this post practically complete, but somehow failed to save it before the last revision, and now I have to start all over again!

Oh well ... here goes! Little-by-little... the update continues :)
Unfortunately I still don't have the pictures from Portugal's day cocktail at Sagres (the camera was not mine), as such I will skip that and jump into my trip to San Francisco.
Let's start by it's climate. "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco,'' this saying is already a SF cliche, it is often attributed to Mark Twain, but it seems to be an invention of unknown origin.

The main purpose of this trip to SF was to attend a conference; IEEE Conference in Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition. This is one of the most prestigious conferences in the area of Computer Vision; besides it was my first participation in a major event, hence I was thrilled.

The conference was held in a "multiple sessions" format, rather than single thread. Meaning that it was up to you to choose the most interesting talks to attend. I have to admit that, in the beginning, I was a bit overwhelmed with the whole thing. The conference started on a Sunday with some tutorials, but the interesting stuff started only on Tuesday.

Any event, this allowed me to get to know S.F. a little bit ahead of schedule :) Most of the folks from my lab were there for the conference; hence we organized and set on a bike trip to have some lunch at the fisherman's wharf. A very popular popular spot in SF.

Thinking ahead, we decided to hold on to the bikes for a day. This way, we thought, we can get to know SF a little better. Although this is not a very bike-friendly city, it is for sure faster than walking.
There are several touristic activities in SF. One of them being a trip to picturesque town Sausalito (North SF, crossing the golden gate). Because I had some sessions to attend in the conference, I interrupted the bike tour after lunch, and head back to the hotel where the conference was being held, and resume later in the afternoon. Sunhyoung and Kritika headed back to the hotel with me. We decided to go to Sausalito later in that afternoon. Vijay and Hamed continued the bike tour, since they had no plans for the afternoon.

As I was saying, the "usual" ride comprehends a bike tour through the golden gate towards Sausalito, and once you're there take the return ferry to the fisherman's wharf passing close to Alcatraz. But because we were departing a bit late for this, and didn't want to be left stood up in Sausalito (the ferry stops at 7pm), we decided to do this tour on the exact opposite direction. That is: Fisherman's Wharf > Ferry > Sausalito > Golden Gate > SF downtown.

The Golden Gate is one of the most pictured places on the planet... and I guess I gave my contribution to increase those statistics :)

As the conference was entering it's climax (I would say Thursday), my personal excitement curve was going downhill... tiresome was taking over I guess. Because there was a lot of interesting material in the venue.

By Friday I had enough of tutorials, talks, poster sessions and coffee-breaks. I was in desperate need of a relaxing weekend. At this point I changed from the Hyat Regency - SF business district - to the USA hostel close to Union Sq. Although the hostel experience was quite good, I have to say this was quite a difference...

The above picture, as you can imagine is from the Hyatt Regency. There was this huge football-like structure close to the bar, to celebrate the FIFA World Cup 2010. I don't seem to have any comparable picture of the hostel, but take my word... it was slightly more unpretentious :)

Arrived at the hostel, I was paired with two Swedish girls and a German guy. They were coming from a tour to the Yosemite National Park, but had just met a couple of days back. As in many other hostels, the environment was pretty layed back and rapidly I befriended my new roommates, and we set on to have dinner (the whole Yosemite gang and myself) in a Thai place, somewhere close by.

After dinner, the hostel had organized a small get together in a bar close by, where an Italian friend from UCSD that had been there for the conference as well, decided to join us.

Before coming to San Diego, I used to work in Alcatel-Lucent in Lisbon. Where I had some occasional business trips to Antwerp. Thankfully I met lots of nice people there, in particular two chaps: Diego and Robert. They both worked in Antwerp at that time, and they're now working in Moutain View (South of SanFran). I though it was funny to arrange for a beer-meeting with the guys, and so I called them and we had a nice lunch in a sunny afternoon at the Cheesecake factory. Here it is, for posterity:

The few days left that I had on my long weekend, I spent visiting the city. I have to say SF is a lovely city, with lots of nice things to offer... but the weather is certainly not one of them. You could be nicely walking around with just a t-shirt, and around the corner be blown away by a freezing windstorm. Still I do believe it's worth a visit, and to prove that I'll leave you with a couple of pictures I took:

rock'n'roll marathon

I'm so late in my writing. Actually, "so late" is an understatement... I want to write about the marathon, my trip to San Francisco, my first paper, ... too much for a single post. I'll just write a few lines about the marathon, and will leave the other subjects for upcoming posts!

Roughly one month ago, I've completed my 3rd marathon, the first one completed abroad.
I had been practicing hard for the last four months and I had the expectation of achieving a record time lower than 4 hours. Unfortunately I was unable to get there... still I improved my personal best in 30 seconds or so ... "always look at the bright side of life" :)

As you might imagine, in such a big race, there is plenty of time for lots of stories. And indeed, many things happened during the race. I remember a couple of guys that were handing out beer for contestants (mile 8), Juan and Anna (a couple of spanish friends) were cheering for me at half way point (mile 13) as the race was going just outside their place, and the most embarrassing episode: how I accidentally spit another contestant... I'll come to that!

I have to say I was tricked by my mind. I was doing an absolute all-time record (for me, that is) at the 17th mile. I got so excited about that, at that moment, I've totally slacked off. By the 20th mile I noticed how slow I was in the past 3 miles (maybe 10m per mile or so), and tried to get again into a good rhythm... but my legs just wouldn't respond! This was an absolute nightmare, and it was the toughest part of the race. First, I was just reaching the "wal", and second, there was a lot of wind against us. I honestly thought about walking for a while. My legs resembled two heavy logs, my right knee was killing me and I felt this excruciating pain in my left foot. I was a complete rag at the 21st mile. And 5 miles is still a very long way to go! At this point, I had to use all my veteran experience... I was running close to the right hand side of the track trying to put my feet on the floor very carefully to avoid further pain or injuries. As I had one of my last passages for a supply post; finishing my energy drink first, and water later, I spit to my right hand side, as there was nobody there. Surprisingly, the spit turned back (with the strong wind) passed close to my right eye and hit a lady that was going behind me. I think I've never felt so embarrassed in my life. I really didn't know what to do... either run faster, or much slower... I just couldn't stay close to her. None of us stopped, but I approached her and apologized. Come to think of it, this was not my fault but the wind's. Either way I was very annoyed with the whole situation, and still struggling to finish the race. She understood that, at that time, I was more dead than alive, and even if I wanted to do that on purpose, I could never do it! She was faster than me, at that time, and soon enough, I was alone and back to my growing problems of several aches in my lower members...

Eventually I was able to control my pain, and maintain a steady pace until the 25th mile. As soon as I saw this plaque, something released my energy reserves and I boosted for a very nice last mile (in roughly 7m30s) pulverizing my previous record for the marathon with a strong finish!!

The feeling of finishing such a race, is not possible to describe through words. I had just reached Olympus, and Zeus was expecting me.

As for the organization of the race, at this point, everything was going smoothly. However, in the return trip all hell broke loose: it took me 4 hours to run 26.2 miles, and more than 2 hours just to take the bus back to the parking lot reserved to participants... this was poor organization. Completely avoidable, and everybody was extremely dissatisfied with this. I'm sure they lost a few competitors for next year...

ps- this post is too big to be re-read, and I'm tired now; hence I apologize for any mistakes you might find!

tall ship

look who's visiting...

my sister's keeper

that is the name of a movie, actually a novel by Jodi Picoult later adapted to cinema, that I just watched. What first caught my attention to this movie was the short (and weird) description associated with the movie. Something like: tells the story of a child looking for medical emancipation from her parents that successively "used her" for transplants - marrow and others - to her older sister suffering from a serious rare type of leukemia.
In my humble opinion this is not at all what this movie is about. It's a very sad movie, as you might have imagined by the description, but deals with a real life story. Very worth viewing... give it a try!

graduation day

Estou vivo ... com pouco tempo para descrever as minhas aventuras por San Diego, mas bem de saúde! Muito bem aliás. A maratona é já daqui a menos de 2 semanas. Estou por isso no pico de forma.

Quase a completar dois anos desde a minha chegada tenho este ano as primeiras festas de formatura. Aqueles que vieram apenas fazer um mestrado (2 anos) estão a acabar agora. Tive o meu primeiro "graduation day" noutra universidade: San Diego State University (SDSU). Mais alguns se seguem mas agora em casa, na UCSD.


Nesse mesmo dia, 23 Maio, à noite tive um jantar com alguns investigadores portugueses da zona de San Diego. Foi promovido pela AICEP por ocasião das festas do Espírito Santo, famosas nos Açores; de onde aliás provém a grande comunidade portuguesa de Point Loma. Este jantar foi algo marginal às festividades, mas por ter sido agendado precisamente durante as festas contou com a participação do secretário de estado das comunidades, António Braga, e o cônsul português em San Francisco, António Costa Moura. A quem desde já agradeço o bom jantar! Ou talvez deva agradecer aos meus queridos leitores portugueses :)
Como se previa, a conversa ao jantar foi enfadonha. Quase toda a gente a lamber as botas do secretário de estado, a tentar mostrar como era fabulosa a investigação que faziam, e como estavam a anos-luz do que se faz em Portugal. Ao que ele respondia com um discurso cheio de propaganda política. Da minha parte, tentei não entrar no mesmo diapasão. Quando vi uma oportunidade para desviar a conversa para algo mais interessante aproveitei a deixa. O secretário de estado discursava com os feitos políticos do seu governo, até que entrou no tema da educação, rematando que à escola não cabia o papel de educar, mas apenas o de ensinar...
Não podia discordar mais desta opinião. Sobretudo no que se refere aos primeiros ciclos do ensino básico, onde o papel da escola é quase exclusivamente o de educar e não ensinar. O meu Pai lembrar-se-á seguramente que já tivemos esta conversa em tempos idos. À mesa, a discussão animou um bocadinho e em pouco tempo estávamos a falar da recente proibição do uso da burca na escolas públicas em França. Para grande tristeza minha, notei no entanto que as sumidades que há poucos minutos se gabavam sobre as suas maravilhosas descobertas, estavam agora silenciosas. Fiquei triste com esta falta de interesse por temas tão actuais no nosso país e no mundo...

anima sana in corpore sano

as many of you know, I've been developing my running skills in the past few years. In such a way that I've even participated in some official races. In what concerns long distance running there is nothing comparable to a Marathon. To be able to finish such a race is like touching the sky; an overwhelming feeling, like no other! In the past, I was able to finish two of those 42,197 meters long races. Both of them in my hometown, Porto.
Now I'm preparing my international Marathon debut. I'm going for the San Diego Rock'n'Roll Marathon next 6 June. With that in mind I've been practicing hard. You can check my training plan below (distances in miles, rather than km):One day, I decided to take my camera and capture a couple of small video clips during a practice run. The resulting footage lacks quality, but gives an idea of my neighborhood. Hope you enjoy it!

the day the earth shook

Almost two years have passed since I moved to Southern California, and on this 2nd Easter the earth shook, violently, beneath my feet!

It's Easter Sunday, after lunch today I went to my office at UCSD since I had some stuff to prepare for tomorrow. I was talking to my Mother when all of the sudden the walls, floor, lamps, shelves... everything around me was shaking! I immediately noticed it was a earthquake (perceptive, hum?). At first I found it funny. After all this was my first quake. But instead of calming down, the quake just got bigger and more intense; and now I was getting frightened; because, having no experience on quakes, I thought it would slow down as time went by. At that point I had to tell my Mother: "Mom... I need to hang up, the building is shaking", needless to say, she panicked :)
It must have last little less than one minute, and now that I look back, I admit that I've done pretty much everything I shouldn't! I was looking up watching the lamps shaking and the A/C pipes, waiting for them to fall on my lap. The alarm sounded on the building, and at that point I was running towards the emergency exit, when as sudden as it appear the quake just... disappeared! By the way, my office is on the 5th floor. As I was reaching for the stairs, I run into a friend. He was at another room in that same floor. He was beneath a table throughout the quake... smart attitude, I thought. I guess it's experience!


After all this commotion we were slowly walking down the stairs, and laughing about how scared we got. The adrenaline was still flowing through our veins.

Any event, all is well when it ends well! And yet (another) lesson learnt: do not underestimate the power of mother nature!

PS- we had several aftershocks throughout the day, but none of them even resembled the big quake.

Yet another "yes we can"

The already historic health care reform bill was voted favorably today. With the republicans (GOP) massively voting against it, and after months of complicated negotiations within the democratic party, the bill got approved today. President Obama was leading these final weeks of negotiations putting himself on the line in case it redounded to failure...



I have to admit that throughout the months of negotiations I've lost track to the changes made to the original bill, but the numbers people talk about go over 30 million Americans covered under this new public health care bill. Maybe the US are on the verge of abandoning basic capitalism and embracing a more social democracy

For me the video below is one of the most emblematic and shows how controversial this theme is for the American society. It reports to a rally (tea party) against the health care bill, where a counter-protester - seemingly a very poor, crippled, parkinson patient who couldn't afford proper healthcare , or got denied coverage for some private insurance company - decides to show up. "No more handouts" they shout, while throwing some dollars to the man's face!

balance, what is it?

Sometimes I live inner turmoils, pretty much like everyone else I assume. Today I had one of those unpleasant feelings. I was having a normal study day at the lab (it's quieter there over the weekend) preparing for my final next Tuesday. A little bit before 7.30pm I took a break to go to mass. Nothing special so far...
I got a little bit late to mass and Fr. JP was already reading the Gospel. For those that are familiar, the reading was the prodigal son's parable. As I was listening to his words, I got overwhelmed with this homesick feeling. It almost felt like my heart was being squeezed slowly. At that time, I thought about all my family, close friends and everything that I'm missing by being here. I felt really sad for all that. But life is indeed made of choices; and this still is my choice! Eventually all that gray mood went away as fast as it came, and in no time my brain was flooded with all the stuff I've been studying for Tuesday.

I wonder what a balanced person really is, and if they also have these moments?

Having said this, let me assure you that my strong will and determination in pursuit of my phd, is again flowing in my veins; and that sad moment as long passed. As they say: "whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger!"

PS- during another break in my study :-) I watched this new series called "the Pacific". Yes it's yet another WWII series, it seemed a classy production... I liked it!

so much for a calm end of the quarter

the last few days on campus where agitated...

In the beginning of the week the University decided to issue an official bulletin condemning a themed "ghetto party" that a bunch of kids (undergraduates, I presume) decided to throw at their places. This was not a University sponsored event, but being this the Black history month the idea of throwing a ghetto party was a little bit unthoughtful, to say the least! They called it "Compton cookout" (this Wikipedia article is being considered for deletion, so better hurry up!!). In my humble opinion this whole party thing was just a bad taste joke. Nothing more than that! A lot of young kids with a lot of free time on their hands. Any event, the University decided to publicly censor the event, and rule on some penalties for the organizers. So much for the freedom of speech, some argued...

Later in the week things turned even uglier.

A noose was hanged in the library, and the police was called for. To the best of my knowledge this constitutes a crime of hate, so things were getting clearly out of proportion...
Recall that the noose is a symbol used by the Ku Klux Klan to mark someone for death. This is way over past the threshold of "just a bad joke".


It seems that the kid that pulled off this noose stunt already turned him/herself in, but there is still a lot of racial tension on campus. You can see rallies and meetings to debate minorities concerns everywhere. It's even more disturbing as UCSD, being a public University, has one of the lowest ratios of african-american students in the whole UC system.

To me this came as a surprise. I thought they were long past this racial issues. I guess not!
UCSD has been on the news lately... not for the best of motives though!
Here is a chronicle of the events so far: http://www.10news.com/news/22682950/detail.html

I just run into this link with an agenda for next week's demonstrations: http://stopracismucsd.wordpress.com/


NOTA- agora para algo completamente diferente: foi com uma lágrima ao canto do olho que vi o último programa do prof. Marcelo na RTP1, meu podcast habitual e que agora me fará tanta falta!

my first "animosity"

oh well, I guess sooner or later this had to happen. I had a verbal conflict with a neighbor at our parking lot. Nothing too serious, but still worth telling :)

For those of you that don't know me that well, I guess it's worth mentioning that I'm usually a peaceful guy. Very seldom I am the cause or the start of any conflict. However exceptions do exist; and a gentleman will walk (away) but never run!

From the beginning then.

My parking lot is basically a big street with one lane in each direction. The cars park perpendicularly on that street. I was somewhat in a rush to do some grocery shopping because I wanted to run afterward, and was already in my car rolling away on that street. All of the sudden a guy pulls out of a parking spot. Truth be said that I saw he was coming out, but there is no rule that tells me to yield, so that he can take the car out. If I was not in a hurry I probably would have slowed down so that he could take out the car safely, but at that time I didn't felt like letting him pass. Somehow he didn't saw me or thought I was going to slow down, and we were very close to impact at that time! Fortunately nothing happened. I kept moving thinking to myself: "damn... what a punkass! This is why accidents happen!" Any event, I went to my business and came back one hour later or so. That same driver was getting home as well in the car just in front of me. But I hadn't yet noticed that.

As we are entering our street (him in the front, and myself just behind; recall two directions street, one lane per direction and perpendicular parking on both sides), "Michael Schummacher" decides to pull his car completely to the left (contrary to the flow of traffic) in order to park in a spot on the exact opposite side of the street (right)! Not happy with this reckless driving he did not turn on his blinker signaling the maneuver to the right. Needless to say that I passed right through him, and again we almost hit each other :)

At this point I thought: this is what happens when you give away driver's licenses in raffles. Damn students! What a luck... it's the second jackass in a single afternoon. Very smart young fellows for Phd's and stuff but very stupid for other more common tasks.

My place is around 100 meters down the road. This was where I parked. I took my shopping bags out of the car, and as I was walking I see this big asian-american dude coming towards me, saying stuff like: "dude, that's the second time today that you almost hit me!", to which I replied: "Oh! ... was that you, just a while ago? Man, you need to use your blinkers more often!", and he argued: "I need to use my blinkers? Dude this is not the freeway, this is a parking lot, you should slow down". "True", I replied. Didn't even put down my shopping bags, as we where face to face arguing when he grew an extra inch or two, probably to frighten me. And I continued: "I think we both should slow down. However the priority was still mine a while ago... you must yield! There is no rule that tells me I have to let you through. As for now, if you pull over on the left to turn all the way across the street to park on the right and you don't use your blinkers, there is no way other drivers can guess what you're going to do". "My blinkers? c'mon man... this is no fuc#$%& freeway, just slow down!"
After this he calmed down and moved away back to his car, cursing things like: "this is a fuc#$%* parking lot, man, slowdown!"

Unfortunately there was nothing more than this :(
I know, I know, it's not much and things would probably be more exciting in Portugal. But this is the US! People live in scare of a law suit, or maybe it was just my "killer-look" that frighten him :)
He was way bigger than me, fortunately in my shopping bags I had two jars of marinara sauce that could prove to be very useful in case things would have turned ugly!

pillow fight!!!

This Friday, I was particularly distracted with my thoughts on a problem that I'm working on. I was walking down the library walk to have some lunch. You probably don't know the place, but there is always a lot of noise and people there. All the fraternities hand out flyers, people show up to either sell stuff, promote events or... sometimes we even have someone preaching :) Yeah, I'm not kidding, there's this guy that shows up, shouting how sinful we all are, and how we should re-think our way of life, etc, etc. Nobody gives him too much attention. But the man is persistent 'cause he keeps showing up!

Any event ... as I was walking deep in my thoughts and with all this background noise, I hear someone shouting: "PILLOW FIIIIIGHT!!!!" ... this served as a wake-up call for me, and I lift-up my head, and all of the sudden all hell broke loose. Kids with pillows in their hands, others reaching for their bag-packs where they had concealed their 'weapon'... everybody, but I mean everybody (!) started hitting each other with pillows. Ahahah... this was something else! Live and color, and in the very middle of the action. I sneaked out miraculously between pillows and was able to watch it all from a safe distance. Unfortunately I didn't had the camera with me, otherwise I would have taken some pictures or even a movie. The 'war' shouldn't have last more than a couple of minutes, but it was ... unexpected, to say the least!!
After more than one year living here, and I still get surprises like this one...


You don't believe me? Then have a look at the final part of the 'fight'. Someone other than myself actually posted a video on youtube. At this time I was already at a safe distance :)


However this seems to be some sort of recurrent event. Digging a little bit more, I was able to find the 2007 edition!

NFL super bowl 2010

probably more important than the recent SOTU (State Of The Union) speech by president Obama, this weekend's NFL (National Football League) final acclaimed the New Orleans Saints as the reigning champions! They defeated the favourite Indianapolis Colts: 31-17
I guess, this year, Mardi Gras starts earlier at the French Quarter!

O! say can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Why I love Trader Joe's

Recently a friend told me about a new gin he had tried. Gin Hendrick's was the name. I've tried it when I was still in Portugal, and I simply loved it! So I set off to buy a bottle around here...

(alcohol on top of knowledge)

Being an unusual gin, I assumed it would only be available at the best stores. The ones that have the fancier items, like Bristol Farms. Here's what I found:
Bristol Farms $36.99
Ralphs $ 34.99
(good old) Trader Joe's $24.99
Simply amazing!

By the way, a nice touch for a gin tonic (with this gin) is to replace the lemon with two slices of cucumber. YES, cucumber! Give it a try. You won't regret it!

Thank God it's Friday

Scripps' happy hour was rather lively last Friday. It was someone's birthday, hence there was free beer and live music! Not bad...

to hell and back

I had a bumpy ride, to say the least, when coming back from Portugal. For starters my flight from Porto to London got delayed for 6 hours, immediately making me loose the connection flight in London to LA. Hence still at Porto, I had to find an alternative way to London. Once the delayed was announced in the airport speakers, people started to spread out. Grab their phones call their relatives and let them know what was happening. I simply needed to find a quick alternative to be in London before 2pm. Hence I headed to customs and explained the officer that I needed to leave the boarding area to find myself another flight to London. He was a bit reluctant in letting me out, but then he felt kind of pressured since I was not the only one wanting to leave. Eventually he did open the gates. Back to the airport's departure zone I started looking for an alternative flight.

I must say this was surprisingly easy: in one of those small travel agencies counters I immediately found the answer. There was a flight leaving at 10am arriving around 12pm to Gatwick, London. This would give me enough time to go to Heathrow before 2pm. I booked that flight, and went to try and recover my luggage...

Porto, good mood before the departure!	The flight delay announcement ruined the mood...

Finally at Gatwick I got a cab to Heathrow. I slept practically the entire journey, but I do remember to see an-all white freezing landscape! From here on things started to look a little bit more on track. It took us a little bit more time to board, due to the precautionary measures against terrorist attacks, but everybody was extremely patient and polite. While in line, I met a fellow labmate that was traveling from India. Started is journey on Sunday morning, he said. Uau! And I thought I was having a bad time...

Eventually we all boarded and, as usual in this sort of situations, the captain apologized for the delay and added: "we will make our best to gain the lost time during the flight!". Boy, I was happy to hear his words!

LAX, waiting for the shuttle (zombie mood).	LA, Union station two more hours of waiting... train delay!

Arrived to LA, we had to go through the usual procedure (what are you doing in the US? ... Study? What area are you studying? Show me your I-20, bla bla bla). Nothing extraordinary here. I remember we got to Union Station around 9.30pm (local time) and bought a train ticket for 10.10pm... This is going well, I thought to myself. I'll be in bed around midnight. WRONG!
Shortly after we came to know that the train was delayed for almost 2 hours: expected time of arrival 11.35pm. Oh dear Lord, what else will happen tonight!?

Disappointed, tired and sleepy, we decided to go for a bite. Just outside the station there is a Denny's open all night. I got some onion rings and a soda. My Indian friend was a little bit hungrier than me. He missed all the meals from London to LA. Slept the whole time :) So he got himself a burger with fries. The kitchen was slow, and after the snack it was almost time to take the train. Needless to say that we slept practically for the entire journey. At Solana Beach he had a friend picking him up, and got me ride home. After all, we're almost neighbors at Mesa residential apartments!

Lesson learnt: DO NOT USE low-cost airlines when traveling with connection flights.

here I go again on my own

... goin' down the only road I've ever known!

As always I've had a very nice time in Portugal, and I'm now hours away from flying back to San Diego. It would be tedious to name all friends and family that contributed to this; rather I thank you all for making my stays here always so pleasant!
Porto, like the rest of the country is very cold; looking forward for the nice warm weather in SD :-)

plans for 2010

2009 is gone, and by this time we're all full of plans for the upcoming year. Let's try to keep those plans simple, so that we're able to complete them ... or at least some of them!

Of course I have my own plans, and I might share some of those here throughout the year, but in the meantime here is a 2009 review...


May 2010 bring you all that you wish for!