Ugh, spent the last 4 days lying/sitting at home being bored beyond belief. Am at work today but still have a sore throat, coughing plenty and going through tissues fast.
I hope it will be fully gone before Friday when I fly back to the NL. And hopefully I won't get sick from the big temperature difference, it's still 21 Celsius here compared to freezing -2 Celsius in NL.
Good times... :-S

Got sick on Thursday evening, sore throat which now developed into full-blown flu. Rather be sick now then during the 2 weeks in the Netherlands with Asnida though.
Weather will also pose a nice challenge, overall a difference of about 20 Celsius between Funchal and Netherlands.
Back to dealing with snot haha.

stormy times

It's been storming a lot the past 4 or 5 days. The wind is blowing so hard the window panes of my bedroom crack and moan during the night. Also, one of my balcony chairs was blown all over the balcony a few times so I had to secure it to avoid the wind stealing it.
Good times in Funchal!

Flying back to NL next Friday (December 17), hoping the weather will calm down a bit so I'll make it out of here. I'll worry about the winter weather in NL once I catch the connection in Lisbon haha.

Yesterday was a holiday (Indepence Day) and I hooked up with some colleagues to do a bit of sightseeing on this island.
Turned out we were out and about for 7 hours. I didn't bring a jacket which I should have. We went to Caniçal for lunch, I had the swordfish with banana. Then we went to the eastern-most point of Madeira: Baia de Abra / Ponta de S. Lourenço. After that we went to Portela to have a view over the Penha de Aguia, and then further upwards to Ribeiro Frio.
I wasn't expecting us to do a levada walk but we did one (about 30min each way) called Balcões. After the levada walk we went for a drink, alcoholic drink called ponche (punch) which is made of lemon, rum and honey. It was ok, didn't warm me up though despite what they told me :-)

I got home shortly after 7pm, caught "Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban" on TV after which I hit the sack.

Next Wednesday is also a holiday to celebrate the Immaculate Conception. Obviously any Steelers fan will turn that into a celebration for the Immaculate Reception ;-)
Speaking of the Steelers, this Sunday at 1:30am local time they play against the Baltimore Ravens again. Should be a good game!

Apparently the exterminator found a bee hive on the 3rd floor balcony, 2 floors down from my balcony. He removed it but I still get some bees and wasps visits. Oh well, I'll keep spraying :-)

Time flies, only 4 weeks left until Christmas break!

Not much news. Had a problem with not getting hot water last week so had to get that fixed which was pretty quick and painless. Before the fix I had about 5 minutes of hot water so you can imagine how efficient I became at taking showers :-)
Now I have about 10 minutes so I can relax a bit more before I literally get a cold shower.

Did some more paperwork, changed the address of my fiscal number to my current one and registered as a citizen at the Camara Municipal de Funchal. Hopefully that settles all paperwork since I've been walking around the city center during office hours a lot to arrange things.

The weather is still great, it's about 22 Celsius/74 Fahrenheit now and pretty sunny. In mid-November!
I'm lovin' it!

Watched Johnnie To's "Vengeance" movie again with some colleagues on Saturday night, went to the Indian Taj Mahal restaurant afterwards for late dinner. I had mango lassi and the chicken bhuna. Good food, decent prices. This was already the 2nd time I've been there and I foresee many more visits.

I still have wasps and bees on my balcony but there's no nest/hive so my landlady said she got an exterminator to check out the entire apartment building since the nest/hive might be on someone else's balcony. I've been spraying/killing wasps and bees left and right, I guess I'll just keep doing that until either one of us leaves :-)

Watched 3 quarters of the Steelers game last night and at the 23-3 score in favor of the Patriots I went to bed. It was 4am so I figured sleep was more important than watching the Steelers take a beating. Turns out the 4th quarter was quite eventful with the Patriots winning by 39-26. Oh well, next week the Raiders at 6pm my time so not in the middle of the night. Steelers should also be able to beat the Raiders but last season's 5 game losing streak is still fresh in my memory...

to sleep, to sleep, perchance to dream?!

I always need to get used to all the sounds when I sleep at a new place. During the first week in my new apartment I've grown used to (and stopped getting annoyed by) the barking dogs and hyperactive rooster at night. The latest annoyance is some rhythmic deep banging somewhere higher up in the building. It's like someone is stamping on the floor again and again which starts around 7am. After 10-15 banging sounds there's a pause, then it starts again. I'm not sure at what time this sound ends since I usually get up since I can't get back to sleep anymore.
Another hypothesis was that perhaps it's people having sex and the bed is slamming into the wall. But there's no moaning and the banging is a tad bit too mechanical.
Either way, whoever is making the banging sound it seems to have a serious OCD issue haha. Let's hope I get used to it so I'll be able to sleep in during the weekends.

Asnida got back from her cousin's wedding in Kedah so I didn't do much today, just waited for her to come online and chatted/cammed until just now :-)
Dinner with colleagues and students at 7pm, curious to see who will show up. Either way, I'm already pretty hungry so it will be successful either way.

apartment :-)

I moved into my new apartment last Friday and my colleague Sergi was kind enough to drive me from the student residence to my new place. We had dinner at the Taj Mahal restaurant afterwards and drank sweet lassi :-D
I did some shopping and got groceries on Saturday and in the afternoon went bowling with a few guys. Although this was only the 2nd time ever that I've been bowling it was interesting that I seemed to do better when using my right arm instead of my left arm. I am a lefty but in the strange case of bowling I might not be a lefty...

Went to Radio Popular in the Forum Madeira shopping mall on Sunday to buy TV, hifi stereo and DVD player. I could only take the DVD player with me, the other 2 would be delivered on Tuesday (yesterday).
Since there's a cinema in the Forum Madeira I decided to go see "The town" directed by and leading role by Ben Affleck. Rather good movie so it's recommended.

Yesterday not only were the TV and hifi stereo delivered but also the good people from Meo dropped by to install internet and cable HDTV. And finally someone from the gas company came and replaced the hose attached to the furnace which apparently was expired. That new hose costed me 40 euro haha.

So after all those purchases and expenses I'm almost broke now but at least my apartment pretty much has everything one needs in this day and age. Btw, here are some pics of my apartment: http://s10.photobucket.com/albums/a137/Saldiac/Madeira/

new apartment!

Will sign the contract tomorrow and receive the keys so I'll move in by tomorrow night! :-)
The ocean view from my balcony will make some folks jealous hehe.
Slowly things are moving along in terms of getting settled in here. Still plenty to do. Gotta check what stuff I need to buy for the apartment and what stuff that's already in it I won't be needing.
It's quite nice that it's already furnished and has all kinds of things like pans, cutlery, towels, bed sheets etc. This helps keeping spending costs low for the first few months.

I'm working on getting TV and internet at my new home address but apparently I couldn't choose the 100 mbps option since there's no fiber available at my address. So it will be 20 mbps ADSL. Oh well. Internet speed at work is fast so if I need to download anything I can do that at work and install at home.

Been trying to follow/watch the Steelers games but it's a challenge since the internet connection in my room in this students' residence is total crap. Won't have internet at home for the upcoming Halloween game against the Saints. That sucks but the game's also at 1:30am so I guess at least I won't be sleep deprived at work...

I know I should take some more pics, will see what I can do with my webcam. That option is easier/cheaper than using my cellphone and sending cellphone pics to my email address etc.

The weather is still unbelievable. Around 25 Celsius (80 Fahrenheit), sunny and pretty hot. In late October. Just crazy haha.
Hope all the Dutchies and yinzers are keeping warm :-P :-P

Funchal - Madeira

I finally obtained a new position a few weeks ago as a research scientist at the university of Madeira. I flew to Funchal last Thursday (Oct 14) and was picked up by a Dutch colleague :-)

I checked into the students' residence from which it's a 10 minute walk to the main bus hub where I can catch a bus to the university. It's only a 15 minute bus ride but there are many hills here and the roads are anything but straight. Quite a change from the straight roads in Pittsburgh! With the obvious exception of Beechwood Blvd ha.

So far I've gotten an office and they've already added name tags outside the door so no more running into cleaning ladies who are surprised to see a new guy in a nameless office lol.
Also got a fiscal number, the equivalent of a SSN in the US and opened a bank account. My bank card is a temporary one which will get replaced soon. There's no money on the Portugese account yet so it's all good. I bought a new cell phone on Saturday, a Nokia 5230 with lots of cool features that I'm currently not using haha. Right now just calling and texting is fine but I might want to update to use some of those cool features in the future.

The main agenda point right now is finding an apartment. Quite a challenge since the language barrier is a serious issue. One real estate agent thought I was American because of my accent :-)
But no worries, I have this student residence room booked until Nov 1 so I've got some time to find a nice place to live.

Not much work yet since I'm busy getting settled in but I've met several colleagues and it seems the Madeira Information Technologies Institute (www.m-iti.org) is a pretty international place with people from 28 different countries.

I'm scheduled to give an introduction talk on Friday. Should be interesting to see how people will respond to my American ways of presenting and the content of the talk. I've pretty much finished the slides but I might make some changes depending on if I get a better sense of what will appeal to people here. I should meet some more colleagues this week since several were at a meeting on the Portugese mainland last week.

I'll definitely have to take a Portugese language course (or two!) to really fit in here. It's kinda funny when you're so used to being able to converse in English pretty much everywhere I've been.

Oh, here's a pic of the view from the rooftop on the floor where my room is. Not bad eh? ;-)
 

Revival of blog :)

The long winter of hibernation has finally come to an end! :D
I'll be moving to Madeira soon so there will be many more updates to this blog.
Not that I'm expecting anyone to still be reading it haha.