Please don't stop taking care of your mental health

On April 26th, so a little more than 2 weeks ago, I tweeted the following: I have decided to adapt into my "international" blog the more personal texts I wrote in my original blog (in Portuguese) about my mental issues that lead to a serious burnout (and more) because #MentalHealthMatters.
And today I finally completed the adaptation (I use this verb because it is not a simple translation of word by word, I need to adapt expressions and styles) of the 7 texts I published last year on my mental struggle experience.
There was another reason I wasn't fully certain yet when I tweeted my decision; that I struggled still until very recently even though last year I thought I was fine, and being aware of the issues and have tools to fight back, I still felt bad again after some weeks of vacation in Portugal.

So, I made a question on Twitter...

As I wrote somewhere the other day, I had sort of given up on Twitter some years ago as it had been described as a toxic environment. I didn't follow many people also so I didn't see any good in going there, but I re-discovered it after Putin's Invasion and quickly realised that Twitter is indeed the place to get the quickest updates on events such as this, if you know where to look. You also don't have that toxicity of posts, shares and comments that are all over the place; again if you know what to follow. But I digress...

It's been a while since I follow Justin King, in theory a journalist that used to be a military contractor (and if I'm not mistaken married a military woman), but that now just describes himself as Guy on YouTube. I've shared many of his videos, in articles here but also in my Facebook page. You might know him as Beau of the Fifth Column and he's of course on Twitter as well.
It was in Twitter that I noticed several references from north-americans to Waffle House, being used almost as analogy or metaphor to some situations or reactions. I noticed that Waffle House was a chain of restaurants (as in a place to get food) but couldn't understand why all the side remarks and comical mentions to it, so I asked a question on Beau's twitter and the floodgates opened...

Cogitation in the Time of War #24 - 34 days later

I was not able to do a detailed analysis on March 24th or 25th, around 1 month since the start of Putin's Invasion of Ukraine. But since February has only 28 days, today the 30th is the 35th day and so I can now look back on the previous 34 days of a war, although there are people who want to call it something else and a former portuguese spy, with a degree in International Law that turned into a despised commentator in the portuguese media, says that under the Law this is not a war because there was no formal declaration of war by either side. As I have written to date 24 pieces here (23 cogitations as I called them, plus the introductory text on the conflict) in addition to the dozens of comments and posts on Facebook and Twitter, I have plenty of material that allows me to recap before doing some new predictions (besides the ones I've made before).

Cogitation in the Time of War #23 - About the latest round of talks in Turkey

Before I write my long dissertation about the (more than) 1 month of Putin's Invasion of Ukraine (I will do it today, that is a promise that I won't break... Maybe... I hope I won't...) let me write a few paragraphs about the recent peace talks in Istanbul between Ukraine and Russia. This is mostly an expanded version of what I wrote yesterday on Twitter and based on a thread from Anastasiia Lapatina (an ukrainian journalists currently in Lviv, if I'm not mistaken) highlighting the main points from the Ukrainian perspective.

As a disclaimer I haven't seen any further news today, so take that into consideration if you see me saying something that doesn't match latest reports.

Cogitation in the Time of War #22 - In war people do bad things

Will Smith decided to hijack the "controversy of the moment" diaspora but now it's time to talk about real crimes that cause real damage.

I'm quoting myself from my Tweet from yesterday (itself a retweet of another retweet) but you can go and have a look because the original one shows a video of what appears to be Ukrainian troops shooting the legs of Russian prisoners: 

This needs to be investigated. If there are more reports and POW testimony that Ukrainian forces are shooting prisoners after capture this is a war crime and needs the proper punishment.

Cogitation in the Time of War #19 - A controversial, yet justified, strike

At least twice I used Russian sources to make/pass an argument; one time in the cogitation #7 and another in a Facebook comment about an interview to a retired Portuguese major-general that should be a military expert but (yet again) made completely wrong statements about the military situation in Ukraine. But most of times I point out the flaws of the Russian sources' statements and claims. I don't use the Russian sources when it suits my agenda. I don't have an agenda per se; I have no issues in saying I want Putin to lose and see Russia (because Putin ordered it) as the aggressor. What I really want is try to share my view on the war, including facts that are of course clouded by the "fog of war" (I have to write about this and other concepts that exist during a conflict that are important for us, normal citizens, to know about).

Cogitation in the Time of War #16 - The mysterious case of the crashed drone in Zagreb

My wife Carolina watches the Portuguese news online. Because of that she is usually a couple of days behind the events as the news usually report what has happened in the previous 24 hours or so and then we add the 1~2 days delay when she actually sees them. So I guess she is starting to get annoyed of hearing me saying "oh that is old news, it happened a while already" when I overhear something or when she comes to talk about a development in the Putin's Invasion of Ukraine.

Cogitation in the Time of War #12 - Symbologies

The Z letter seen on the Russian vehicles that invaded Ukraine is by now likely familiar to everyone. It even became a symbol in both Russia, where it is used by those supporting Putin and his "special military operation", and in Ukraine as a symbol for tyranny, in the same way that the swastika was a symbol for the Nazi Germany as seen on the collage on top.

Cogitation in the Time of War #11 - Tomorrow is Sunday

Personally it was a nice day for me. It's still cold at night but the sun has been out and shining for 4 days now. We inaugurated the barbecue season, with a mix of meats but also sardines. I spent almost the entire afternoon without checking my phone for news on Putin's Invasion.

The only downside today was that my bicycle's chain broke cycling home (3rd consecutive mechanic failure when riding with my son).

Cogitation in the Time of War #8 - A meme, a summary and a personal thought

The image above is a new Russian meme, apparently doing the rounds in Moscow. Part of the photo widely shared all over the world, with Puting meeting his top 2 generals (Defense Minister and Chief of the General Staff) but them sitting opposite ends of the (extremely) long table

This is a translation of the text (since I don't know Russian nor cyrillic) to English:

- "You are sitting closer to him. Hit [the fuck out of] him with something."

- "Hit him with what, from 20 meters?"

But day #8 of Putin's Invasion of Ukraine is gone and I'm just sharing some thoughts before going to bed.

Gone with the War

One week ago I was planning to write a text about a prediction I made 7 years ago (February 24, 2015) in regards to electric cars. I'd already thought and structured the text in my head and even made a research to confirm the data but with the daily stuff hadn't found the time to sit at the computer and start writing it down. The main reason behind writing about this subject was to not keep banging on the same key over and over about the usual subject, the pandemic. But in reality I still had a draft about the pandemic, namely about its announced ending and what was coming with it, almost like a season finale as I wasn't planning to return to it for weeks and months to come.

But then the war came and all plans went up in smoke...

Cogitation in the Time of War #6 - Shocking and surreal

In addition to the videos and photos in the social media, including TikTok, of civilians stealing/recovering russian military equipment, with the emphasis on the Ukrainian farmers towing armoured vehicles among others, I'm in awe with what I just seen on Twitter.

Putin's Russia has been using analog radio communication in their operation and there is a worldwide community of radio amateurs and translators that are listening and documenting their comms; they are also jamming the frequencies thus disturbing even further the operations on the field. This group alone already have hours of comms and will share them online at some point!

More details on this can be seen in this tweet.

I will use again an adjective that will probably become one of the 2 words to define my reaction to this entire conflict: shocking!

Together with the OSINT (Open-Source Intelligence) community, and the Anonymous collective, we have several civilian groups "fighting" a non-kinetic action against Putin's Russia. Surreal!

Cogitation in the Time of War #3 - 78 hours later

Maybe nobody reads this, or cares, but I'll say it anyway:

To me Putin is the aggressor and I want Putin to lose (as in not achieve his objectives). So in a way, Russia (the state ruled by Putin) is the "bad guy".

BUT I have no beef against Russians. My children have friends and classmates that are Russians and we told them they have done nothing wrong and they shouldn't even say anything bad about Russians when they go back to school tomorrow. When my son asked me "are the Russians bad guys?" I tried to be very clear to him that not even the soldiers fighting are bad guys, they are just following orders.

We sometimes simplify these things and make it a "us VS them", I have done it and probably will do it in some posts, but I try hard to remind myself of the same words I shared with my kids

Cogitation in the Time of War #1 - The beggining

On February 4th around 17:07 I wrote this (in Dutch because the match was here): "Voordat Rusland en Oekraïne vechten op de Oost-Europees Laagland (hopelijk niet), strijden ze nu bij de FUTSAL EURO 2022 halve finale." and this menas: Before Russia and Ukraine battle each other in the East European Plain (I hope not), they fight now in the semi-finals of the Futsal EURO 2022.

Later on the 20th, wrote an additional comment about Putin and Ukraine that said, among other things:

This is so much alike 8 years ago, when there were no Russian troops in Crimea and Crimea was just looking for independence/sovereignty, but not really (it was a Russian plan all along).

All the pieces are set and all conditions are there to "justify" a Russian intervention. With the excuse of an attack on its troops or due to violence against Russians or whatever in the East of Ukraine, they will intervene.

(...)

What happens next depends on the reactions of the rest of the World. Russia can be severely impacted and that can diminish support for Putin.(...)8 years ago there were already many people in the West believing Russia had rights to take Crimea. Some will again think Russia is in its right and only reacting to provocations/moves by others.

The next day, Putin recognised the 2 self-proclaimed republics in the Donbas, making at the same time a lot of statements about Ukraine not being a real nation and the need to correct the mistake that came with the end of the Soviet Union, and I got this off my chest (and there was an interesting debate in the comments that maybe deserve its own dissertation):

It's done. Now all (the) pieces are in place. The 2 regions are recognised, Russian troops will enter to "protect them from Ukrainian aggression" and only question now is where it stops?

We were just starting to get back to normal...

Fuck this shit!

So what's my diagnosis or condition/disorder anyway?

Around 3 weeks ago I'd already done a very little introduction for this text and saved it as draft. The image on top was already chosen (and edited cause I had to search and then combine the 2 separate ones) and the title was also set. But without writing more content, and with other ideas in mind, I used Facebook to make a survey on what my next dissertation theme should be. I was surprised since the post was shared in a group of people from my home town (Sever do Vouga, in Portugal) and because liking the post  was the reaction to cast a vote on this one, I counted 16 votes from different people. The little synopsis I used to describe what this text would be was: how I think I have one thing (ADHD), one psychologist thinks I'm a sociopath, another that I have Asperger's and finally a third one thinks it's just intellectual giftedness.

But before moving onto these different diagnosis, and provide more insight on the latest, I think I must tell the story from the beginning, so if you may, please click on the link before this. But if you're only interested in the process I went through for the diagnosis, that I'm still not sure when it will be final, you may continue reading the following paragraphs.

Indicators of my state of mind

My plan since the beginning of March was to finally start with the thread of chronicle-dissertations about the months when I was sick (the burnout but not only) describing my condition/disorder/syndrome that has affected me since ever and will continue to affect forever. This was because after some months in therapy I was finally going to go through a neuropsychological evaluation with the objective of confirming my suspicions.

But the therapist responsible for that, that I can say is my favourite therapist, not because she's the one that advises me the nest but because she is less than 30 yo and those who know me are aware that I love talking with young people, in particular women (and if they're good looking...), has yet to conclude our discussion on the report and so I still don't know what are the next proposed steps (and I need to convince her that I should go through additional evaluations).

So for this reason here's another text that demonstrates how is it possible to check in what state I am by simply checking my activity online, on the social media (and those who keep closer in touch, can better confirm).

Annus horribilis in XII imaginibus

2020 was the appropriate year to use the Latin expression annus horribilis, since it was a shitty year for almost everyone, something we didn't have for a very long time. Of course the jury's still out in regards to 2021 but we're only now completing the first quarter...

The truth is that in spite of COVID-19 appearing in the of 2019, the SARS-CoV-2 virus sequencing only occurred in January 2020, it was also during January that it spreaded all over the world and by the end of that month it reached Europe (at least officially; there are reports of people dying from a very similar disease before but only confirmed later when they analysed again the samples collected and stored back then). In February it was also the time I started writing about the epidemic (it wasn't a pandemic at the time), when it started to "explode" in Italy, when the first official COVID death occurred in Europe and when it arrived here in The Netherlands. And in March it arrived in Portugal (my homeland), the first person died here in The Netherlands and when it all began for me and for real, the whole trifecta of pandemic/isolation/quarantine.

A Whole New World

Today was a Spring day here. With temperature reaching 15°C (59°F), I didn't wear a warm coat, actually spent a lot of time outside  in the patio with no coat at all. We cycled to, and from, scouting, I washed the motorcycle, took out the side wheels from Amélia's bike (now it's hers), although she quickly gave up on trying to cycle without 'em, we cleaned and we played.

Since I washed the motorbike, I decided it was time to start it up and it's a good thing I kept the old battery, and charged, from last year. It's been several months the bike was left abandoned and not only because it was Winter. Since the bike's engine was running I put outside on the public parking area behind the house to minimize the gasoline smell in our patio. .And once it was already outside, with the pleasant Spring weather, having cycled in the morning, hearing motorbikes revving in the distance but all around me, I had to go for a spin.

Let's talk about myself then

This text was originally published here (in Portuguese) on the 17-Mar-2008

My initial description of myself here in Blogger stated that to know more about me the best was to read what I wrote and latter make your own judgement about my person. Maybe not these exact words, well for sure not was since it was written in Portuguese, but the same message nonetheless.

But actually who am I? I think that is not at all relevant, more interesting is the What than the Who. So, what am I?
I think I am really a ... strange dude. I reckon is it always tricky to talk about ourselves, since I believe it is really hard to get it right.
What I can really say is that I am somewhat tall (1,85m), somewhat obese (~110kg) and somewhat a stinky pig (my wife used to say I should wash more often, and I am known to burp loudly regardless of the time and place). These are facts.

The Chronicles of Paris - The Shower, the Internet and the Train

This text was originally published here (in Portuguese) on the 07-Mar-2011

No, I am no thinking in writing a fantasy saga with amazing stories set on incredible worlds. Although I do have some incredible stories that might be considered fantasy.
Basically I went to Paris this weekend, more precisely to Val-de-Marne, to spend it with my parents. But let's take one step at the time since, because this told in smaller parts might be funnier: