Competitividade

Como não poderia deixar de ser, posso estar ausente do meus país mas todos os dias tenho os meus feeds do JN a actualizar de meia em meia hora.
No total leio para aí 2 ou 3 notícias completas por dia, de resto leio apenas os cabeçalhos no programa. Ontem por acaso foi a da taradona/psicótica professora de Espinho.
Hoje, embora ainda sejam 11 da manhã aqui, duas notícias chamaram-me a atenção por conterem algo curioso!


- "Ferreira Leite adverte que o país pode falir"
Manuela Ferreira Leite defendeu esta terça-feira num almoço com empresários ucranianos que Portugal tem poucos anos para resolver o problema da falta competitividade se não quer "ficar irremediavelmente pobre".

- "Portugal ultrapassa Espanha" (só este título chama a atenção a qualquer tuga!)
Portugal subiu três lugares no ranking que mede a competitividade dos países a nível mundial.

Ora bem... Algo anda para aqui a contradizer-se, ou será que não? A Manela diz que o país vai falir com falta de competitividade, e afinal Portugal já ultrapassou os Castelhanos? Algo esquisito se passa... Vejamos, a Manuela é uma pessoa que tirou economia; este ranking mundial são várias pessoas que tiraram economia! Logo, é mais fácil estar errada a Manuela que um grupo de economistas que nada mais faz a não ser analisar países.

Assim sendo pergunto: Manuela, será que Espanha já faliu e ninguém sabe?!

Banana's Republic

How is a greek second chance school?? Einai poli orea! Now we know the secret of their happiness and laughs in their work, take a look at this.
Me and Sandra are volunteering there in their Green Roof project. Today, I don't know why because they had plenty of materials, we did almost nothing. We worked something like 15 minutes! Then Giorgos told us that "today no more work, food!". Okay!
Then we went to the small garden house in the roof, with only 2 walls, and they brought some small foods and Ouzo...and Tsipouro (or whatever it is written). For those who don't know, these are like 30% up, Tsipouro being more than 45% I think...

So, an afternoon to discover one of the secrets of the "Banana's Republic"! I would like to see a public employee drinking these drinks during their work schedule...ahahah!

Responsabilidade

Serei eu extremamente pesado e o outro demasiado leve?? Se calhar é por isso que ando sempre cansado, obrigando-me a dormir as horinhas certas para estar relativamente bem no trabalho.

Carago...qual o peso da responsabilidade??

Olympia

Last sunday, Olympia.

Being my first train trip in Greece I was a bit expectant. Well... It started fantastic! The train line is not working at 100% so we had to take a bus that was waiting outside of the station. Half an hour or more through swamp-like plantations and zig-zag roads... Great! We then entered the train in a station somewhere. An old and slow train but okay for a trip like this.
Arriving at Pyrgos we waited a bit and took the next train to Olympia. A small one, looked like the urban trains in the portuguese North Line.

In a short trip we arrived at Olympia, last station of the line. Maybe because it was sunday, but the first thing we saw were big piles of garbage nears the bins... Poli orea! We then saw the map and we moved to the area of interest.
The town looks like it only lives for the tourists, so it seems there is nothing more to see than the and the archaeo site.

Archaelogical Museum
Modern building, nice construction with some statues outside, video vigilance everywhere, "security" people everywhere (and one of them a bit annoying), better room lighting than in the Athenian Museum (which is great for taking pictures without flash)...

The expositions count with lots of statues, many of them from roman emperors and famous people and athletes, very nice glass objects, metal objects, tons of pots, war helmets and armor, shields, bronze griffins and very small statuettes, and a huge room with a sequence of statues or both sides.
In fact I discovered here in this last room, that mobile phone technology was already used in ancient Greece, as you can see in the next picture.

Anyway, we moved to the archaeological site after talking a bit!

Archaeological Site
5 minutes of walking from the museum and we where there. We showed the tickets at the entrance and then we started a tiring trip!... In the beginning the place did not look so big. We passed by Gimnasium, then the Philippeion, then the Olympic Stadium, then the Echo Portic, then Nero's octagonal house, then the place where the Cryselephantine Statue Of Zeus was, one of the Old World Wonders, then the baths, then 2 more buildings and finnaly we were done!
It was a very hot day, we were tired, so we decided to go back to take the bus back to Pyrgos. Otherwise we had to wait 2 hours for the next bus back.


(The server is not uploading images. Later if I have the pacience I will upload some more...)


Distance from Kalamata: ~110km
Transportation used: train, bus
Travel time: ~3hours x2 (10:30-19:15)
Total transp. price: 9,40 euros
Museum + site prices: free to EU students, 9eur normal ticket, 5eur non-EU students and <19

Photo count: 428
Photo artifacts found: 0

My Daily Movements

Here goes something like the description of the movements of my legs in a normal volunteering day:

- they move in my bed to get out of it, they go to the bathroom, they make me eat or drink something, and then they move to the room for me to get dressed;

- at 10:00 they pull me to the Youth Center where they stay many time without moving;

- at around 16:00 they get hungry and so they lead me to my home, into my kitchen;
(this week they were missing my parents and so they jump to my bike almost everyday and they moved in circles for half an hour to go to and get back from the beach)

- sometimes at 19:30 or 20:30 we have some workshops, and my legs are very interested in that, so they ride or walk to the YC again;

- then they get hungry, and they lead me many times to Jimies place, or to our house (once again to the kitchen or directly to the dinning room);

- sometimes they need a kind of fuel so they go for a drink with other friendly leg pairs;

- other times... they just go to bed and hold a movie or they hang with other legs behind some table in the house in a vivid conversation above.

Claymation

We just finished the shooting of our first "claymation" movie!
The editing will be easy, I am sure. But we made lots of mistakes... :D Light and shadows, moving scenario, shaking [a lot] camera, fast clay movements... We are always learning, and for the first time we learned really a lot! Anyway, at least 2 scenes are very very nice. I will try to post it someway later.

Perfectness

How does it feel to be okay? How does it feel to be liked? How does it feel to be minimally admired? How do you feel today? I will tell you about me. I feel nice, okay, comfortable, good and confident. I just want to keep this in mind in order to be like this more times. I just need to remember, or if the memory fails, I just need to read it again. And certainly think about what it meant in the past, what it is meaning just right now. I am sure I can remember that! It is very easy: how does it feel to have lots of things in your personality that can interest such perfect person from very far from your home place? How does it feel to know that other cultures can like you? How does it feel to know that someone with such a different background could maybe be the perfect one? And then, mostly fantastic, how does it feel to know that that person at least admires you as a person? It feels great. Even if with more days we could become evil persons. Because then I just lay down and relax; my first impressions are [almost] never wrong and “we live with the qualities and we learn to live with the bad ones”.

If a small and sweet supposed “angel” liked me, then why couldn’t the normal beings like either? Yes that’s it. Let’s keep this text for the future, let’s keep it as a guarantee for me of my possible value. Being accepted intellectually and maybe more, in not just my culture is something comfortable. For now it is relaxing, it is reflective, it is happy. Anyway let’s just hope that the same can be felt by you. Let’s hope that all I said, all I’ve done [or I haven’t] and all I showed just allowed you to feel the most fantastic person I knew for a long time. Why do you look like the perfect harmony between external and internal beauty? I want you to feel special, I want you to be yourself and then to cast a smile to me! And tell me without talking that you heard what I haven’t said about you. Tell me with your kind voice, again, that I am special and wait for me to tell you that you will always be! Just tell me now, perfectness, how does it feel?