Sound-blocking headphones will do fine, thank you.

The music in the restaurant was horrible. Take the worst pimba (corny Portuguese popular music, for the foreigners reading this) and play it as loud as you can with a disco beat thumping in the subwoofers. That was what was being served to us as the side dish and I wished for silence.

Fast-forward a couple of hours. The last train would be arriving at the station soon and I needed to be on it. It was drizzling, not enough to feel the drops, but just to be on the safe side I took cover in a stall in the station. While there, a group of six or seven young men come in. It's the usual Saturday night crowd at Santos: around twenty years old, jeans, sweatshirts, a hoodie here and there. A swagger in their walk that says "We're young, we're together and we're having fun". They sit on the other side of the stall.

As I wait for the train, something is amiss. Nothing's changed. The place is as quiet as it was before the group entered. Where were the usual loud and excited conversations of youth? A look at them explains it all. The conversations were there, all right, and they were certainly full of energy. I just didn't hear them because no words were spoken. All seven of them were happily gesturing with their arms in sign language.

They were deaf. That put my wish for silence in perspective.

Just don't bring up her Sarah Palin impersonation

In case you're wondering, I'm still alive.

Actually, the chances of you wondering that are very slim, either because you are not pessimistic or because you hear from me using other media, so let me start over:

In case you're wondering, this blog is still alive. The fact that nothing has been posted in almost a month is simply due to nothing happened in almost a month that would be worthy of a mention here.

Some things did happen that were not routine. I met my current boss's previous boss, who was as cool as I expected. There was a pretty fun party at the institute where I had a discussion that started with "I stopped listening to new music after the The Wall because there was nothing new left to be said" and got better with every turn it took (and it took lots and lots of turns). I gave a half hour presentation to first-year Master students that lasted for an hour and a half. Just a few hours ago I listened to Lynn Margulis talk. Plus other stuff that I can't remember right now, not to mention national and international events that could be commented upon.

So it's not a complete lack of theme that has kept me from posting; it's the lack of a theme that will inspire me to put fingers to the keyboard and hammer out a coherent and pleasing text. I guess I could write about Tina Fey's witty humour, and nerdy good looks, but I don't want to trade dignity for inspiration yet.