OK, see you thursday!

For now everything seems to be the same and OK. More news will be known next Thursday.

 

If you are lost send me an e-mail. =P =)

My Thesis Stats

Well, after delivering the report and the summaries, and almost everything I should deliver for now, I feel much more relaxed. =)

As I said in my last post here come the stats of my thesis, it's just numbers and are not a measure of quality, but it is nice nevertheless.

Number of Pages: 114
Number of Words: 35178
Number of Chapters: 8
Number of Images: 22
Number of Tables : 4
Number of References: 141

=)

Next I'll be doing my presentation, which will take place on the 17th of July in Porto.

\o/

.o. \o. \o/ \o/ .o. \o/ .o. \o/ !!!!!


It's there! =)


Now just abstracting a bit and everything will be delivered! Stats later!

Progress "bar" - Monday 29 of June

Watch out, the deadline is above us! =) Today at 23.59h it is time to deliver the report.

The ToDo list for today is:

1- Finish the Introduction
2- Write Abstract
3- Write Abstract in Portuguese
4- Write 2 pages abstract
5- Write 2 pages abstract in Portuguese
6- Add a few more pictures
7- Revise the report.

I think I will manage it.

I did not make this post in the morning so I have not registered my progress from yesterday. At this moment I have 76 pages written and total 97 pages of document. 33k words! =)

I'm really looking forward to have my life back tomorrow!

Progress "bar" - Sunday 28 of June

One day to go, no time for cheap talk, just time to work!!

Saturday: wrote 11 pages, stopped at page 64.

Progress "bar" - Saturday 27 of June

Two days to go! I am getting a bit nervous and am a bit afraid of the delivery date!! Nevertheless there is not enough time to freak out. I have to write as much as I can and as fast as I can. I think I'll manage to finish it properly, but I'm wish I would have more time to revise it. My goal today is to finish the chapters that I still haven't finished, which means one and a half chapter to do today.

Yesterday I wrote a few pages, but also wrote the Acknowledgements, did some introductions and summary of some chapters, things that I was saving for later but I decided to do when I was not being too productive in other chapters.

And I still only have one picture on the document, that will take some time also... need to rush!

Friday: Wrote 3 pages plus extras, stopped at 53 pages. Had 25k words! =)

Progress "bar" - Friday 26 of June

Here I am again. Time is running short and there are still some pages to write. Nevertheless I think I'll manage it, just not as relaxed as I would like.

Yesterday "the writings" were not bad, but I should be faster. Let's see how does it go today!


Thursday: 5 pages written. Stopped at 50.

PS: Michael Jackson is dead... let him Rest In Peace.

Progress "bar" - Thursday 25 of June

Yesterday was a better day than before. After deleting the 5 paragraphs I wrote in the day before (they were not that good) I ended up writing nine pages. I never wrote so much in one day... but I must admit that I didn't exactly write those pages yesterday. I had written more than half of them during the semester, it was part of the project, but now it was time for them to be included. But I guess it counts anyway because I was the one that wrote them! They still need some fixes and tweaks but it was a good feeling to see the report growing like that. I wish it was always like that. Well it better be from now on! My objective is to finish the main part of writing before Saturday (yeah, I know that tomorrow is Friday already =P). This way I'll be able to spend the weekend revising, writing each paragraph's introduction and summary and tweak the report a little bit. I hope I can manage it. I still need to fix what I did yesterday and then two more chapters. But it's like they say "a chapter a day, keeps the failure away", or something like that.

Wish me luck!

On Wednesday 24 of June: 9 pages, stopped at page 45.

When Motivation is not enough

When motivation does not work, one might need some Fuel... provided by Metallica.


Five days to the due date... :-o

Today's Motivation is provided by:

Manuel Cruz - Foge Foge Bandido - O meu amor está perto.

Progress "bar" - Wednesday 24 of June

Today is Saint Johns holiday in Porto, and I'm already working and it's not even 8h! But I have a meeting in a bit more than 3 hours and need to prepare some things to take. So let's do it.

Oh and yesterday I didn't dedicate too much time to the report... =/


Tuesday 23 of June: 3 paragraphs written; Stopped at page number 36.

Progress "bar" - Tuesday 23 of June

Today I woke up with the wish to keep track of my thesis/report evolution. So I decided to write a daily post with the progress from the day before. Just for fun or for pressure, not really sure. Nevertheless here it starts!


Monday 22 of June: 5 Pages written; Stopped at page number 35.

Classes are over

Yesterday I felt something really strange that showed me how close I am to finishing my studies. I was reading some posts or something of the kind and found someone who said that their classes had finished and they were getting ready for their exams... When I read that, it struck me that for the first time in many years I was no longer even remotely aware of the school calendar...

Ever since I first went to school for the first time until last January, I always kept track of the date when classes would finish. Until my 11th grade that meant vacations (from the 8th or the 9th grade until the 11th grade we had something called global test but I think those tests were still during classes period). In the 12th grade our classes finished sometime before taking the national exams that gave us the grades to access college. And, in college, classes finished a week before the exams both in the first and the second semester. Although the last day of classes in college didn't mean vacations yet, it still brought me closer to them and that was something of an event., Most times that brought in a somewhat relaxing feeling... of course, studying for the exams is not relaxing, but at least one can choose at what times one studies. Obviously this doesn't mean that I hated my classes in college, but that the end of classes was a very nice moment. =)

This semester it arrived without me expecting it and then it struck me that it no longer had any impact on my life. I'm still doing my internship and I'm writing my report... so nothing changed. But I felt like an emptiness in my heart for not being able to celebrate the last day of classes...

It will be like this from now on, I know that... (well, at least I'm 90% sure it will be, unless I become a teacher or I take another degree (but I haven't won the €uromillion yet, so I can't go and take the history degree or the Toponymy degree that I would love to take :P)) so I should get used to school calendar becoming irrelevant for me. And I know I will, but it made me feel sad for a moment.

But hey, that's life!=)

Thunder, Thunder, Thunder Pictures!

Last night at 4am in the morning. It think this was the first time I woke up with a thunderstorm and the sound of the wind. And something that might have helped was the small pieces of dust from the ceiling that were falling down all over my face. One of the downsides of living in an attic. =)

Company or dinner?

Tonight I saw this little spider crawling on my walls... I was going to kill it, but then I was merciful and let it live. I hope she doesn't come back while I'm at sleep! Yuck... (at least I hope to have good fortune... in Portugal spiders are associated with good fortune, I have no clue why).

While the spider was crawling my walls there was a nice thunderstorm outside the window. It has started almost two hours ago and still lasts, going away in distance and coming back. I know my camera is not that good, but I was able to take some pictures of the weather...


Before and during the "blowing" of a thunder...
Awesome! =D Fortunately it wasn't raining when I came home, otherwise it wouldn't be so awesome...

It has been a long time since...

Hello everyone that still keeps following me. I know it has been a long time since I last wrote in here, but I haven't found the patience to do it lately. And the more time I take the less motivated I feel, because there are stuff that I want to talk and write about, but the time passes and too much stuff piles up... and then... I just want to write excuses for not writing. =)

So I'll just sum everything up in this post and maybe I'll write more in the future... or maybe it's just the way it is... just a small blog with few posts. =)

Anyway...

After my trip to Luxembourg I had a short week of work that finished wednesday, because thursday 30 of April was a public holiday here in The Netherlands, The Queens Day. In Queens Day eve I went with some friends to The Hague to celebrate. It was a really nice night. The streets were full of people, there were Dj's in lots of places playing music outside. I found this really cool, because I'm not a fan of discos, speacially because the music gets too loud and the space gets too small. So outside djaying allows for disco fans and people like me to be together in the same place with the best of two worlds, space and music. Allowing conversation and dancing... Besides the dj's, the people and the bars there was also a kind of a Theme Park in the middle of the park. With things that I thought only existed (or maybe never really thought about) in Portugal, but it seems that are the same everywhere. Really the same. I can almost swear I saw those same machines in Portugal. =p

In the Queens Day we went to Amsterdam and if The Hague was crowded, then Amsterdam was really insane. With waves of people always coming and going in every big street of the city. And most of them were dressed in Orange, to honour the House of Orange. It was a really nice day, even though a bit tiresome.

In the following day I went with Mariana and Sofia back to Portugal for a one week visit.

In the next day, saturday, the "Queima das Fitas" (Burning of the Stripes in a literal translation) started. This is a week long event for students of the University of Porto, dedicated specially to the senior students, like me, who finish their studies at the University this year. =) It was a really awesome and touching week. I really enjoyed it!=)

Besides the "Queima das Fitas" it was really good to be with my family and friends! It was a very busy week, with lunches, dinners and almost even breakfast scheduled to try to be with everyone. Of course and unfortunately a week wasn't enough to meet everyone, but it was really good nevertheless.

On the 10th of May I returned to Delft and on the 11th of May I celebrated 3 years since I've started dating with Mariana! It has been some amazing years and I must say that she makes me happy!=D Thank you!

In that day I also returned to work and at the time that I'm writing this there are only 6 weeks left to finish my report and a web application that I'm developing, so it's time to run for my life and finish my studies, at last!

In this last weekend Gustavo came from Boxmeer with a Catalan friend of his. It was nice to meet him again and hear his story about the farm they are working on. It was another nice weekend in The Netherlands. It was the first visit I received! Yay! :p

And as one visit is not enough yesterday a former member from BEST Porto, João Oliveira, arrived in The Netherlands and is staying at my place for one week. He didn't actually came to visit me, but since he will start working in Roterdam in June and is still looking for a place to stay he asked for shelter.

And that is all for now! =) Hope you were able to read this far!

Now back to reporting, enough procrastination! And you... go back to work!

25th of April 1974

Yesterday was the celebration of the 35th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal. For me it is one of the most important and meaningful public holidays of Portugal.

This was the second time I wasn't in Portugal in the 25th of April.

This year I was not only in The Netherlands but also in Luxembourg and even passed through Belgium. I went on a quick visit to the Luxembourg with some friends.

But I didn't forget what day it was so to make my own small celebration I listened to José Afonso, a Portuguese singer whose political songs were a way of fighting against the dictatorship that ended in the 25th of April of 1974.

As we say in Portugal "25th of April forever, fascism never more! Long live Liberty!".

As suggested in the comments box here is a link to some videos of José Afonso's songs.

Graffiti Tunel #1 - Lucky Luke

Here in Delft there's a place relatively close to the train station where people make graffiti in broad day light. I don't know what is the law here in The Netherlands but I don't think that it is allowed to do it anywhere, so I guess that in those specific walls it is not forbidden to do graffiti. And I find it perfectly logical. Those walls are just by the street and half of them covered by a train bridge, so otherwise they'd just be gray.

This way every week, mostly at weekends, there are people painting them with new graffiti. And since they are not breaking the law they have time to make some nice drawings. But since there aren't so many allowed places to graffiti most of the drawings don't stay for more than a week, being painted over by someone else some time after. Which is really nice, because this way the decoration of that tunnel is always changing!=)

And for someone like me who likes graffiti is really nice to pass and look at what's new!

Two weeks ago someone had painted this Lucky Luke:

And it seems that it wasn't someone too young, because Lucky Luke is smoking a cigarette instead of having a straw of some cereal in his mouth...

So you can expect to see some more graffiti in the future, if I see some nice drawings. =)

#Sorry for the quiet time! =) More posts to come in the next days (or weeks, who knows!). Wait to learn how I almost started an International conflict at United Nations office in Geneva!

Corpus Experience, Leiden

In the same day that we visited the Keukenhof Gardens we also went to visit the Corpus Experience. The Corpus Experience is a 5D (yeah, 5D, at least that's what they say) experience museum about the Human Body. In this museum we travel around different rooms that represent different parts of our body. During the journey there are some explanations about what we are seeing and how our body works.

The idea is really nice but I think that the final result is a bit disappointing, because most, if not all, of what I heard there I already new. It's probably a great place for children to visit, but they should have told us that before...

So even so that it's kind of nice to visit I won't recommend it to anyone that has studied natural sciences in the basic school.

So for me the most interesting thing in this museum is the building... which has a giant iron man sitting in/inside it. =P

Corpus Experience

A Visit to Keukenhof

When Mariana's cousin was here one of the places we visit was Keukenhof Gardens. As the name might suggest it's a great place to see flowers, and specially the famous Dutch tulips.

Here are some photos of this visit:

A philharmonic band! =) They played the "Pink Panther" Really nice!
no, not drunk... it's just my camera's fancy color options

hmmm, flowers...
Look at me, look at me!
Really nice colors!=) Tulips field

One more camera trick!;)
The Flintstones's car!