Halfway

We have just reached half-way this week! Which means that we have, at this stage, posted 40 posts on our blog! I swear I didn’t think I would have enough things to talk about to get this far when we first started but here I am. I guess that the more you write the more ideas pop into your mind, however sometimes we do get stuck wondering what to write about.

 

I think that writing this blog also helps us discover a bit more about ourselves, our interests, hopes, emotions and even our flaws. I have tried to be as diverse as possible with my topics but I guess that we always go back to what interests us the most. So get prepared for at least another 40 posts with the Brazilian flavour and lots of PR and volunteer talk.

The 10 most unexpected consequences of being online

1. Bumping into people that live a stones throw away from you: Once I met a neighbour of mine through ICQ! We started chatting and eventually we found out that we could see each other if we looked out of our windows.

 

2. Making friends for life (even though you never personally meet them): I have had two friends for more than 8 years; we used to live in the same city (Rio) and we have never met personally although we are “virtual” friends until today.

 

3. Discovering things about your friends that you never knew: Today, with Facebook and Twitter, you get to know more about your friends beliefs and whereabouts than ever before.

 

4. Finding people you didn’t even know where to start looking for: Social media can make one nostalgic, making you find people you haven’t heard from for years.

 

5. Getting a stalker: Be careful with the information you put online or you might get people calling you at odd times.

 

6. Learning about things you didn’t even know existed: It is so quick and easy to find information on the Internet nowadays that you can learn something new everyday.

 

7. Addiction: Having access to the Internet the whole day can make you feel a need to be online all of the time.

 

8. Virus: Being tricked into downloading a virus that will damage your computer.

 

9. Deciding to have a smart phone: Just so that you can read your e-mails or access Google anywhere.

 

10. Being contactable: Sometimes you just need to be offline.

Valentine’s day

You must be thinking that I’m crazy talking about Valentine’s Day in June but the fact is that we (Brazilians) celebrate Valentine’s Day on 12 June. I have my own explanation for this. Everywhere else in the world Valentine’s Day is celebrated on 14 February. I think that because this date is right about the Carnaval time in Brazil they changed it to later in the year. At the end of the day it is a commercial “holiday” and the shops just want people to buy things for their loved ones.

 

During Carnaval, those who are single are definitely looking to stay single. I have even heard of people who break up during Carnaval and get back together just after. I don’t want you to think that it is normal, but it happens. Besides that, celebrating love in winter just seems romantic to me.

 

Another difference is that we don’t celebrate love, we celebrate the relationship between a couple (e.g. boyfriend and girlfriend). So don’t go around wishing Brazilians happy Valentines Day… you might get yourself into trouble – this is a something reserved for only your other half.

The elephant in the room

An elephant in the room is a metaphorical idiom for an obvious truth that is being ignored. And it is amazing how we are capable of letting the elephant be in the room. People would rather go through the trouble of working around it than acknowledging it and trying to find a solution to remove the elephant from the room. Sometimes it is not possible to make the elephant go away but he might shrink and make things more comfortable for all.

 

We all have our elephants and they all have different sizes. We just need to get them to disappear instead of allowing them to get bigger and bigger until we are unable move around them.

 

I think that the elephants in the rooms are the only animals that we should actually be trying to make extinct. So go get rid of one of yours today.

 

Tumblr

When I first started this blog I also started my “Tumblr”. I still don’t use many of the features that it offers; I mainly use it to reblog things that make me smile. It is almost like my fun place to be when I don’t want to worry much and just have a good laugh.

What I think is cool about Tumblr is that you have the “reblog” function which is basically a retweet whereby you share what you think it is funny without having to email it to all your friends and fill their mailboxes - they can just go there and check on “what you been laughing about”.

I guess that if you look at the practical side of it, very few people will actually have time to go to Tumblr to check if you have posted anything. For that reason Tumblr has the functionality to automatically send an update to Facebook and Twitter, making everybody’s lives easier. There are even Tumblr applications for smartphones which makes it even more user-friendly.

Go check out my Tumblr. You might just get hooked on it.

Every day is a good day

Everyday is a good day, but not necessarily for the same reason. For me, “every day is a good day” is only half a statement; it should be “Every day is a good day for different reasons”. What I mean by this is that one day can be a good day for being active and the other a good day for just lying in bed the whole day. Or you can even look at it in another way, like one day being a good day just because it was all perfect and happy while other is just the right day for everything to go wrong and you learn from that.

I guess that the only things that can change this statement are our attitudes towards things that come our way. I am not being a “super optimist”; sometimes all you need is a day to complain about everything in order to get it out of your system. In that situation the day is a good day to complain. I thing we should always try to focus on the good things in life in order to fill our lives with positivity and bring good things our way.

Adding to that this statement for me is also about how every day could be a good day to start something new. People have the habit of leaving things for later, even things that will bring them their happiness.