the moves of the day

27 Oct 2009

at Lattes Cafe Bar with Hilra and Highfield Campus in Autumn 2009

Today i came to Highfield campus to teach an Academic English class on Management building. After that i came by Hilra's building (Education) to do something with her about my blog. We went up in this super secure lift which only the cool people can ride, such as Hilra and whoever is lucky enough to follow her, like myself today, as you need an ID to make the machine work.

Then we went for our agreed upon nice coffee at Lattes Cafe Bar, the staff club. We had our calories for the whole week (I had a chocolate muffin with coffee and Hilra had this unbelievably caloric fruit cake with coffee) in one single sit and talked about life. . . It is usually inspiring to talk with Hilra, and the conversation always goes on and on and on and on from one topic to the other in a very interesting flow that does not require clear cohesive devices to be coherent. What makes the whole bit coherent is our understanding and the freedom to speak up freely, which we certainly do.

It is amazing how we can find pleasure out of dealing with pain to an extent. It is really a puzzle to me sometimes that we choose to be around the ones with whom we can exactly talk about what worries us rather than just spending time with people to laugh only. . . My meetings with Hilra have been opportunities to explore thoughts, experiences, (im)possibilities and whatever the topic of the day is. Sometimes our conversation is so seriously around concrete worries, not only about ourselves, but also about others who relate to us, and it is so nice, so nice. And we say bye bye with the feeling that we still have this something else to say about whatever. hehehe

Well, today I had to bear with a new feature my friend Hilra is starting to display, which is a sort of neologism, well, not exactly neologism, but more like 'hibridism' in the sense that she, after having been living here for more than five years now does sometimes mix Portuguese with English. We clearly speak only one language at a time, which may in the end be another sort of symptom :-) but the point is we two try to keep being the naturally good Portuguese speakers that we are. My friend, however, is now with this little problem, so funny! She said she feels the need to buy two dictionaries to help her out on this issue, both of them starting with the letter O: Oxford dictionary (for English, of course) and Orélio dictionary (for Portuguese support, obviously).

Anyway, the main point of this post is to emphasize my rationale that no matter how busy you are, if you want to, you can manage to find a moment to spend with a friend and help and be helped in all ways. This Tuesday has been (it's 5.55pm now) a very busy day for me. Still, we had agreed to meet for a coffee today and the new things I had to add to my day to do as well, which represented round trips from highfield to avenue throughout the day, were not important enough for me to cancel our meeting. I am happy because these breaks during the day are so invigorating and should be part of life. It is like being responsible in a more harmonic way.

I feel so tired right now because I came to Highfield to teach 9 - 10:45 in the morning, spoke with Hilra from 11am to 1pm, walked back to avenue campus, grabbed a slice of pizza to eat, taught an EAS class 2 - 3.30pm, met with Chris Sinclair, walked back to highfield for an appointment here at 4.30. I am now free and waiting until the buses are not too packed with people. I need to buy fruits, but am not in the mood to go to supermarkets and queue up and carry heavy bags home.

I have to write an email to this one person to talk about something really bad that is going on now and is having an undesired implication on my personal life. I should stop torturing myself and just go ahead and write the email. duh!!!

Kalina Morena

bus stop at the Avenue, and Highfield Campus in colourful  Autumn 2009