I'm unhappy

It's a quite tough moment. I feel like I can hardly get any support from those who means a lot to me, family or friends, in a time when I just want to be understood, or listened at least. What to do now? I don't know, but I'd like to change. Change. This is a word that's been present in my whole life. All I want is a bit of happiness. I'm desperate for it, actually. And I've been trying to go after that, but it seems the more I walk, the farther it gets. Am I going to the wrong way? How can I find the right one?

How to waste an ally

Well, it's much better when I can post in a good mood. Yes, if you're inferring my mood is not currently a good one, you're right.

Imagine you were having a pleasant walk, in a pleasant place, like a park. Then, when you go outside, you suddenly see yourself surrounded by hungry lions, willing to devour whatever piece of meat they see. Well, my situation is not that dramatic, but one could see it that way.

To be at home can be a good thing, but to me it's stressing. It's not really a place where I can have peace. And this is all about my parents. It's frustrating how I have to direct my life without support from them. It's like driving with brakes on all the time. Imagine you want to study, so you can get into a good highschool or university, to study English, so you can reach the rest of the world, or fight for what you believe. Well, my dad is against it all because he's the one who brings money home and, thus, he has the right to demand others to stop they projects and their plans to do as he will.

Well, if that's the memories he wants to build on me, I can't do much, but to remember them in the future.

Game addict

The last hours were the ones I've been addicting the most, here in Canada. I was supposed to quit it some days ago, but the challenge of the mechanics of the game is so exciting that decided to play a bit again. And then this bit became an all day play. For two whole days.

I don't really know what happens in other people's mind when they get addicted, but I'll try to write down what I thought while I was addicted, over the last two days, or better, what usually happens.

It all starts before the play starts, where everything is not as exciting or entertaining enough, when I'm doing all the same thing over and over and anything seems to reward me in any way. And then I know this game, and I know a bit of its mechanics, and how people who play it usually behaves, even though each is a very different person from each other.

When the match takes place and then I can have two kind of happenings. The good/bad axis, where the game is challenging, entertaining and/or fun, or not, and the short/long axis, where the match takes a short or a long time to end. When the game was good, I get all excited with it and I want to experience more of it again. When the game was bad, I feel frustrated and I want to start another match, so I can get a better match. The good/bad experience is sometimes related with when my team wins or loses the match. Moreover, the team is also another factor for that. Since each person has different skills, with differents game characters, and the same happening with the opposite team, every match is a completely different setting, even though the elements, like the characters, items and map are the same. Just like any other game.

Two things happens with me when I get into that vicious cycle. I still think about the world out there, but I always feel that to play just one more match won't make a big difference. The other thing is that I always have this thought at the end of a match.

I know to be addicted like this can be harmful to my mind. I'm usually just taken by the moment when it happens and I don't really see that I'm wasting an important time for the history of my life.

Snap Thought #13

A bitter past stranger looking for something meaningful to move on.

Canada

I'm finally in Canada!

For those who doesn't know how long this journey is, I'll start from the very, very begining. It's a long and repeated story, so you can skip the next four paragraphs.

Back in mid 2004, I was studying for university exam when I finally upgraded my computer. This upgrade allowed me to play this massive multiplayer online role play game called Ragnarok. Back then, there was lots of private servers, but few (paid) official ones, including the International Ragnarok Online (iRO) server. The iRO server gave each new player one week free to play and that's when I started playing it. I played it alone for some days, when I met a novice, Leona, who would help me playing at the Payon dungeon. Since I wouldn't really pay to play, I asked her for her email, and since then we started chatting almost everyday. Janiliz, the person behind the Leona character, became my very first best friend. Then, one day, back in mid 2005, Janiliz told me she met a girl who she was arguing with. I didn't care at all about that, but that fact would completely change my life.

Some weeks later I was invited to join a MSN chat, which had some of Janiliz friends, including Aurianna, the girl who she was having some arguments. Auri added me to her MSN list, but we would only talk about six months later. Then we started talking, about many things I had never talked about before. We'd talk from small topics, like the differences between our countries, to big ones, like the nature of life. There was this one day when my dog, Noah, died and she comforted me, while another day, we would just play some random game on MSN. I couldn't avoid being passionately in love with her.

It was January 1st, 2008, when I went to this New Year festival where we could write our new year wishes in a paper and give them to the (buddhist or shinto, I can't remember) monks. Coincidence or not, and I wouldn't believe it, but my wish came true some time later. Except for two moments, the next months would be the happiest ones of my life. The two exceptions: when I lost my best friend and when I lost my girlfriend. Our relationship wasn't doing that well because I started working, so I could gather money to meet Auri, and at work, there was this annual conference, when each year they organize a scientific conference in a previously selected city. At that time, in mid 2008, things wasn't going that well between Auri and I, and once I came back to São Paulo, we had this talk when I told her I wanted to break up. I was lying, I didn't really want to do that, and until now I ask myself why I did it. It was my life mistake.

Although I'd like to make myself the main character of a romance story, life is not as easy, or simple, as what we imagine. The twist in my life made me look for things so I could clear my mind. I tried karate and swiming, but I wouldn't practice it that much. I got addicted to Heroes of Newerth and quit it. Twice. And I also started working on a scientific initiation, a kind of internship, but working with a teacher. It took about 2 years, to get over the past. Then, new perspectives came to my life. Accepting the single life I always had before made me go back to the track of all the effort I was putting into computing and studying, and I joined a new project. But I was finishing an important milestone. I was graduating.

We might not know what future brings us, and sometimes we must be intrepid to walk into the unknown, but we all have the power to change our own lives. I could just keep living in my city, just like I've always done, but I had to put myself into the trial of leaving my comfort zone. With a small stimulus from my friend Helena, and after a few preparation months, I put myself into the adventure of traveling to Canada.

Except for a few ones, almost all of my friends don't know about my past with Aurianna. When I tell them I'm going to visit her, I make it sound like I'm visiting just another friend, but the truth is that it means much more than that, for me. Two weeks ago, I finally met her for the first time.

She's beautiful. I also met Brandon, Auri's boyfriend, last week, at the beach with her friends and at his dad's Cinco de Mayo celebration. I try to tell my few friends who know the story about his boyfriend, but I can't remember who knows what. Anyway, the thing is that Brandon is a good guy. He's attractive, fun, smart, friendly, good with children. It surpresed me so much because I wouldn't believe it if people just tell me. Despite the past feelings, I'm convinced she took a good path. (While I can barely communicate that well in spoken english.)

It's still a bit awkward because I haven't talked much with her (it's my fault, actually), but I'm really happy for being able to and finally meeting her.

Puppy!

She's only one month old and still doesn't have a name, but she's our new family member! You're welcome and making all the family very happy! :)

The Begining

The rest of the journey passed pleasantly enough; Harry wished it could have gone on all summer, in fact, and that he would never arrive at King's Cross... but as he had learned the hard way that year, time will not slow down when something unpleasant lies ahead, and all too soon, the Hogwarts Express was pulling in at platform nine and three-quarters. The usual confusion and noise filled the corridors as the students began to disembark. Ron and Hermione struggled out past Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle, carrying their trunks. Harry, however, stayed put.

Working nonstop

I've been working nonstop for years. And the last few months weren't different. I was working on my already completed scientific initiation project, and the French billboard management system, besides doing some freelance jobs, researching about every single detail of travelling to Canada... and running on some evenings.

If I just could stop time...

The day when the blue sky turned dark

The phone ringed and dad answered. The news was thatCindy,  my labrador, died from the operation on her uterus, due to an infection. It was one the most unexpected news I got in life. She was completely fine until some few days ago. She had a slightly tamed, but active personality. She would patiently wait all the cars to cross a street, but when she was crossing, she just couldn't wait and pull me to start running. She would sit and wait authorization to eat food, but she would it as if she hadn't eaten for days. I saw her when she was just a puppy, and how mischievous she was back then. She left us so young, in her early 6 years old..

Rest in peace, dear Cindy...
2006 - 25-01-2012

Setting up

I'm mentally ready for going to Canada and preparing everything up. The general lines is that I'm going to for a place close to Tsawwassen to stay and study, if possible, but it seems chances are higher to find more oportunities in Vancouver. I've already annouced it to key people and I'm researching so I can prepare everything up. My goal is leaving Brazil in April.

2012

I don't know why, but I already love this year. Not only because it's when the world is going to end, but because I'm going to become a new person. This is the year I'm definately going to act, instead of think, and to put my guts at stake. And there is no time to lose because this year is going to be a short one. But I'm not all about conquering the year, exclusively. There is something that has been guiding me, and it's been growing up much stronger lately. It's my heart. My heart is shouting inside, begging for rescue. His own echo has been his only company for years. My mind has been inert and mechanic, so he can ignore my heart's shout and, thus, avoid an imminent insanity. A letter of hope was already sent, and I just can't wait for the rescue. My limbs are exhausted trying to survive in the sea. I  leave all my pride aside to beg you, please hurry, don't hesitate to give it a try, at least, to save my life. Please, do it before it's too late and I'm gone...

English Pronunciation

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.

After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Fe0ffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité

Source: http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2011/12/23/english-pronunciation/