This poem represents those friendships sufficiently strong
to resist to envy, to evil and rumours.



Faithful reason of mine,
That saves you pure and divine,
Even in presence of evil,
Surrounding me...

But not passing through this line
Guarding you with tenderness.

You remain forever rose,
Where never lacked the beauty shine.


Paulo Rodrigues
(This poem has already been posted on the internet)

To my wife

I was dead and now I live
You took my hand

I blindly died
You took my hand

You watched me die
And found my life

You were my life
When I was dead

You are my life
And so I live

Harold Pinter June 2004

Meeting

It is the dead of night,

The long dead look out towards
The new dead
Walking towards them

There is a soft heartbeat
As the dead embrace
Those who are long dead
And those of the new dead
Walking towards them

They cry and they kiss
As they meet again
For the first and last time

Harold Pinter, 2002

How about a green car?

To be green means to be fashion, and if you are fashion, you are in.
National Geographic Magazine, posted this week an article regarding a recent Brazilian invention which certainly will make a certain difference on what concerns environment.
It is about a “…small attachment that connects to your car’s tailpipe. It improves the air flow in the catalytic converter and acts as a filter, capturing toxic exhaust particles that would otherwise circulate in the air.”(National Geographic)
We can be certain of one thing, it is a fact that the car is very useful and it would be hard to change people’s mentalities, by replacing it from one day to another, to public transportation. Either, it is a fact that if we don’t modify our attitudes, this will probably kill us in a very short period of time.
This invention can help but it is not the solution. However, to have a car with this system implanted in, represents already an innovation and a good help to environment.
I am going to be honest. I am about to buy a car, not because I want to, but unfortunately, because public transportation does not work efficiently the way I expected. Firstly, most of the buses and trains are completely ruined, are dirty, and secondly because they are awfully expensive.
This way, people in Portugal will probably do what I plan to do, and will continue to drive a car to work, for the reason that the options are not enough efficient and the government does nothing to adjust it.
Though in other countries such as Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland and so, people can safely ride a bike to move from one place to another, here we don’t take that risk obviously because our safety is not assured and accidents by car crashing are very unhappily common.
Surely we can not revolutionize it, instead, we should look forward to making green options the moment we buy something and keep alive in our thoughts how important is to give much more importance to our planet.

Filipa

Feminists in cartoon form

By checking the BBC News site as I usually do, I found today a fun one concerning cartoons that are part of history and part of our imaginary:
“ Seventy-five years before the “Spice Girls coined the term girl power, Betty Boop struck a blow for just such a cause. Ever since, cartoons and animations have challenged our traditional perceptions of feminity.”
It is curious in fact, to realise how much cartoons reflect(ed) society’s evolution, through colours, shapes, political contents and urban little tells. Moreover, and regarding the subject exposed, women have transformed and radically imposed social habits and values.
Let’s just think one hundred years ago how blocked was the woman’s role, how dependant was she from her relatives, her father first, her husband then. Life, was a daily routine with not to much options and bringing up children, housekeeping, God and the others was part of a natural gift imposed from the very beginning. Her home was her work place as well where she had to remain, pretending the world outside was not such a big deal, and making an effort to accept that probably nobody would notice her presence.
Cartoons reproduce part of an influence that has deeply altered woman’s presence in society. For instance, make-up, short fashion hair cuts, jewellery, skirts, dresses, body care, professional options, freedom to think and act, independence to make choices…
All this happened so suddenly that we hardly imagine how diverse was being a woman and how was this feminist term started to make part of our current dialect.
So, if a century ago, women’s worries concerned her freedom and the will to break up with traditional ties, nowadays their fears are mostly the prison where they seem to find, as a consequence of the selection they have being made through years so far.
What is this prison about? It is about being a mother, professional, being elegant, beautiful, powerful, well dressed, nice, kind, efficient, sexy, sensual, intelligent and in sum…perfect!
How far has feminism changed? At the beginning, aims were different and were related to personal and social affirmation which causes so many battles, challenges and scandals as women started to claim for rights: the right to vote, to be single, to be paid, to participate in political matters.
What has changed so far? A lot have been changed in the way women have projected their image in society. Although certain things remain and still need to be adjusted as most of the women are less paid than men and still have less influence in politics. The biggest change however, is how fashion has been imposing in such a violent way, the values that (wo)men seem to care about. And that is also reflected in cartoon characters such as Betty Boop, Jessica Rabbit and most recently, Lara Croft.
What do they have in common? They are physically perfects: beautiful, athletic, independent and exotic girls.
Women’s independence became in a certain way, a serious social problem regarding family basis. Nowadays, since women have so much to do and to discover, they seemed incapable of having a family, or if they do, it seems they are always running out of time to be a woman, a mother and a friend.
So, don’t you think that is some how, there’s a need to return back in time and to recover some of the lost values we’ve buried?





Filipa

Learning English

I was about 10 years old when I started to learn English in school. Today Portuguese children initiate their English studies even sooner. This represents the worlwide importance of the language, and the trend is increasing. With the use of new technologies and its contents (such as blogs), people are able to communicate eachother and show samples of what they are good at. E.g: One of newest Portuguese singers has risen up to the Music world through her videos posted on Youtube. Her name is Ana Free. Offcourse, she could sing in a different language, but the public dissemination of her work would be also different.
There are 336 million native English speakers (approximately-according to Wikipedia),which gives it the 3rd position after Chinese and Spanish. What about the other English speakers, the non-native ones...How many are they?!


Paulo Rodrigues