2008-06-10

Portugal Day

Or in portuguese, Dia de Camões, de Portugal e das Comunidades Portuguesas.

Being currently living outside of Portugal, this day had a special meaning for me today. No, I'm not about to cite the "usual bs" about being nostalgic and The Lusiads (Os Lusíadas) being on par with the Iliad and the Odyssey. This day had a special meaning because of someone's initiative: Mr. José Bouza Serrano, the ambassador of Portugal in Denmark.

I spent some hours at his house today, at first mostly with Danish people and then with people mostly from Portugal. It was a very good experience – the chance to talk with Portuguese people living here both for a few (0-4) and many (20+) years was priceless.

On one hand, I had an interesting time just trying to analyse how entusiastic people were about staying in Denmark for some time; On the other hand, I had a few inspiring conversations on how peoople got here, what was their living condition then and now, what plans do they have for the future and how can we make our own lives easier living almost "alone" in this pretty closed society.

That being said, I really haven't made up my mind on whether I'm going to aim at staying here in Copenhagen after the internship or not (remember the first rule of career planning?)... but I certainly have a quite broader perspective on working an living here than I had when I woke up this morning!


Speaking of career planning, while in my previous post I didn't mean to be explicit about how I came in contact with Microsoft Copenhagen, it has been pointed to me that I should perhaps refer that that. So, in my case, I was already percolating in my mind the possibility of an internship abroad and I basically seized an opportunity presented by my faculty – FEUP – and particularly the association of alumni of my programme (Master in Informatics and Computing Engineering) – AlumniEI (formerly AlumniLEIC). Some FEUP teachers and AlumniEI members are really the ones who presented the dots, I just connected them :)

No comments: