Páginas

2014

illustration by A outra mafalda

a noite começava-se a alongar. em vez de se ir deitar, levantou-se do sofá para mais um ataque à cozinha.
uma desculpa (parva) - energia para trabalhar, oh e que trabalho estava a fazer.
zapping entre programas de televisão inúteis enquanto adiava um trabalho aborrecido, vagueava pelas redes socais sem parar muito tempo em cada lado...

(é hoje que ela regressa.)
e em vão espera. espera por uma palavra que não chega.
(mas eu não espero nada).
espera sim, e em vão tenta não desesperar.

é inveja. (mas sentir inveja é mau)
é solidão. (a solidão por vezes grita no silêncio ensurdecedor).

é começar a sentir-se inadequada, inapropriada, desajustada.
mas ao mesmo tempo não querer adequar-se, ser apropriada e ajustar-se.

e pensar que tudo consegue e na cegueira pouco conquistar.
e passar noites em claro a pensar, ou evitar pensar.
é fugir para a fantasia sempre que algum sentimento mais forte se sobreponha.

é esquecer o mundo, porque ele nunca se lembra dela.

Bolachas Doces e Salgadas \\ Cookies Sweet and Salty

Quem me conhece sabe que tenho uma pequena obsessão por bolachas. As de Açúcar já as tinha feito num Natal anterior (lá para os lados de 2010). Mas saíram totalmente diferentes. Na altura tinha juntado fermento e bicabornato de sódio à farinha; além disso não tinha rolo da massa para estender massa, logo ficaram umas bolachas altas e que ainda por cima cresceram quase para o dobro do tamanho perdendo grande parte da forma que lhes tinha sido dada.
E se antes já tinha feito muffins salgados, porque não experimentar fazer o mesmo com bolachas?
\\
Who knows me well, knows that I have a serious obsession for cookies. The sugar ones I had already made in Christmas passed (around 2010, while was living in Germany). But they come out completely different. Back then I've used baking soda and I didn't have any rolling pin to roll the dough, therefore the cookies were too thick and also somehow they grow to double of their size almost loosing their shape.
And if before I've tried a couple a different combinations with salty muffins, why not try the same with cookies? 

Bolachas de Açúcar\\ Sugar Cookies (adaptada da receita Sugar Cookies de JoyofBaking.com \\ adapted from the Sugar Cookies of JoyofBaking.com - my holy grail for baking goodies)



400gr de farinha \\ 400gr plain flour
1 pitada de sal (que pode ser eliminada se a manteiga tiver sal) \\ pinch of salt (if the butter is unsalted)
200gr manteiga à temperatura ambiente \\ 200gr of butter at room temperature
200gr açucar branco \\ 200gr of white sugar
2 ovos \\ 2 eggs

Misturar o açucar com a manteiga até formar uma massa leve. Adicionar os ovos. Lentamente começar a incorporar a farinha nesta mistura até formar uma massa uniforme. Dividir a massa em várias partes (duas ou quatro), envolver em papel aderente e levar ao frigorifico no mínimo uma hora.
Pré-aquecer o forno entre 180º e 200ºC.
Retirar uma parte da massa refrigerada e estender numa superficie enfarinhada até ter a espessura desejada. Corte-se a massa com cortadores de bolachas e distribui-se por um tabuleiro forrado com papel vegetal. Consoante a espessura das bolachas demoram 8 a 12 minutos a cozinhar.
\\
Mix the sugar with the buter until it forms a fluffy dough. Add the eggs. Slowly incorporate the flour into the mixture until all the dough it's uniform. Divide the dough into parts (two or four), wrap it into plastic wrap and take to the fridge for at least one hour.
Preheat the oven between 180ºC and 200ºC.
Take one part of the refrigerated dough and on a lightly floured surface roll out the dough to a thickness that you desire. (I like them really thin). Cut the dough with cookie cutters in the shape you like most. Spread the cookies into a oven tray lined with baking sheet.
The cookies may take 8 to 12 minutes to cook.




Bolachas de Queijo Mozarella com Sementes de Linhaça \\ Mozarella Cheese Cookies with flax seeds (aadaptada das Parmesan Shortbreads da Nigella Lawson\\ adapted from the Parmesan Shortbreads by Nigella Lawson e/and Rosemary Parmesan Biscuits by Taste.com.au)



200gr Farinha s/ fermento \\ 200gr plain flour
120gr Manteiga \\ 120gr of butter (salted or unsalted depends what type of cheese you want to use).
150gr Queijo Mozzarella seco ralado \\ 150gr of Mozzarella Cheese, Grated (you can use other kind of cheese like parmesan)
2 ovos \\ 2 Eggs
100gr de Sementes de Linhaça \\ 100gr of flax seeds
Alho em pó q.b. \\ Garlic powder (depend how much you like the garlic flavour.)
Oregãos secos q.b. (ou outras ervas secas à escolha) \\ Dried Oregano (or other dried herbs of you choice).
Sal grosso q.b. \\ Pinch of Salt (depends how salty you want them to be).

Misturam-se todos os ingredientes até formarem uma massa uniforme. Divide-se em duas ou quatro partes, que se envolvem separadamente em papel aderente e levam-se ao frigorifico no mínimo de uma hora.
Pré-aquecer o forno a 200ºC.
Retirar uma parte da massa e estende-se com o auxílio de um rolo de cozinha sobre uma superficie enfarinhada até obter a espessura desejada. Neste caso foi uma espessura fina. Corta-se a massa estendida com cortadores de bolachas e distribuiem-se pelo tabuleiro forrado com papel vegetal. Se forem finas vão ao forno entre os 10 a 12 minutos.
\\
Blend all the ingredients until have a uniform dough. Divide it into two or four parts, and wrap them into plastic wrap and take to the fridge for at least one hour.
Pre-heat the oven to 200ºC
Take from the fridge one part of the dough and roll it with a rolling pin over dusted with flour surface, until you reach the desired thickness. Cut the dough with cookie cutters and spread the cookies into a oven tray lined with baking sheet. If they are really thin and with mozzarella cheese they go to the oven for 10 to 12 minutes.


3am BINGO!

BINGO! \\ Torres Vedras (2012), PT


Start working at 3am because you're feeling to sick to go to sleep?
Now that sounds like a great idea! Humhum

Late dinner make me feel sick. And now I'm tired but too restless to go to sleep. This is not good.

So let's design shall we?
And maybe when the sunrises again I might feel tired enough to actually go to sleep.... or I just might drink some coffee and turn on the tv and watch stupid shows.

Short {after midnight} story #2



All that she ever wanted was to be loved.
Be accepted for what she was.
Let down the mask and be with someone that she didn't need to hide parts of her, that's she didn't need to tell sweet little lies.

She just wanted to be free from the standards that restrain her.
Be like a bird, spread her wings and fly away... so far away.

It wasn't that easy to do, not even in her fantasies she managed to be free.
She was locked down by her fears, her beliefs, values and tears.

There was no escape... no escape from herself!

Solitude

Solitude \\ Miramar, Capela do Senhor da Pedra (2013)

How can someone spend her day dragging herself from hour to hour, just to realize the day has passed... it's gone, she didn't do nothing. Accomplished nothing, nothing that she can hold in her tired hands.
Because she's tired, oh so tired.
All she wants is to lay her head in the soft sand and let it all go.
Close herself in her cocoon and have some closure.

And let it all go.

The Beard man said \\ Life is too short

Up up until the end of the golden path  | Golden & Brown Fall Series \\ Cucos (2011), TV, PT

“Life is too short to waste any amount of time on wondering what other people think about you. In the first place, if they had better things going on in their lives, they wouldn’t have the time to sit around and talk about you. What’s important to me is not others’ opinions of me, but what’s important to me is my opinion of myself.” 

 — C. JoyBell C.
Another Black day \\ Church Door (2005) Dois Portos, PT


What to do when you find out that something you thought it was real it's fake?
Or to be more specific, I thought someone was something, I deep believed it, and more I know the person, more I know it's fake, and fake. I swear that I thought I was different, what we had was different. But apparently I was wrong.

It's something that's bothering me, and more time I let it go, worse I feel about. I don't want to deal with it, and with the person. All this gives knots in the stomach. I find myself not wanting to do things that I usually enjoy.

I'm just tired of this.

1am - Panic Attack



I'm having one of those freak out moments!
I'm excited with all the things that are going to happen this week and during the month. At the same time, as I can't control when and some of them how, I'm getting insecure, I'm doubting if it is too much things.
Seriously freaking out!!!

My heart is beating fast, my breath is a bit uncontrolled...
Yes I'm having a panic attack.
Which might be a good thing after all - if I solve it the right way.
It just might keep me awake all night! - and that's not good.

Just calming myself and write all of this helps.
My mind can be incoherent many times, moving fast and faster without focusing in anything. Leading to make me feel disoriented and losing control. By focusing in small task, even if it is just written what I'm feeling it helps to calm myself and start to solve the problems I have in hands.

Thinking and written in another language also force me to calm too. Thought I can pretty much think and write in english as almost my native tongue. Almost. Not quite there yet.

Back to the turmoil in my head, all the things that I propose myself to do will make me have to postpone other things that I want to do. But that's life right? Sometimes you have to give up or postpone certain things to accomplish others. For certain things to work you have to work hard and commit. But sometimes is so hard to commit! It's so hard to commit one way when you feel (even for rare moments) that others aren't committing as much as you! And that you are always finding excuses for the others, and until you hear ourself out loud you don't realise what you're doing, or how sad is what you're doing.

I dream big. Often too big, and also often I dream the finale, not the middle, or the steps and hard work to accomplish it. Then I lost motivation - and I write here.

I always think that I can do everything, and always creating new things to do, even if haven't finished what I already had started.
When I have an idea, I want to do it in that exact moment. But that's not realistic.
Things take time. Understanding this is growing up. But I still need to realise this on day to day, and not just remember it every time I analyze things.

Realizing that I'm 24 and just now I waking up for my future, and still that looks so uncertain.
Day to day can be a struggle. Some days I have the whole world strenght and will, other's I just wanna curl in my blankets.
I have lucid moments that I know what I want and how to get it! But most of the time I feel like wandering lost for one thing to another.

It makes me sad knowing how bad I am on keeping people around me, or even how still this days I can't and won't open myself to others. I can count people I consider friends by one hand (with most of the fingers left out). But most of the time I feel I can't rely on almost no one, often not even in myself. I don't like to pretend what I'm not, but I don't like either to let people in. I can either tell a lot, or just say nothing at all.

I'm in cocoon. A bubble, where I can see the world, but most of the times can't pass through - I don't know how to act, what to say... I want to be able to go somewhere and say this is me, this what I do and what I like, this are my believes... But let's be honest, that's kind of hard when you don't know how to present yourself, or you don't believe you are at your best.

I'm not good at doing things for myself! I'm not good for myself. I should have solve this kind of problems long time ago. It's so sad that the problems that I have with myself are still the same that I had when I was a child, and a small one. In one hand I know that I'm different, and somehow most of things I wouldn't change. But at the same time I can't get over that! I fear confrontation, I'm alone, but I fear to be lonely. I cherish the time I spend with myself but I don't wanna be that way forever and all the time.

I can't solve this problems. I choose to ignore them most of the times. It's easier to live this way. Hide everything deep inside of me. (and this can be so harmful).

When I get insecure or fearful everything comes back in a big wave to put me down. I can spend days is this state if I'm not careful. Sometimes I think that in the past I spend weeks, months even in this kind of state, so tight by my fears that I could make a move. I couldn't create, I couldn't do nothing, and when I had to, I manage to convince myself that it wasn't worthy. It wasn't worthy to have all the work to accomplish this because no one would appreciate it. It wasn't worthy because I hadn't the skills and I had not time for it. I wasn't worthy... Why would anyone would care about what I was doing? I'm nothing special, why would someone care? I'm not perfect, and I can't do perfect things - why would someone like the things that I do? I feel I know nothing, why would anyone think that I know something? I'm grumpy and gloomy, why would anyone ask me things as if I am someone nice to talk to? I'm inadequate... and sometimes I still think all of this and believe in it.

Couldn't finish my master thesis based on my stupidity and fear. Lost all the love I had for that project in the process.
At the same time learn I could still create! That I was able to relate to new people, though not making new friendships.
Learn that I could dream again, that I plan and start to make things. And though that's all good, I still can't accept me for what I am, I can't love me, I have moments that I don't believe myself or even can stand myself.

Nowadays I often act like I'm a teenager, I answer back, raise my voice... all things that I haven't done when I was a teenager. It pisses me of that I do this kind of things. People aren't guilty for my flaws and faults.
I feel that at this age I should be conquering the world, not spending my 24/7 in front a computer on the internet. I feel that I should be enjoying other things out of my own room, by my own or with friends, and not leaving home every time my parents are. Or wait for them to do things. That's kinda of sad in so many levels.

This is ridiculous especially for someone that considers freedom so important... and therefore is so dependent.

It's sad that I've started this text at 1am and now it's 3 and I'm still here. Tears have rolled out of my eyes. They are dry now. I'm not anxious anymore, but can't sleep either. I felt angry, but feel calm now.
My feelings are a turmoil, and change faster than the weather.

And I feel that I have nothing else to say... at least for now.


Bites and Bits \\ This week

Hello, Hello

Borboleta - the wild cat in my backyard peeking in the stairs for food 

Since the last post about my latest obsession about horror movies that I haven't publish anything! Shame on me!
Since then I've only seen one more movie - unfortunately I didn't realize until the end that it was a 2009 sort of remake of the Friday 13th - and it was a little blah. Not scary at all, visually strong and gory but not scary and too long! No doubt I will be searching for the first one to see.

But let's not talk about movies again. After that I went on a reading spree! I started to organize and took a deep look at my e-books; and then it was just choose and read. Which lead me to think that the best investment I did this year (after my new glasses) was the modest tablet that I got. It's not the most fancy thing ever, but for reading books and comics is beyond perfection.

But back to the books that I've read; I mainly read two authors Sherrilyn Kenyon and Nora Roberts.
From the 1st one: Dark Hunter Series - Fantasy Lover, The Beginning (short story), Dragonswan (short story), Night Pleasures, Night Embrace, Phantom Lover (short story), Dance with the Devil, A Dark Hunter Christmas (short story) and Kiss of the Night.
From the 2nd one: Blithe Images (short story), Islands of Flowers (short story), Search for Love (short story), Song of the West and The Hearts Victory.

Seven books and seven short stories O_o hmm (but who is counting right?... oh yeah right... me)

Right... can I mention that I read fast? And by fast I mean like lightening speed. oh and that these books were kind of small too (well at least half of them). It's a good thing that I don't read like this all the time, I would be out of books to read really fast.

But life isn't just having fun.
In the past week I was really moody, I had things to do but I had some kind of block (loads of layers of different kind of blocks). Pretty much as I was when I wrote this personal rant. But fortunately I broke the blocks and was able to function again and work too. I think the thursday holiday helped in that a lot.
I feel inspired again and I manage to advance in a couple things that I needed to do. *ohhappyday*

In those days I also try spotify and in a couple days ruined all my free hours of the week. But I managed to find some nice folk bands that I've been enjoying to listen - The Civil Wars (I've got this friend and Devil's Backbone), Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros (I'm addicted to their Home music), Fleet Foxes (the video below), The Lumineers (my love goes to Submarines), Beirut, The Decemberists (really like June Hym), Foster the People (Pumped up kids) and Noah and the Whale.



I'm a person that doesn't enjoy going to the beach, or even a person that enjoys the summer too much. I don't like the heat, I don't feel comfortable in summer clothes. I like wind and wearing scarfs with cardigans. So my summer trips are mainly in my room. It might be sad to some, but I like it this way.
I'm happy today - I managed to do what I had to do. I have more exciting things to do next week. I draw some nice sketches for notebooks/notepads that I will be doing this week (hopefully). My grandma's birthday is this week, and we started to celebrate already today with chocolate cake and port wine (which are two really nice things to have at any time). Over all I feel that I accomplish something, and that's good (I think).

Bolo Brigadeiro \ Nom nom nom 


7A \\ Weekend Movies

(attention, it might have spoiler alerts - consider yourself warned)

I have always felt curious about movies. Recently that curiosity moved towards horror movies. When I start to see properly a new genre of movies I feel the need to watch some of the considered classics!

Saturday, for no apparent reason, I felt it was perfect to see Halloween and Michael Myers. I've embarked in a marathon of Halloween movies.
Only after I watched a view that I realized there was more, and many not even related with the first/original movie.

I started properly with the first movie of 1978 - Halloween, directed by John Carpenter, with Jamie Lee Curtis in the main role of Laurie Strode. A quick movie, quite scary - the ambience is very well constructed, the characters are not very deep, but that's perfect for the genre of the film, and for an independent movie at that time, that was a lot! - and probably that's why it was so successful. It's a movie full of gore, there's a lot of chasing and in the end no one knows where Michael Myers is.
1981 - Halloween II directed now by Rick Rosenthal, still with Jamie Lee Curtis in the main role of Laurie Strode -  it's a bloodier and scary continuation of the first film. There's a lot more deaths, more violent too. The whole movie happens just right after Laurie Strode got to the hospital -  continuing the first movie, and the whole plot happens in this small hospital with barely any staff and patients. Some of the scenes in the hospital basement remind me of A Nightmare on Elm Street but it was only released three years after, so it might be other way around the influence - if there was any.

I wasn't aware of next movies (in chronological order): Halloween III: Season of the Witch in 1982; Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers in 1988; Halloween 5 - The Revenge of Michael Myers in 1989 and in 1995 the Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, so I didn't watched them yet.

I jumped to the 1998 movie Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, again with Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode. This happens twenty years after Michael's disappearance. Laurie never got convinced of her brother's death in the fire at the hospital, because his body was never found. She changed her identity, and now is a teacher and director of a posh private school. She also has a son that recently did 17 years. She is psychotic and over controller mother, but she as a point, after all her brother might come back anytime!
It's an ok movie, but in the horror genre it doesn't scare at all. It has some nice persecution scenes, but that's it. The ending is epic, and pretty much seems like the end of Michael Myers.

I haven't see the 2002 Halloween: Resurrection (again with Jamie Lee Curtis), and started to watch instead the Halloween (2007) and the continuation Halloween II (2009) by Rob Zombie. And oh boy! Rob Zombie restores parts of the original storyline but adds so much more to the story! Not just to the story itself but also visually. I don't know if it was because I saw the unrated versions, it's way more violent and gory - sometimes in a disgusting way (like just in the beginning of the Halloween II when Laurie it's in the hospital, all bloody and the doctors are taken care of her and there are some detail shots of her wounds). Both movies are really long, about two hours each, for a horror movie that's a lot! But there is always something to see, a new thing happening, so there isn't a moment of boredom in the movies.
Comparing the Laurie Strode character, I think she, as a character, lose a lot, she is more fragile and thinking well, in the Rob Zombie version the main character is Michael Myers. You can follow Michael path since he was a bullied child and killed is older (and slutty) sister, sister's boyfriend and his mother's (asshole) boyfriend, and then when Michael was arrested at mental disorder facility, because of that. How Dr. (jerk) Loomis was important in his daily routine, and also how his mother's weekly visits were important to him. How he snaps when someone talks about he's little sister, or when some pigs try to violate a girl in his cell and he end up by killing them all and escape from prison. After that is halloween and Michael tries to get to his sister. In the first film she thinks that she killed him, but soon you can found out that he's not dead and he will be back - after all he was just a psychopath boy that wanted to gather back his family! They all died in the end - happy ending? Maybe not, horrifying ending? Well probably, after all it's a horror movie.

On Sunday night I was feeling that I need to change subject so I choose something lighter to watch, something that have been on my watch list for awhile - Ultraviolet, a 2006 movie with Milla Jovovich.
Downside of the movie, I kinda wanted to know more about the characters background stories, there were a lot of questions that I wanted to be answered, but maybe they'll do a sequel!
I adore the opening credits with all the comics references, unfortunately its fake, I mean, there is no Ultraviolet Comic Series, though I think they would be epic, or at least good.
Other issue in the movie is so many references to other movies, scenes and actions that make you think I've seen this before! Which would fine to me if there was something more relevant in the plot, but the plot isn't very deep. Some of the other movies that remind me of were Tron, Matrix, Underworld, Star Wars and Æon Flux, to name a few.
It's entertaining but for such nice graphics it asked for a better character development.

And that was it for this weekend, I hope to see the rest of the other Halloween movies really soon.


Bites & Bits | é um ciclo vicioso {personal rant}



Hoje acordei a pensar na vida.
Isto de acordar tarde não dá com nada. Acordo com a mente turva e primeiro que clarifique um pensamento coerente, pode demorar algum tempo. A solução aparente seria deitar-me mais cedo, mas na verdade é que se estou a fazer algo interessante não quero interromper o fio à meada para ir dormir. Outra solução seria pôr um despertador... e depois não ignorá-lo.
A parte mais parva desta conversa toda é que este diálogo repete-se ciclicamente, todas as semanas. Penso é desta que me levanto cedo e faço 1001 coisas. Sim, resulta um dia, no outro já tenho sono, ou não tenho nada muito importante para fazer que justifique acordar já já.
Uma desgraça!

E como uma desgraça nunca vem só...
A minha cabeça está sempre a pensar em mais coisas para fazer, até parece que só conhece a soma e a multiplicação, sejam novos desenhos, novos projetos... Tudo é possivel! Mas o tempo não estica, e aqui a moça tem uma maneira muito peculiar de trabalhar. O que muitas vezes resulta em stress desnecessário. E quando a prima preguiça e irmã procastinação vem visitar e instalam-se alegremente sem vontade aparente de partir, cria-se um 31 de tal ordem!! Que por norma significa um par de dias a comportar-me como uma barata tonta cheia de stress que não sabe o que fazer! Até acalmar e achar uma solução... ou o contrário.
É um ciclo vicioso, mas hei-de quebrá-lo!


Bites and Bits \\ Uptaded Layout Blogs

I've been really busy with exciting projects and I wasn't able to get some time to blog. And oh boy how I miss it.

One of this projects is a partnership with my best friend. We got together and created the Nuts for Paper brand and all the notebooks and other paper ephemera. We recently opened our Etsy Shop, though we are just starting I'm always thinking about new products and new ideas to spice it all up. We are also preparing a exhibition for september and I am beyond excitement.

Besides all that I'm also working as freelancer designer.
I'm happy. And I will be even happier when I can conciliate everything together and go back to blogging every week.

I had this in mind for a couple weeks already, and little by little started to change the layouts and organizing better my blogs. Because I can't have just one, and I don't want to mix different things, like inspiration images (that belong to I'm not afraid of the dark and to Pinterest), my photo diary and my drawing/illustrations. I just feel that they don't belong together.
Last night I was playing with the new layouts for the blogs.

Scribbling Drafts \\ Illustration & Drawings 
Octo vel Octoginta \\ Photography Dairy
I'm always changing my mind about the layouts in the blogs. However I tend to gravitate more into a more minimalist layouts, where the content and mainly the images are the king/queen of the posts.

For now, they'll remain like this. But in a couple of months... who knows?

Wanna keep up with everything? I might want to follow me on twitter.
See you soon


7A | Brave



Sometimes I feel like releasing my inner child and watch cartoon movies.
And then I see movies like Brave, that gathers a few things that I LOVE - leading female role, curly redhead, great graphics, relatable characters, funny characters (like the chiefs of the clans, Merida little triplet brothers and her father) and it all happens in a celtic land (and that almost equals perfection in my dictionary).
The accents in the english version are amazing, and I refuse myself to see it in any other language.
And then you have the whole music... my favourite it's the Song of Mor'du, it's perfect to me, because reminds me many of the books that I've read that are supposed to happen in a celtic era, and it translate how I imagine the music that they use to sing.

It's a kind of film I know I will be watching again, and again, and again....

Noam Chomsky on Children and the advertising industry...

" The advertising industry is a huge industry, and anyone with their eyes open can see what it's for. First of all, the existence of the advertising industry is a sign of the unwillingness to let markets function. If you had markets, you wouldn't have advertising. Like, if somebody has something to sell, they say what it is and you buy it if you want. But when you have oligopolies, they want to stop price wars. They have to have product differentiation, and you got to turn to deluding people into thinking you should buy this rather than that. Or just getting them to consume - if you can get them to consume, they're trapped, you know.


 It starts with the infant, but now there's a huge part of the advertising industry which is designed to capture children. And it's destroying childhood. Anyone who has any experience with children can see this. It's literally destroying childhood. Kids don't know how to play. They can't go out and, you know, like when you were a kid or when I was a kid, you have a Saturday afternoon free. You go out to a field and you're finding a bunch of other kids and play ball or something. You can't do anything like that. It's got to be organized by adults, or else you're at home with your gadgets, your video games.

But the idea of going out just to play with all the creative challenge, those insights: that's gone. And it's done consciously to trap children from infancy and then to turn them into consumer addicts." -   Noam Chomsky
"My personal feeling is that citizens of the democratic societies should undertake a course of intellectual self-defense to protect themselves from manipulation and control, and to lay the basis for more meaningful democracy." - Noam Chomsky - Necessary Illusions

Sting in the Ear | Thrift Shop

Image via BubbleNews




I am kind of addicted to this music.
And oddly enough, before yesterday, when I started to listen more this music, I went "shopping" in my grandma's closet.

(at least I cease my obsession for The Lord of the Rings)

Bites and Bits - Where I have been lately

Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, Lisboa | 27.02

Some days you feel like things are stuck, your life is stuck in the same place, and you can't leave the place where you are.
But then a small action can make you feel that there is some future, things can be slow, be going somewhere.

detail | Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, Lisboa | 27.02

Projects pile up, slowly and slowly take shape.
Days pass by so quickly, more quickly than I can do the things I want to.
I have a lack of focus and personal organization. But I'm working on it...

seagul | Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, Lisboa | 27.02

On other subjects, last week I went to Lisbon, and spend the morning near Jerónimos Monastery. I ate a pastel de Belém and saw two temporary expositions of the National Archaeology Museum. [QUINTA DO ROUXINOL. Roman kilns in the Tagus estuary and Global Change. and Technology atthe Origins of Agro-Pastoralism in Alto Ribatejo] I really enjoyed the museum, I will for sure return sometime soon.

Santuário de Fátima | 02.03

Then on Saturday went with my family to Fátima Sanctuary.
I'm not a religious person, but I respect others beliefs. It was very sad seen persons talking out loud in a place where is suppose to be a meditative place. It was even sadder seen a religious ceremony in the open sky and people on their cell phones.


The space around the Sanctuary is quite nice, specially the access to the parking lots. It was a small garden with such quite and calmness. The light was gorgeous, so as the blooming trees.

Nazaré | 02.03
After Fátima we drive to Nazaré for a quite late lunch on friend Restaurant - A Tasquinha.
Delicious food, good white wine and beyond excellent Port Wine.

Gambas à Tasquinha | Nazaré | 02.03
After lunch we enjoy the good weather and a small walk near beach.


until the next time... see you around...

The Streets of Óbidos

Óbidos | 08.February
I'm not sure if it's a matter of taste, or acquired style, but in my own photography I tend to like them more without human presence. Empty streets, nature and so on.
It might a reflection of myself, and how I see myself in the world... or just a question of opportunity.


Óbidos | 08.February

Óbidos
Castle & Town
The fortificafion has roman origins. It was also conquer by D. Afonso Henriques {first King of Portugal} in 1148.
It was rebuild multiple times over times.
The lands of Óbidos were always under the Queen’s of Portugal command.
It is one of the few castles in Portugal that still have complete exterior walls, that makes the town and the castle inseparable, magic and so unique.

Óbidos | 08.February
Óbidos | 08.February

{ in the Óbidos series:
- Óbidos Street Lamps I
Óbidos Street Lamps II
The Streets of Óbidos }