What were you doing ten years ago today? You probably can't remember, but I can. I was leaving Portugal, moving abroad, something I always wanted to do. I also remember that I had dinner at the Cafe Bern in Nieuwmarkt in Amsterdam, and that I ate "kaasfondue" sitting at the counter with my cousin A. Good old days. Amsterdam is a great city and I had a wonderful time there. I have so many good memories.
But the turning point was not moving to Holland but moving out of Portugal. I packed my suitcase, took a plane and there I went, on my own, the start of a new adventure. And my life has been an adventure since. It was one of the best decisions of my life. Of course I miss my family, the sun, the sea and the beach, my friends, and the good Portuguese habits. But aren't all Portuguese supposed to live in eternal "saudade"?
É o vento que me leva.
O vento lusitano.
É este sopro humano
Universal
Que enfuna a inquietação de Portugal.
É esta fúria de loucura mansa
Que tudo alcança
Sem alcançar.
Que vai de céu em céu,
De mar em mar,
Até nunca chegar.
E esta tentação de me encontrar
Mais rico de amargura
Nas pausas da ventura
De me procurar...
Miguel Torga, Diário XII
Showing posts with label Portugal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Portugal. Show all posts
26 March 2011
23 February 2011
You can take the girl out of Portugal but you can't take Portugal out of the girl!
I had such a great time with my family I wish I could have stayed longer. And there's nothing like walking by the sea to cheer one up. Back in gloomy London now...
17 February 2011
Top 10 news of my week
1. The last few remaining eyebrows fell out but the next day I woke up with a vigorous bush of new eyebrows growing. Fantastic! It’s still less than a millimetre long, but it looks great. I miss my dark thick eyebrows.
2. I lost all eyelashes some time ago and just like my eyebrows, the eyelashes are growing strong, very uneven and very slow, but they are there.
3. Ten weeks after the last chemo, the hair on my head is still very weak, scarce and ugly, but it seems to be growing a bit everywhere now. I’m not jumping of happiness yet but I stopped panicking, there’s hope!
4. After a long, stressful and frustrating search, I finally found a really nice bikini, it is pretty and it makes me look perfectly “normal”. It doesn’t cover the chest port, the bump stands out a bit, but I can live with that. I can’t wait to go on holidays now.
5. I started exercising with a personal trainer who has been helping me regain strength in my arms, correct posture, and build some muscle. It’s great and I feel very motivated. I am aware that it will take several months before I recover completely but I am on the right path.
6. J. started working this week and I miss her company already. I've been so lucky to have here, she's been my guardian angel.
7. Tomorrow is my last radiotherapy session. The end. Time to celebrate. And to celebrate, recharge and get some miminhos from my family, Saturday I am going to Portugal. My mother’s sofa is the best place in the world to rest, nap and be lazy. After Portugal S. and I are going to pamper ourselves in a spa.
8. According to my acupuncturist my Qi is imbalanced (I’m not surprised, I actually think everything about my body is deficient at the moment), and to balance my Qi and help me sleep better I started taking some Chinese herbs.
9. I’ve been eating like a pig and I’m putting on weight faster than I lost during chemo. Urgent action required, bald whales are not attractive!
10. I am preparing myself to get back to work. It’s been eight months and I wonder if I still remember where my desk is...
2. I lost all eyelashes some time ago and just like my eyebrows, the eyelashes are growing strong, very uneven and very slow, but they are there.
3. Ten weeks after the last chemo, the hair on my head is still very weak, scarce and ugly, but it seems to be growing a bit everywhere now. I’m not jumping of happiness yet but I stopped panicking, there’s hope!
4. After a long, stressful and frustrating search, I finally found a really nice bikini, it is pretty and it makes me look perfectly “normal”. It doesn’t cover the chest port, the bump stands out a bit, but I can live with that. I can’t wait to go on holidays now.
5. I started exercising with a personal trainer who has been helping me regain strength in my arms, correct posture, and build some muscle. It’s great and I feel very motivated. I am aware that it will take several months before I recover completely but I am on the right path.
6. J. started working this week and I miss her company already. I've been so lucky to have here, she's been my guardian angel.
7. Tomorrow is my last radiotherapy session. The end. Time to celebrate. And to celebrate, recharge and get some miminhos from my family, Saturday I am going to Portugal. My mother’s sofa is the best place in the world to rest, nap and be lazy. After Portugal S. and I are going to pamper ourselves in a spa.
8. According to my acupuncturist my Qi is imbalanced (I’m not surprised, I actually think everything about my body is deficient at the moment), and to balance my Qi and help me sleep better I started taking some Chinese herbs.
9. I’ve been eating like a pig and I’m putting on weight faster than I lost during chemo. Urgent action required, bald whales are not attractive!
10. I am preparing myself to get back to work. It’s been eight months and I wonder if I still remember where my desk is...
28 December 2010
Winter in London vs. Winter in Espinho
When we left London our street looked like this:
And on Christmas day Espinho looked like this, clear blue sky:
08 October 2010
Portugal, on the Medical Map
By RAPHAEL MINDER
The New York Times
Published: September 8, 2010
LISBON — Thanks to €500 million inherited from its richest man, Portugal will unveil a medical research center next month that could put it at the forefront of advances against cancer.
The Champalimaud Center for the Unknown, based in Lisbon, will focus on cancer research, as well as run a neuroscience program. It marks a significant change for a nation of 11 million people with no history of scientific eminence, and founders hope it will encourage more researchers to work in Europe rather than the United States.
“No stone has been left unturned to make this one of the world’s top cancer research centers,” said Raghu Kalluri, a professor of medicine at Harvard University who is director of the Champalimaud cancer center. “We’ve recently been seeing people returning from the U.S. to India and China in waves, but the same thing should now happen in Lisbon, because this place is really designed to attract the best worldwide.”
Just as unusual for Europe is the philanthropy behind the project. António Champalimaud displayed business acumen but little public charity during his lifetime. When he died in 2004, however, he allocated in his will a quarter of his wealth to medical research, with a person almost unknown to him left in charge of disbursing the money.
Mr. Champalimaud’s donation was “a huge surprise for everybody in Portugal,” said Leonor Beleza, who was picked by Mr. Champalimaud to lead his foundation.
While American research has long benefited from such private donations, most of the financing in Europe has come from governments or pharmaceutical companies.
In Germany, for instance, the Max Planck Society relies exclusively on public financing, while the country’s other leading research institute, the Fraunhofer Society, gets its money evenly split from the public and business.
In the United States, meanwhile, the financial crisis has hurt financing but has also led to initiatives to encourage private giving. Last month, 40 wealthy American families and individuals agreed to join Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, and Warren Buffett, the investor, in a pledge to give at least half their wealth to charity.
“My grandfather always felt the American spirit of giving back to society was something to follow,” said Rodrigo Champalimaud, who works in finance and, like the rest of his family, is not involved in the foundation. “Unfortunately, Europeans aren’t used to giving as much, and I’m sure that he wanted to change that.”
The center will be inaugurated on Oct. 5 but will start operating only next year, gradually filling to a capacity of 500 researchers working alongside 100 physicians handling about 300 patients daily. That level of interaction is what the center’s backers claim will be unique, an approach also welcomed by other independent researchers.
“Significant cancer research initiatives have been taken in recent years in countries like Spain, France and Germany, but I feel none of them have had the impact that they should have,” said Axel Ullrich, a German cancer researcher who is director of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry. “One reason for this failure is that these institutes have been doing the basic research but are frequently not really focused on therapy development.
“Lisbon is now not the center of science in the world, but it could make it if this is managed well.”
Meanwhile, Christopher Wild, director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, noted that Portugal was the only country in Western Europe not to be a participant in his agency, itself part of the World Health Organization. “This center hopefully will prove a new focus point in Portugal to draw in international cooperation, including our own,” he said.
Although the Portuguese authorities provided the land to build the center (in a spectacular location at the mouth of the Tagus River), the foundation has otherwise maintained independence and not sought any public or additional private money. That autonomy has arguably led to some unorthodox approaches. For example, the foundation chose an acclaimed architect, Charles Correa, but without running a competition for such an ambitious construction project, costing €100 million, about $127 million.
Instead, Ms. Beleza was impressed by a research facility built by Mr. Correa at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mr. Correa is also Indian of Portuguese descent. “We felt that he could relate to the exact place from where Portugal’s great discovery ships had left,” she said, pointing to the neighboring 16th-century tower of Belém.
Ms. Beleza spent four years as her country’s health minister in the 1980s. But she studied law rather than medicine and then coupled her political career with teaching law at a local university.
So she said she was stunned when she received a phone call in 2000 from Mr. Champalimaud, whom she had met only once, asking her if she might run a medical foundation. She agreed, but then never heard from him again — until the opening of his will.
Ms. Beleza then took more than a year to immerse herself back in the medical world, touring laboratories, meeting researchers and studying scientific data before deciding how to spend Mr. Champalimaud’s money.
With only a single phone call to prepare her, Ms. Beleza also tried to second-guess Mr. Champalimaud’s intentions. His father was a doctor, but his will provided no indication as to why he wanted to promote medicine. “It was up to him to tell me more if he had wanted to,” Ms. Beleza said. “The only thing that’s clear is that he was a man of action who created things and made them work.”
Mr. Champalimaud began his career in a cement business owned by his mother’s family. He went on to build Portugal’s most powerful financial and industrial empire — twice, in fact, because his companies were nationalized a year after Portugal’s 1974 revolution, forcing him to resettle in Brazil and start afresh there.
Using his Brazilian earnings, he then returned to Portugal to buy back his companies in the 1990s before finally dismantling his financial empire by selling his banking assets to Santander, Spain’s leading bank, in a controversial deal that the government tried — ultimately unsuccessfully — to block on the ground of national interest.
The Lisbon center’s inauguration will be led by José Sócrates, Portugal’s prime minister.
Underlining the national importance of the Champalimaud project, the government also requested that the center’s opening coincide with the 100th anniversary of Portugal’s becoming a republic.
However, and given past tensions between politicians and Mr. Champalimaud, Ms. Beleza insisted in an interview that she had not bowed to political pressure over the construction deadline. On a sweltering afternoon in late August, about 1,000 workers were still carrying beams and pouring cement around the site. “They’ve recently been working until midnight, as well as Saturdays and Sundays, so that’s how we will be ready,” Ms. Beleza said.
Meanwhile, Ms. Beleza is getting more calls from wealthy people wanting to hear about Mr. Champalimaud’s contribution, making her hopeful that the center can set a new benchmark for European medical philanthropy.
“The United States is still pretty far ahead of the rest of the world in terms of having philanthropy behind such ventures,” Dr. Kalluri of Harvard said. “What António Champalimaud did is already getting noticed across Europe, and hopefully other wealthy individuals will want to do the same. This is exactly how things happened in the United States: somebody has to set an example and set things in motion.”
The New York Times
Published: September 8, 2010
LISBON — Thanks to €500 million inherited from its richest man, Portugal will unveil a medical research center next month that could put it at the forefront of advances against cancer.
The Champalimaud Center for the Unknown, based in Lisbon, will focus on cancer research, as well as run a neuroscience program. It marks a significant change for a nation of 11 million people with no history of scientific eminence, and founders hope it will encourage more researchers to work in Europe rather than the United States.
“No stone has been left unturned to make this one of the world’s top cancer research centers,” said Raghu Kalluri, a professor of medicine at Harvard University who is director of the Champalimaud cancer center. “We’ve recently been seeing people returning from the U.S. to India and China in waves, but the same thing should now happen in Lisbon, because this place is really designed to attract the best worldwide.”
Just as unusual for Europe is the philanthropy behind the project. António Champalimaud displayed business acumen but little public charity during his lifetime. When he died in 2004, however, he allocated in his will a quarter of his wealth to medical research, with a person almost unknown to him left in charge of disbursing the money.
Mr. Champalimaud’s donation was “a huge surprise for everybody in Portugal,” said Leonor Beleza, who was picked by Mr. Champalimaud to lead his foundation.
While American research has long benefited from such private donations, most of the financing in Europe has come from governments or pharmaceutical companies.
In Germany, for instance, the Max Planck Society relies exclusively on public financing, while the country’s other leading research institute, the Fraunhofer Society, gets its money evenly split from the public and business.
In the United States, meanwhile, the financial crisis has hurt financing but has also led to initiatives to encourage private giving. Last month, 40 wealthy American families and individuals agreed to join Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, and Warren Buffett, the investor, in a pledge to give at least half their wealth to charity.
“My grandfather always felt the American spirit of giving back to society was something to follow,” said Rodrigo Champalimaud, who works in finance and, like the rest of his family, is not involved in the foundation. “Unfortunately, Europeans aren’t used to giving as much, and I’m sure that he wanted to change that.”
The center will be inaugurated on Oct. 5 but will start operating only next year, gradually filling to a capacity of 500 researchers working alongside 100 physicians handling about 300 patients daily. That level of interaction is what the center’s backers claim will be unique, an approach also welcomed by other independent researchers.
“Significant cancer research initiatives have been taken in recent years in countries like Spain, France and Germany, but I feel none of them have had the impact that they should have,” said Axel Ullrich, a German cancer researcher who is director of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry. “One reason for this failure is that these institutes have been doing the basic research but are frequently not really focused on therapy development.
“Lisbon is now not the center of science in the world, but it could make it if this is managed well.”
Meanwhile, Christopher Wild, director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, noted that Portugal was the only country in Western Europe not to be a participant in his agency, itself part of the World Health Organization. “This center hopefully will prove a new focus point in Portugal to draw in international cooperation, including our own,” he said.
Although the Portuguese authorities provided the land to build the center (in a spectacular location at the mouth of the Tagus River), the foundation has otherwise maintained independence and not sought any public or additional private money. That autonomy has arguably led to some unorthodox approaches. For example, the foundation chose an acclaimed architect, Charles Correa, but without running a competition for such an ambitious construction project, costing €100 million, about $127 million.
Instead, Ms. Beleza was impressed by a research facility built by Mr. Correa at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mr. Correa is also Indian of Portuguese descent. “We felt that he could relate to the exact place from where Portugal’s great discovery ships had left,” she said, pointing to the neighboring 16th-century tower of Belém.
Ms. Beleza spent four years as her country’s health minister in the 1980s. But she studied law rather than medicine and then coupled her political career with teaching law at a local university.
So she said she was stunned when she received a phone call in 2000 from Mr. Champalimaud, whom she had met only once, asking her if she might run a medical foundation. She agreed, but then never heard from him again — until the opening of his will.
Ms. Beleza then took more than a year to immerse herself back in the medical world, touring laboratories, meeting researchers and studying scientific data before deciding how to spend Mr. Champalimaud’s money.
With only a single phone call to prepare her, Ms. Beleza also tried to second-guess Mr. Champalimaud’s intentions. His father was a doctor, but his will provided no indication as to why he wanted to promote medicine. “It was up to him to tell me more if he had wanted to,” Ms. Beleza said. “The only thing that’s clear is that he was a man of action who created things and made them work.”
Mr. Champalimaud began his career in a cement business owned by his mother’s family. He went on to build Portugal’s most powerful financial and industrial empire — twice, in fact, because his companies were nationalized a year after Portugal’s 1974 revolution, forcing him to resettle in Brazil and start afresh there.
Using his Brazilian earnings, he then returned to Portugal to buy back his companies in the 1990s before finally dismantling his financial empire by selling his banking assets to Santander, Spain’s leading bank, in a controversial deal that the government tried — ultimately unsuccessfully — to block on the ground of national interest.
The Lisbon center’s inauguration will be led by José Sócrates, Portugal’s prime minister.
Underlining the national importance of the Champalimaud project, the government also requested that the center’s opening coincide with the 100th anniversary of Portugal’s becoming a republic.
However, and given past tensions between politicians and Mr. Champalimaud, Ms. Beleza insisted in an interview that she had not bowed to political pressure over the construction deadline. On a sweltering afternoon in late August, about 1,000 workers were still carrying beams and pouring cement around the site. “They’ve recently been working until midnight, as well as Saturdays and Sundays, so that’s how we will be ready,” Ms. Beleza said.
Meanwhile, Ms. Beleza is getting more calls from wealthy people wanting to hear about Mr. Champalimaud’s contribution, making her hopeful that the center can set a new benchmark for European medical philanthropy.
“The United States is still pretty far ahead of the rest of the world in terms of having philanthropy behind such ventures,” Dr. Kalluri of Harvard said. “What António Champalimaud did is already getting noticed across Europe, and hopefully other wealthy individuals will want to do the same. This is exactly how things happened in the United States: somebody has to set an example and set things in motion.”
24 March 2008
Portugal
The other day I read an article about Portugal and it is not about old glories.
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/sponsored_sections/country_focus/portugal/portugal.pdf
Most people don’t know much about Portugal. When I mention I come from Portugal all they can think of is Figo, Cristiano Ronaldo and Vasco da Gama. Older people think of Amália.
I’ve heard a couple of funny things like: “Oh, you’re Portuguese? Last year I went to Barcelona.” Dah! Once I was asked if we had ATM’s. I couldn’t resist answering my parents keep their money in the cookie jar! My favourite is when people start speaking in Spanish to me. I feel like crying. But I am not surprised, Portugal is never on the news and it is almost impossible to find Portuguese writers in the bookshops. We only hear about Portugal in the summer because of the fires or the missing children.
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/sponsored_sections/country_focus/portugal/portugal.pdf
Most people don’t know much about Portugal. When I mention I come from Portugal all they can think of is Figo, Cristiano Ronaldo and Vasco da Gama. Older people think of Amália.
I’ve heard a couple of funny things like: “Oh, you’re Portuguese? Last year I went to Barcelona.” Dah! Once I was asked if we had ATM’s. I couldn’t resist answering my parents keep their money in the cookie jar! My favourite is when people start speaking in Spanish to me. I feel like crying. But I am not surprised, Portugal is never on the news and it is almost impossible to find Portuguese writers in the bookshops. We only hear about Portugal in the summer because of the fires or the missing children.
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