It's growing!...

That's right. The (secret for now) structure we're building for the CANstruction charity event is finally starting to look like "something"! The schedule is really tight but I believe we'll make it. Everyone's invited to show up at he COPIA center in Napa starting on Nov. 10 to take a look at all the structures that will be built.

Tired of waitin'?!...

Good news. Intel is developing and hopefully soon to release a new technology that is expected to help us boot up our PC's in a flash. According to MIT's Tech Review Intel "unveiled a prototype technology, codenamed "Robson," that reduces startup time in notebooks from "several seconds" to "almost immediate (...)".
(Check it out here)

Ai que cheirinho a bacalhau...

Este fim de semana juntámo-nos com mais uma dúzia de Portugueses que conhecemos (uns mais recentemente que outros) e que vivem e trabalham em São Francisco ou na zona do Vale de Silicone (gostam que escreva em Português não gostam"?!).

O Bruno teve a bondade de nos preparar um bacalhau à moda da mãe dele que estava um espectáculo! Depois da barriga bem cheia fomos então dar uma volta por Santa Cruz. Prometo fotos pra breve!

Ah fadista!!!

Esta mensagem merece ser em Português!
Na sexta-feira fomos ao concerto da Mariza no Zellerbach Hall aqui na universidade em Berkeley.
É interessante o que ser emigrante nos faz experimentar coisas novas... Nunca em Portugal fomos a um concerto da Mariza e pouco ou nada ouvíamos a sua música... mas desde que chegámos cá já fomos a um concerto dela em Oakland o ano passado (parte do festival de jazz de São Francisco) e agora este ano em Berkeley (parte do centenário da Cal Performances)!
Poder ser piegas mas há alguma emoção em ouvir um anfiteatro cheio nos EUA a cantar "uma casa portuguesa é concerteza (...)".
O espectáculo deste ano teve algumas inovações em relação ao do ano passado, incluindo uma nova secção de cordas e um percursionista. Este último (João Pedro Ruela) deu um show em que acabou a tocar com as baquetes no chão e numa das colunas de som... muito bom.

Tuga Gang com a Mariza o ano passado em Oakland

4 days of festivities!!!

To celebrate the end of my first quarter (meaning 30/120!) we organized a 4-days celebration!

Day 1 - October 13
We started with culture: The Sleeping Beauty by the Kirov Ballet & Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre. Great show. I realized that the guy that invented the golf swing was not the person coming up with the most awkward movement in sports/arts... it was the guy/woman that came up with the idea of dancing "sur les pointes" (in toe tips)!

Besides the acculturate comment above, and even if we're not "Balletomanes", I have to say we loved it! There's always something amazing when a "ballerina" executes a perfect "diagonale" of "pas Ballonné" or when she slowly spins in a steady "tour de Promenade" while the "Cavalier" holds her hand. (Doesn't it seem I know a lot about this?!)

And guess what?! The sleeping beauty with whom I got married didn't fall asleep halfway through the show as she sometimes does! :)

Day 2 - October 14
In order to celebrate my B-Day in Portuguese time we threw a party onFridayt night and cut the cake at about 11.30pm (which would beOctt 15 - 7.30 am in my home town, time at which I was born!).

You'll not gonna believe but we gathered almost 50 people at our place!!! There was a lot of beer flowing down the throats but it were really the Caipirinhas that helped the crowd to get it going!

At the end of the party it was clear that the night had been extremely hard...


Day 3 - October 15
Went out for dinner in SF. The female Berketuga booked a table at Masa's a very good "new french cuisine" restaurant that assembledan extremelyy experienced and knowledgeable team, including Executive Chef Gregory Short, who worked as Chef de Partie and Sous Chef under Chef Thomas Keller at The French Laundry for seven years. (If you don't know "The French Laundry", I suggest you take a look at www.frenchlaundry.com to get some saliva flowing in your mouth).

Day 4 - October 16
I closed the festivities by offering myself a very good birthday gift: I went up to Tahoe with Felipe (a Braziliann friend) and closed down a deal on a cabin for the winter season! Can you imagine that we rented one of the cheapest places in our list but that it is still probably the best of all: it even includes a pool table and a piano! Man...you definitely gonna be hearing a lot about this cabin. :)

Fleet Week 2005!

Every year in SF during the Fleet Week there's a bunch of navy ships that can be visited and an impressing air show that includes stunts with many different airplanes. From the C130 ("Fat Albert" as they call him), to the ultra light ultra maneuverable Team Oracle's airplane that's used in RedBull-like races, including the old-school F16. You get it all there!

This year was particularly interesting because the Blue Angels where showing up after missing the show in the previous year. Check out the pix below! Who wouldn't like to be in one of those cockpits?!


"Fat Albert!"


Sean Tucker (Named one of the 25 "Living Legends of Flight" by the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum) flying Team Oracle's airplane and experiencing from several negative G's to +10G's! (Check Team Oracle here). The most amazing is that the organization of the event broadcasted is voice on the speakers installed in the park and this crazy guy was diving vertically with +10G's and saying jokes at the same time! Mommy, mommy, I want an airplane too!


Finally, the Blue Angels entertained the crowd for about 20 min.

Look at you!... You're in the cover of a magazine!

Do you like these? You can get them and some others from leenks.com.

Wine... wine... you're so fine...

Portuguese wines are one of the nation's products that most successfully market our country. This week Mario Ferreira (who some of you know from the Port Wine lecture he gave at our place) sent me a news that came out in the New York Times. I am posting a excerpt of the article named "For the Next Big Thing, Look to Portugal ". You can follow the link below to read all the text.

"Today, Portugal is a source for distinctive wines that can be very good values, and some of the best Portuguese red wines, as the Dining section's wine panel learned, are coming from the Douro, the area best known as the home of port."
(Full text here)

Egg car?!


(http://www.gizmag.com)

This is the Nissan Pivo and will likely be introduced next month in Tokyo. This car, which according to www.reveries.com is described by Jathon Sapsford of The Wall Street Journal as "cross between a golf cart and an egg timer", uses electricity to challenge assumptions about automotive design.

In this car the driver must always look out one side because she/he sits not on the left or the right, but in the middle, with a passenger on each side. Still according to www.reveries.com Pivo's round cabin twirls allowing a driver to park forward into a parking space and then just turn the cabin around and drive straight out of the parking space!

Mariza

Following on the (music) topic, please write it down in your agendas: Mariza is singing in Berkeley this year at the Zellerbach Hall B, on Fri Oct 21, 8 pm. Even though this wasn't confirmed officially, it seems that she changed the venue from Oakland (where she sung last year) to Berkeley, as a thank you to the Tuga community living in Berkeley and that cheered her during last year's concert. :)

The Cal Performances website on Mariza: "The emotional cousin of the blues, tango, and flamenco, Portugal's fado music fuses seemingly incompatible worlds: impossible pain and fervent joy, life's cruelty and love's intensity. With her debut recording Fado Em Mim, Mariza—a Mozambique-born beauty of Portuguese, Spanish, German, African, and Indian descent—was immediately hailed as the heir of fadista legend Amália Rodrigues. Mariza walks the fine line necessary to communicate fado's genuine traditions while imbuing them with modern freshness, and her performances capture the raw emotion that characterizes this classic music. "Her voice is a gorgeous, evocative instrument, and she sings with bravura and power," says Billboard." (www.calperfs.berkeley.edu)

She also has her own website: http://www.mariza-online.net.

Sigur Rós

I heard about this band some time ago but almost forgot about it... Last weekend a friend told me she was going to their concert in Oakland and that awoke my curiosity... I ran my cheap $2/month Rhapsody software (it's great to be a Cal student!) and listened to some of the tracks on their new CD "Takk...". The relaxing quasi-ethereall tunes transported me to some kind of an inner heaven inside my living room... Simply amazing.

Like they describe themselves in their website: "Sigur Rós hail from Iceland, and rightly claim to bring you the beautiful landscape of their homeland with their music. it's impossible to justify it with words, you have to listen to it to understand".

Ainda o SCP... (free translation to english in http://babelfish.altavista.com/:) )
(prometo que este blog não será só pra falar de futebol... mas nesta fase negra preciso de desabafar... e tenho de o fazer aqui porque a pobre da Berketuga já há muito que está no vale dos lençóis.)

Recebi um comentário bastante interessante do António (Filipe) em relação à questão organizacional do clube... Embora sendo do SCP deu-me vontade de rir :)

"Quanto ao Sporting, não me parece que o problema seja organização, pois considero que é preciso grande espírito de organização para conseguir juntar tanto estúpido em campo, só um grupo de estúpidos é que perde aquele jogo (ainda por cima perderam várias vezes durante o jogo e não aprenderam)"

What da hell is this?!



This semester I'm taking a product development class, and today I run into a link that talks about something that I had read before already. It is a very interesting product development project: building a $100 laptop as a way to facilitate access to information to people from developing countries. I'm sure that if the MIT can do it for $100 we can do it here at Berkeley for cheaper than that!(Full text here)

(Photos courtesy of MIT Media Lab and downloaded from the link above)

Parabéns à famí­lia Pina!!!!
(that's right... every once in a while you english speakers you'll get to have some lessons in a language that once "ruled" half the world... and I'll leave the history lessons for later :) ).

Já nasceu o João! Segundo os Berketugas conseguiram apurar correu tudo lindamente, tem 3.55 kg e 49 cm. O pai Pina detém os direitos de propriedade das duas primeiras fotos.
(Free translation a la Berketuga: João is born! Everything went fine. Please do the exercise of converting the units to the British yourselvesrselves. The father of the kid owns the copyright of these pix.)