Balázs, Gonçalo, Monika, Anne Dumas, Ana Fabjan, Sascha, Jonathan, Joao Miguel Alves, Claire-Marie, Beatrice, Thore, Anja, Daniel, Alec, Rebecca, Kaja, Andej, Per Anders, Nicholas, Charles, David “La Frite” Fritz, Pauline Bamberger, Anne “La Blonde” Thiriet, Daphne, Mattia, Roberto, Anna Ferenecova, Lena, Alessandro and Zan

Many thanks to all of you for a wonderful time in Lisbon!
I miss you all, and I hope to see you soon, somewhere

PS: download the original size for printing.

So that i will never forget, here is what I did on my last week of erasmus:
mon: (back from Porto) caipirinha + beatrix bar
tue: caipirinha + minimercado
wed: beach (sao pedro) + nood (clair’s dinner) + caipirinha + shotbar
thu: new erasmus party at XannaX (crap) + bedroom
fri: bedroom + didn’t get in on BBC guestlist
sat: met lots of people in Bairro + last time in Lux
sun: chicken curry at the frenchies
mon: non-alcoholic evening at Noo Bai and yellow jazz bar
tue: beach (estoril) + monixken’s brithday dinner + chocolate fondue at Daphne’s + last minimercado

sunset at Estoril beach

Quite a week. And lots of fun.

A reminder of the best places (bars) in Lisbon:

• Noo Bai (miradouro santa catarina) : chill bar with amazing view, gmaps
• Instituto do vinho do porto: port wine tasting in a chill relaxing bar
• Vou ao Camoes: aka “the caipirinha shop”, sells caipirinha’s for 2Eur
• Maria Caxuxa: nice bar in Bairro
• Bar sem nom: aka “the shot bar”, 12 shots for 12 euro’s, always good music
• Yellow jazz bar: great tosta’s and good music
• Bedroom: mini club in Bairro. Nice interior and good sound. Some times good house dj
• Lux: the big club of the city. I am a big fan of the downstairs floor (mostly techno)

I discovered all of this, with these guys

Next exam was on 7 January: Logistics & Supply Chain Management. We didn’t receive many classes as the professor was often not able to attend. Much of it we already learned in previous years. The exam wasn’t hard and the professor likes too give a lot of points. Didn’t learn much from this course.

Yesturday, 12 January, was the hardest exam. Damn. Analysis of Industry and Competition. There was a lot of micro economics involved with theoretical models to show how certain situations affect competition in a given Industry. The course was rather interesting but very theoretic. The professor (who looks a little like Fez from that 70s show) did a good job to keep it interesting. It’s really a shame that the exam was such a problem: WAY too little time to solve all questions, so you rush through most of the computations without taken much time to think. This not only makes it stressful and unpleasant, it also punishes students who want to tackle the questions thoroughly. Giving the students half an hour more (or reducing the number of questions) would have made it a lot less frustrating. 15 minutes after the exam most answers popped into my head, blaaargh, frustrating..

Tomorrow the last one.. Bluurgh, International Business. It might have been an interesting course if the professor wasn’t so lazy, sleepy, unenthusiastic and constantly leaving the classroom to smoke and drink coffee. On top of that she has such a boring voice and a blank stare. No, this really drains your motivation to put effort in this mildly interesting subject.

So I better get off and hit the books!

Following several consultations with the French government and taking into account its firm recommendations, the organisers of the Dakar have taken the decision to cancel the 2008 edition of the rally
Amaury Sport Organisation

 
That really sucks, because I love to watch the rally every year. It’s a good break from studying during the exams and the landscapes they pass are so beautiful. (Some nice pictures from previous years)

Too bad we won’t see it this year. Most contestants however are still here in Lisbon with their cars and teams. When I came back from my first exam (which went well) I was surprised to see both Hummers of Robby Gordon and Ronn Bailey in the middle of Avenida, just outside the metro station. I took some pictures of both cars and their support trucks. The Tuareg of Hardy and Lecompte was also parked in front of the Novotel. Nice rides. It kinda sucks to see them here in the middle of the city in stead of in the desert sand.

First there was Beatrice’s party at our apartment. It was her birthday and we invited a lot of people. I think about 50 in our apartment in total. It was really fun and later that evening there was a gala from the economics faculty of Nova university. (that’s were Alec and me are studying)

A week later there was a party in the apartment of some other erasmus people, but this really beat all records. I think about 200 people were there that night. Really amazing. An open area with stairs going from one side to the other. (I hope I can get a hold off some pictures) . 4 floors of party people. The name of the street of this apartment was “Rua de 1° Decembro” so they had to give a party there on the first of december. We met some belgian people who study in Ghent there.

On 6th december, we had a christmas party with the people living in my flat. We bought gifts for each other and had a 6 course dinner. Everyone had to cook a dish. Ana made guacamole, Monika made a lovely polish soup, Bali and Andy prepared an amazing slovakian dish, Anne served us a nice tartiflette, Alec and me stuffed everyone with cheese fondue and Lena finished everyone off with a delicious tiramisou. One thing did go wrong though: A full glass of white wine got spilled on my MacBook. (It was playing the music) . Luckily my MacBook survived after letting it dry for 3 days.

That week we had our final presentation for the product innovation course. The idea of João and me finished second out of 7 groups. (This is fine, don’t you think?). Alec’s idea finished first of course I can post the presentation if you want, it’s about rPACS: a system for transferring medical images (X-rays) to doctors.

That night we had a goodbye cheese fondue at our place. Most people are leaving to be home for the holidays , so it was a nice opportunity to get everybody together.

They day after the final 5 minute presentation I left back to belgium for the What’s Cookin’? website launch party. The pictures of the party are online on the new website. The place was packed, everyone had a great time and we had the chance to tell people about our next great gig: 1st February, we are organising a whicked what’s cookin’ party in the Vooruit in Ghent. You might want to keep on eye on the what’s cookin’ blog because I think Jan will announce the headliner soon.

I stayed in Belgium for a week. It was nice to see my family back. But damn, It’s cold in Belgium (-3°C). Last Thursday, we had kind of a christmas dinner with the family. Really nice. I enjoyed spending time with my brother, sister, Rossella and my parents, and playing with the Wii

So I got back to Lisbon yesterday. I came home to an empty apartment Luckily the Dutch girls Daphne and Claire are staying here for the holidays, so I wasn’t completely alone. And Nathalie is coming tomorrow to spend christmas here. That will be nice Argh crap, I should be studying now for the exams coming up in 2 weeks.

So, I hope I brought you guys back up to speed on what’s been happening here.

I haven’t really told you about the project I am working on with my Portuguese colleague João. We are working on modernizing the distributing of medical x-ray photo’s. More specific, we are developing a software front-end for doctors to view x-ray pictures over the internet. If you think that this sounds complicated, you are right, that’s why it’s been taking a lot of time and effort

But we were able to convince the professor and most classmates with our presentation this monday. The presentation itself was rather boring and not well prepared (I spend way too much time programming the prototype) – but the demonstration of this prototype was more successful.

Only one big presentation left for this course, and it’s the most important one. On december 12th, each group has 5 minutes to give their pitch talk. This presentation is supposed to convince potential investors and venture capitalists to fund our great innovation idea. I found some great tips from Garr Reynolds on how to prepare and deliver a great presentation. On Guy Kawasaki’s blog (a director of a VC firm with an amazing career) i read about The Art of Innovation, The Top 10 lies of Entrepreneurs and his 10/20/30 rule of PowerPoint.

Besides all the work, I also had some fun Nathalie was here thursday till monday and we went to a goa party on friday. Good sound system, great dj’s and live’s, too much people and thus extremely hot and sweaty. Saturday we had a mustache party in our apartment as a homage to Carlos, our mustached landlord.

My parents were here to visit me from sunday till today. 3 diners with delicious food! Thanks l’homme père & la mama We also had lunch with a super friendly Portuguese colleague of my dad, Cpt. Carlos Mirpuri. Quite an experience. Too bad my parents had to leave so soon. The weather wasn’t good, and I feel that they didn’t get a proper view of my life here in Lisbon. Sorry guys that I was so busy with university projects..

I hope I catched up on old news now Time to start working on the new website for What’s Cookin’?

I did upload my pictures here a few days ago. We visited the Pena Palace and the amazing Castelo dos Mouros.

Nathalie and me had a lovely diner that evening for our 3 year anniversary, joepie! Time really flies when you’re having fun.

But now I have to get back to work: We have to hand in our preliminary report in just 2 days :-/ bummer

Pillow Beach

The weekend before this one (27 October) we went to a really cool beach near Costa da Caparica. It’s a long journey to get there (especially if you take the boat to Trafaria) but it’s somewhat worth it.

The Kontiki Bar on this beach is amazing because it has these really nice pillows on the sand where you can lay back and relax with a drink while watching the beautiful ocean. Very relaxing. Somewhat like the Limonada on a beach (A really nice lounge bar in Gent) There were a lot of surfers that day because of the good waves.

I tried to get a little tan, but I guess I have some kind of Irish skin that just doesn’t tan.

Hints if you want to go there: Take the bus from Praça de Espanha to Caparica instead of the boat. They don’t accept foreign cards, so bring cash

PS (for the Belgian readers) : De locale Joeri was daar voor onze veiligheid

Foto’s are in this set

We started walking to the castelo, but stopped at this amazing miradouro. I don’t know the name, but it is a really nice one. They have couches, chill lounge music and a breath-taking view of Lisbon. You can see where it is on this google map.

We spend some time there chilling & relaxing before we climbed the streets up to the castle. From the castle I took this picture of the miradouro.

Castelo de São Jorge

Great news when we bought our tickets to see the castle: It’s free for students studying in Lisbon and 50% off for other students. We started by walking around in the little town inside the castle walls. There are some beautiful narrow streets with cats and old ladies standing by the windows.

As you can see I took some really nice pictures of Nathalie here. The light was great and she’s so beautiful with her “Portuguese” tan.

From the walls we saw even more breath-taking views than earlier. You could see Praça de Figeuira and Praça de Comercio, as well as an amazing overview of Lisbon with the 25 de Abril bridge.

A guy was playing medieval music on his guitar creating this medieval atmosphere in the castle. I could imagine knights and kings living here.

Just outside the castle a german man was making Tibetan influenced Mandala necklaces. In Tibetan Buddhism Mandala is a term used for a representation of the cosmos. The necklace has 5 (or 6) folded positions which represent a state in the creation of the cosmos. Jewelry with a deeper meaning. We liked it.

Belém

It was already late when we hurried to the other side of the city to see Belém. Belém is a parish of Lisbon famous as the place from which many of the great Portuguese explorers set off on their voyages of discovery. Too bad we were too late to enter the Jerónimos Monastery, the Padrão dos Descobrimentos and the Torre de Belém. We will have to come back some day to see these from the inside.

We had a nice time in the park surrounding the tower.

We saw a beautiful sunset. It’s amazing to see that the colours of everything around you change when the sun is going down. Lovely. Near the Tower there is a controversial monument in memory of the combatants of the Colonial war.

I had a great time today with my darling visiting the city I’ve been living in for the past month. I saw some interesting sights and breath-taking views. I also learned a lot by writing this blogpost and researching stuff on Wikipedia.

Please take a look at the other pictures I didn’t post in this entry on the usual Flickr set.

The student city

Friday I took a train from Orient station in Lisbon to the Coimbra-b station. The Intercidade (IC) train takes 2 hours to get there and costs 15 euro’s. A bus then took me to Praça da Republica where Nathalie picked me up. She lives in a flat with 13 other girls (my god, not easy!) , but most of the time she’s at the hostel down the street. The Grande Hostel de Coimbra is run by some amazing young people (an artist, an architect, a doctor and a lawyer). It has a design interior, wooden floors, good kitchen, playstation(!) and a wonderful garden with BBQ and sitting bags. Now I understand why liefken works there. Go there if you want to visit Coimbra!

I had a really nice time walking through the town with Nathalie. It was very relaxing. There’s this calm and easy atmosphere in the city, but this was probably because most of the students leave during weekends.

The population of Coimbra consists mostly of students, it is home to one of Europe’s oldest universities. The hill where the university is built on offers some breathtaking views of the city. We had the luck to see a gorgeous sunset. I hope Nathalie uploads her pictures soon. Very romantic.

Mondego River

Saturday was one of the hottest days since I’ve been in Portugal: 32°, so we searched for some refreshment near the river. The Mondego river is much nicer than the Tejo in Lisbon. You can sit in a park by the river bank and enjoy a good meal while you hear the water flowing. (well almost). Nathalie dropped my knife in the river while we were eating: that was fun luckily the waiter didn’t notice it was missing. Great sopa do dia & hamburger with fresh fries.

After 21:00 the restaurant where we ate transformed into a lounge bar. I had a caipirinha (which wasn’t as good as the 2euro ones from Lisbon).

Sunday we spend most of the day chilling in the garden of the hostel with Nathalie’s friends. They are really nice people. I had a good time. Nathalie made a delicious carbonara to please our stomachs: the weekend was perfect. Too bad I had to get back to Lisbon that evening because I had classes on monday.

Thanks liefje for a wonderful weekend!