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!