I give them one thing

Posted on May 28, 2007
Filed Under General, The English People and I | 1 Comment

People can say what they want about England, but in my opinion, they have one thing in which they are better than anyone else in the world: their bands!!! We can start with some of my favourites:

MUSE

Depeche Mode

Placebo

Cold Play

The Mission

The Sisters of Mercy

James

…….

Not forgetting the classics (some of them not to my personal taste but admit they are genius):

Pink Floyd

Queen

Beatles

The Rolling Stones

Led Zeppelin

The Who

Sex Pistols

Dire Straits

The Cure

Madness

The Police

…..The list is endless

And then we also have:

New Order

The Verve

Blur

Oasis

Stereophonics

Keiser Chiefs

Prodigy

The Killers

I could be here all day… I’m sure I forgot many, and I’m sure you have many more to add to the list

Thank you England for some of the best bands in the world :) Although sometimes ;) I have a hard time living here, I also have the bands to help me get through it.

I gave up…

Posted on May 16, 2007
Filed Under General, The English People and I | 2 Comments

on trying to understand certain mentalities…

I’ve been trying and failing miserably, so I thought ‘bollocks to it, not worth the effort’.

When in Rome be a Roman? Maybe, or maybe not.

So as long as people don’t step on my toes (or I’m not in one of my moods ;) )…

Meh…

Back to England

Posted on April 10, 2007
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10 days in Portugal…. Never enough…

As usual I had a very good time. Not much of a holiday as I didn’t rest much, but did wonders for the mind!

As I said I took Russ (again :p ), Becca, Olly, Phil and Dan with me.

The first two days we all stayed at my house and I took them for a bit of sight seeing and food so they would get used to how things work. I took them to the castle, where I worked as a tour guide some years ago. It was good to be back!

After those days I decided it would be good for me to say at my dad’s. The others were obviously interested in sight seeing and I was interested in seeing my friends and family. Also I needed a rest from England, and speaking English all day was not going to help (although I still had to speak English with Russ he’s getting close to being able to speak Portuguese :) )

It was great to see my friends! And to see that some things don’t change, like their friendship. Dinner at Vanda’s (although she had a rough day she still managed to make the delicious chocolate mousse and we all had a great time), coffees with Rita and Xana, seeing my mum, my dad, my step mother, the fantastic food, the good coffee (finally),… I could keep going…. There is no place like home!!!

I met with the others to go to Sintra on an 8 hours tour. I thought it would be worth it although i’ve seen it hundreds of times. Absolutely gorgeous!!!

I was going to add some pictures to this post but I forgot the cable to download them so I’ll have to do that some other time.

I’m sure once Olly and Becca get their website working they will have many for you to see. And all the event will soon (I hope) be described by Russ on his own weblog. But don’t take my word for it ;)

In the mean time I found out this website with wonderful pictures of Lisbon.  It will give you an idea of the city as we ‘alfacinhas’ see it.

And now I’m back to England and the terrible coffee. Sorry but it’s hard to get used to it +o(

I managed to avoid Milton Keynes for a bit longer and stayed the last few days at Russ’s with his family. It has been wonderful a usual :)

Will tell you more about it some other time :) The post is already too big

Valentine’s Day

Posted on February 14, 2007
Filed Under General, The English People and I | 3 Comments

*sigh*

If I really don’t like Christmas that much what to say about this day?

To be honest never thought much about it. If I was in a relationship on the 14th Feb we would usually ignore the day. It just annoyed me that anywhere I went there was loads of hearts and everything was pink (which is not one of my favourite colours +o( ).

This year it wouldn’t be different, at least for me. But I learnt the hard way that people in this country give a lot of importance to cards (they have several shops dedicated to just that!). I never gave a card in my life before coming here, I just don’t think about it. But after the first christmas in England, when, to my surprise, I received loads of cards and gave none :$, I decided to ask Russ if he was going to give me one.

He told me he didn’t give much importance to the day as well, we wouldn’t celebrate, but yes, he would give me a card.

(apparently a card is always necessary in any occasion, even if nothing else is done or given)

So I though, OK, I’ll buy one as well (I have recently started to give in and give cards as well-em roma se romano).

It would be fine if I usually gave cards and if I even remembered the damn day was today!!!

Last night I realised I forgot to buy the card! :o

What to do??? Panic!!

Then Becca gave me an idea and I ended up making a card myself with just a few sheets of paper, some photos and a printer. And you know what? He  loved it even more :d

NHS Vs Servico Nacional de Saude

Posted on February 6, 2007
Filed Under General, Portugal, The English People and I | 3 Comments

Still haven’t figured out which public medical service is worse :s

The first day

Posted on January 30, 2007
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Lets go back in time again to what I wrote originally in ‘The English People and I’.

This is the post that followed ‘How I got here’ 

I left on a beautiful day but at soon as I got close to England all you could see from the plane was clouds…the great English weather…
My supervisor picked me up at the train station in Milton Keynes and showed me around. I managed to find a place to stay immediately which was fantastic! One less thing to worry about. The house is within walking distance from the university and was shared between me and two other students from the OU (not to mention 2 cats and 2 guinea pigs). I went to the university and got introduced to just about every person we saw. They were all very friendly and helpful! The department looked fantastic as well!
But immediately I got the impression I wasn’t at a ‘normal’ city and at a ‘normal’ university.
Milton Keynes is a city built almost from scratch a few decades ago. It has a new and small town centre which consists mainly of a huge shopping centre and a couple of clubs and pubs. This centre is surrounded by estates hidden from the grid system of roads by trees and bushes and with a lot of green fields in between. In future posts this will be properly commented on.
The Open University as the name says is a long distance university. The only students present on campus are PhD. students (a couple of hundreds of them). The remaining people are staff.
As I was saying I was expected at the OU and as soon as I arrived I was presented with a full file about me and only had to sign 3 or 4 papers to make things official. I was impressed!! In Portugal it would take ages going from place to place and signing all kinds of different papers and I would be completely on my own! God bless my supervisor! Anyway, that seemed like a very good start!

Some People….(1)

Posted on January 24, 2007
Filed Under General, The English People and I | 10 Comments

I wrote this post some time ago; I’ve been writing my experiences for some time now. I wrote this when some things happened at the time with me, and when I came to know some things that happened in the past to some other people. It really upset me at the time and I was actually thinking of going back to Portugal.

Recently, however, some things happened that made me think this would be an appropriate time to publish the post.

The recent events didn’t happen to me, but to people I know. They were so bad that I was and am profoundly shocked. I will not give details of what happened (at least a the moment) but I can say that it is related more to the middle part of the post (it seems to happen a lot, the story repeating it self over and over), while my personal experience has to do with the first part. Here it goes:

I have met some messed up people in this country! Maybe I just met the most messed up and they don’t represent the rest of the country, but from what I’ve seen, they are really messed up! I mean, my friends in Portugal are far from perfect. They are messed up as well (I’m one of the worst); some have depression, need therapy, some have a problem with drugs, some with alcohol, all kinds. But here… I’ve met people here I thought only existed on films! Maybe it’s just because before I was in a big city and I could choose who my friends were. Here, it’s a very small place and you have to live with who ever is here and no chance of escaping…

I’ve met people here who are only happy with other people’s misery, that actually make the effort of planning and doing everything to ruin other peoples lives even if they don’t know them.

People who are such idiots that don’t seem to be able to do anything right, who don’t respect other people’s feelings and who seem not to have a brain at all (and they have a big IQ).

People who cheat on partners, who cheat on friends, to a point you actually wonder how they can live with themselves. A lot of people here seem to not have any sense of what is right or wrong, no sense of family, friendship, commitment, or decency. People who have no consideration for others even for the people who love them. Some don’t even seem to be human. This is all very confusing for me. It’s hard to understand how people can be like this…

And of course, maybe because of all this, I’ve met people with such low self-esteem. These are the good people… and maybe they have low self-esteem because they can’t deal with the others…

And in the end, I’m in the middle of it. And how do you deal with it? I have no idea!!! It doesn’t seem normal to me. The only thing that can be done is to expect everything from everyone. And that is very sad. Not a good way to live. Get me out of here!!!!
I want to go home!!!

It is interesting to notice that some of the people are involved in all the above but sometimes with different roles. But at the same time, the things happened with a lot of other people in completely different situations, with nothing to do with the just mentioned.

I will just say: I am shocked that these things happen. It is completely out of order! It makes you think if you should trust people…

Clarification

Posted on January 24, 2007
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As the previous post and its comments were a bit confusing, I asked Dan (a Lawyer) to clarify his post and tell me what the law is in England. The answer is on a comment in the previous post but i think it deserved a post of its own:

Cat has asked me to attempt to clarify the English law on abortion as I confused her with my previous post…

As alluded to in my previous post the law is different, at least in practice, for voluntary abortions and medical:

In either situation 2 doctors must agree that the relevant criteria are met.

Where there is a risk to the life or mental or physical health of the pregnant woman, or if the child would be born with severe abnormalities, or in an emergency situation, an abortion is lawful at any time in the pregnancy. (There are several different definitions of these situations in the Abortion Act but they are all roughly the same).

The other situation in which an abortion is lawful is limited to the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. Under this ground an abortion is permitted where the risk to the mental or physical health of the pregnant woman, or of her children or family, is greater if she does not have the abortion than if she does. The practical effect of this is that if a woman requests an abortion within the first 24 weeks this is likely to be granted due to the effect on her mental health and social/economic situation of having a baby.

Hopefully that is a bit clearer. There are 7 separate grounds for an abortion in the act but I have simplified them slightly.

Readers from Portugal may be interested to note that attitudes to abortion over here are tightening and there is a lot of pressure for the time limit for non emergency abortions to be reduced to 20 weeks or even less.

Dan

PS: disclaimer - please do not take this as legal advice and act upon it - I do not want to be sued for negligence :)

PS PS: I don’t know off the top of my head what the law on this is in Scotland but I am pretty certain that it is harder to get an abortion in Northern Ireland, although not as difficult as it is in the Republic of Ireland from where I believe people have been known to come to the UK to obtain abortions

So voluntary abortion is legal in England to a limit of 24 weeks of pregnancy-a lot later than what is being voted in Portugal; even if it gets reduced to 20 weeks it’s still double the time. Everyone is likely to be able to have one as the fact that the mother being forced to have an undesired baby will affect her mental health and jeopardise the future of the baby. All under the law. I keep my 10000 points to England and, as Vanda said, hope I will say the same for Portugal in February.

10000 Points to England!!!!!

Posted on January 19, 2007
Filed Under General, Portugal, The English People and I | 8 Comments

In England, abortion is legal(!) under certain circumstances-with practical effects similar to the ones the ‘Yes’ movement is fighting for in Portugal.

In Portugal it seems like the ‘no’ on the referendum will win again, and women will continue risking their health and their lives, and with the fear that at any moment they can be arrested and humiliated.

I don’t know about you, but I have no doubt which mentality I prefer!

How I got here

Posted on January 17, 2007
Filed Under The English People and I | 2 Comments

As I said in previous posts, the purpose of the blog was to write about my experiences in England. And I had written a few ‘posts’ already, but things happened in the mean time that I thought were important to post here. So now I go back to what I wrote initially, and this is the post that follows ‘In the beginning’.

My life in Portugal was what you may call a ‘normal’ life. School, friends, family, with all its ups and downs. Never travelled much, with the exception of some trips to Spain and a 2 week holiday in the south of England and Ireland about a decade ago.

I graduated in geology at Lisbon University. As in any other science course (in Portugal) it was difficult if not impossible to find a job related to what I’ve studied. So for 4 or 5 years I struggled to pay the bills having all kinds of different jobs. I finally got the opportunity to work in something I never thought possible: got a scholarship to study Mars! I couldn’t believe it! Studying space is something you dream of as a kid but then realise it is impossible especially if you live in Portugal… It was a great experience, although with some problems related to how things work (or don’t work) in Portugal. While I was working there I found out about a position for a PhD working with comets and interstellar dust at a university in England. It sounded great! Not only would I have the opportunity to do a PhD without a masters degree (Universities work in a different way in England and Portugal so I had enough years of university to be considered as having a masters degree) I would also be paid to do it!!!!  And well paid as well! (Would you ever dream of that happening in Portugal?).  Anyway, I applied because there was nothing to lose but never really thought I would get it. After a few weeks, on a Saturday, I got a phone call from England. I was still sleeping so it was all a bit confusing… In the end I was told that I was expected one month later at the Open University in Milton Keynes! I couldn’t believe it! I was going to England!! And work with the best!

I was thrilled but at the same time terrified. As I said, I never left the country. I was leaving my friends and family and going to a different country alone, where I knew no one. Nevertheless, I thought it was an opportunity I couldn’t miss, and so after a lot of good bye parties and painful breaking up problems which are not to be discussed here, I left for England on a beautiful day in October.



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