Tangerine's PoV

Nowadays we all tent to say (and think) that we have no time to read. I always have books that I’d love to read but they use to spend months on the waiting list because there’s always something that occupies all my time: work, school, etc. Now there is a solution: Dailylit!

Dailylit is a page which offers a small dose of literature daily directly to your e-mail. You can subscribe and receive your book at a certain hour, everyday or only on weekdays. You can read it when you use to take a small break when you are at work, or when you use to spend the 20 minutes in front of the PC when you get home. It doesn’t have a very big collection of books, most of them are old books with expired copyright, but still, very good books and they are adding new books every now and then.

I have started to read Dickens’ Hard Times, and I really enjoy it. When I use to take my coffee I receive my daily installment and I enjoy it while I relax a bit. I still have 129 installments to go, but we’re getting there.

Very recommended!

I’ve been tagged by Cris to write 8 random facts about me. So, this is how it works:

• We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
• Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged write their own blog post about their eight things and include these rules.
• At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged and that they should read your blog.

All this being said, let’s start with the 8 facts:

1. I always wanted to be a young mother, but still, when I got pregnant the first thing I thought was: “Oh my God, I’m too young to be mother”. I still think I’m too young, but well…
2. I hate it when people don’t let you get off the metro/bus/train before they go in.
3. I have big issues with living in the present; I use to get lost somewhere in the past now and then.
4. I have problems finding what I really like: I have started three degrees (economisc, English and Spanish philology and finally advertising and public relations), and I still don’t know if what I study now is what I would like to do in the future. Maybe I have to be what they call the “eternal student”.
5. I read boring literature (everytime I lend a book to someone, a book that I enjoyed a lot they are not able to finish it, or if they can they declare it the most boring book they have read in their lives).
6. I like to watch contests like ‘Who wants to be a millionaire’ (not exaclty this as here in Spain the host of the show is disgusting).
7. I hate it when the company I work for is not organized and does not establish rules to be followed by everyone.
8. I am scared to death by the thought of giving birth. It’s been two or three weeks now since I dream about it every night.

Now I would tag Sabina, Cornelia and Cris but I would first have to convince them to start a blog. Tough task! So I tag anyone who is interested in sharing with us 8 little random things about theirselves.

We use to say that we are multitasking because we are able to do more than one activity at one time successfully. We can speak with a client by phone, write an e-mail and respond to colleague who is asking if we want coffee or not. But do we really do all these things at the same time and do we really concentrate on each one of these things? Cientists have different opinions and until they make up their minds and come to a conclusion we will not know if we can really be multitasking or not. I always considered myself able to do various tasks at the same time, but still, science might study this and discover if this is really possible and how can it be achieved.

For the moment I have found some very interesting videos which demonstrate that the most important skill that helps us realize more than one task at the same time, aka the short term visual memory, is limited. We can only concentrate on 4 things at the same time. False? See the videos on this page and see how long it takes to find the difference between the two pics in each video.

One year ago at 5 o’clock in the morning I was going to the airport with my luggage, my memories, my hopes, my illusions, and looking forward to see B and start a new life with him. I had left my parent’s house the day before, with tears in my eyes although I still had the hope that it will be fine and I’d have a better life in Barcelona. I arrived to Bucharest the night before at around 10 PM. I went out with the girls to have dinner in Piranha, where we laughed, we talked as we used to as if it was an usual night. Then I went to Cornelia’s house to sleep or something. We eventually chose the “something” so we didn’t sleep that night. We talked about work, about our friends, about how my life would be far away. 4 days before I had left Softwin thinking that I would get a better job in Spain. I remember the day I left, I use to see the pics now and then. Half of my colleagues were friends. I remember when we had to work on Christmas we spent the night there with champagne and “sarmale”, playing badminton and attending the clients in the meantime. But I left… with a smile on my face…

113, the taxi that I used to go to work with came to pick me up and left me at the airport. I came to hate airports because I had to travel so much in the previous months but still, that morning the feeling I had was the most peculiar feeling I ever had. I remember I was dying to get to Barcelona, to see B, to see our new house, to see Terrassa, but I knew that I had left my friends behind, that I didn’t know anyone but B in Barcelona and that it would be hard to make friends again in a country where romanians are not that well considered, and that my only family will be B. And I left…

Today I was talking to B:

- Today it’s the 4th of July, I told him.

- Oh, it’s been one year since you’re here.

- Yeah…

- Shall we celebrate or forget about it?

I still don’t know… Since I came here I cried more that I ever cried, I missed my country more than I thought I would, I was close to go back several times. It was definitely not what I expected, not what I dreamed, and it was hard to stay here and not to leave everything and go back to where I was considered a person.

First of all school… I have never seen so many posh people together. God I hate it… All defending Catalonia as a country and defending the Catalan language because of course it was so hard when they was punished for speaking Catalan. OH MY GOD! They are 18 years old, what do they know about that??? When they were born all this had ended and world was a peaceful and lovely place. Until they “grew up”, of course…

And then work… where you’re an immigrant and they don’t pay you what they should pay you and you cannot say anything. When you are willing to do anything for the company, when you spend extra hours in there, you would at least want for that to be seen and considered (not materially, but at least you would wait to see their respect). Where they treat you as you would depend on them… And you do… And you would like to run away, to say something but you can’t because there HE is, to talk shit about you just because you got pregnant without asking for his permission. And just because you don’t want to play his game, and talk shit about him you have to stand still and see how people look at you as if you were the worst person in the world. And you deserve more than that, you go home, you cry, you get back and look people in the eyes hoping that they will finally see who you are. But that moment never comes… I’d really like to feel person again…

So here goes the question again… “should we celebrate or forget about it?”

Work sucks, the university too, people here are strange, whenever I need a paper I have to queue for at least 4 hours, everytime someone asks me where I am from I see that look in their eyes… I hate that look…

But there are things that can still make me forget about this and have a close to normal life here… B who helped me most of the times to get over it and A who is growing inside my belly and who moves from time to time to tell me that he is there and I can count on him. My two reasons to stay here and the two persons that can still make me happy, my two reasons for living. This year, after all, brought what I thought I would never have: A.

B, thank you, for this and for being with me all this time… I finally, after one year, could take a photo of you smiling.

So… shall we celebrate or forget about this day, about this year and hope for better days? I decided to forget the bad things, and consider that this was an year with you, and year seeing you eveyday when I woke up, and year who brought us the little alien, a wonderful year after all. So… for that and for other unknown reasons, consider yourself invited to dinner. You pick the place!

This one goes for you:

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It’s been 7 months since the baby exists inside there, 7 months since our lives are not the same, not even a bit. I remeber my life, what I did, what I had before and I see it empty, senseless. I remember I could understand the ones that had kids, I remember I could understand what it was to be a mother, but I didn’t, and I still don’t; everything I thought I knew before about it is wrong, completely wrong. You cannot explain what it is to be a mother or a father, and trying to explain it is useless: the ones that have kids don’t need an explanation and the ones that don’t have kids will not understand it until they eventually have kids.

I remember when I found out that I was pregnant. I went with the test to tell B. and he looked at me with the specific look he has in his eyes when he doesn’t understand a thing. I remember him asking “What does that mean?”. I was starting to freak out, I didn’t believe it, and he kept telling me that it would be ok, it would be fine. I couldn’t believe it, I bought another test, positive, I went to the hospital to ask for a test, positive. It was all so unbelievable. Now, 6 months later I know it will be fine and I know that our lives have no sense without the little alien I carry inside.

2 months and we will see him, we will hear him cry (maybe too much), we will hug him and we will be parents, young parents, good parents. I know that we will have to give up things, lots of things, and that we could have enjoyed more our youth, but still, we still have the hope that with 30 years we will have an 8 years old child and we will be able to enjoy our youth in a better way.

Alex is a gift for us, he will make our lives better, shinier, and we will try to give him everything a child could wish for: a good education, common sense, scalextric cars, passion for the music and lots of things we have to share with him. We are anxious to welcome him home.

We are definitely living in Barcelona now. We may not have lamps already, the apartament is not clean already, but we’re here and we love it.

Here you have a preview of it: The new gran

After almost one year of living in Terrassa and spending 3 hours/day in the train/bus we finally got sick of it. A small problem in the apartment also helped a bit, and we finally decided to move to Barcelona, look for something close to work, etc… Hard task, as we work in the center of Barcelona. But we did it! We found an apartament and at the end of this week we’ll have the keys. Starting from next week (I hope) we will only have to walk for 15 minutes to get home. And I am at 10 minutes from the University. And the zone is precious. We will definitely post photos of the apartment and the zone soon.

Gràcia, here we come!!!

Here is the author website.

I can see this Pulp Fiction scene through the animation. Love it!