If you're portuguese, don't read this.

I'm just posting a very loose english translation of what I wrote here, 

So, move along. the internet is vast. Watch this video about the birds of paradise mating dance instead. come back in a few days when I write something new.

To the rest, here it goes:

SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR VERY SELF-CRITICAL PEOPLE

If you’re a struggling artist with internet connection, there’s a big chance you’ll spent a considerable amount of time browsing behance portfolios and feeling lame and unoriginal. 

During my time in university I learned some tricks to avoid the self-commiserating spiral of oh-god-there’s-so-many-talented-people-in-the-world-why-do-I-even-try. This is a list of the things I try to focus on, to snap out of work-driven ansiety. 

Consider this a life coaching moment for underachievers:

1- There will ALWAYS be someone better than you.

When my friend Sofia told her parents she wanted to study arts, her mum said “you know you’ll never be the best, don’t you?”. It might sound harsh, but I think it’s a good motto. Unless you’re Michael Phelps, there will always be someone faster, richer, more handsome than you. So you might just well accept it, roll up your sleeves and do your best anyway.

2- Even Michael Phelps gets nervous.

Once I started going to art-related events and festivals, and met people out of art school I became more aware that even those that I consider super talented and sucessful had their moments of visible nervousness and perspiration.

I’m aware this is a little despicable, but thinking that the people I admire also get insecure and doubt themselves from time to time makes me very glad.

3- More to learn!

When I went to university, I found myself surrounded by people that knew a lot more about design than me. They mastered the software, talked about typefaces and had little inside jokes about Josef Muller Brockmann! Eventually, I made a conscient choice to avoid thinking about how little I knew and rather how much I could learn from them. 

THE MAGICAL DAY PAULO TAUGHT ME HOW TO USE THE MULTIPLY TOOL ON PHOTOSHOP

Now that I’m not in school, there’s a bigger physical distance between me and the people with shiny behance portfolios. They’re not sitting next to me in the school canteen anymore. 

But I also learned that artists outside the academic world are generally nice and enjoy talking about themselves and their work. My advise is: Don’t just look at other people’s portfolios online. Read their blogs, go to exhibitions, sign up for workshops, ask them stuff, pick their brains, try to find out about their process and inspirations. It’s easy to look at a finished piece of work and think “gaaah... this is genius I’ll never do that” and overlook the fact that it developed out of a lot of failure and experimentation. That piece is the good-looking tip of a huge iceberg of hard work.

4- There’s worst.

I used to entertain myself browsing bad illustration portfolios when I was feeling down. It was a guilty pleasure that I only admitted to a few close friends because I feared it was a bit pathetic to cheer myself up with other people’s lack of talent.

With time, I discovered everyone else does it! (that, or I’m only friends with terrible people) Although I wouldnt advise you to linger too much on this type of comparisions. This are not the healthiest of thoughts and eventually one of the people you think you’re better than will get the job/award/exhibition/visibility you craved for and you’ll feel like the world is unfair, have a rage attack and rip to shreds the latest Time Out issue, because they published a new article about that person’s awfull work. 

5-Call your biggest fan.

 
You have merit! You’ve done some interesting stuff! And if self-compliments don’t work call your mum and ask her to remind you the talented miracle kid you are. Have her tell you how everything you do is beautiful from the pasta collages in kindergarden, to the editorial works from now..

6- You will fail. You will survive.

I used to get so ansious about school my stomach would start to burn. Watching Teleshopping at 4am waiting for the painkillers to kick in is the opposite of a happy life.

To avoid that, now I focus on how all the things that make me worry: deadlines, driving exams, failed relationships, job interviews... are small in the vast universe that is my existence.

VISUALIZING MYSELF AS A GIANT HELPS

That’s how I flunked Printing Technologies on my third year. It was the day before the deadline. I had enough time to do the report, but would probably pass with a low grade, sleep very little and stress a lot.

So, I sang a karaoke version of Eye of the Tiger on Youtube, made up my mind and said to myself: nope, this is not worth the effort. I deserve to be happy. and BAM! I flunked something for the first time in my life!

Newsflash: Nothing bad happened. 

Nobody died. The world didn’t implode because of my failure.

If whatever you’re doing makes you way more miserable and ansious than it should, being well is more important. And it’s not a big deal to give up.

First Day

Though I've never been very keen on New Year's celebrations, I've always made some sort of resolutions, that I would conveniently forget about, during the course of a month.
Last year I wrote them here and now, for the first time, they are coming back to haunt me.

So, one-year-ago-Joana wanted to drink less, stop being lazy about shaving her legs, keep up with the gym and be more patient with herself. Like a lazy and socially inconvenient bear, I was having troubles keeping my skin smooth, my drunk behaviour in control, and was far from being fit.

but I've grown so much since then, you guys!
I've done so many fulfilling things this year.  

Like that time we went to a lake in Moletai. But didn't swim because I didn't expect Moletai would have lakes and hadn't packed a bikini.

or that time I drank kefir for the first time.

or that time my mum and I managed to talk about plastic bags for a whole half an hour, on skype.

or that time I rode a taxi and the driver was drunk and I still payed him because I'm such an idiot and then he asked me for my number and I ran away and lost a glove.

THIS YEAR WAS FULL OF MILESTONES
and I've changed so much!

My legs are shaved, at this very moment, and I was alcohol free for most of the year.
In fact, can proudly say that, in 2013, I didn't vomit even once, and always peed in the right places. I'm aware this achievements are kindergarden level, but I'm going to congratule myself even so.
I quit the gym back in February, BUT since my other resolution was to be more patient with myself, I've decided to embrace the fact I'm not the gym-type person and craddle my fat inner child with lots of love and cookies.

Now, about the new year:
2014 is going to be all about emancipation. I'm tired of this sabbatical state I'm in and will finally start looking for something to do that involves putting on clothes and leaving the house most days of the week. Somehow I'm picturing myself in a power suit plunging throught the art scene of Porto...but that's unlikely.

Here are my goals for 2014:

-move out of my parents' house.
-get a job.
-have sex.
-spend less time on facebook.
(I believe the last two are correlated.)

**wish me luck!**

Yes, I finally have an excuse to google season appropriate lolcats.



Penafiel is soaked in Christmas spirit.
Not only you hear Christmas songs in every shop you enter, there's also a public soundsystem all over the main street, playing carols all day long. Teenager temp workers were hired by the Shopkeepeers' Union, to dress up like Santa and hand out balloons, screaming "hohoho" with their squeaky pubescent voices.
To make it even better, a dutch Circus is coming to town. Their poster is too good for words to describe it:

There's no snow, but that just means you can get to wear prettier shoes to all the Christmas dinner parties. Facebook events are all over the place and though I cherish the prospect of eating loads of desserts, it's time to start worrying about getting presents for all this people.

Do you feel confused about the weird tradition of wrapping things in flashy paper and handing them away? Are you clueless about what to offer this Christmas?
Don't worry.
I'm here for you.

This seasonal blog post will be about
THE SECRET OF GIFT GIVING.

When deciding what to give someone for Christmas (or any other present-giving holiday) keep in mind this golden rule: All gifts fall into one of this 3 categories - useful, fun and/or sentimental. 

A great gift would fulfill all three, but that's pro-level gift giving. The best trick for you beginners is to just focus in one category and the rest will follow.

USEFUL
This has been my dad's technique for years. My mother needs a new mixer...we shall give her one.
People always need more stuff. From keychains a high-tech GPS. You just need to pay attention. Practical gifts can't go wrong, unless your aunt has been complaining how much she needs a cheese grater to everyone in the family, and on Christmas day you're not the only one offering her that. But, even then, that's her problem not yours.

And, to be honest, there's no such thing as too many cheese graters.

FUN
This are my favourite. The main idea is to give people something they probably would love to have but won't buy it for themselves, because it's not a priority.
For example, a party wig. No one ever buys a wig without having a purpose, people get one when they're planning to dress up for a costume party. But it's so nice to have a new wig just for the sake of it! 
A karaoke machine, glow in the dark face paint, inflatable palm trees are some of the things a responsible adult wouldn't buy, but are super cool. You wouldn't know how much you needed them until someone gave them to you.

SENTIMENTAL
This gifts that are somehow symbolic of your relationship with the giftee. A photo, matching friendship bracelets, a sweet mixtape... The sentimental gift can be handmade, but not necessarily.
It's nice when it's about an inside joke between the both of you. When I say it's sentimental I don't mean everyone will hug and cry after unwrapping it. It can be hilarious! 
Sometimes the best thing you can offer is a few good laughs. So go ahead and record yourself clumpsly dancing to one of the new Beyonce songs and send it to a special friend.

After considering what kind of present you want to offer, bear in mind this two tips:

THE BEST GIFT IDEA
I know it's a cliché to offer socks. But, it's a cliché for a reason - it's an awesome gift!
Everyone wears socks!
(except that international student from Brasil, two years ago, that wore sandals all his life before he came to live in Porto)

Socks can be slick and sexy, or comfy and silly. They come in all sizes, and colours and materials! THE CHOICES ARE INFINITE! SOCKS ARE INFINITE!

THE WORST GIFT IDEA
Never, 
NEVER,
offer live animals.

If you're friend wants a pet, let him get one. Offer him a kitty litter, NOT the kitty.
There are other ways to make animal-loving people happy besides giving them something to adopt. Some dog shelters have a special days when you can take the dogs for a walk. Make that your present - take your friend there for a fun afternoon. Or donate to a animal charity in their name. Or buy this Gemma Correl's totebag.



Any of this things are better than giving someone a living thing they will need to feed, clean and take care of from now on.

So, that's about all the advise I can gather.
If after this you still have no ideas of what to offer your loved ones tomorrow night, check the wikipage for Saturnalia, the ancient roman festival that preceded christianity. They also gave presents to each other:

"In his many poems about the Saturnalia, Martial names both expensive and quite cheap gifts, including writing tablets, dice, knucklebones, moneyboxes, combs, toothpicks, a hat, a hunting knife, an axe, various lamps, balls, perfumes, pipes, a pig, a sausage, a parrot, tables, cups, spoons, items of clothing, statues, masks, books, and pets.[38] Gifts might be as costly as a slave or exotic animal,[39] but Martial suggests that token gifts of low intrinsic value inversely measure the high quality of a friendship.
In a practice that might be compared to modern greeting cards, verses sometimes accompanied the gifts. Martial has a collection of poems written as if to be attached to gifts.[42] Catullus received a book of bad poems by "the worst poet of all time" as a joke from a friend.[43]"

Isn't this great? I wouldn't mind receiving a hunting knife, or a mask or a bad poetry book. Apart from the slave giving thing, this is full of precious gift ideas.

Now go and find a shop that sells knucklebones.
*Merry Christmas*
 

I never fainted.
But, for some reason, I was weirdly obsessed about it as a teenager.
You know how when you're young and wonder with expectation about how your first time having sex will be like? I had that about fainting.

I was eagerly waiting for the special day I would lose my conscience for the first time and fall dramaticly on the floor.
I think what attracted me was the idea of a diferent state of mind. You're not dead, but not sleeping either. That was very seducing to 12 year old me (This was a long time before finding out I could induce a blackout with a few shots tequila. After that my curiosity about the unconsciousness kinda died.)
I knew all the symptoms, and although I had assured my mum I would put my head between my knees if I ever felt dizzy and light headed, deep down I knew I wouldn't. I wanted to try it.
And I was very sure I'd eventually have a chance to do so.

But I didn't.
Nevertheless, I was close to it for 2 occasions,
and both involved getting hit on the head.

First, in a Visual Arts class.
Any of you from portuguese school certainly know how EVT classes were madness. I have never met an EVT teacher that wasn't on a verge of a nervous breakdown.
For those who didn't experience it, imagine  30 hormone-pumped pre-teens, sitting together and making collages.

Bad things happen.

There was always a lot of confusion and very little boundaries. One day, for some reason, students were throwing their backpacks at each other. Zé wasn't even aiming for me, but his Eastpack hit the back of my head and I instantly felt very dizzy and my legs were all mushy. I thought "oh oh it's coming! it's my fainting first time.!!"
Unfortunately, I got so excited about the imminence of a fainting episode I started feeling better.

The teachers rushed me out of the classroom (yes, there's 2 teachers in EVT classes. I'm pretty sure it's for riot control purposes), and I was excused for the rest of the lesson. This would be a good thing if it didn't mean spending 45 minutes sipping tea in the "infirmary".
I'm writting quotation marks on that because in spite of being called an infirmary it was just a little room with a bench and posters about the dangers of alcohol. There wasn't any nurse. Only a cranky cleaning lady who came by occasionally to check on me. She looked me up and down, decided I was too thin and proceded to lecture me on eating disorders and how my present condition (almost fainting from being hit on the head) was solely due to being weak from self-starvation. Little did this lady know that she was preparing me for the following 10 years of people making snap judgements about my eating habits and self-image.

so, thank you fake school nurse. you made me a stronger yet slightly jaded person.


But, back to the story, a year later, something similar happened:
Again, a classic wrong-place-wrong-time situation.

I was standing near the school's footbal field, talking with some friends, when one of the players shoot for the goal, and missed it.
The ball went straight to the back of my head. 

WHAT ARE THE ODDS OF THIS HAPPENING?

Again, I felt everything shaking around me, this time I was one hundred percent sure I was going to collapse! So I declared "I'm FAINTING!" rather loudly, to my girl friends, who promptly picked me up and lay me on a bench, arguing about what to do next.
In retrospective, I doubt a lot of people scream "I'm fainting!" before doing so, but my friends believed. Some were going to call a teacher, another was confronting the footballer guy, and one waved a pack of sugar, in case I was having a hypoglissemic shock "I'm not fainting because of low blood sugar, LUÍSA! I JUST GOT HIT IN THE HEAD BY A PENALTY KICK THATS WHY I'M FAINTING!" I complained, like the ungrateful bitch I am.

I was ready to see my friends preocupied faces go blurry.
Maybe I would wake up in the hospital. Who knows..
Maybe my parents would be there, holding my hand.
It could be all very cinematic.
(this was before I saw the inside of Penafiel's public hospital, thanks to another school-induced-injury. I used to think all hospitals looked like Grey's Anatomy.) 

I waited for a white numbness to lead me to unconsciousness, but it never came.
I was wide awake, my neck hurt and the floor kept spinning.

Then, I started to worry.

For the rest of the morning, I felt like I was standing on a boat and couldn't stop my body from waving from side to side. The teachers noticed I was more discoordinated than usual and sent me home.

I missed school for almost a week (2 months in teenager time), during which I just walked around the house looking permanently tipsy.

Later a doctor told me my spine had suffered a very mild trauma that shook up my inner balance.
And fixed it.
I'm a very balanced person now, to prove so I took a serie of portraits of me equilibrating things on my head:

a wooden duck

a tiny fake lemon tree

a hygrometer + donald the duck VCR tape

Let me take you to a gay bar, gay bar. or not. it's fine. we can just go to hesburger. no problem (part 4 of 4)

Halloween is a very uneventful date here in Penafiel.
My only fear is that kids this days are more americanized and if they come to our door trick or treating I have no candy in the house except for a half-eaten jar of nutella.
But I doubt that will happen. There aren't any children living in my neighbourhood (how creepy is that, huh?).

Anyway, the only possible scenario for celebrating Halloween, this year, is to watch Dracula and maybe dress up my cat. (I just googled pet costumes and entered a whole new world of possibilities. look at this! )
I decided that, to be in a more festive spirit, I'll comemorate the day by releasing some pages from my comics project, the-thing-that's-taking-all-my-time-and-keeping-me-stuck-here-in-this-childless-land, more precisely, the pages from 31/10/2012.
Go check it!

Apart from that, here's the last review of gay bars in Vilnius, concluding the series.

SOHO

I think this is considered the best and most popular club.
InYourPocket travel guide describes its decoration as "the style of a vampire’s Council house." and I think it's spot on.
It's not as fun as Men's Factory because, in Soho, it looks like they are actually taking themselves seriously and trying to be elegant and refined. And failing. There's a lot of corners divided by red curtains, a very polished and classy bar, fancy seats and a fake fireplace. But a TV screen with phone numbers and videos of naked men clashes with the atmosphere they might be trying to achieve.

Most of the times I've been there, I felt like I was crashing a party full of gay guys accompained by their straight girl friends, who wanted to get very drunk and rowdy and dance flirtly but in a totally platonic way.
One of those nights, I was in the bathroom calmly washing my hands, minding my own business and the girl next to me felt the need to tell me, a perfect stranger that didn't even look at her twice, that "she's sorry to disappoint me, but she's not a lesbian"
I'm rarely perceived as gay so my brain went from being slightly surprised "she thinks I'm a lesbian?" to "SHE THINKS I'M HITTING ON HER JUST BECAUSE WE'RE WASHING HANDS NEXT TO EACH OTHER???!"
I wish I could tell you I had an awesome answer to that and the girl felt really stupid afterwards, but I was really embarrassed and furious and stormed out of the bathroom mumbling "dont worry, i'm not interested!"

I found it odd and a bit insulting that this girl would go so much out of her way to inform the world (in this case, me) she's not gay even though she is in a gay bar. This is not like I offered her a drink or asked her to dance. I was just standing there washing my hands!
I want to believe this was a very specific thing and not make any bigger conclusion about the club based on it, but, let's be honest, I'm not trying to make a scientific research here, the point of this review is to give my opinion of the places based on the one or 2 nights I've been there. And, based on that, plus the accounts of some of my friends, Soho didn't seem to be a very welcoming place for gay women. Not only from the attitude of the people there, but also because the club is completly oriented to men.

To which you're going to say: "Well Joana, what were you expecting? All the events in Soho are marketed for men. The entrance as semi-nude dudes in the walls and one of their logos is a penis!  Besides, you've been to Men's factory and loved it, what's the difference now?"
So, here's the difference:
Mybar had nights for women, Men's factory has another branch, Girl's Factory (I didn't visit it, but if the decoration follows the Men's Factory taste I imagine boob-shaped bean bags and a clitoris-rodeo like the one Sophia Wallace did.), but Soho, in spite of being the most popular bar, the one that appeared on the march and has good connections with the Gay League, is the only one not having an alternative night or events directed to women.
And that's sad. Specially because girls go there all the time, and if theres gay women wanting to go to Soho, they should welcome diversity.


Rating: ***
I'm giving it 3 starts. Because they seriously need to get something going on for the ladies. And because I the mirroed walls in the dance floor are kind of strange.

 

 

Let me take you to a gay bar, gay bar. or not. it's fine. we can just go to hesburger. no problem (part 3 of 4)

hi readers!

How are you all?

Since my last post, Summer as pretty much ended. Or at least, I started wearing socks to bed, which, in my book, is the definition of Winter.

I'm in Penafiel full time, and very short on interaction with other human beings. I even started refering to other people as human beings, that's how creepy and asocial I'm becoming.

My comic project is building up in the living room wall and my cat will ocasionally roll around the sheets of paper in a desperate call for attention. 
 

I know, it's adorable.

 Apart from that, I started driving again!

After a initial "which one is the break?" moment I'm actually doing well and have droven around town, wearing sweatpants and a pyjama sweater, at the extreme velocity of 30km/h. I'm officially an old lady, now.

One of this days I'll let you in on my the whole trauma with cars and screaming driving instructors, but right now we'll go back to wilder times in Vilnius and I'll write you my review of the third gay bar:

MEN'S FACTORY

Me and Ceren went to Men's Factory for a Drag Queens Night. 

First, we got lost. 

We were in the right street but couldn't find it! After walking back and forth like crazy, we finally tried entering in an area that looked like it was only for industrial warehouses and had a "you're-gonna-get-raped-here" vibe to it.

Turns out it was there.

Men's Factory is one of the oldest gay clubs in the city and it had recently reopened. Someone told me it was built in a soviet bomb shelter, and that's why it's so underground and has tiny claustrophobic stairs. The entrance was an antique looking door protected by a hiron cage and muscly guards.

Past the guards, you come into a little hall where a entrance control system contrasted with vintage mirrors, red curtains and walls, and a big and phallic copper statue. This was a good preview of what you would find inside. Men's factory did feel like a theme park atraction with a pornographic twist. Pirates of Caribean Sex Dungeon or something of that sort. The bartenders dressed as sexy sailors and there were penises everywhere, the lamps, the statues, the coat hangers, the chair feet. Everywhere. It was so odd, so over the top, I loved it.

Even though the place was obviously for men (just in case you didn't notice it in the name..) and even had areas restricted for me, I didn't feel completly unwelcomed, or like I was crashing some gay men's party. The bartenders, the men drinking at the bar and even the guards outside were nice to us (They called us a taxi. With their own phone.)

The Drag show was awfull, but entertaining. I don't think it was supposed to be funny, but I laughed, a lot. One of the drag queens  was too tall for the stage and tried lip-synching while clumpsily dancing and avoiding hitting her head in the stage illumination. It was terrible. 

But that sort of terrible that goes around and gets to be good again.

There were very few people there, but the tiny crowd was in a very drunk and sexy-party-hard mode. As we left, a lady licked salt out of a bartender's belly for a shot of tequila. This is the kind of thing that looks sort of cool if you're surrounded by party people, in a festive setting, and looks super strange if you're the only person in an almost empty bar. Which was the case.

rating ****

It's hard to find, but totally worth seeing. The only drawback for me was that the music was terrible.

Also, as reference, there's a pizza place right in front of it that happens to be the best place to eat pizza in town. I would highly recommend it, too.
 

Let me take you to a gay bar, gay bar. or not. it's fine. we can just go to hesburger. no problem (part 2 of 4)

Hey! Today I'm in Lisbon. It's 28Cº and my sister lives up the hill. I came back from the supermarket and completly colapsed in the sofa for 3 hours.

Apart from that pointless information, I'm also here to share my opinions on the second gay bar! YEY!
 

MYBAR:

Generally speaking, Mybar is a terrible place unless you're a 40-something gay man who loves Eurovision.
If that's the case, go for it.

(ahah is she patting her boobs?)

The problem is that the bar isn't popular at all. I followed them on facebook, and everytime they invited me for an event the only two people who checked attendance were part of the staff. Which is sad, because they do make an effort to have different events. There was even a Electro Swing night!

The space itself isn't bad. It's small and cozy and they have plenty of really comfortable sofas and beanbags. It's a nice place to be either dancing or sitting down for a drink in the upper floor.
The most stricking characteristic about Mybar is that it's the only club on the list that isn't underground. It has windows, it's very central and inviting (you still have to ring a doorbell, though) From outside, it looks like any other bar, which for me it's a positive thing, but it actually may not be: If it doesn't look like a gay bar, how do you keep away homophobes?

In spite of starting this review saying it's a terrible place, I'll make amends and admit I actually had a great night there. The first time I've been at MyBar was for a 90's party and,  proving my theory that gay girls in Vilnius love decade thematic nights, there was a lot more people than usual and the music was good. (I mean, if you like Spice Girls and Madonna. I do.)
Unfortunately, after that, everytime I went there it looked like a house party that is reaching its end: only a few drunk people slouching on the sofa and not much going on.

  Rating *
I really think it could be a cool place, if only people went there. But then again, that goes for almost anything, even a warehouse in the middle of the forest would be cool if it had a lot of fun people and good music.
If you want to check it out, I would reccommend going on a themed night, since more people may come. And the good thing is: in case it sucks, you're still in the city center and in a walking distance to a lot of bars and clubs - it's easy to make a plan B and not have you're night ruined.