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filha
acredito que escondes um segredo nos teus olhos
quando sorrias para mim
tornava-se transparente
partilha sempre esse segredo comigo
lembra-te de mim e sorri

As a continuation of my post about the ZX Spectrum, it is a reflection of the times we live in that it doesn’t sound frivolous anymore to buy a computer to play games. Not so in the eighties. At the time excuses to buy a personal computer ranged from the obvious – to help the kids do the homework – to the far-fetched – organize recipes.

The sordid little secret was that most people just played games with it. Deep down parents knew it and we knew it. And another revolution happened under false pretenses just under our fingers, all in the name of seriousness. Deja vu all over.

My favorite personal computer of all times, the ZX Spectrum, is now officially 25 years old. Very few things bring back so many happy memories of my childhood and teenagehood (yes, I made the word up) as this little beauty and its descendants. At the time nothing seemed so mysterious and embodied the infinite possibilities of life as that tiny black box, with its stylish colored rainbow and rubber chewing-gum keys. Well, nothing except the opposite sex. Maybe.

The time I spent using it, both playing and programming it, helped develop my logical and analytical capabilities. In the end it came to mould my future career decisions more than anything else.

You don’t need to own a ZX Spectrum to feel the intense rush of nostalgia, or maybe even observe how technology progressed since those times. One can emulate these machines on its own computer and download games and programs to it with a press of a button. If you want to know more, a thriving community of both old and new users of these machines exists on the Internet: it is called World Of Spectrum.

“I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.”

(William Blake)

A new sick man of Europe, that’s what The Economist calls my home country in a recent print edition. Yet if you pick a local newspaper the headlines revolve around the issue of an engineering degree that Mr. Sócrates, the prime minister, obtained at an estranged private university.

Mediocre human beings bearing engineering degrees not worth the paper they are written on are not rare, and long ceased to be news in my native hell hole. But Mr. Sócrates is not mediocre, in spite of everything. He is not, and I say this as someone that never was much of a fan of the man. He may have gotten the degree easy, he may have played a bit with the truth, but lets put things into perspective shall we? It makes me sick that with so many much more important issues to worry about people lose time with minor technical details. In the end it boils down to one thing: pure hypocrisy, one of few things we Portuguese people as a whole are competent at.

We must have the courage to stand to what we believe and take sides. No doubt Dante was right: the hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crises maintain their neutrality.

“At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures – be what he is. And, above all, accept these things. “

(Albert Camus)

Just look at these two faces. There’s a wicked face on the left, and a normal face on the right. Now just get up and walk away. Which one is wicked and which one is normal?

“LOVE – what is love? A great and aching heart;
Wrung hands; and silence; and a long despair.
Life – what is life? Upon a moorland bare
To see love coming and see love depart. “

(Robert Louis Stevenson)