Tendinitis

Yesterday was a sad day for me.

I went to the doctor to make an x-ray to my knee. The nurse took so many x-ray shots that I was feeling like a model, but an undead one. I performed the "folded legs lying on the mattress, facing up pose", "left leg extended, turned to the left side, lying on the mattress pose", "left leg extended, turned to the right side, lying on the mattress pose" and "standing with the knees together pose".

When, finally, the session ended, I went to the doctor's office. "Oh, so those sexy positions x-rays downstairs were yours!" — he said. But instead of contracting me for the agency he diagnosed me with a tendinitis.

This means that I can't make much efforts in the near future for an unknown period and, as I really like to run, this will be tough for me. I'm trying to think of the advantages of my condition. Today I made something I didn't do since probably my second year of art school which is observation drawing! I started with a big moth on my balcony wall and then moved to my living room which probably looks messier on the drawing than in reality.

Short Considerations on Weather, Detectives and Style

It's been a long time since I published something, I'm sorry for that, there's been a lot going on right now and it's hard to find not only time but also a proper theme for an article. You know what they say, you talk about the weather when you don't have anything better to talk about. I never agreed with this statement for I always loved talking about it as much as anything else. You know, the world keeps developing, nanotechnology is built, skyscrapers cut the clouds in Dubai but the weather is still here to change our daily moods as easy as a click — I wonder how people can keep inventing such things when their feet are cold or when they're sweating like hell. Downtown houses in Porto are very badly isolated, this can make you feel the four seasons down your skin quite easily, just like the weather pavilion at expo'98, from which you got out with a cold — but here,  instead of staying 5 minutes in each room, you'd stay three months. Which makes you feel like 'oh my god, the next room is three months away, I'm gonna die in this freezer or in this oven or in this windy drying machine or in this pollen power disperser', but then you don't, you always survive and forget how bad it was and then two months later you're wishing you were in the previous season — just like you had a fish's memory or a traumatic experience from which you don't remember anything or how bad it was.

And you know what, fall just arrived, my favorite season!
There's something dramatic about fall I like a lot, I think of lonely walks in the park, the yellow and orange leaves falling in spirals, I think of tea, coziness, squirrels and hedgehogs snoring between hazelnuts, baking carrot cakes (even if I never made one) and the best of all: detectives and murders! (basically my sense of fall is everything but portuguese). I can't help myself not thinking of style when talking about detectives, that's part of my attraction, I admit it. I love their big brown coats, their hats covering their faces and the smoke from their cigarettes vanishing in the fog — although I don't smoke (I'm very allergic to tobacco smoke, for my lungs sake) I always found it to be very sexy, mysterious and stylish, the perfect attributes for a detective. But the point where I'm trying to get is: a detective story has always to be set either in fall or winter, a detective in floral shorts and flip flops would need to have lots of 'carisma' to pull these of. When I was a kid I loved to watch The Adventures of Shirley Holmes, a Canadian TV series from the nineties shown on portuguese television in the kids channel Panda. Shirley was the great grand-niece of Sherlock Holmes and followed her ancestor's legacy of solving crimes after finding his letter and his detective tools in a box in the attic. Shirley was not the high school princess kind of girl, she was cool, I mean, detective cool. She had those hermetic bags, tweezers, brushes and a magnifying glass in her backpack and wore some nice hats with her school uniform in a very low profile kind of way — oh, she was my kind of girl.

And this leads me to another thing I can't separate from the beginning of fall — school! Buying books, new supplies, sometimes a new backpack, a coat and boots, meeting your friends that became different after the summer, fall always made me feel a bit more grown up, not just because of the starting of a new year at school but also because my birthday is in november. After the silly season of summer, fall is the time for seriousness, for drama, for philosophy, for the wind and tears on your face. Last year, fall started after the person I was with for about two years broke up with me, this year fall starts with a different bitter feeling that I never experienced before in my life — there's no school… anymore. Actually the school feeling is still here, and I will always associate this time of the year with school but, as I just graduated from university, it won't be a reality anymore. This fact highlights the karma that fall has to be dramatic, it's not only the time for you to realize you've grown older and take life decisions (even my astral map says that I should make important choices after october), it's also the time to be alone. I like to think that the wind, the rain and the fact that everything is falling apart are here to help me realize that — just like hints from a detective story. And if I was a smoker, I'd be much more stylish in this season.

zoom-zoom-zoom

Hey João!
I know you've been a little down lately, because of all the work. And I'm basicly taking over this blog with all my silly drawings and noisy nonsense. But today I have something special to cheer you up:

It's the perfect music video!
Probably you've seen it before, because I know you like Robyn, but I ran into it last night and think it's the best thing ever!!!
(also, if you've seen before, how could you keep this from me?)



 I even made a list of reasons why I think it's awesome:

1 - weird costumes. - SHE DRESSES AS A BEE!! AND SUSHI! AND A PING PONG BALL! I'm literally taking notes for the next halloween/carnival party.

2 - karaoke. - in fact, pink karaoke, with a little birdie.

3- the lyrics, - "One left one right that's how I organize them."

4 - people disguised in the scenery. - Look at the face of the guy dressed as a cloud at minute 1:14. ahahah!

5- a dancing monkey


and that's it.
I hope it makes your day.
I'm leaving now for the voluntaries meeting in Lisbon, and anticipating two really boring train journeys.
Maybe I'll just sing this on the way. out loud. repeatly. for 3 hours.

talk the talk and walk the walk

Last week I discovered who Clea Duvall is




and imediatly downloaded every film she was ever in.

Now that I'm back home I'll proceed to watch them entirely, like the creepy little stalker I am.
"No Joana" Xana says "It's not stalking if they're famous!"

Which reminds me,
Xana doesn't like me to write her name here, because "You know my name in brazilian means cunt!! What if there's braszilians reading this?"
I'm not sure if her problem is readers believing that I have a friend whom I call that,

or the possibility people in Brazil will get confused into thinking that, instead of a friend, I hang around in the company of an antropomorphic human-sized pussy that ocasionally joins in conversations.

Either way, from now on I'm shortening it to X. Which is kinda cool and makes it sound like Xana's a sexy spy with a secret identity.

So, this week we all crashed at X's house, in Coimbra. I went back to the not-so-healthy nocturnal habits and ended up in some strange jet lag state. After sleeping until 3 in the afternoon I woke up feeling reaaally weird, and had this conversation with Mariana:
-I'm not tired, just mushy, like my legs are made of play-doh.
-Oh, I feel like that when I've had a lot of sex the night before.
-Yeah, it's pretty much like that, but without the blissfull joy of actually having screwed all night.

And that introduces the subject I have for you this week,
LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX!!


I'm bringing this up because lately I've been finding myself included in a lot of really open and honest conversations about sex.
It just started to be a topic, all of the sudden.
I don't know if it's the summer and everybody's kind of horny. Or it's something that happens when you turn 22. All of the sudden sex becomes something everybody's confortable discussing.
It's not like I've been hanging with any different people, either. They've all been my friends for years and always talked about relationships and love stuff.  But now, I'm getting waaay more information than I used to.

Not that I'm complaining! Quite the opposite, it's awesome to have people sharing with me the ups and downs (a-ah!) of their sex life.
It makes me feel like one of the ladies in Sex in the City.
I guess...
...I never really watch the series.
but I'm pretty sure it's similar to this. Pour me a Cosmo if I'm wrong.

But the point of this post is not to tell you how freaky I found out all my friends are.
I'm going to write about sex education.
my sex education.
or.. hm.. lack of it.

Let's start from the beginning, ok?
Telmo told me once, that he remembers exactly the day he found out about sex. Until then, he had only heard the daddy-puts-a-seed-in-mummy explanation, but didn't really know how that physically happened. When he discovered, he was completly freaked out about it. 

I never went through that sort of moment of realisation.
I always knew sex existed. The same way I knew Santa Claus didn't.
My barbies had sex on a daily basis. I would lay them naked over Ken and give both some privacy.
I didn't know exactly how it all happened but I grasped the basics.


and theeeen, I became a teenager.

That's when it all went downhill and I started freaking out, like Telmo when he was 5.

If, like me, you've been part of the weak public education system of Portugal, all you learned in school about sex was mostly in science classes - a biological perspective, regarding the whole where-do-babies-come-from question and scientific illustrations of penis inside vaginas -  and the catholic moral classes - where they talked A LOT about contraception and STDs.

and that was it.

In short, from all school thought me, sex was having a man putting his penis inside me and meanwhile we both had to be very carefull about contraception and disease control.

I was also sure you had to do it lying down. In the dark.

Meanwhile, there was a whole different side to it that nobody really talked about, but I knew it existed.
Everytime I went to my grandparents house, they had this little magazines with the tv program schedules, soap-opera synopses aaaaand, in the last pages, a short erotic fiction.

And I always read this.
Very quietly, curled up on the sofa,
during family gatherings.

THAT WAS MY FIRST CONTACT WITH ANYTHING PORNOGRAPHIC,
IN MY GRANDPARENTS LIVING ROOM! OK?
don't judge me

This fictions featured descriptions of fortuitous sex encounters. No regard for STDs whatsoever. Sometimes there was more than two people and, let me tell you, they were rarely lying down in the dark.

It's not like I believed those things really happened all the time. I knew it was fiction.
But I felt teachers weren't being very realistic either.

I guess I lacked a honest thing that would fill the gap between the all the scientific information about sexual organs and procriation I was getting from school and the debaucherie that I read on those magazines.
Not having that middle point left my teenager self with a lot of unawnsered questions that are kind of embarrassing to aknowledge, now, but here it goes:

Is sex always pleasurable?
Are other kinds of intercourse sort of a variation from the penis-in-vagina, which is the real deal?
What is normal, and not normal to do in bed?
How does it work when it's two people of the same sex?
Do other girls masturbate?

I guess we all had doubts that now sound kind of silly and obvious, but at the time it was a big deal!
A friend told me that, before highschool, she was convinced that blow jobs were this thing nobody really did. Only hookers. "Until I overheard some girls in school talking about it and I started having doubts. So I got the courage to ask my older cousin. She told me she did it with her boyfriend and it was a completly normal thing to do with a partner as long as both of you wanted it."

Unlike her, I never had the guts to ask my older cousin about this things (Sorry Alice! I know you'd be glad to help!). Or anyone, for that matter.
I got my answers in time, as I grew older.
Some from reading stuff online. 

Others from actual practise.

But I also learned that you don't suddenly start doing it and figure it all out.
I just went further to dealing with other bigger issues: like boundaries, consent, sexual identity, intimacy and compatibility. And some more especific day-to-day problems like "what if there's a dog sleeping in the bed?? gah!! I don't what do this in front of the dog!"

The learning never ends and you always have stuff going on you're not sure, or need to share...
Unfortunatly, I started coming to the conclusion that, as an adult, I'm almost as handicapped when it comes to talk about sex as back when I was a young teenager secretly looking at the vibrators in my mum's La Redoute catalogues. 
And that's something I should start worrying about.

One of my friends told me that the best decision he ever had was to promote a honest attitude with his parents about his sex life:
"Now that I'm older, we talk about everything. I really get a kick from having sex in public open-air spaces and  I've warned my mum that there's a probability of me being arrested for indecent exposure, one of this days! ahaha! but seriously, it's better for her to know what I do now, and give me advice, than to be surprised later on, when I call her from jail."

It's cleary been working great for him. But I definatly can't talk about any sex things with my parents.
I didn't do it when I was thirteen - I'm not doing it now.
IT WOULD BE MORTIFYING
for me
for them
for everyone.

But, recently, as my friends started being more open about it, I realised that a lot of them were dealing or had dealt with stuff I could relate to. And that it had been kind of silly of me, in the past, to think they wouldn't. To think that I was the only one having doubts about sex matters. that everybody else had it all figured out but me.

CONCLUSION:  Keeping it all to myself was never a very mature thing to do. Comunication is a bliss. Even if only to reassure you that you're not alone, and everybody is just as messed up as you.
Besides, being able to talk about sex with family and friends makes it easier to later do it with a partner without making it very awkward.

So, what about you guys? Where did you get your sex knowledge from?
Did you're parents talk to you about it?
Was it a mix of erotic short-stories and science classes, like me?
Did you read stuff online? Had any good books?

With whom do you talk, now? Where do you go when you have doubts?

and also... when is sharing just too much?

I'm saying this because, as I was preparing to write about how people around me are talking a lot about sex, I commented it with X. Just in case I was imagining stuff and people had been discussing penis sizes and how oral is ok from way back and I was just not paying attention.

She agreed imediatly: "I know what you meeeean! I noticed too! Everybody is fired up, right? Yesterday I was going out with a group of friends who started talking about sex stuff. My cousin was there, and said things that I WISH I HADN'T HEARD! GAAAAH! GAAAAH! IT'S MY COUSIN! TOO MUCH INFORMATION!!!!"

Also my mum told me that, when she was my age, her friends were very talkative about this things. But there was one in particular that had a lot of weird sex encounters and shared them detailed with the rest of the group, even though they reaaaaaally didn't want to hear about it.

It's been 40 years and my mum still remembers it! ahahah!


So, how do you know if your full-disclosure is making everybody unconfortable and will probably scar your well-intentioned friends for life?
Like, everytime they see that person you had been with they will remeber he likes to be poney-rided and can't really talk to him without bursting into laughter?
this is just an example.

I have a summertime ritual.It isn't going to the beach. or eating a ton of icecream. or getting my hair completly braided.

Althought I wouldn't mind doing any of this.

(Specially now my hair is long, and I'm searching braided hairdos on Tumblr on a daily basis.)

But my ritual is to re-read one of my books from the Meg Cabot shelf.

meg cabot / j.k.rowling shelf in my room

They sit there all year, looking so pink and shinny, until the hottest days come, and I finally pick one up.
Only one. Each year.

When I was younger I idolized Meg Cabot. I think I still do.. a tiny bit.. and that's why a never re-read the Princess Diaries. Those were my favourites and it would break my hearth to read them now and realise they suck. So I go on re-reading all the others she wrote, for nostalgia sake.

Last year was great! I chose Avalon High and it's about an american high school where everybody is the reencarnation of a character in the arthurian tale. It's the original King Arthur story repeating itself in an contemporary setting. There's sword fights and cheerleaders, isn't it awesome?!

This year...
it's High Stakes!

About a badass sixteen year's old mediator/ghost hunter that gets into fights with the undead, makes brazilian exorcisms, and basicly kicks ass. She also has a extremly good looking spanish ghost living in her house and the book features long descriptions of his abs. ahahaha! i looove it.

People are geeky about diferent things. I'm geeky about young adult fiction.
When I was younger, after reading this books I felt truly inspired and compeled to write. I wanted to write a book like Meg Cabot's. A book that I could fit in my shelf next to hers and it would be equally good.
IT WOULD BE MY MASTERPIECE...

I think over the years I started a endless number of this book projects.
I liked thinking of a story line, imagining characters, drawing portraits of them... I could go months daydreaming about it, but once I actually started the writing I lost all my interest imediatly. Most of my so-called books never got past the first chapter.
But there are 3, that I probably worked on for more time than the others, that I can sort of remember:

age of 11
I wrote the firts two chapters of a story about a girl that lived in a big mansion by the sea. The place was very odd, it had an insane amount of windows, all diferent in shape and size. There was something magical in the plot, (I was reading Harry Potter at the time.) I think the girl found a portal to some fantastic new world, but I honestly can't remember very well.
It was written during my summer holidays, in a notebook, and I gave it for my mum to read. It was the only writting project that I shared with anyone.

age of 14 (or 15?)
I drafted a story about a girl named Clara that moved to a new city because her mother got married again. In one of her ramblings around the bay she accidently witnesses a crime. (somebody was dropping a body from a boat!!) The story was partly about trying to find out what happened (and being chased by the mafia) and partly adapting to her new life, and falling in love with her step-brother (whom she hated at first, but there was a lot of sexual tension between the two). IT'S NOT DISGUSTING BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T BLOOD RELATED! Right? Plus, he had a band! and a bike!

I think I didn't write much past the wedding part, in the begining. I planned the whole story with post-its on my bedroom wall, but only found it fun to write the making-out-with-the-step-brother scenes. ahahah I'm a pervert.

age of 16
A-ah! By this time I got serious. Well, sort of. I wanted to write a screenplay. I had a proper software to do it and all.
It was about a group of friends and it all went around a Truth or Dare game. I think it was sort of a secret thing they had: They got together, played the game, and accepted the consequences no matter how embarrassing, degrading or illegal they were. The game turned into something addictive that controlled they're lifes to a certain degree. So, everything in the story was somehow influenced by it, and every episode things got nastier.
I remember there was something about kids shoplifting in a chinese store. And one of the girls falls in love with her teacher (that was going to be played by Pedro Granger!) and later gets pregnant and kicked out of her house by her catholic grandmother.
One of the characters had moved in recently and was running away from an abusive father. There was also some guy that dyed his hair blue and I'm pretty sure, at some point in the story, there was drug abbuse.

In general, all the things my boring, innocent high-school existence didn't really have.

Not that I'm complaning.
 
Around that time I also wrote a short story about a girl that fell in love with a ninja. He moved very fast and dressed all in black.
I'm not kidding. I really have this written in one of my diaries.
Their first date was at the mall.
Because, you know, ninjas love malls.


So, I'm curious. 
Does this happen to you too? Having big projects that you enjoy daydreaming about, but deep down you know that if you actually start doing it they're going to be nerve wracking and annoying?
Or, am I just very lazy?
I think, no matter how much you love doing something - from horse-riding to cooking pastries - there's always a moment when hard work is hard work, and things don't go so well and it's frustrating.
How do you do pass that point of :"oooooh.. this isn't fun anymore!!! I wanna give uuuup!"?

the good and the bad

part 1

We went for a mini-holiday at Sofia's place, in Vila Real.
I got there early and while Xana and Mariana didn't arrive, we sat on the sofa watching Eurosport. After a loud tennis match between Sharopova and Petrova, they broadcasted this race called: Ultra-trail du Mont-Blanc.
I had never heard of trail running, but after a few minutes I was altogether convinced this was the coolest sport ever. It's pretty much the same thing as hikking, but running. And Mont-Blanc is such an incredibly beautiful place, that it must be a thrill to be running with views like this:



The starting line was in a really cute ski resort near the Alps called Chamonix. So french. So adorable. People were in the windows making noise with pots and pans, as the ultra-trail started.
The crow of participans wore really colourful clothes and most of them were amateurs. Everybody seemed really relaxed, enjoying themselfs and stoping their run to talk to the cameras or having a snack sitting down on the mountain. Some of them got to the finish line completly covered in mud but really euphoric. 
After watching the show for a while, we started noticing something about the athletes. We were both thinking about it but Sofia was the first to say it out loud: 
"They are all really good-looking, aren't they?"

And it was true! Almost every runner they interviewed or filmed closely was, in my opinion, hot stuff.
I can't really put a finger in what made them look that way: some were really pretty, others just had this glow and confidence about them, like, a fiery and adventurous energy that made them really handsome!

It's incredible! guys, we found the secret! We cracked the code! This is where attractive people are hiding! They are all running around Mont Blanc in colourful The North Face jackets! 

After a while I was just poiting at the TV like crazy and screaming "gaaaah! I LOVE THIS SPORT! SIGN ME UP FOR THIS!", everytime there was a closeup on someone.



Maybe I should start exercising.




part 2

Later, that night, we went out. Clubbing.
Although colourful lights and dancing in a sea of people are two of my favourite things in the world, I've never been very fond of clubs. Most of the times, I feel the music is repetitive and tedious. Since I can't really sit and talk because it's too loud, and I have no one to make out with, I just get bored very fast.

But this night was different. This was Ladies Night in Vila Real. Which meant we didn't pay entrance, and could get 5 drinks for free. My love for free stuff widely surpasses my hatred for club music, so I was extremely happy to go.
On the way there, Sofia told us that, a few years ago, Ladies Night offered 10 drinks to women and 5 beers for men.

The whole Ladies Night thing is really weird, when you seriously think about it. As I walked to the bar I felt tempted to just say something like "I have a vagina, pour me a drink.", while waving the pink drinking card they gave me at the entrance.

But anyway, with free beverages in our hands, we started dancing to some disco version of a brasilian funk, and I began noticing people around us.
and..
everybody was kind of lame.

Man wore chockingly deep V cuts, hair gel, and silver necklaces. Some weren't that young and stood by themselfs with a drink in their hand looking around - which is something that freaks me out slightly.
A lot of the women looked sort of cheap, wearing way too much make-up and probably the same super-push-up bras I had seen in Women's Secret, that same day, and made me very puzzled:


As an overall description, just picture being in a place with a lot of smoke, low ceilings, blinking lights and the entire cast of Jersey Shore around you. 

Xana seemed happy about it, though: "This is like going to a gay bar! I don't feel atracted to anyone!"

Zé told me food in Lithuania is great. Apparently, his lithuanian flatmate always brought her suitcase full of food, coming back from vacations. I smiled at him and said "oh, lucky me!" but I really didn't believe it.

Guys, let me tell you something,

there is only one portuguese stereotype I allow myself to have:

I firmly believe that food in every other country on this planet sucks.

I can't help it. I'm gastronomic prejudiced. No food is like my mum's food.


I didn't think I would be like this, you know... I used to hear people say the thing they missed the most about Portugal was the food and I would think, all smugly,"Oh, these simple-minded people. They can't adapt, they're so bound to their roots."

Then I went to live abroad,
and became one of them. I missed it so much I planned everything I was going to eat the week I came back. My mom filled the freezer with fish, upon my arrival.

Part of this longing had a lot to do with the fact that I was simply getting sick all the time, with the food in Budapest. After two or three months I got to a point of despair calling my mum on skype barely holding the tears: "I'M SICK OF FEELING SICK! I WANNA GO HOOOOOOME"

This happened for various reasons, partly my fault, partly hungary's fault. (yes hungary! i'm talking to you!)

1 - first of all, genetics ain't helping me. I come from a long line of people with digestive problems and food intolerances. It's our thing. We all get sick with food. Our tummies rumble in unisom. Our stomaches ache together. Our livers are weird and lack enzimes.
Also, moving to a different country had a real impact in my whole body. I didn't even get my period for the first 3 months I was there! For a moment I thought I was carrying baby Jesus.

2- I  wanted to try new food that eventually didn't do me any good.
Top of my oh-god-i-wish-i-hadn't-ate-that list: LANGOS

(it's like, a pizza made of churro's dough. I honestly think my life expectancy dropped after I ate that.)

3 - It took me ages to realise minimarkets there weren't as reliable and the meat I was buying was kind of dodgy. When I finally got chicken from big market place I could almost hear a choir singing.

Nevertheless, I reckon I also missed the food back home because it was the first time I was cooking all my meals. Every day. Weekends included.

And I'm a lazy cook.

I have no imagination. My ideal meal is just cutting everything in small pieces and cooking it all together in a pan/ pot.
The less trouble the better. Why cook it separately? It's all going to end up together anyway!


that's what eventualy lead to the PURPLE INCIDENT:
(see how I wrote in purple the "purple incident"? that's the kind of subtlety they teach us in design school.)

I really didn't think it through as I put everything I had in the fridge in the boiling water. Potatos, carrot, onions, parsnip, paprika, meat.. and then I added beetroot. 

When I peeked inside the pot, after a while, I had a huge chock: Everything had turned purple. Everything. 

It looked awfull! 
But no way I'm throwing away good food just because it looks like someone drank too much grape juice and threw up they're dinner afterwards.
















I ate it proudly and saved the rest in the fridge for the next day.

Anyway, I'm telling you about this disastrous cooking moment to make you understand how hysterically amused I got, when I searched lithuanian food on google and this was the first thing that popped up in the image search.

Maybe Zé is right. I'm going to fit in that country like a glove.