December 23, 2011

Children's day!

Today's is children's day in the office. Almost everybody brings their children and they play around with each other, they freely run among the desks, happy, shouting, singing...

I love children! Everybody can tell just looking at me interacting with then, but having them running around your desk, shouting and screaming and playing their toys is not an ideal work environment!

Mainly when they play with your toys! :)

December 20, 2011

What will be?

Believe it or not, some people just don't clearly see the "interjunction" of their lives! Call it 3-way junction, Y-intersection, T-junction, it doesn't matter... you will clearly face this dilemma at some stage... the sooner the better!

Some people are so skeptic that they can't see the big steps in every little decisions they make... in other hand, some of them just think every little decision, no matter how little, is part of a bigger plan!

How to achieve the right balance?

Easy as it seems to be, this can get really complicated if we start with a simple question: are you a believer? This question probably triggers another one: in what? From there, we had open a whole world of possibilities... pretty predictable, isn't it?

Talking about predictability, isn't it the most extraordinary thing about the universe? To write down equations to describe the unseen from the seen? Yes, and I have to concur with my determinist friends: mathematics is simply beautiful!

But... what else? As my determinist friends believe, is maths the new God (if any)? Is determinism just an excuse to exempt one-self from any responsibility from their acts? Perhaps... but perhaps it's just uncertainty! Or even worse, the new faith! An irrational desire of ending up with an explanation for the unexplained!

I still sustain the free-will approach, and will, eventually, take the memorable way to my life, while the determinists, sadly don't know yet, as the way they will take is already determined, but they will only know after they've take it!

November 24, 2011

Just another lazy, drunken journalist!

Sometimes you need a good argument to bend someone's opinion, but sometimes you just need a stereotype... that's exactly what made me think I shouldn't watch Depp's new movie, The Rum Diary.

People is talking about. People usually talk about things. Cool things... even they are not really cool. Sometimes, looking cool is cool enough. That's the case with The Rum Diary. People are saying they want to watch, they have to watch, and even that someone else has watched and it's great!

Really?!? I doubt! Not because I watched, but just because it didn't sound right! I don't known if was only the advertisement, or a combination of the advertisement and the trailer, but "great" is an adjective which doesn't goes well with the whole thing... and I was right!

Apart from my own stereotype - and I don't know from where in hell I got it - I just needed a review to endorse what my impressions were, and that's it... I have a good reason to NOT waste 120 minutes in a "cliché" movie! FOMO-free!!! As was said in The Sunday Times, "... at times, the film is The Hangover for people who think they are edgy outsiders."

October 20, 2011

Dunnes Stores. The difference is we are irish!

Dunnes Stores. The difference is we're Irish! What's that supposed to mean? An "irish quality label"? Dunnes Stores claim they are irish, but they act as germans - nothing against the german people... it's supermarkets we are talking about!

Last weekend doing my regular shop - I'm not particularly loyal to any supermarket. Usually I buy certain things here, other things there... and last Saturday, while buying some stuff in Dunnes, an image of Lidl came to my mind... all the fruits and vegetables were still in their delivery boxes! A very known practice for Lidl and Audi, the so called low-budget markets. In this way they save some money as they don't need anyone organizing their shelves...

So... what's the difference again?

September 11, 2011

110911


Ten years ago today, I recall, I was in Citibank's datacentre in Paulista Avenue, São Paulo, Brazil, and around noon, 1 pm, we got the news about the attacks. We were all in the operating room watching the images, almost unbelievable, in a small TV set. We were sent back home that day, as Citibank, like all other American companies around the world, closed its doors fearing terrorist attacks... this would be the first sign of terrorism's victory over the free world!

The theme was so explored since that it seems nothing was left to be said. The change of paradigms, the split of the world, the end of individual freedom... there were many speculations, some real and some sensational, like everything else in the press. At the time I did not have a blog - a technology still blooming - but I remember the heated discussions over the subject... even an colleague, friend of a friend of mine, poet, believed to have written "the definitive poem" on the 911. Needless to say, only he and perhaps his girlfriend of the time found the poem great. An advertising people's thing...

Grudges aside, write about the 911 in 110911 seemed, at first, opportunism. Even more considering all the hoopla american media - and to some extent european as well - around the date: Ground Zero visit by President Obama and former president W. Bush, debates about Arabic-American situation, large media coverage - written, spoken and warched. It's just too much!

Reading an article this week, by Conor O'Clery, the Irish Times foreign correspondent who lived in Manhattan at the time, he said something about remember the little things... the little things! I already knew Manhattan and the Twin Towers from my first visit to New York in 1995. I revisited the Twin Towers again in 1998 and 1999, then I visit the remains of them in 2002, during a training course I was attending in New York, near to Ground Zero site... and be there with no towers was at least weird. Besides the obvious - the horror of the act and its consequences - those little things people who lived in the area miss the most, the immense shopping and service concourse, the numerous newsagents, cafes, from Starbucks to run family-run shops, with freshly baked bagels every morning, not to mention barbers, hairdressers, key-cutters, shoes-repair, deli's, restaurants... a piece of history for each daily frequenter of that World Trade Center... and me, I just experienced for few weeks during sparse visits!

So, buddy, during this 110911, instead of consuming all that super-produced material that media will push down your throats on TV, radio and newspapers, try to remember the little things... those apparently irrelevant, or meaningless, or insignificant, that in the end make a difference, simply by reminding you that you are alive to watch them!

September 06, 2011

It's been a hard time

It's been a hard day's night, and I've been working like a dog
It's been a hard day's night, I should be sleeping like a log
But when I get home to you I find the things that you do
Will make me feel alright


I've been working hard, alright, but not like a dog! So many new things going on that it's almos impossible to find spare time to spend blogging... pity!

I'm trying to get back, though...

June 24, 2011

Shop! Shop! Shop!

Yes, now it's official: the government has declared it's time to buy! The one's who can afford to buy have the responsibility to save the economy in their shoulders!

Michael Noonan, the Fine Gael politician who has been the Minister for Finance since March 2011, is encouraging Irish people to "go shopping"! Well, you might be asking "but buy what?", in which return the minister might turn to you saying "don't ask silly questions, boy! Just buy, buy and buy!"

We all can guess where such technical advises might bring us, can't we?

June 20, 2011

Is é Eamonn Ó Mhuireann do fíor?

Someone's questioned
the veracity of Eamonn Ó Mhuireann...
Who the hell are they to doubt
about Eamonn Ó Mhuireann?

Eamonn Ó Mhuireann, son of
the Great King of the North
From the lands where no one stands
more than a moment in heresy...

Who the hell art thou, Whale of Stones?
Art thou stoned enough to stores'f holder
or carry thou too much stones on thy shoulder?
Níl uisce-beatha ar bith fágtha sa bhuidéal ar do shon...

Eamonn Ó Mhuireann,
yeah, that's me!

Hum... me pergunto se seria do fíor or ag fíor, sendo ag não o presente contínuo, é óbvio, mas sim a substantização verbal de fíor...

June 03, 2011

Where's Wally?

Wally will be in Dublin from 16 to 19 of June, as part of the Street Performance World Championship.

Details:

May 11, 2011

The new children's playground

Even most parents believed that kids under 18 should not be able to keep their accounts private and among them, about one-third monitor their children's usage of social media, some parents still tend to allow their 10 to 12 years old children to have a Facebook or MySpace account and keep it private, says a recent study.

The www is a wild, wild world, as Yusuf Islam (or Steven Demetre Georgiou, aka Cat Stevens) used to say! All kind of people out there, from good to psycho, and really bad people as well, so better you look after your children... or someone else will be doing that for you...

March 24, 2011

All you need is love

OED, the Oxford English Dictionary is launching a new revised version today. First in it's online version, and later-on on the paper. Among the new words, "wags", for "wife's and girlfriends"; an annoying modern usage of “heart” as an ironic verbal expression of the non-verbal design used to represent “love” on T-shirt and car-sticker slogans; “tinfoil hat” – referring to a type of headwear believed by some to protect the wearer from covert surveillance.

The most interesting thing though, was the patterns noticed among online users. The single most searched-for word is “dictionary” itself, but the second-most popular search was “love”...

Yeah, people are still looking for it!

March 18, 2011

I am unsuccessful man!


Someone came to me today saying that I look more successful when I'm on my suite... but it's Friday, the official casual day, so, that's OK!

This situation made me recall a text I posted (in portuguese) for the 2010 New Year's occasion. In that text I said that instead of wishing people happiness and prosperity, I'd like to wish LUXURY. What determines the concept of luxury is its shortage... So I want lots and lots of those things we lack... as SIMPLICITY, HUMILITY and SOLIDARITY, this, the noblest sense a person can have, along with COMPASSION, which I also want in large quantities...

March 16, 2011

Irishness

It's Paddy's day tomorrow, time to show up all the "irishness" people have been hiding the whole year!

Things start in the morning... It will be people all around on their Paddy's costumes: greens high hats, with the shamrock stamped in the top, green t-shirts, red fake beards... even Celtic t-shirts will do the job of bringing all that restrained "irishness" out.

Of course there will be people with much more restrained "irishness" than others. And those would be the ones still thinking in the last election pool, or in how Enda Kelly will run the country, the ones just worried about their own jobs, their mortgages, their taxes rising, their money shrinking - money now has been taken by something called Universal Social Charge.

For those who can't forget the bank's bailout, the corporate taxes, the richer people's tax privileges... for all of those, (including myself, even I'm not officially irish), they just need to push all that irishness out in a very well-known way: DRINKING THEMSELVES TO DEATH!!!

Long Live Paddy!

February 23, 2011

What a Dissimulator!

I got some feedback from friends about my "birthday poem" posted yesterday, and they were concerned about the darkness and the bitterness of the poem. I'd say this is the way I write, most of the time! And the beauty of writing is that you don't need to write the true... this is why is called fiction!

To recall Fernando Pessoa which wisely said:
The poet is a mere dissimulator

His dissimulation seems so real

That he dissimulates to be dolor

The dolor which he can really feel.

And those who read his writes,

In the pain chore feels well,

Not both the pains he delights,

But the one which no one tells.

Thus in the gutters of the funny wheel,

Spin, spin, to put my mind apart

This convoy of hope made of steel

This convoy of rope called heart.
Translated by myself...

February 22, 2011

guess who is getting older?

older, older and older,
the burden on your shoulder
everything you've ever done
with your youth now is gone
and you're older, older and older

wiser, wiser and wiser
your lore overflows like a geyser
the wisdom you'd like to share
finds no one who really cares
and you getting wiser, wiser and wiser

skeptical, skeptical and skeptical
can't decide if a coffin or a receptacle
doesn't matter, get your things on time
whether you fall whether you climb
and keep skeptical, skeptical and skeptical

you're a clown, a clown, and a clown
spent your life trying to be by your own
so that you couldn't see your beloved ones
crying over your dust, over your bones
and you're still a clown, a clown, a clown.

February 17, 2011

Old School

BIMM is comming to Ireland. The Brighton Institute of Modern Music have announced that they will be opening a new college in Dublin in association with the DIT (Dublin Institute of Technology). They already have the backing of Sir Bob Geldof, who says in BIMM's website that he is aware of BIMM’s track record as the leading provider of modern music training in the UK, and the success of their graduates and their employment in all areas of the music industry, plus many hit record successes.

Hummm... he sounds like a business man, doesn't he? This is all about money, investment and employment. It's just another business, don't get exited about it... What were you expecting for? To be taught how to be an artist? No! They can teach you some music theory and pratice, OK, but art itself they can't!

Ah, the old days where all the music came from the heart...

February 08, 2011

the clowns are on air!

Without Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny, TV3 first leaders' debate was a success... as entertainment. What was the difference between Xfactor, Big Brother and The Debate? None, as it is all television! The Debate probably will be bored faster, as nobody can sing nor dance! And who was that saying it was a great debate?!? Terry Prone or the other guy? I can't tell, as I was only listening, not watching...

Eamon Gilmore and Micheál Martin were worried about their images only. Empty words merely to cause impact, mutual attacks to old problems... and in the mean time, Enda Kenny was going solo, in Carrick, Shannon.

No winner in the Eamon Gilmore vs. Micheál Martin debate, but surprinsingly, Enda Kenny didn't win either!

February 06, 2011

I'm not rich!


Chardonnay is most closely associated with France's Burgundy region and California's Norther. Chardonnay is a popular grape and with good reason: made in styles that range from steely, mineral laced wines with crisp green apple fruit to wines that are buttery, rich, and laden with tropical fruits, there is a Chardonnay that will appeal to every palate. And this is the problem!

There's an article in the Sunday Times' Style Magazine today - Alone Home. It's about spouses of successful men, which got it all: rich husbands, perfect houses, lovely kids... and an alcohol problem. They are in a such state that anything is an excuse to drink: a bad day, a good day, pre-lunch, lunch, after lunch... everything is toasted with a glass of something.

Well... at least I'm not rich...

January 15, 2011

The non-optional misery

Driving all my way back home last night, listening to "Radio na Life", the DJ just said something on air which really touched me. He said "Happiness is something you grow inside you. Misery is optional". It made me think about life a bit... and then I thought he was probably talking about psychological misery, not physical misery.

He probably doesn't know what physical misery is. How it is to agonize in pain, because of starvation... in such state, is not the hungry which matters anymore, at least not your hungry... all your guts are fighting against each other in search of something to consume, anything possibly left, any drop of water, mineral, or even protein -  the walls of  your stomach... the mucosas,  submucosas, and anything else!

Agreed: Misery is optional. And happiness is something you grow inside, because you have the choice to grow it. Physical misery doesn't give you any option...