6 de Setembro de 2019.
Físico português Gaspar Barreira, que morreu em Junho, foi homenageado durante visita ao Laboratório Europeu de Física de Partículas, em Genebra. Uma delegação de mais de 50 pessoas, incluindo empresários, engenheiros e cientistas, terminou uma visita de dois dias ao Laboratório Europeu de Física de Partículas (CERN), na Suíça, para reforçar a participação de Portugal em novos projectos. Até porque continuam as obras para melhor o desempenho do grande acelerador de partículas deste laboratório, o LHC, e fala-se da construção do seu sucessor. A visita, que incluiu reuniões de trabalho, terminou esta quarta-feira com a participação do ministro da Ciência, Tecnologia e do Ensino Superior, Manuel Heitor, e do secretário de Estado da Internacionalização, Eurico Brilhante Dias. Em declarações à […]
5 de Setembro de 2019.
Marguerite Duras and her book “ Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein” Marguerite Duras was born in 1914 in Gia Dinh next to Saigon in the French Indochina. She is a writer, novelist, playwright, and essayist. She became famous in 1950 with the book “The Sea Wall” (Un barrage contre le Pacifique). This book is largely inspired by the life and adolescence of Marguerite Duras in the French Indochina. After this first success, she will publish many new novels. Her style is close to the New Roman, with strange sentences construction, deconstructed characters, storyline, and timeline. The main topics are the wait, love, sensuality, and alcohol. In 1984 she published another great success “The lover” (L’Amant) an auto-fiction about her […]
3 de Setembro de 2019.
An Austrian author of the 21st century: Marc Elsberg If you are interested in scientific thrillers, Marc Elsberg’s books are always a brilliant choice. It doesn’t matter if you choose Blackout, Zero or Helix – they’re all interesting, exciting and teach you a lot. This is why I like his work and why I always enjoy reading any book he wrote. He was born in 1967 in Vienna, grew up in the surroundings of Baden in Lower Austria and studied Industrial Design at the University for Art in Vienna. Later on, he worked in the marketing business as a creative director while he was starting to write his first book, a satirical novel called “Saubermann”. After three more books, he […]
1 de Setembro de 2019.
A very well known writer in Finland. Kari Hotakainen started his career as a reporter and became a full-time author in 1996. He has written many novels, poetry books, children’s books, radio dramas, newspaper columns, plays, and one TV-series. He has received some literature prizes for his work, for example, the Finlandia Prize for the novel Juoksuhaudantie (Battle Trench Avenue). The same book was later made into a movie. For me, the most meaningful book written by Kari Hotakainen is Satukirja (Storybook). The book is considered for children and young adults, but I think that it suits all ages. All the stories are very imaginative and different. It is a huge possibility, that after reading one story you become addicted […]
31 de Agosto de 2019.
A Polish-British writer, most famous for Heart of Darkness (1899). Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski is known rather as Joseph Conrad which is a combination of his two names. He went to Marseilles as a seventeen-year-old boy to work as a sailor. When he returned from his voyages to the Caribbean and South America, he had troubles with his citizenship, as a resident of the Russian Empire, he was obligated to do military service. Without permission from the Russian authorities to serve on French ships, Joseph fell into debts and consequently he attempted to commit suicide. Later on, he went to Great Britain and began serving in the British merchant navy. After a few years, he received the rank of captain […]
29 de Agosto de 2019.
I’ll talk about the Belgian writer Herman Brusselmans. Why him? To reply in his own style: because this dickpick is probably the most f*cking interesting choice of them all. That’s right. I didn’t choose him because his oeuvre is close to my heart. Neither his high pitched literary style. Still, he is one of the greatest writers of Belgium. How did this come to be? Well, to start with, he is (unlike many colleagues) in front of the media. He keeps himself in the picture through talk shows and columns, where he likes to mock other celebrities and comments on certain situations. This provocative talk is also very typical for his books. The overall style elements are a Highly autobiographical […]
27 de Agosto de 2019.
The Writing Teacher Gerwin van der Werf is not a name that many non-Dutch people know nor are able to pronounce properly. Not a lot of Dutch people know him or his work either. He is not a famous writer of literature that creates complex novels with hidden themes and multiple meanings but he is one of the greatest Dutch writers. He has written four novels, Gewapende Man (2010), Wild (2011), Luchtvissers (2013) en Een Onbarmhartig Pad (2018). Apart from being a writer, he is also a music teacher at the high school I went to in the Netherlands. He is a teacher full of energy, full of empathy for his students and with a great sense of humor. He […]
25 de Agosto de 2019.
An Austro-Brazilian Roman Catholic bishop and also a writer. Erwin Kräutler was born 1939 in Koblach Austria where he grew up as the eldest of six children. In 1980 he was appointed coadjutor prelate of Xingu, the largest diocese in Brazil in terms of area. Upon the resignation of Erich Kräutler, who was his uncle, he became Prelate of Xingu in September 1981. Between 1983 and 1991 and since 2006 he served as President of the Indigenous Missionary Council of the Brazilian Catholic church. Since the 1980s he has helped secure the inclusion of indigenous peoples’ rights into the Brazilian constitution. Especially in the resistance to the Belo Monte dam project, he played an important role. In his book “Mein […]
23 de Agosto de 2019.
The man who created The Witcher. Andrzej Sapkowski was born on 20th March 1948 in Łódź and has lived there until now. He is the second most popular Polish author of fantasy books, which books have been translated into other languages. His literary career started in 1986 with publishing his fantasy story “The Witcher” in Polish monthly magazine “Fantastic”. It was his debut, and then the short story was developed for 5 books saga about The Witcher. Besides this, he published many other fantasy books, however, “The Witcher” is the one, which brought him big fame, not only because of the book. If you don’t know the book, there is a high possibility that you know the game with the […]
21 de Agosto de 2019.
Giorgio de Chirico and his metaphysical painting as a breath of fresh air in a grey set. Beyond the empirical sensorial experience there is something else, a thin layer that is not above reality, neither below, behind or inside, but lives “within” it. These two layers influence themselves, and sometimes our limits break, so that we can taste a slice of this alternative world. Giorgio de Chirico, father of Italian metaphysical painting, didn’t try to express anything really new. Since humanity became capable of being aware of itself, it had to face the supernatural, it had to deal with those elements that fly away from our sight, which can sometimes be essential for our being, if not life changing. Is […]
23 de Outubro de 2017.
My project is sadly getting close to an end and it got me thinking about different aspects of my life here in Madeira, that I won’t be able to continue back home. First of all – nature and weekly hiking trips. Of course we do have amazing landscapes, mountains and forests in Poland too, but it’s not as easily accessible for me there as it is here. Never in my life I have been hiking as much as I do in Madeira. Secondly, the ocean. The atmosphere of living so close to it is irreplaceable. The salty scent, the sound of waves, the feeling of space you can only understand it if you’ve experienced that. It’s such a privilege to […]
16 de Outubro de 2017.
During three months, which is the period that I spent in Madeira, I explored part of the island in the weekends with some of my other colleagues. I had the opportunity, by hitchhiking, to meet a lot of people from the island. At the moment, most of the people that gave me a lift were Venezuelans, the second community of the island. Thanks to that I realized we mustn’t trust always in the media and there are people that agree and people that don’t agree at all with the socialism, most of them disagree just with the application of this ideology by the Venezuelan government and the current economic situation of their country. Anyway, they came looking for a better […]
9 de Outubro de 2017.
I studied European Structural and Investment Funds and I thought that it would be interesting to see what the EU have done for Madeira. As a pro-European, and even though I am well aware that some people are sceptical about this whole idea, I want to believe that the European Union can only be beneficial to its member states. The European Structural and Investment Funds (ESI Funds) are the European Union’s main investment policy tool: 454 billion euros have been allocated from the EU budget to be invested in more than 500 programmes. Together with national co-financing of 183 billion euros, the total investments amounts to at least 637 billion euros. With this budget, the ESI Funds have become increasingly […]
5 de Outubro de 2017.
I am in the middle of my EVS project and I feel hungrier and hungrier of discovering Madeira and people all around me. Is so many views to see, kilometres to walk and topics to talk about. My brain has already registered many gorgeous memories, mostly during my free time when I was among the nature, especially in the mountains. As said Peter Croft, Canadian rock climber and mountaineer: There is such good stuff in the mountains. This stuff is free and you can take it for free. Rock star says that his first love is guitar, Sailor´s heart belong to the Ocean, and I can say that Mountains are my lover. As a teenager I was very active scout, […]
2 de Outubro de 2017.
You can vote in referendum, write a petition or have a deep discussion with councillor about architecture. Don´t let your heritage desapear. Every single day, when I am walking around the down town of FunchaI I can see hundreds of buildings in poor conditions. Sometimes I am afraid of going next to them – nobody wants to be hit by felling down layers. The residents of that places are cats and homeless people, who risks a lot, because the God only knows when they may collapse. In the effect of huge emigration of Madeiran, people started to leaving their properties and houses without care. The Portuguese low is saying that if you don´t take response for your building, for the […]
28 de Setembro de 2017.
As Madeira is not the first Portuguese island which I visited, I knew what I should expect here. Before coming to Madeira I spend part of my studies on Erasmus exchange program in Azores and because of that I did not think ‘always expect unexpected’. When I arrived I was not surprised by the Madeiran weather, climate, high humidity, cockroaches, lizards, and very narrow streets. People were also very nice and the city of Funchal seemed like a safe place. However, what surprised me at first was that Funchal is much bigger and it hosts much more tourists that I thought. That is why, in my opinion, people here are more open to other cultures. Also because of that, many […]