cat /proc/claus

Moving out of Tokyo, I suddenly have a lot to write about in my Blog. Many times my Japanese (and sometime international) acquittances made questions about life in Brazil that I dismissed as “not so different from the rest of the world”. However, after 6 years living in Japan and 2 weeks back in Brazil, I started to realize that these questions may actually have interesting answers.

So suddenly I have a lot to talk about. I’m trying also to take pictures of some of these interesting points, but this has been a little difficult since I don’t feel comfortable carrying my big honking camera when walking around by myself (hey, one difference there!). But let’s see what I can do.

I’ll try to provide updates about my life, research and random stuff as well, along with the Life in Brazil discussions. For starters, let me introduce my new living arrangements: The Lego Beach Resort!

I’m living in the 23rd floor of a building with a great view of the bay and the mountains. The neighbourhood has plenty of bars and other shops, and is much cleaner and well kept than I was expecting. The apartment itself has three rooms, a living room and a kitchen, for PLENTY of space. I’m sharing it with Ju, a friend of mine from my Unicamp days. She is also a former Comp.Eng. graduate, which means the apartment is kind of a Nerd Fest, something I was missing since my undergrad days. For example, the living room’s walls are decorated with a Retro Mario theme, and cabling can be seen everywhere. (see the picasa album for more info - with captions!).

The building also has some things of note. First one of its elevators has a creaky wheel or something, so it shakes and make terrible noises all the way up. I took that elevator by mistake on my first day here, and boy I don’t remember being so afraid for my life before (I was kinda enjoying the rush, though).

One particularly Brazilian thing, not only in this building but on the vast majority of apartment buildings in Brazil, is how they have “service” and “social” elevators. On a first look, this might seem a reasonable idea - you would want at least one elevator that should not be used for trash, animals, cargo, etc. However on practice the social and service elevator are the same size, and usually side by side with each other, and reflect on Brazil’s practice of segregating rich people from their servants. Fortunately, newer apartments don’t seem to have service elevators like these anymore, or when they do, it is actually a proper cargo elevator.

Gas is in the tubes, like in Tokyo, but water is heated by electricity - which last I remembered was cheaper in Brasil than gas, due to our hydro plants.

Compared to Tokyo, the rent is indeed cheaper. I’m paying about half what I used to pay in my Tokyo apartment. Considering that I’m sharing the flat, it means that the full rent would be similar to that of my old home. For a much bigger place, in a great location, and with good services. Remember also that Rio is considered to be one of the most expensive cities in Brazil.

Tomorrow my research activities begin. I’ll keep you all posted, and feel free to ask more about my living arrangements in the comments!

I have moved all the pics in my album, plus a few previously unpublished pics, into Picasa:

http://picasaweb.google.com/caranha

Browsing, searching and viewing there should be better than with my current php album, even though they don’t have a neat “random picture” feature.

This should make the move to a newer version of wordpress easier for this blog.

Today I saw the master defense of a friend in my lab. To tell the truth, I was a little disappointed. Not on my friend’s presentation, which was allright, but on the professors who were watching. It seems to me from their questions that they didn’t took the time to at least peruse over my friend’s thesis before the defense.

I compare it with my own thesis defense, some 2 years ago. LM (one of the professors) opened his copy of my thesis, completely leafed through, and full of red ink. Made some insightiful remarks regarding my research, and after the defense handed me a page with 30 questions I should ask myself if I were to continue researching that topic (actually, 8 of those questions were answered during the thesis defense). The other professor also made questions more relevant to the content of the thesis, than that of the presentation.

In fact, my then advisor told me, when I asked how to prepare the presentation, “consider that the professors have read and understood your thesis”. I really hope they do the same this time around, for my current research is turning out to be much more interesting than my previous one.

—

On an unrelated note, I have uploaded more pictures to PICASA. While it bothers me a little to use yet another online service to store my data (I would much rather have them on a local disk), the hosting service where this webpage is located is almost full, and I do not feel like putting my personal pictures on the Lab’s web server. But Picasa’s service is actually quite nice, in spite of not being able to exclusively search for tags, and the lack of a Linux Client.

Enough ranting, here is the link:

Claus’ web album

I have uploaded the pictures to my vietnam and hokkaido trips. Enjoy!

Just a quick post - Pictures from the Kamakura Trip have been uploaded! Enjoy!

… Or Marilia will be mad at you.

This is a post for my mother (not that anyone else can’t see it, mind you).

You always complain that there are not enough pictures of me. Or that I’m making faces in my pictures.

Very well - this weekend I was supposed to go take studio shots of marilia for a project of her sempai, but we missed the time and the appointment was cancelled. So we went to a nearby park instead, where she found that taking pictures was just as having someone take pictures of you.

HOWEVER - by seeing the below pictures you are hereby agreeing to NEVER, EVER, EVER again complain that I do not have enough pictures of myself in my blog. There are pictures below to last for my next 4 or 5 afterlifes. Furthermore, you also waive your right to tell me not to make silly faces when taking pictures of me.

Capisce?