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?