Show off

Today I had a terrible day, moody, busy, tiring, difficult, lonely, horrible, depressive.. ok ok , that is too much, a lot much worst than it is but who doesnt have a day like this sometimes? A day that you feel unable to solve your problems, a source of weakness seems to born from your mind and invades your body and dreams overwhelming your life on its whole. This is again the worst romantic view to look at what I feel, I am conscious, but for some reasons I just felt like that today. But notice, I write PAST because I also found out in the meantime that there are people able to give my strength back to me and put a smile on my lips :)

However, I am not yet ready to write as usual a nice funny post, as I always try to do, but just decided to leave a song that I heard today. Actually I spent a good part of my day listening to MUSE and this song fit with my feelings today, not literally, dont try to pick it up from the lyrics ´cause its not that related but there´s something in the song, maybe the melody. Listening to music is always helpful when I feel down and that was the way I found to start washing away my heavy mood ..

Have fun, I will (soon, very soon)!

Street wall revolting writting or hanging fish for drying, which is one is more impressive?

Today I am posting photos very different then those I previously posted from my great holiday in Greece but they require a second of your attention.

The first is a wall where someone wrote something really revolting such as 'Antes ABORTO que vidas de merda (translating because this was in Lisbon, Portugal): "Better ABORTION than shity lifes".. I saw this while I was driving around Lisbon two months ago during my holiday in Portugal. There was some traffic as usual and it left me time to read the walls and it brought me a mix of a laugh with drama because of course whoever wrote that is definitely very revolted and disappointed..
I also inform the readers that Abortion was illegal in Portugal until march 2007 where before any woman could not legally decide to have a baby or not under penalty of being convicted of a crime (with all its consequences included.. like prison p.e.). Unlike mostly all the countries in Europe with exception of Malta, Portugal have kept this old law until the last year and the law was changed by a national referendum. It was the second time the government gave people the chance to decide and in the first one (2002??) people rejected to change the law (Meanwhile a lot of new/fresh mentalities arisen!)

The second photo I took when I was walking around Ericeira, also during the same holiday time. Me and my family went for a little trip around Lisbon to spend a very nice sunny Portuguese Sunday (It doesnt happen in England anyway dont try to remember one). Ericeira is a very nice place, situated near the coast with awesome views over the ocean. It is a small piscatorial village therefore there is a lot of very fresh and good fish and plenty of good places to eat. "Raia" is a very popular fish on that region but what I didnt know and quite surprised me, given rise to the reason of this photo and comment was that people dries "Raia" fishes such like clothes by hanging them out! There were several houses with these fishes hanging like t-shirts in cloth ropes placed on the windows! Strange, funny and smelly..

Translating 'Querer e Poder'

Querer e Poder is a Portuguese saying I wrote in yesterday's post and I translated to english as 'wishing something is the way to get it'. However this translation is not completely right therefore the meaning is more: wanting something is the way to get it! (Don’t want to misteach my foreign readers :) and by the way, the person I mentioned a few days ago (See the post "Portugez in a Where's Waldo brand new version!!") who didn’t know about Portugal as a country and bla bla bla, today just greeted me with a 'Boa tarde' in good portuguese! But still it deserved the nice funny post!!

To finish I am gonna leave you with a song! The following song is from a Portuguese kind of hip-hop band. They are cool, very very popular among young generations. I think whether this would play in the UK they would get really loved! I am not a big fan but I listen to these guys since my 14s and they are from my hometown, Almada. I have been to several concerts and it is a good fun!




Sorry but not going to translate ;)

How to quit smoking and learn a foreign language in a short period of time and other stories..

Some time ago I wrote about celebrations which were not actually that important, but today I am writing about a very important one: Tomorrow I am celebrating one month smoke free what literally means that I spent one month, 30 days no smoking at all! I am such a brave girl!!

But no, I am not that brave and now you wondering what the hell has quitting cigarettes to do with learning languages and bla bla bla..

Easy and simple:

MOTIVATION!

In fact this post is more about motivation and which kind of things makes a person undergo a certain effort to change her/his life! In my language we have a popular saying: QUERER E PODER, that means that wishing something is the way to get it!

And now the bridge to learn a foreign language... this makes sense here!

Amongst my group of friends we conclude some time ago that there are two major sources of motivation to learn a foreign language: either one learns it when a kid, in the cradle, or as an adult, in "bed". Of course, once a kid, the motivation is innate and comes from the need to understand the others and talk/express therefore communicate as a human being. From the adult perspective, that motivation is about LOVE! Ok, who says love, says something love-like and I just know so many people who are currently learning a language that they would never thought to learn as a way to impress their beloveds, or to make them happy, or to seduce them, or to date them, of simply to go to bed with them.. whatever the wills it entails motivation from the presence of a person who speaks a language one does not know.

So now I opened another bridge.. The bridge from MOTIVATION to FEELINGS!
The feelings are the other stories, that is so much about feelings and so many feelings in our human world and it is sometimes so difficult to control them: to understand them, to deal with them, to hide them, to show them!
But one thing one should bear in mind: feelings are a source of motivation! Motivation to learn a language, motivation to quit smoking, motivation to change life, motivation to travel, motivation to settle down, motivation to start again, to climb, to fight, to built, to stay or to go, to party and dance, to watch TV, to not watch TV, to change habits, to do sports, to smile and to cry and even to die for! And we can't deny our feelings, we can barely control them and they trap us sometimes taking us to situations that we think they could never happen! That’s so complex..

But not to make this post much longer because actually I just wanted to let you know I stopped smoking and I want as much people to know about this as possible people that I don’t want to let down and I think that will help me think twice before I lit up a next cigarette!
For those who read this and think about stop smoking or not and what would really change whether they would stop in terms of health benefits I leave you a list of What Happens to Your body if you stop smoking Right now?
by Wade Meredith on July 19th, 2006


This little timeline below is about some of the more immediate effects of quitting smoking and how that will affect your body RIGHT NOW (http://www.healthbolt.net/2006/07/19/what-happens-to-your-body-if-you-stop-smoking-right-now/)

• In 20 minutes your blood pressure will drop back down to normal.


• In 8 hours the carbon monoxide (a toxic gas) levels in your blood stream will drop by half, and oxygen levels will return to normal.


• In 48 hours your chance of having a heart attack will have decreased. All nicotine will have left your body. Your sense of taste and smell will return to a normal level.


• In 72 hours your bronchial tubes will relax, and your energy levels will increase.
  In 2 weeks your circulation will increase, and it will continue to improve for the next 10 weeks.


• In three to nine months coughs, wheezing and breathing problems will dissipate as your lung capacity improves by 10%.


• In 1 year your risk of having a heart attack will have dropped by half.


• In 5 years your risk of having a stroke returns to that of a non-smoker.


• In 10 years your risk of lung cancer will have returned to that of a non-smoker.


• In 15 years your risk of heart attack will have returned to that of a non-smoker.
  So, you have more immediate things to look forward to if you quit now besides just freaking out about not being able to smoke.

But above all, smoking is not popular anymore, its not fashion, it is not cool! It is very expensive, smelly and useless!
I quite enjoyed smoking and for me the most difficult part of it was because I wasn’t doing it for addiction but it was the pleasure of holding a cigarette and drinking a beer while talking to people, etc etc, I got rid of the nicotine addiction a long time ago, the real hard part of the quitting procedure are the social meetings. I don’t want to fail this time; tried a few times before with no success; but NOW I have got a lot of motivators! And I don’t even have to learn another language!! :)))

Doctor of Philosophy, PhD or How to get a complex life (sometimes is nice!!)

I am not sure whether I mention what I actually do for a living but I decided to dedicate the post of today to my current type of entertainment.. Not sure I can call it that way or another; it is not really having LIFE!
Basically it is about this PhD thing. I wanted to do this, I always knew about how much trouble I could get, I was aware of the amount of work it would be and how many hours of my life I would have to spend doing this but still I went for it and I am now doing it.. THE PHD!So, please let me introduce you the PhD sort of (entertaining aka complex) life:


It doesnt matter which day it is, if it is raining, if you are ill, anything can happen BUT once entitled PhD student you are always ready to work.. NO way to overturned it! NO one accepts your excuses though.. (don not try to become creative!)


As a PhD student you have a lot to do, you have to plan experiments, you have to run them, you have to read a lot, you have to write everything you do, everything you intend to do and everything you didn’t do but you should have done.. And every result you might get (thats doesn’t usually takes much time because there are never much results anyway.. So you end up spending your time writing about the frustrations). One have to meet the supervisor, one have to go to seminars, have to review papers, have to be social and nice (even when everything is going crap) and of course attend for the very much popular journal clubs where a few groups meet weekly for a scientific conversation.. so boring (I missed the journal club today by the way.. )
From my personal experience I havent got my superboss, I mean supervisor, in the lab (thanks God!!!), but I know a lot of people who did have this experience and I can state their experience here: more or less it was always very painful and never actually resulted very well.. it usually brings a lot of trouble to the students since supervisors become old and out of date they cant perform experiments anymore and they don’t know how things work anymore.. New software, new devices, new machines, all electronic... Supervisors look simply good sitting on their desks, writing grants and other shit stuff and that’s all. No supervisors in the lab, please, they have to understand that things changed in the last 20 years! The PhD is already a lot difficult without the supervisor around, don’t make it worse please!

Another detail about being a PhD is that to do anything the procedure is always a hundred, up to one thousand times more complicated than for a professor.. Any thing since writing a letter, asking a permission, attending a course, applying for a desk or facility... whatever.. Why?? Because you write your name only without a title like Professor! When professor word is added as a prefix to your name your life goes so much easier and you suddenly get a lot of “slaves” and everyone think you are a sort of a king. You are then so respected that you don’t even have to spend time with formalities or politeness! No reason, you became a professor!
Same happens when you are an engineer in Portugal (ask my friends for more information ... http://towardsnothing.blogspot.com/ the person who writes this fairly interesting blog is an Portuguese engineer.. I hope he forgives me because of this advertising but he affirms that from personal experience).

The very last reason because one does a PhD is because that person wants to add a piece of knowledge to the subject/area where he or she belongs to and therefore results, RESULTS, are welcome and very expected..
Nonetheless, How much and how hard one has to work to get results is very subjective. Sometimes it just happens, one gets a shot of luck and results appear like magic. Other times, months away looking for a single result and althought it was just so much planned and seemed so interesting and logic and expected but it doesnt happen!
Supervisors always think that everything can be done quickly and easily (because they are not in the lab. they don’t know, they forgot a long time ago..) Its always hard to say that what we thought that was a brilliant idea did not bring out any results yet and yet..

Despite the bad things of being a PhD student which are just so many and it makes your life really shity sometimes, there are the good points:

- you are a student and as a student one has the student benefits, can behave like a student and that means that you are not an adult for real and can avoid a lot of adult stuff!

- And.. thats it! No more advantages, sorry! (But if you are a PhD student and you feel I am being unjust please I welcome your comments!!)

- 12 hours in the lab, work during the weekend, stay late, dream about the experiments, have a great idea during the dream, but it doesnt work in the reality, go back to the dream and it doesnt work anyway, go back to the lab and it does work at all.

- Read a lot of stuff, have piles of books sitting next to the computer but read the emails, facebook a lit bit and write your blog instead of updating your knowledge reading the latest published papers and so on and in the end of the day complain about it and about the loads of overdue work to do!

I am a 7 months PhD student and I have got more three years to go.. can you imagine?? I cant but just as like AA: One Day At A Time! And its not that bad any way.
If you feel like doing it: think twice!
If you are not sure: think 10 times
If you don’t want but your being persuaded: give up!

Celebrating 1 month and 18 days of existence

That sounds just like I have nothing to write but that's not true! I just want to write a small and simple post to celebrate 1 month and 18 days of existence of my blog! I think this day deserves quite a big attention therefore I dedicate this post to this remarkable celebration!
Yesterday for instance I celebrated the day that I was meant to get tired of someone but I did not actually got tired of that person (useless celebration..) Anyway, everyday counts!

Now more seriously, I havent been posting that often, not every day as I thought I could, but I dont think I have to make such a big effort because I am enjoying writing this as I do. And the most important thing is that month and 18th days since I wrote the first time I still post.. (remember that before I wasnt able to write more than the first and second posts). On the other hand I have actually no idea of how many people read this blog (I am still waiting for the visitors' counter.. but no worries it will not track you personally therefore you can still visit me!)

Portugez in a Where's Waldo brand new version!!

It is quite universal that Americans in general (I sincerely apologize for generalizing and of course it doesn’t mean that all Americans are ignorant but those who are not, I suppose I don’t need to apologize because they also know what I am referring to).. Anyway, as I was saying, Americans are generally bad in Geography, they may be very good in other fields but not in Geography.
Besides Americans (poor them), mostly everyone seems to be pretty good localizing countries in a map and from my experience everyone I know had no doubts where Portugal is located even all the Americans I met so far.
Now, despite all this prejudice about Americans it happened that they have got competitors!
Who?
British people? Of course not, British people know very well where Portugal is on the map, it is a very popular country amongst British people! Reasons:
Futebol (1st), holiday (2nd) and Magdelene MCainn (3rd). Wine, Beer, beaches, chicks, good weather, surf, bla bla bla .. For intellectuals they may eventual remember "The Pink Map" (Portuguese: Mapa cor-de-rosa) where Portugal disputed with Great Britain over the land between the colonies of Mozambique and Angola which led to the British Ultimatum or when the British navy came to help Portugal and Spain during the Napoleonic Wars... etc, etc.. So, lets say, very popular!
However, I found ONE, a single one BRITISH person who did not know where is Portugal! That person thought at first Portugal would be in Europe, which is not too bad.. but more than that was already too much.. First trial was to put Portugal somewhere in between France and Germany, followed by some other places in Eastern Europe ending with the probability of Portugal being an island very close to England! I suggested to have a look in Goggle maps and that person wrote "Portugez" when searching for Portugal... before the Google could correct it I did.. and under that person's surprise, Portugal is just there.. on the Western coast of Europe on the left of Spain!! "wow, how could that be? I knew every single country except Portugal.. I had no clue where this country was really, is there anything important related to Portugal?".. Quite offensive though but not going to tell you what I taught this person because you may know enough but one thing I am pretty sure is that this person is now as almost as proud of Portugal as I am of being Portuguese.. I was called Patriotic!! :))
If you still have questions I can promise you that Portugal is located on the that map on top where I tried to confused the readers in a Where's Waldo map fashion.. Have fun! By the way is Friday night and I am still in the bloody lab instead of having a good super special nice, awesome, splendid, great amazing time... I am off now!

A lot more of Greece!

Santorini

Last time I published photos from my holiday trip I haven’t yet got the photos from Margarida's camera... I still find a little bit unbelievable how did they managed to survive a 6 meters dip in the Mediterranean sea.. Only Margarida could do so..

You know when you are on a boat? What would be the last thing to do? Imagine you have some special belongings, like your phone, your wallet, your purse full of credit cards or nice family/children photos or your almost brand new 300€ camera with all photos from your holiday.. Well, I am also pretty sure that you would be careful enough not to leave items like these place on the edges of a boat that as every one knows always rocks even when the sea looks flat and calm..

That’s exactly what one should do but Margarida does not agree or or she was too drunk to use her brain when she simply placed her camera just in the edge of the boat side surface.. more or less the most slippery place and of course within seconds it just dropped into the water where it (I imagine) slowly dived before it found the yellow sand in the bottom roughly 6 meters below.

Margarida cried for her sake and for mine before she was brave enough to call my name to tell what so silly thing she had just done. She started: "it happened the worst thing that could ever happen so far".. Concerning her voice I though about the worst things one can do but never ever thinking about the camera.. I couldn’t talk to her for one hour after she told me the story..

Nevertheless the camera return to our hands on the next morning thanks to the boat sailor who kindly dived to find the camera!

The camera I might say looked just like a portable aquarium full of water inside.. Just fishes were missing, was such a big laugh! The memory card survived the up to 12 hours underwater and the photos were intact!

Then thanks to this little big adventure I had something to say today and an excuse to post a few more photos of this trip all from that diver camera!

Check them out ;)

Me and Margarida on the boat just minutes before the incident...

So many places ideal for two..

There were always these specimens on the water

White beatiful villages kindly placed on cliffs turned to an awesome sunset and a still active vulcano.. Santorini

I quite agree but when a student things work a little bit diferently.. Greece is bloody expensive for drinks!

White churches everywhere in cycliades and but the vulcano only in Santorini

A little bit of Greece

Just want to leave some photos from my last holiday to Greece where I had a very good time with my very best friend Margarida. I missed some other people (no offence to my friend), but there's more specials in my life :)

The trip started in Athens with around 40 degrees and it was so nice to feel the very warm weather at night specially considering I was coming from the rainy island with the most horrible weather ever (grrrrrrrrrr.. freezing).

Next morning we caught a boat to Santorini, very famouse island for couples, weddings and honeymoons, therefore very romantic, very beautifcul, magic, ideal for 2(in fact almost everywhere there were only tables for two.. fortunatly I was with one friend only... we were two then, but not a couple! No misunderstandings).

After three great days and nights in Santorini, we went straight to Mikonos the very popular Party island (aka Gay island.. but gay means happy right?? and Happy means fun and fun means party..etc, etc) Well..it confirmed! Happiness was all over and party as well! Gays were even more all over mostly represented by italian guys (gays).. not gay women, only men! This island was had up to 90% italian people!
Watch the video below to have a tiny idea..

I may say I had a good time there, not so much to see, but good for one or two days of fun and a good laugh taking the piss out of those funny people!

After three days and two night at the crazy place we went back to Athens to catch the plain back home and back to work where I am now (back to my blog though!).

It was an unforgettable and a remarkable time, very recomended, I regret I havent had more time to go to other islands but I recomend Milos from some photos I have seen! I should have gone there in the begging of August instead of Portugal... buAAAAAA.. Never mind!

Enjoy the Photos!!

Plagiarism or how the proteins are synthesized, shown by a bunch of freaks!

Last time I visited my university ex class blog, that you can access here http://sexyhote.blogspot.com/ (written in Portuguese by the way), and where I took part in the past but never really wrote anything, I found the following video which I found so awesome that I couldn’t resist publishing it in my own blog.

It has so much to do with what I do although at the first sight it just looks like a bunch of freaks swinging and dancing around while an idiot freaky song plays. NO offence but really gets me an idea of a Hippie camping in the 70s where a group of hippies decided to do a colourful choreography!

BUT NO... that’s nothing like that!

It’s impressive but this video is SCIENCE and it is so good that I really believe that mostly everyone understands the protein synthesis after watching this! The video is long but worths the time to watch. Has a 3 minutes introduction where Paul Berg, Nobel Prize for Chemistry 1980 explains what’s going on and then, ENJOY!
This amazing educational film was used in schools to teach biochemistry to the kids!





Description of the film:Directed in 1971 by Robert Alan Weiss for the Department of Chemistry of Stanford University and imprinted with the "free love" aura of the period, this short film continues to be shown in biology class today. It has since spawn a series of similar funny attempts at vulgarizing protein synthesis. Narrated by Paul Berg, 1980 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.