To chill.

Having a horrible few days with this never ending search for a place. In the meantime getting so frustrated with people.

Anyway, here is a great song to chill before going back to work tomorrow.

Have a great week.

On hold.

I haven't been here for a week or so.

Life doesn't always give us the choice to lead the way.

So, to make it short, this last week has been exhausting. 

Nothing that would give me amazing and fun stories to tell, just boring episodes in the search for a new place.

As you all know, there are tons of adverts online and even more agencies that will promise this and that. 

That has been my Life, after work searching online and visiting houses. And it is never easier than the previous time.

After moving to this flat, I thought I would stay here for at least 6 months. It ended up very abruptly last week when the landlord asked me to give up the only assurance I had that would prove that my payments made to her were for rent.

You see, we had no contract - she could not do a contract - and because I thought we were kinda friends I trusted and accepted her conditions. And when she asked to let go my only security I just couldn't put myself at risk and the solution was to move out.

My time has been only dedicated to it. Today I thought I had found one, but, again, no contract was to be made and I'm feeling so tired that I have decided to give myself a day off of searching.

Until I find a new place this blog will be hold, which I hope it won't for long as my last day in this house is coming around the corner.

Have a great week and talk to you soon.

World on fire.

And this is literally the case!

So, I have told that I am portuguese. I'm from the south of Portugal, from a really nice, small town.

As you have been feeling it, here in the UK it has been very hot these past few weeks, which is very unusual - can't remember a summer here, since I moved, where it was such a nice weather for so long - but I guess the global warming is becoming a reality faster than anyone could believe.

The fact is, Portugal is known for being very hot and having a great weather all year around and, in my area, the weather tend to be especially hot during summer time. Because of it, every year we have to deal to fires, natural ones and not so natural.

At this moment, there is a small village called Monchique close to my city that has been fighting against the flames for the past five days. Some people have lost their homes, the firemen have been working non stop and there are people coming from other parts of the country and even from other countries to help out.

But, up until now it has not been enough and all the help is welcome - water, food and other supplies for the people who lost everything, for the firemen who are exhausted and also for the animals that live in the wild parts but also the domestic ones.

It is a very sad moment for Portugal once again, there is so much to be done to prevent this events to happen and everyone is to blame for this, not just the government.

If you are on holidays in Algarve - you must have heard of the situation - or if  you are somewhere and can help, please do so. Today this people and animals need your help, tomorrow you may need theirs.

Thank you. 

See you soon.

It looks like friendship is still the theme of the day.

Only in a different direction.

Yesterday I said goodbye - in a good way - to a good friend who I have met here in London.

I met her and another girl at a Halloween Party in the house of a friend of mine who knew her. All portuguese people. And that was almost three years ago.

Over the years, the three of us kept in touch and became good friends. And now that I'm thinking about it, if we would have another girl in the group we could have look like Sex and the City (LOL).

A few months ago, this friend started to feel like she was kinda lost in her Life and was not sure about what she wanted to do.

I guess we all go through those feelings every now and then, but not many of us actually act on it and try to find an answer.

She had a good job, something that she enjoyed doing, had a nice group of friends, traveled a lot, but that was not enough and she decided now was the time to make a change and find out if she wants something different or if she will just come back and keep doing her job.

So, she thought she needed to take some time off and for months have been planing her big trip to south America with another friend for a minimum of four months - she wants to go back to Portugal for Christmas. 

Well, after contextualization, I get to the point I wanted to talk about. I have realised how important this friend and the other one have become to me. Somehow, along the way, we built a nice strong friendship, where we could be ourselves, talk about everything and knew that we could count on the others at any time.

I guess I am surprised how I feel about them because, here in London, is not easy to make friends and as I am kinda of a quiet person, it is even more difficult. Yes, you do meet a lot of people, especially at work, but soon you realise that they are only colleagues, the 'friendship' ends when you leave the work place most of the times. 

With my experiences in making friends here, I know I started to put even more obstacles to people who may want to approach me and I thought I was doing the same with them, taking things slowly and not trusting too much. I see now, I was doing the opposite and as I said before, they became very close to my heart.

Yesterday it was hard to say goodbye to her, but the three of us will meet when she comes back to hear all of her adventures and in the meantime we have social media.

Life is really funny sometimes and quite tricky to understand or rationalise but it never stop to amaze me.

Good night and have a great week!

My old friend.

And we have our Summer back!

Today I reconnected with a childhood friend. Last time we had spoken was 5 years ago, but we were very close friends for more than 20 years.

We used to be neighbours and our families were very close, since we were still babies, so we grew up together like brothers, always in each other´s house. He has an uncle almost the same age and, the three of us, and a few more kids, used to be all the time together after school until dinner time - good old days, when you could just play around in the streets without any issue.

But anyway, his father left Portugal when he was quite young, moved to England and he was living with his grandparents. Since we were young, you could see that the absence of his father had a big impact in the person he was. And his mother was not around as well, both parents only visiting him once a year.

My friend used to say that he would moved in with his father soon. He actually believed that that would happen every single time his father would go on holidays, and we all believed too - it always looked like his father was having this amazing life here in the UK because, whenever he would go to Portugal, he would rent this fancy car and would take all of us, his son´s friends to the beach or even to ride horses.

The thing is, and as kids we never saw or would understand it, back then, there was this idea that all emigrants were rich just by living and working outside our country and, a lot of the emigrants, when they would go back to their home country, they would act as they were living the dream.

Time went by and, only when we were in our early twenties and my friend had finished school, was working and was more independent, he decided it was time to live with his father and get to know him better. He thought it would be easy to find a good job and have an amazing Life like his father.

But that never happened. And he ended up seeing the truth about his father, his hero, but he also chose to stay with him because, in the end, he didn´t want the great Life, he just wanted to have a father present in his Life.

He has had a difficult Life, full of step-backs, and that changes a person more than we think. And that was what I have realised today by talking to him. Nowadays, we are very different people and we don´t know each other anymore, our friendship lives on our memories from all those years ago.

However, I still know he will have my back whenever I need as I will always have his.

Good night everyone!