As promised, 2016 was the year I signed up to the gym. This is likely to be the biggest change in my life last year since it made me to start making more conscious decisions regarding the food I ate and my health. It had an huge impact in me.

Last year was shit. I moved to London in 2015 (because my partner is English) and last June was a proper kick in the stomach. Half of the population reduced me, an immigrant, to a sterotype that they themselves had built (the TV show about living on benefits is a great example) and all my contributions (taxes, donations etc) were nothing. Moving here was emotionally hard but I did settle. Unwanted here, yet staying.

Politics in 2016 turned me into quite an angry person. An angry person with no power to change anything. No tweet of mine, blog post or petition signature will change anything so I have just given up on all that. I've deleted Facebook from my phone and I've only been using Messenger, Whatsapp and Instagram. I do use Twitter for the sake of tech posts.

During the whole year I had anger, fear (of my future) and anxiety building up to a point that even sleeping became difficult and by the end of the year I resigned at my job to try to have a fresh start of 2017 somewhere else.

But not everything was bad. I keep bringing up my two trips to Finland (post 1 and post 2) as the best moments of 2016. Besides that, it is really hard to mention any highlight of 2016.

As for 2017, I have a couple of goals:

• Learning more about minimalism: my word for 2017 is declutter. Own the minimum I need and avoid buying stuff to the maximum possible;
• Reduce social media usage;
• Be more environmental friendly;
• Post more in this blog;
• Do volunteering;
• Continue to go to the gym;
• Be more thankful;

I wish everyone a happy and healthy 2017.

Nearly three months after, I finally post here the photos of the Vesala gigs I saw in September. I travelled to Helsinki on purpose to finally see her live (I've been a fan for over ten years now).

Full album here

This woman is unstoppable: music, theatre, acting, writing. Like she said, she can do whatever she wants and that is exactly what I want for myself too. I don't want to stop: doesn't matter if it is as developer or not.

And why am I posting this? Vesala comes to my mind in every job interview I go to and the interviewer asks "why did you become a developer?". Well, over ten years ago I taught myself how to program and I built a small website about her, because she is who I admired a lot at the time (and I still do).

my first websites were about PMMP (around 2005)

the only screenshots I was able to recover from ten years ago when I built a fansite about Vesala

I have on my drafts a very long post that will cover how I first learned to program, but for now I will leave here these. I do smile a lot looking at these screenshots: I was 15 years old and I was learning CSS and HTML on my own after school.

And ten years later, I was meeting one of the people that, by accident, contributed a lot to how my future was being shaped at the time.
So thank you Paula, and sorry for crying when I met you.

And so I say goodbye to 2015. A year full of emotions and unexpected adventures. As any ordinary person on the final day of the year I reflected on everything that was left to do but also the achievements I managed to complete. At the end of the day it's the good things that are worth celebrating.

In 2015 I moved to London and started a new job. The early months were a huge emotional challenge. Leaving my parents, friends and family (and all my crap too) and going to one of the biggest cities in the world and starting a social life (nearly) from nothing was an exhaustive process.

Very quickly I started to hate public transport, crowds and everything involving the city. It was painful emotionally, for me, to plan anything because I didn't know anyone and trying to work out the best way to get to a particular place in the city was a nightmare.

However, time passes and I got to know new people who took me to visit new things and have new experiences which I wouldn't put myself through in my spare time, and now I know the transport network better than the back of my own hand, a journey of 45 minutes changing trains three times doesn't scare me anymore. I took almost four months to start to like London. Now I love it.

Changing jobs didn't leave me with many days to take off as holiday but nevertheless I managed to travel a little bit. For those that have read this blog may have seen posts about Tenerife, Amsterdam, Brugge and Copenhagen. Not to mention visiting Portugal a few times and other places in England (Brighton and Weston-super-mare).

I don't yet know what 2016 will bring, but signing up to the gym is definitely on my list!

Happy New Year,
Ana

Há duas semanas atrás fomos visitar Bruges e Copenhaga. Planeamos esta pausa há alguns meses atrás mas demasiado tarde para sermos mais ambiciosos. Eu pessoalmente gosto de viajar no inverno mas pode ser um bocadinho mais complicado para estar devidamente preparado para o frio.

Decidimos partir de Londres (usando o Eurostar) para Bruxelas, daí apanhar um comboio para Bruges e voltar dois dias mais tarde a Bruxelas para apanhar um voo para Copenhaga.

Copenhaga é uma cidade particularmente interessante, no entanto não me cativou como Bruges. Eu prefiro cidades "paradas no tempo" onde posso sentir que estou também a viajar na história. Com grandes e belos novos edifícios, Copenhaga é excelente para apaixonados por arquitectura, mas é um pouco mais moderna do que esperava.

Dois dias não foram suficientes para fazer tudo o que queríamos. Fizemos tours de autocarro e barco mas infelizmente as nossas visitas a museus foram muito limitadas (o que é pena dado que os museus em Copenhaga são, na sua maioria, gratuitos).

Passamos uma tarde no Tivoli: um dos mais antigos parques de diversões.

Recomendações:

• Comprar Hop on - Hop off tours (autocarro e barco) - se visitarem numa altura em que os canais estão congelados pode não ser a melhor ideia;
• Visitar o Tivoli é mais caro às sextas-feiras - informem-se antes de visitar;
• Não visitem o Guiness world records!

Comida e bebidas (esta lista foi feita por um amigo meu que viveu na Dinamarca):

• http://cofoco.dk/da/restauranter/hoest/
• http://www.madklubben.dk/bistro-de-luxe/
• http://halifax.dk/restauranterne
• http://torvehallernekbh.dk/
• http://llamarestaurant.dk/
• http://cofoco.dk/da/restauranter/oysters-and-grill/