Quick Note

A couple of quick notes:

1-) If you're thinking about watching Vantage Point, please DON'T! It's so bad it hurts, and it's giving 10.000 B.C. a decent run for worst movie of the year.

2-) One of the best nerdy jokes I've seen lately (from the nerdiest of all comics, xkcd):

News from California

So I'm officially half way through my time in California and I thought it was time to post some news. I've been postponing this, hoping I'd get some pictures to put up here, but since my camera cable is still gone I'll have to go picture-less for the time being... :-) So, what's Silicon Valley like?! It's freaking awesome, kinda like a high-tech american TV suburb. Which is also the bad part: there's not much to do around good ol' Mountain View; I mean, there's great shopping, some movie theaters, fine restaurants and a couple of bars. Enough to go by for who's gonna be here for a few days, but living here probably leads to a very quiet life...

San Francisco, on the other hand, is awesome, and only an hour away!!! It's a gorgeous city, with a very beautiful coast, and very nice people. There's all the touristy stuff, you know, Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, the weird winding streets, Fisherman's Wharf... there's great shopping, of course, nice parks, restaurants, bars, everything!!! Up until 2am that is, because there's a very annoying (apparently state-wide) law that prohibits people to sell alcohol after 2am!! Do you believe that?!!?!

I've done some pretty interesting things already, and I will go into more detail when I actually get to my photos to post here, but I gotta say the coolest thing I've done was to bike on the Golden Gate bridge, that was awesome!!!! And yeah, it also made me realize I'm really, really out of shape... will have to work on that... :-)

Oh yeah, to finish off, since I don't have any photos to post (because I have no idea where I put my camera cable), check out this video: this is how I know we're all actually living in a sci-fi book some crazy dude is writing somewhere...

Another cool trip

These have been hectic days and the first thing to be neglected was this blog (well, actually the second thing to be neglected... the first was my masters :-) ). But now I got an hour or so to spare in Houston Intercontinental Airport, so I'll post a few updates. First things first, I'm very much in love with my job right now; working at Google has proven to be everything I'd hoped for, fun, challenging, and full of opportunities. Moving to Belo Horizonte has been an interesting experience too. Even though it's the best place I could think of to live in right now, it's a great city with a lot of interesting things happening, concerts, good restaurants, good bars, very nice people, a very nice place indeed. The only thins is it's hard to find an apartment there, but hopefully I'll take care of that problem soon.
Now for the news that's probably going to run this blog for the next few weeks: I'm spending three weeks in Moutain View, Google's main headquarters. Mountain View is a little town in the Silicon Valley, near San Francisco. It's gonna be a great chance for meeting people and learning A LOT for more experienced googlers and it's gonna be an amazing opportunity to travel a little bit around, after all God (or whoever) did invent the weekend! Right now I'm in Houston, Texas, waiting for my connection to San Jose, some 30 min. away from Mountain View. This weekend is probably gonna be spent in SF, walking around town and seeing the sights (Alcatraz, Golden Gate Bridge, all the hills and buildings... I'm pretty sure there's plenty to see), and partying in town (there's a Blind Boys from Alabama concert today too, we might go to that).
Next week we'll probably go to Vegas, either drive (roadtrip!!!) or fly, specially because Cirque du Soleil has a special show in town inspired by Beatles song (how the help could I miss that??). Then there's one weekend that we don't know yet what to do and on our last weekend here there's gonna be a Bruce Springsteen concert saturday night (also my grandma's birthday, hopefully I won't forget :-) ) before we catch our flight back home on sunday. We might do some wineries saturday before the concert, but nothing is certain yet... who knows what might happen, I'm just sure it's gonna be grrreat!!!!

A very bad year for movies

Hey, it's been a while, right?? Well, life's been crazy lately, haven't found an apartment yet, new job's been very demanding (end of quarter), I've been back and forth from Salvador more often than usual... oh, yeah, and my masters (similar to this blog) hasn't seen much action... but, one thing's still the same: I've been going to the movies! And, well, I've been mostly disappointed, with a few noteworthy exceptions. So, for starters the best movie of 2007 is Tropa de Elite, hands down (and kudos to the Berlinale for recognizing that!). I've seen most of the Oscar nominees, and they're no competition whatsoever. Actually, 2007 was such a bad year that any of the 2006 Top 5 would be the best movie of 2007. Both No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood are very good movies that will be forgotten in a few months. Juno is cute, but no Little Miss Sunshine. The comedies were pretty good, though... Superbad and Knocked Up are awesome!! Finally, the movie I enjoyed the most was Across the Universe,
I guess hundreds of people must've thought of making a movie musical with Beatles songs; if they hadn't, it should've come to them after Moulin Rouge! came out. That's exactly what they do here, they use 35 Beatles songs to tell the story of the '60s, of Jude and Lucy, Max, Sadie, Jojo and a bunch of other names right out of the songs we all love. Their use of the songs is amazing: some are obvious but very well done, some are surprising and some are amongst the most moving things I've seen lately (the gospel version of Let It Be is really amazing). The only one song I didn't enjoy so much was For The Benefit or Mr. Kite, but I guess 34 out of 35 is pretty good, right? :-)
The movie tells the story of Liverpool-boy-but-America-bound Jude and Ivy League-bound girl Lucy, who meet and (yeah, you guessed it!) fall in love. They happen to move to NY during one of the most complicated (and fun) moments in recent American history (late '60s, Vietnam, Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination, Psychodelia) and we live it all through their lives and the Fab Four's songs. If you're a Beatles fan you're gonna have the time of your life. If you're not a Beatles fan, well, you should just rethink a whole lot of things now, shouldn't you?