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20 (and roughly a half) years later my trusty Fiat Uno turned all the digits on its odometer for the second time. Here’s to 100000 more kms of reliable service! 🙂
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Location update: Porto, Portugal!
Hardly a surprise now, especially when considering my previous post. 🙂
Anyway, yes, I’m back home for a couple of weeks – not that I enjoy a month-long holiday in Portugal in the middle of winter (even though it is quite warmer than England, it is a lot better during the summer months!), but as you’d probably guessed by now from my previous rants I am stuck at home, recovering from my nose surgery which happened last weekend. Apparently everything is OK and I am returning back to normal as expected… it is only a terrible nuisance, that’s all! 😛
Fortunately, the weather is helping – it is so miserable and damp outside that I cannot feel sorry for not being out there. And I’m trying to keep myself busy – a truckload of lab reports to mark were electronically delivered to me this Wednesday, and alongside a lot of reading and TV series I think I won’t grow bored.
Now, the biggest expectation is that I can get back on a boat before heading back to the UK… nose, I’m counting on you! 😀
Season’s Greetings
Well, apparently this is the first Christmas where I actually keep my blog running during the actual holiday season, so I have no choice but to drop my Christmas card here as well. This year it wasn’t anything terribly fancy or geeky, particularly due to my lack of time associated with a surgery I undertook during the weekend (more on that later on), but, you know, it is the intention that counts and the photo isn’t bad, either! 🙂
So… Merry Christmas, dear readers, and a happy 2013 full of goodies and happiness! 😀
Seriously, Portugal?
I was having better weather conditions back in the UK! OK, it was quite colder than the 11-13º C I get in Porto, but 25 mm of rain in 3 hours? 😛
Yum!
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But nothing fancy! I’m just clearing up the fridge since I’m heading home in a few days…
And the English classics, baked beans on toast, cheese-n-ham scrambled eggs and some tomato always work nicely!
Francesinha night… in Canterbury!
Yes, indeed! Our latest meeting of the Portuguese group involved a fairly elaborate Porto delicacy, the famous francesinha. 😀
Even though I’ll head back to Porto in a few days, one can never say no to a francesinha, especially one that was completely home-made, following a fairly complex recipe for its sauce (I lost track of the ingredients after a while, they were so many! 🙂 ).
And to our vegetarian friends, the chef Bela Soares created a masterpiece – a “veggie” francesinha featuring eggplant and mozarella, which looked also fairly well-composed, and the “unusual” ingredients in it made it look fairly smart and sophisticated. (and it also tasted brilliantly, according to our vegetarian friends!)
(well, perhaps they wouldn’t like the tripes as much as the francesinha… 🙂 )
All in all, it was an excellent evening. I do miss speaking Portuguese when I’m out and about (skypeing does not count!), and this kind of events really help making that happen. And I’ve also had the opportunity to meet some very nice people, while at it!…
Yours truly is over there on the left, grinning stupidly for no apparent reason and making a sad figure of himself…
The entrance to my lab…
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… or how many LASER warning signs you can fit around an entrance door 😀 .
And yes, I have a interlock system fitted to the lab door, even though I’m not using it (my superluminiscent source is only class IIIB, not too bad – it "only" outputs 6 mW! 🙂 )
Vistas do Porto (Oporto views), circa 1989
This is an old video I digitised a while ago from a pile of my grandfather’s old Betamax tapes. I think Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (Winter) is the perfect soundtrack for such a dramatic landscape!
(and note the two rowers on the double-scull – my old grandfather’s Sony camcorder has quite a good zoom, as you can even see the colour of their blades 🙂 )
Nothing better to start my day! :)
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Perfect. Who needs Nexpresso? (okay, I may be exaggerating a bit, but this is quite nice!)
Let it snow, let it snow…
Absolutely fantastic. I had obviously seen snow before (Portugal is a southern country, but it can get to subzero temperatures in the countryside and in the mountains!…), but since it only snows in Porto every 15 years or so (and even when it actually snows it is never that intense, just a few flakes that melt immediately when they hit the ground) I saw snow falling for the very first time. And it was magical, I was grinning from ear to ear 😀 .
Actually, I was a bit fortunate, as it only started snowing heavily when I was already inside my office – I still had to deal with the ice on my driveway (grabbing the bicycle in one hand, and the handrail in the other, while slowly and carefully climbing up the ramp out!… 🙂 ), but that was about it. And obviously, this being England, the public transportation systems grounded to a halt – my housemate actually had to get a cab in order to get to work, there were trains cancelled and major traffic jams along the motorway (it pays off to live close to campus! :D). Hopefully next week I’ll be able to make it to the airport to get my flight to Porto, fingers crossed… (I will give the whole day to get there, though, just to be safe!)
OK, any major news? Well, surprise surprise, Santa came earlier to my place and I got myself a shiny Galaxy S II (a review to follow, perhaps this weekend, time-permitting). On contract, with 10% off due to a student discount, I’m paying only £22.5 for 2 years, which is not too bad, especially when considering what the plan offers and that I paid nothing for what is still a very good smartphone (actually, all the images of this blog post were taken with it – and it films in 1080p, which I found pretty darn good 😉 ).
The work is, somehow, progressing (at least, that’s what I say to myself every day after staying up late in the lab ramming my head against the wall to make my code work). And today I got myself a new desk for my lab, so now I can work comfortably in my computer (properly stocked on tea, obviously). And next week I will have my last lab session of 2012, with plenty of lab report marking to follow (yay!). That, along with an article I will have to write for a conference proceedings will keep me busy while recovering from my surgery and hopefully keeping myself from being terribly annoyed of not being able to row when the river and the club are so close by!… 😛
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