segunda-feira, setembro 27, 2010

10

10 months have passed since I moved to Cambridge, 10 months have passed since I started working. And this last week I have been missing Portugal, my family and my friends a lot. And even Mariana is in Portugal this week... so "as saudades" are in huge values.

So to celebrate 'as saudades' of my loved ones (Mariana, Family and Friends) I felt like posting these pictures that I took at the "Praia do Navio" in Santa Cruz, this Summer. In a pseudo-poetic way... =P


quarta-feira, setembro 22, 2010

New house \o/

I've just moved to a new place here in Cambridge and after one week and a half without Internet I'm back here!

Moving houses was quite the task, it's amazing the amounts of things that one is able to collect in 9 months in a house. But, even so, the biggest challenge has been to find furniture, buy furniture, assemble furniture and even disassemble furniture to assemble it again. Yes, because I've moved to an unfurnished house. But now it's almost perfect! Still lots of boxes to send to recycle and some things left to buy, but it's looking good! =)

I've moved to this house with two Portuguese guys who I met here in Cambridge, and things are running smooth so far, I must say that I'm really enjoying this, even with a back pain.

With the moving I ended up having to drive two vans, which is very cool. I could own one of those... it's the closest I've been to driving a lorry.
I drove an Opel (Vauxhall here in the UK) Vivaro:


And a LDV (I didn't even know this brand):

(The smallest one, I think).

Besides driving these lovely vans I also spent 8hours in IKEA... and I must say that it is too much... way too much! But we got some nice things. =)



We managed to fill 7 trolleys in total, but 3 of them were with big pieces of furniture... but still it was a challenge to move them around.

In this week and a half my bedroom has gone from a perfectly balanced pile of clothes, bags and papers, to an almost 80% tidy bedroom. But there's still some work to do! =)

Now our next challenge is to handle our garbage... here in the UK each house has two bins 'assigned' to them. A blue one for recycling (everything from cardboard, and plastic to glass) and a black one for general waste. Each of those bins is collected every other week, and the collection dates are different from street to street and zone to zone. On my previous house they collected at Wednesdays at 9am, so last week I put the blue bin outside on Wednesday, 'cos I thought I saw some blue bins from neighbours outside... but that wasn't our day. On Wednesday night I saw and confirmed that the bins were outside to be collected in the morning, and I went to my neighbours bins and checked the colour... it was the general waste one... So I thought 'tomorrow morning I wake up at 8h and put the bin outside... and so I did, but the collection truck had passed... at 7h! So now we are stuck with the general waste bin for another week without collection... and the previous tenants left it full... no fun in that.

At least we were able to get rid of most cardboard tonight and the bin is already outside waiting to be collected.

And that's it!

PS: I know I said that there would be some pictures from my vacations, but without Internet it would be a very cumbersome task... ;) Maybe now I'll be able to do it!