Living in Delft: 2008

Hey hey!

Hum...it seems everyday I get more lazy about sitting down and doing some writing! It has been 20 plus days but I'll try to catch up without being boring.

The first of November was the second Halloween party here in Delft... The first was on the 31st and was pretty crowded at Marcushof... The next evening I went with some spanish to Wolbodo and ended up meeting the rest of the people there...

Tim was doing the honours at the DJ position and the party was pretty funny... some pictures and a movie next!

panorama

the crowd

Camilla Victor Myself Jose

Back home

On the second I went for a bicycle ride to visit the Delftse Hout and De Grote Plas... nice landscape :)

Entering the Park

The Lake

The lake once again

Yet once more

The evening on the city

Friday, the 7th I went to Brussels as I long promised Ana and the cousins... It was a very enthusiastic travel to Brussels... I got there late in the afternoon and then I've seen the house and the surroundings... Not much going on Friday, but Saturday started real early.

Woke up late in the morning... with a big effort... Maria Rui began what I felt like a ritual... waking me up! (everyday that I've been in Brussels, Maria Rui was the one who would wake me!)
The table was set to one of those FULL breakfast which I wasn't use to... obviously... but it felt nice ^^ Lunching in a portuguese restaurant, seeing the park in the afternoon and Brazilian club by night! Sunday was more about staying inside... and helping my cousin with the homework was a laugh :D

Myself and my cousin Miguel

A family picture

Swam close up

Park lake

Gran Place

Le Roi

@Canoa Quebrada

Nice disco looking bottle of vodka

The next weekend guess what? I went to Brussels once again... I met my parents in Rotterdam, walked a little had lunch... then came back to a much cosier city - mine! =)
Apparentely they enjoyed the city pretty much! I went back to Brussels with them to spend some more time together! After missing several trains that weekend I missed the train back to Delft Sunday, so I ended up staying yet another day :)

Love how everybody wakes up at 7 am like i'ts the most common thing in the world ^^

After another working week, the following Wednesday was pretty cool... it was Victor's B-day.
I got him a Porto bottle and everybody was very creative with the gifts... It was hard to fit everybody inside but i guess we managed pretty well in Vicky's room.

Swedish song

Gülben, Johan, Sofia, Silje

Birthday boy and the rest of the crowd

This last weekedn was fascinating.. Saturday snowed a little but sunday was like la piéce de resistence for me :D It snowed endlessly for the entire day... From the moment I woke up sunday, I got dressed and went outside basically to play ^^ I took i big amount of pictures and buildt a snowman and everything... thrown snowballs with a couple of people I met in the library roof... and so and so... The wind and kind of killing me... but I felft so good that sunday...
Here, check the pictures...

The garden just outside

the basketball field

Poptahof park

Snow covered boat

Heart statue near the markt

campus garden

TUDelft library

a snowman

People playing in the Library

Sled riding :D

Yet again the snowman

the bicycle park

Some random street near the center

The heart yet again

Hugo Grotius half white statue

Poptahof's Child statue

Poptahof Zuid park

View from my room

That's all folks... :)

I wish I had some more pictures from the two poker nights but I don't. I can just mention how cool it was to play a black 8 seat round poker table with an actual dealer :D

The second night was at Harold's with just a few of us... still it was a really nice time!

hope you've enjoyed (parts at least)

Love,

Diogo

Allo Allo everybody!

Been a long time... since the 12th of October!

Trying to remember the last couple of weeks is proving to be very hard... but luckily I write down one or two lines per day.... keeping some sort of brief diary! And doing some research on it I found I have actually lots of news to write!

After the Octofest (Brazilians and Portuguese party) I was pretty busy doing a project for 3D Computer Graphics: an L-System (algorithm of growing plants and trees).

Though desperate at times, it was funny to be back on programming OpenGL! It was definitely a bit nostalgic, because I had similar projects back when I was on the 2nd and 3rd year of college in Portugal! I wouldn't go as far as saying I actually enjoyed the project but but definitely a different kind of assignment...

So this project was taking most of my time until Monday at 6 am... (the due time was 8 am) and in between that.... guests on Friday and the 'Why not' party!

Friday night Victor's friend Eva (from Mexico) and Tim dropped by for dinner! We had pasta for dinner and after that Johan stopped by to drop the guitar to Victor... Johan was going home for the weekend and the guitar was definitely a good addition to the house during that weekend... Yeah and I managed to learn the first riffs of 'Dunas' ^^

Saturday was party night! Why not hum? As far as I know, the party was thrown by some Polish a Chilean and some Spanish! It was at Binnenhof again! This was a little different party then the previous. They had all sort of disco lights and mirror ball and even a DJ cabin! The Binnenhof looked like a dance floor! the downside about this party! We needed to pay for the drinks! And It wasn't that cheap for a student's home party. The police, yet again, showed up because of the noise... but everything was ok... aside a Greek guy that tried to get a picture on the driver seat of the police car! ^^ the policemen that were inside Binnenhof hurried back to chase him when they realized what was happening! and sadly he didn't get the picture done on time!
Binnenhof is a cool place because they have this large inside space as well as the outside garden... so it's never too crowded!

Monday started the free week at TUDelft (study period for the exams), so I was glad with no classes, Dorotea and a girl from Germany showed up for dinner and I had meatballs on sauté sauce (whatever that means)

That week wasn't very exciting as I just stayed at home most of the time trying to study for Enterprise Ontology and occasionally seeing a movie (one of the many I have by now)

Saturday though Hugo came for dinner... special dinner... I cooked the Victor's Grandma recipe (with his permission course ^^) it's pretty simple and very tasty! be sure to look it up in the pictures below! Ah and Portuguese wine to go along the rice and chicken! Grão Vasco 2005! don't even know if that's any good!

Trivia fact: Grão Vasco was a painter and besides giving his name to a wine there is also a school in Viseu named after him! lol!

The next Monday I went to Hugo's to have dinner and meet the Pavel's Czech friends that came to visit! We ended up not having dinner. Instead we were eating many types of cheese during the night and drinking czech beer (pivo) and Caipirinha... so it was a little bit of exchanging cultures :) which is a way fancier name for: 'just drinking'

It was very hard to talk to the girls because none of them spoke English... One of them was trying very hard to understand and then translate... but still it was a nice evening at Hugo's!

I managed to save a lot of money in a book for Enterprise Ontology. The book was 55 Euro which I thought it was way too much for a book I'm not even using after the exam... I never planned to buy the book, but then the professor announced the exam was open book (so we could JUST take the Enterprise Ontology book and anythin else). We that in mind I needed the book... Luckily there was an online version in the library and it was downloadable! And there is no copyright for personal use :)

The exam was a couple of days a go and it wasn't very hard!

I was able to fix the seat problem in my bike this week... I felt very proud to find a way to solve the problem with a plastic tube inside the bike's core. Now the seat won't go down any more!

Yesterday there was another party this time in Marcushof. This was the black party! Never had I seen such a crowded party... seemed like every student in delft was there... Me, Jose and his friend went to Ana's place to hand out for a minute and then hurried to Marcushof... this time Hugo didn't come because he is in Belgium! It was a very nice party full of Spanish all over, but that's nothing new for a party in Delft! Some of the people there were wearing costumes but the majority was just wearing black...

Today I'm still not sure if I'm going out or staying in... the weather as been pretty bad all day long because otherwise I could have been going to Amsterdam for museum night! So by now I'm definitely not going... perhaps another Halloween party here in Delft I don't know!

FUNNY STORY NO 1
One of these days (I don't really remember when) I had the most frightening and perhaps, one of the funniest moments in Delft.
It was late in the night... around 4 am and I was lying in bed about the reach the ending of some movie! Suddenly I hear noise outside... like footsteps climbing the stairs :O I was kind of intrigued by it because I wasn't expecting anyone at that time! I was so alert by then so when the footsteps stop somebody was at my door... and I couldn't see whom because of the curtains! But then, that somebody was tried to open the door! By then I got up and put the curtains aside to see myself face to face with a HUGE old guy... maybe Polish or Dutch I don't know... when he saw me he quickly apologized and tried to say he got the wrong house and then he left!! I got into the bed again after that but for a second there my heartbeat went sky-high! ^^

FUNNY STORY NO 2
This happened to Johan. He told me all about it when he came to get the guitar back!
One night Johan heard noise outside and since he lives on the ground floor his room is just by the street side. He thought it could be someone trying to steal their bikes so he got up and opened the door to see what was happening! What he saw was... a Bulgarian guy (he says so) completely drunk and pissing just by his apartment with a beer on his hand... Johan tried to tell the guy to go away and the Bulgarian actually was saying to him to come outside and have some beer too! After refusing and since the guy wasn't leaving Johan and his roomate called the police to tell them about the situation. The police though wasn't very keen to go on picking the guy so it was a dead end situation! They all settled for sleeping and just hoping for the drunk guy to leave. But then Johan couldn't sleep because the Bulgarian was snoring! lol! Well then... after that crazy night at precisely 7 am they all woke up (because of the construction site) The Bulgarian then just said bye and took off!

Without anything else to add I think I'll finished here the post... check some random pictures from the last couple of days!