Who's smarter?

An english professor wrote the words "A woman without her man is nothing" on the chalkboard and asked his students to punctuate it correctly.

All the males in the class wrote:

"A woman, without her man, is nothing."

All the females in the class wrote:

"A woman: without her, man is nothing".

New Year in Paris

(belated) happy new year!! :)

The lights were magical, the Christmas shop windows from the Galeries Lafayette were from a russian fairy tale and the weather was... well... freezing!!

P.S. It's not easy to take photographs with all those lights twinkling and also, I think that the camera might have had a little bit too much champagne...

pics coming soon... i think...

Fast cleverness ;)

P.S. "General knowledge" if you're english...

Thought of the day

I'm getting a fringe!
... i think...

It's hard being a foreigner :)

Canoeing in Wales

Time for some new pictures, finally!!
The weather was glorious :)

Me and K. were the "co-pilots", Mi. had the hardest task: to keep the canoe from capsizing and to give instructions to two girls who preferred to enjoy the views and relax than to row in synchrony!! We did well with our very own special technique, anyway :)

Some better news

Every morning I take two different buses to go to work. Every morning I read the free newspaper on the bus. Every morning I get depressed because people were raped, killed, mugged, etc.

Last friday a boy got a certificate for correctly using the bus, prisoners were asked about the quality of their cells, the girl that was missing in the previous day was found and was ok, a shop assistant with a physical disability won a few thousand pounds in damages for being discriminated by her employers, two baby asian lions were born at the London zoo and were going to meet daddy loin Lucifer. Also, apparently, women prefer men that are already taken, because they were pre-screened by another woman. In psychology this is termed "mate poaching".

Eastern and western people read faces in a different way. Europeans scan evenly across the face, while people from the east focus on the eyes. This is even reflected in text speak. We use our mouths to express happiness :-) or sadness :-(, whereas the corresponding eastern emoticons use their eyes for the same expressions: ^.^ or ;-;.

Apparently someone died towards the end of the newspaper, but I didn't have time to finish it, so these news brightened up my morning (well... it was friday anyway!!).

oh... I almost forgot the highlight of the day: the second largest Primark just opened in Bristol and hundreds of young shoppers queued up at dawn for the big opening. Seriously... get a life!! :)

The sight of the sound

Mona Lisa is perhaps the most famous painting in the world. Its uniqueness is due to the techniques used by da Vinci, like the pyramid organization of the elements and the way he played with light. If I was given the chance, would I hang it in my home? No, not in a million years! Why? Because it's horrendous and it doesn't go with the furniture, anyway... I prefer Mark Rothko's splashes of colour. More than just going with the furniture, they go well with life, they go well with me :)

What if we could also see music in bright colours? When I had piano lessons, everytime I was given a new musical score I enjoyed making up a story and characteres for each voice. By looking at the musical score we can kind of see the sound, but like this it's fun and easier. We can see the sounds running, playing hide and seek, bouncing up and down, drawing circles, imitating each other or just doing whatever your imagination dictates. It's a bit like looking at the clouds on a (portuguese) summer day. What about closing our eyes and just listen to the music? Well... that's not bad either :)