#recently

This year has been passing way too fast. In the beginning, I felt the urge to finish the academic year. Now, I’m only one month away to the beginning of my (hopefully) last year of university. Exciting projects may happen this year and I’m here for it.

July was quite a nice month. In the beginning of the month, I came to Portugal. Then, my boyfriend and I visited Lisbon for roughly a week, which allowed me to see some of my friends, and then we went to Porto, where we had a nice boat ride.

Since then, I’ve been staying at my parents, and, I’m not going to lie, there’s not much to do, but it’s been good nevertheless. I will be soon returning to the Netherlands, so we don’t need to rush.

I’m hoping for a calmer academic year, but is it going to happen? Let’s slowly enjoy the rest of the summer.

June is done, exams are done, first year of my master’s degree is finished. Yay! I really don’t have many updates, besides the fact that I will be working on an exiting project next year at university.

Now, it’s time to rest and go back home.

Enjoy your summer, safely!

As I usually say, one more month has passed and we’re already in June! If everything goes on well, this is the last month of classes and exams of my Master’s first year.

It’s been very busy, and I’m pretty sure this month will be even more. There’s assignments to deliver almost every week for the many courses I have and I have to start preparing for the exams too.

In other news, I visited Den Haag, Maastricht and Tilburg! I also managed to dedicate more time to photography and revamp my photos page. But let’s be honest: I’m always changing something on this website so it’s not as if that’s news.

I leave you with one of my favorite pictures of the month, but I invite you to check out the other ones!

One more month has passed! It is unbelievable how fast this academic year - and 2021 in general - is passing. I’m already in my last quartile, having my last courses for the year.

There’s not a lot new about what happened in April, besides a very weird day here in Eindhoven where the weather had a heart attack and it was sunny, then it was hailing, then it was raining, then it was snowing, then it was sunny again. It was… dramatic!

I also got a scare: somehow I dodged Covid-19, which was very weird and stressful and it was during my exams week! Fortunately all exams went well. I already received almost all grades. Just waiting for an assignment for Machine Learning Engineering.

Besides that, I managed to visit Utrecht. It was a very very beautiful city. It contrasts a lot to the city I’m living in because it’s older, it has canals, and a very different vibe. I really enjoyed my few hours walking there and I hope to come back soon now that more things are open once again!

We’re now in May! Sun is coming and hopefully something good for all of us! Have fun, but stay safe.

March has been an extremely busy month for me where a lot happened and, at the same time, nothing happened. I can’t even believe that April is just starting!

Two months ago - what feels like yesterday - I was starting a new quartile with 3 new courses and I already knew I had to repeat an exam from last quartile. I was already stressing, and worried. Now we’re just a few days until the exams.

Next week, I will have 4 three hour exams. I have never, in my entire academic life, had three hour exams. Those 4 exams will all be comprised within a week, with no resting day in between: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. It’s definitely going to be a tough week!

I’ve been preparing for weeks already. I feel I can probably pass all of them, some with good grades, but I’m still not confident enough. There’s still a few days, and that can change. Besides, two of the exams are open book so, hopefully, they will be reasonable.

All of the exams are going to be on campus. They’re going to be my first exams on campus in over a year, and my first exams on campus at TU/e so I have no clue what to expect. I just know that the cases are increasing, there’s more cases than in January and we still have to do exams om campus.

I wouldn’t mind if we also had classes on campus. But I do mind because they’ll put 50 people inside each room - which I think are quite large - with no mask when seated. But who am I to decide the seated people infect or not others?

It’s been slightly over a year that all of this pandemic situation started and we’re now running our race in our second year of pandemic. It’s getting boring, my friends and I feel like our mental health has never been as bad as right now. Living in a different country, different university, different life. Yet, everything is the same: locked up in our houses.

Other than that, spring 🌷 started! And the Netherlands is getting filled with color. At least Eindhoven. I’ve been enjoying the cherry blossom trees.

Stay safe! But enjoy your life!

One more month has passed. A year ago, I was starting my second semester of my final year of my Bachelors degree. Right before that, I had just been traveling across Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands. At the time, we were a bit worried with Covid-19, but there were barely any identified cases in Europe. We didn’t even wear masks on the flights.

Who would say that, a year later, I would be writing this post from the Netherlands. This month marked, for me, an year of worries about Covid-19. Since the pandemic started - or slightly before it was actually considered a pandemic - I’ve never, ever, had physical classes. I haven’t seen many of my friends since then. Only a few. Now I’m in a different country, and the situation doesn’t look much better unfortunately.

It’s been quite a while since I sent my last newsletter. And now the ferocious winter winds are storming outside. I’m looking at my screen wondering what to write and why write. Since August, I have been living in the Netherlands and I thought it would be a great ideas to talk a bit about the experience of moving during a pandemic.

2020 has come to an end. It was a very troublesome year regarding worldwide events. However, I must say that it was quite a fantastic year personally.

I am definitely not going to cover everything in this post - which is going to be rather quick - but I must say that 2020 has allowed me to grow in ways that I did not expect.

From the lockdown to moving to a different country, all this experiences changed me in some special way. The Covid-19 pandemic just made everything slightly more difficult. Sometimes we need to pass through some difficulties to see the light ahead.

I am hoping that the vaccines will have a long lasting effect in most people so that we can surpass this challenge together. The pandemic is far from its end. It’s just the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end!

I wish you all a fantastic 2021 and hope great things will happen this year!

Hello y’all! Yet another month has passed. November was quite full of good things in my opinion. It’s been quite a long month so I’ll probably skip some parts because I simply don’t remember.

So, first of all and most importantly, I moved! I moved out of The Student Hotel and all the problems that I had with it to my own studio. I really enjoy the place and the location. I might not have a view from the 10th floor as I had before, but I still have a view from the 4th.

We’re almost half-way our second quarter of university and there’s things to do every day. It’s been very very very busy. I don’t think I can even compare to my Bachelor’s. I managed to work 50% of the time during my Bachelor’s, but I’m struggling with 25% with my Master’s.

It’s much more intensive in my opinion. I think the fact that we use a quartile system is the main culprit. It makes deadlines tight, not much time between quarters (only two weeks, with exams…). Nevertheless, everything seems to be coming up together!

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to use my camera as much as I hoped but I count on going to a few virtual photography workshops this month. In two weeks I’m flyinng back to Portugal for my Christmas break.

Enjoy your Holidays, enjoy Sinterklaas, enjoy Christmas!

Here we are again, one more month has passed. Today - or tomorrow because I’m writing this yesetday - is the first day of November! So here comes another “Recently” post. Even though October was packed with joyfullness, happiness, adventures and some stress, this post will be rather short.

The autumn has set and the streets are finally getting filled with reds, oranges, yellows and browns. Different trees, different colors. It’s actually very different than what I am used to in Portugal. There we don’t have many reds or oranges: it’s mainly yellows and browns.

I had the opportunity to go for a bike ride for a few kilometers in the south of Eindhoven and the sights were absolutely incredible: sun, then a little bit of rain, clear sky, pine trees, forest paths… For someone that lived all his life on a place were vegetation is rather scarse, this is really pretty for me.

On other news, the first quarter of university if finally finished. The exams ended on Friday and we’re now just waiting for the exams results. Quarter two will start in two weeks, so I now have one week to rest and get ready for new adventures!

Happy November!

Today’s the first day of a new month, so here’s a new “recently” post. Since I decided to start this series after mid-september, there’s not that many news since. However, I’m more than happy to write a few words about what’s been happening lately.

First of all, I decided to create a newsletter even though all posts I will send through it will be available on my website since day 1. Then, why did I choose to create a newsletter? I always wanted to publish articles regularly, but sometimes it’s difficult to keep going when we don’t feel obligation for it. After talking to Alfonso, I decided to give it a try.

Darkroom

Regarding photography I have two updates. The first one is related to this website. I decided to give my photography its own beautiful page instead of just a tag (remember #lifethroughlenses?). From now on, you can visit my photography in the darkroom. It’s obviously not a darkroom, but I thought it would be a great name for that page.

Over the years I have had many photos pages on this website but always ended up removing them in order to simplify the website. However, I’m in that point where I no longer think that “less is more” regarding this website. Not saying more is better though! I don’t want to solely relay on Instagram for my photography and this way I have flexibility over its presentation.

The second update is as simple as this: I decided to join the Eindhoven Film and Photography association. It’s called Dekate Mousa and there’s activities all Tuesdays at night related to either photography or film.

Thesis?

Since I’m already in the first year of my Master’s degree, which is just two years, I have been reading, investigating and thinking a lot more what’s going to happen next year: the project/thesis. I should pick an area and a specific topic soon and try to contact a professor regarding this. Or just see what the professors at my uni are looking for, but that might not be as exciting. Next Monday I will be bringing a post specifically about this. So… if you’re curious, please wait for it!

It’s been a little bit over a month since I first arrived in Eindhoven. Since then, I have had time to explore the city, a bit of Rotterdam, and even find a Portuguese store with “Pastéis de Nata” in Helmond! I have also had time to study, but had to decrease my time at Protocol Labs due to my studies. With all of this, I haven’t had time to give much love to my blog.

Inspired by Tom MacWright, I am going to make a commitment that sounds quite simple: make a post every month called “Recently”. On it, I should reflect about the past month, the highs and lows, the things I’ve learned, important things I think are worth mention and so on.

With this, I am also deprecating the now page. Why? This posts should already give an overview of what’s been happening lately that is not covered by my micro posts. But don’t worry! I’m not breaking any links. It will just point to the most recent “Recently” post… no pun intended!