I am Phoenix!

My last blog post here was over 2 years ago, a resolution to write more. This, obviously, failed miserably. This year, despite my intention of letting go of resolutions, I decided I wanted, once again, to write more.

I thought of having a joint blog with my bff - we wrote a couple of posts and shut the operation down.

It's hard having a blog, you know? We're afraid we'll end up saying too much and exposing ourselves to the world and regretting it later on.

I summoned some courage and decided to go it alone. And today felt like a day, as good as any, to start that.

Hopefully this will last, but if not, I'll see you in another two years!

New Year, blog resolutions.

Many years ago, I went to the Getty Museum in L.A. and bought this beautiful hardcover notebook. I've always had a thing for all things stationary. So I remembered when I was younger and kept a diary, and how much fun that was, so I thought maybe I could use that beautiful notebook as my grown-up diary, or journal.

You should also know I am very much into rituals - there are things that I just couldn't care less, but there are things, little things, that I am extremely and anally methodical about. So I waited for New Year's to start everything fresh.

I opened the notebook on December 31st, and as a rule - don't ask me why -, I never write on the very first page. So on the second page, I wrote 12 New Year's resolutions, which I think was for year 2007 or 2008.  The common same old story blabber "make more money, lose weight, travel, blablabla" and the very last item was:

- Frequently write on this journal.

As I was organizing some boxes for my moving (yes, I'm moving next week!), I found this notebook. Brought a smile to my face and very fond memories... I opened it, read my resolutions, and realized that was all that was written in it.

Every single year I make this "resolution" of salvaging my blog and somewhere along the year I always end up losing it. I was doing good last year, even won a trip to London as a blogger. But after that if was all chaos and I barely had time to sleep, let alone blog. So once again, my baby was set aside.
As tradition says, this year yet again, I will promise to keep it up, and hope I won't fail yet again, despite the negative history I have with blogs.

Truth be told, most of the time I feel like my life is not interesting enough to be shared,  but my friend and I decided to, let's say, commit to having a personal blog, and maybe try to get out of our comfort zone more often to shake things up a little bit and, who knows, we might have stories to tell. 

Worst case scenario, you will just be stuck with boring, sad, sob stories that will make you feel good about yourself.

Getting ready!

Seems like this adventure started so long ago, but in fact, it's just starting NOW.
The thoughts of making the first intro video, the anxiety to make the challenge video... they're nothing compared to what's coming now! And at first I thought it was probably just a trip to London with random blog posts... but it's a bit more complex than that.

So the first group of the Samsung Global Bloggers arrived TODAY in London, and they have already been briefed on some of the activities, teamed up and given names to each team...
All these things just help build up more and more anxiety - I'm so excited for them!!! I have NO IDEA what are the activities they'll do and HOW they'll do it... but I'm happy and counting the days until it is my turn to go there and have to run around to get all the juicy good stuff to people and blog about it!

So make sure you follow me on my London2012 Olympic Games blog!!! New updates coming real soon!!!

Some of us bloggers... see me??? 

#Winning!

As I posted a while ago, I was running for a spot to be one of Samsung's Global Bloggers in London for the London 2012 Olympics.

The competition had two parts.
1. The auditions, where hundreds, maybe thousands of people from all over the world posted a 30-second video introducing themselves and saying why they should be picked as one of the #SGBloggers. Here's my entry:



2. Challenge videos. Twenty bloggers from each of the participating countries were chosen  to be in the finals, where they had to, again, record and edit with the best of their knowledge a video where they talked about a sporting event that took place in the city they lived. I guess the biggest challenge here was to do it all in 30 seconds. When I talked about it here on my blog I only posted the bloopers video, so here's the official challenge video:



Yes, I won!!!
Well, me and three other Brazilian girls. And four other people from the other participating countries. But still, YAAAAAAYYYYY!!!! 

I've already done this on social networks but it's never enough: I wanna thank everyone who supported me, voted on my video, cheered for me and sent me AWESOME positive vibrations! And I'd specially like to thank my sister, who was the one who pushed me into being part of this, and my two buddies Marco who is an awesome director and helped me filming my second video, and Japinha who besides being the best Brazilian drummer and RockGol's striker, is above all an amazing friend and a very charismatic person - he's a national heartthrob and has even won over a few international fans!!! hehehe :)

I already have so much more to write about this whole experience, but I will leave it for another post... coming very soon!

Samsung Global Blogger

Samsung is taking a few bloggers from all over the world to cover the Olympics in London this year. When I first submitted my video I must admit I wasn't very hopeful, I did it "just because", you know? Well, turns out the judges chose me to be one of the 20 finalists in my country and I have just submitted my challenge video, which will determine whether I'll win a spot to be their blogger or not.

It's "just" a contest, but it is kind of a big deal. I mean, it's a trip to London. With tickets to the Olympics. And a Samsung smartphone ;)
It's "just" a contest, but I've already lost a couple of nights sleep on this account, editing videos and getting feedback from friends - which by the way, helped me A LOT. From the first draft to the final official video there were SIX versions of the video, each of them adding something different, a little more color and spice.

I'm not overly confident for this because all 20 of us have great videos, but I am very happy with the result I got from mine. The challenge was to make a 30 second video about a sporting event in the area where I live. Instead of taking the obvious pick talking about any given sport, I took a chance and talked about a TV show on MTV Brazil - and that can go for or against my odds.

In this video I talk to a very sweet person who also happens to be a celebrity here in Brazil (won "Best Instrumentalist" award from MTV and Multishow for the past 3 years) and an awesome "athlete" for MTV's show.

Below is the "bloopers" video.

Also don't forget to go to Samsung Global Blogger's page and vote for me :)
Thank u!
<3

The star curse

I remember being a kid and thinking "there's one thing I'll NEVER eat!" whenever I saw a starfruit. I don't know, they just looked so weird... and the skin looked like some sort of larvae... so a fruit that looks like a star-shaped larvae should not be trusted!

Until one day I tried carambola juice. Just one of those powder, artificially flavored juices, you know? It was so sweet and citric and aromatic... but I still wasn't convinced. It wasn't until I was around 27 years old that I tried my first bite of carambola, more commonly known as starfruit. 

carambola

It was love at first bite.
Ever since, whenever I get the chance I like to buy some and eat - I always eat by myself since my husband seems to have the same kind of prejudice I used to.
The past couple of months I had been consuming a bit more of it and as a connected citizen of the year 2012, I always took pictures of it. Then a friend from facebook sent me a message:

"Dear Elize,
I hate to kill the mood, but I should warn you - eating too much starfruit can be bad for your health. Apparently, the fruit has a toxin that is bad for your kidneys (my dad is a doctor and he corroborated  this fact). I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, I too love it and feel bad for not being able to eat it very often!"

Heartbroken! Obviously, the first thing I did was google it, and sure enough... here's what I found on wikipedia:

Carambola contains oxalic acid, which can be harmful to individuals suffering from kidney failure, kidney stones, or those under kidney dialysis treatment. Consumption by those with kidney failure can produce hiccups, vomiting, nausea, and mental confusion. Fatal outcomes have been documented in some patients.

So it pains me to say, but if you - just like me - are a starfruit lover and have a certain propensity to kidney problems... stay away from carambola. I don't intend to totally cut it off, but cut back for sure. One way I really enjoy eating my carambola is by cutting three to five slices of it and serving with flan - it's tasty and cuts off the excessive sweet of the flan, and goes really well with the caramel topping. Besides, it's a very cute ornament to the dish. Hope you try it and like it!

flan and starfruit :)

Happy 88

Today it is my grandpa's 88th birthday!!!

my cousins, my grandpa, me, my sister - his birthday last year

Talking about the old man makes me a little emotional - he is for sure one of the most important people in my life and, truth be told, if it wasn't for him and my grandma this family wouldn't exist.

You know how people say grandparents will spoil the grandchildren the way they never did with their own kids? Well this is absolutely true for my granps. I guess he was always working so hard and so stressed and worried to be a hands-on dad and also, those were different times. But as a grandpa, he's been the best.

I lived with my grandparents up until I was about 7 years old, and I remember leaving their house and going away with my parents being devastating. My grandpa would come back from work every day between 4-5pm, then we would hang out for a while and he'd give me a shower and get me ready for dinner. Then we'd sit side by side on the sofa watching the evening news before going to bed. He taught me how to ride a bike - and he bought my first, second, third bike... He'd take me for walks, take me to the fair, bring me beetles in a shoebox so I could play with them... Haha, yes - I collected beetles when I was a little kid.
He gave me a typewriter, and from that I developed my love for writing. He gave my brother his first guitar and payed for guitar lessons, and today my brother is an excellent musician. 

When I was 17 I moved back in with my grandparents. I guess those were our roughest times - I was a rebel teenager and he was feeling the weight of responsibility again. I had a boyfriend whom he loathed, and this sweet old man would actually walk up to my (at the time) boyfriend and say "F-you, you S-o-B!!!" hahaha. At the time it was terrible, but nowadays just makes me laugh.
And even in those rough days, he would still wake up at 5am to make me some tea before I left for work and walk me to the bus stop. He's always been by my side, even when he's not.

He's 88 today and I feel so fortunate that he's part of our lives. I'm so happy that he loves my husband and feels that he doesn't need to worry about this troubled girl anymore. I know he is sometimes a grumpy old man, but I doubt anyone who's 88 and is not grumpy - I just could not ask for a better and more loving grandpa.

Love you, granps!

grandpa, parents, sister, brother and I at the airport