This phone surprised me in a very good way. I was expecting the worse from a Windows-based phone, and the interface is very good, the connection with Google works wonders, everything is very intuitive and easy to do. Doesn’t look like a Windows OS at all :)

The downside is the AWFUL Windows Marketplace: the apps are expensive and, yeah, totally uninteresting. I just gave up on trying to find apps after a while, don’t even bother.

Guilty pleasure: playing Solitaire on the subway. Gotta love this!

I was happy with the phone, just having problems with Mobilicity coverage. THEN SOMETHING HAPPENED: exactly one month after I bought the toy, I fell asleep on the Trinity-Bellwoods Park and had my purse stolen – yep, with the phone. Is it strange to say that I miss my Windows Phone? Microsoft has done something that I like and I’m not afraid to admit it.

I spent more than a week deciding wether I should buy an Android, like Fabio’s, or use some old phone on a prepaid carrier. After being stolen, the cheapest solution seemed wiser and I’m just a crappy prepaid phone owner now.

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The Good

If you’re a geek, in any level, you’ll fall in love at first sight: it’s OMG a cellphone running Linux? I want that thing NOW! The operating system, Maemo, is debian-based, so it makes installing apps a very simple task, and Nokia got it right and the interface is not that confusing thing I got on my old N78 Symbian – yeah I hate Symbian.

You’re usually one or two clicks away from doing what you need and it has a sliding, full-qwerty keyboard. Typing won’t be an issue. It’s REALLY a small computer just the size of your pockets, and worked like a charm on my GSM carrier.

The Bad

Now that you’re in love and you’ve started your relationship, some things will start to annoy you. You’ll need to add extra (“non trusted” in Nokia lingo) repositories, if you want to install really interesting apps – everything in the “default secure trusted” is booooring and old (this is so Debian I should have expected). The adding new repos thing is not that user-friendly if you’re not used to linux.

You’ll also find out that if you want full root access on your command line, there are also some tricks involved. The N900 is now looking like a geek toy but trying to protect you from playing with it.

After solving these issues, I installed ssh, the apps I wanted and tried to set it up for synchronizing with my Google Life. Now comes…

The Incredibly Awful

The N900 doesn’t carry any kind of app that synchronizes with your google calendar, mail or contacts and their Exchange connector doesn’t work with Google. There are some vague solutions on their forum – even suggesting upgrading the firmware! – but, as I only had the N900 for one week, I couldn’t test ALL of them, and the best I could do was to sync my facebook account and contacts and manage my contacts using the awesome app Hermes.

The thing is: even with my old Symbian phone, it was pretty easy to do Google Sync. HOW COME I have a INCREDIBLY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGICAL DEVICE and it does not do Google Sync? Come on, we’re in 2010, these things HAVE TO WORK. So, this is a major turn off on the N900 for me.

The Veredict

It’s a good gadget, it works and it has great battery life (Nokia is the best for battery life, always). I don’t care about camera or embedded music player – I just need them to work, and if they work, it’s ok for me. But if you’re expecting to transfer your Google Life to your pocket, go buy yourself an Android. I’ll have more amazing cell phone stories to share with you. Stay connected.

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So, what’s the problem? Good bikes are expensive. Awesome bikes are
inacessible. The day I arrived home, I shared the elevator with a guy
with his Cervélo. Now, THAT’S A FUCKING BIKE. I felt humiliated. The
guy could lift it with one hand – probably it’s ridiculously light.
And it’s oh so beautiful!

But I have a plan: I’ll save money until my birthday. If I keep
improving my rides with the crappy bike, I’ll buy a very nice bike to
ride more professionally. By that time I’ll probably be able to choose
more wisely and give it some maintenance myself – at least I hope so.

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I’ve got a job in the Toronto International Film Festival as Technical Support – LOOOTS of work, but I was almost in tears when I visited the Film Reference Library, it’s WONDERFUL and full of treasures.

Subway at rush hour here is not nearly as bad as subway at rush hour in Brazil, but it doesn’t mean it’s good. So I decided to commute by bike – this is pretty safe here. I bought a very cheap crappy old bike that fits me – the “fitting” part is hard. Being small is a challenge. Nothing is never my size. Even bikes.

But I found this crappy dirty old one for less than 50 bucks and there I go. Tomorrow I’m riding my bike downtown. This would be life threatening in Sao Paulo, or even in Rio (crazy bus drivers…). If you see a very small girl riding the worst small red bike, it’s me! Summer vibes!

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I went to the counter while some very loud brazilians were cheering like crazy and asked the pub owner for a bottle of water. We had the following dialogue:
- I’d like some water, please?
- Are you from the school?
- What?
- Are you from the school?
- No, I’m too old for school. I’d like some water.
- Are you sure you’re not from the school?
- Thank you sir, but it’s been a looooooooooong time since I left school. But I’m very thirsty and I need some water.
- You look like you’re from the school.

I decided to have some water from the counter, I left a tip for him and told him I was 30 years old. I’m not sure he believed me. When you’re worried about wrinkles appearing on your face and gray hair, isn’t it awesome a random someone (possibly drunk) thinking you’re still a teen? Oh, yeah, there’s a school just across the street, and I’m very short, that’s probably why he asked. But I felt great anyway.

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I’m talking about content someone took some time to write, specially for you. Someone saw something, thought about you and decided to write a random line to you. Even if it’s a random lolcat. No, powerpoints don’t count – all the motivational & forwarded hoaxes are junk and people who believe this is “thinking about you” deserve to die.

E-mail is dying because of social networking, different kinds of communication, people want faster ways to reach each other, and when you mail someone this requires some time – time to think on the subject line, time to think on the content, time to arrange the ideas, time to write. When communicating over instant messaging, you skip the formalities. Social networks are useful for finding content and sharing with others – no need to formally create from scratch. It’s a big change.

The deal here, I’m old and I MISS receiving old text e-mails. I also like very old forms of communication people seem to have forgotten – I LOVE postcards and I used to be a member of postcrossing. Because of my inbox loneliness (both virtual and real), I tend to read all my junk e-mail (again, both virtual and real), so I feel more loved by my spammers. I know how automatic this content is, but someone took time to generate it. I should write a bot to mail myself some random lolz daily, to keep my inbox happy – and myself happier too.

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So, it came to my attention that this year I’m not celebrating Valentines for cultural reasons. In North America, it’s celebrated in February, and I arrived here in early March (exactly three months ago, hooray!). In Brazil, probably for some Catholic reason, they celebrate in June 12th, the day before St. Anthony (who is supposed to be the saint associated with weddings – there you go!). And I’m already here on June, thus, no Valentines for me this year.

I obviously can do my own romantic dinner whenever I want, candlelight and stuff. This lovely springtime (well, now it’s raining…) invites you to romance and whatever. No need of a Valentines Day when you have blooming trees, crazy running squirrels, singing birds. I suggest ordering your lunch take out, then ask your partner out for a fast picnic on a neighborhood park. Ah, the spring!

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Women’s sizes are like 0,2,4.. and there’s this extra, extra small size, the 00. You guessesed, I wear the 00. Obviously, not all stores have the 00 size. I’m also considered “petite” – I’m too short – and finding a brand that sells BOTH petite AND 00 is almost impossible.

Because I live in this clothing wormhole, I have to find alternatives. It turns out that I can wear GAP‘s “ultra skinny capri” – the smallest of the smallest – as normal, decent jeans. But the REAL problem has been finding “businesswear” – you know, button shirts, this kind of thing. All my button shirts look alike.

Some people suggested me Banana Republic and Pacific Mall. Banana Republic is very nice, but pricey, and Pacific Mall… well… I hate shoppings, and I would never travel to Pacific Mall just for shopping. A solution I’m yet to try is Kensington Market / Chinatown – I may not find exactly what I’m looking for, but surely I’m gonna have some fun there.

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From the beginning: eeePC 900, the old model, features two SSD disks – 16GB and 4 GB. It uses a Celeron M ULV 353 900MHz Processor and I upgraded the RAM to 2GB.

The linux distribution that comes with the eeePC is useless. I’d say awful. Xandros is not even usable by newbies. I don’t even know what is worst, an eeePC running windows or Xandros.
WHY I GAVE UP: Awful interface, user experience, and slowness.

Ubuntu-eee is SLOW. But at least I could manage to configure it according to my needs. But the slowness was a serious issue.
WHY I GAVE UP: It was slow, and they released another version under another name.

Then they turned into EasyPeasy. It was “kind of ok”, but still too slow to do daily tasks like watching videos and listening to music. I gave up.
WHY I GAVE UP: OMG SLOW

My next shot was Crunchbang. I had Crunchbang installed for a long time because I feel it’s very customizable. The guys understood that not every netbook owner is a newbie. And netbooks tend to be slow, so running a minimal environment is always a good choice. But they are Ubuntu-based and they are stuck in Ubuntu 9.04. I tried installing some newer software, like latest pidgin and firefox, but I couldn’t compile the libraries needed without, basically, rebuilding the entire system.
WHY I GAVE UP: It was too out of date for me. Too bad

Jolicloud, with awful netbook interface

I’m looking out for new distros and I know there’ll be a new release of Crunchbang soon. I’m also planning to buy a new, REAL notebook and – uh – BETRAY TEH COMMUNITEH! – as I’m pretty sure I’m getting a good MacBook.

But I still like my eeePC, for being so lightweight and small. And I love to test new stuff, so I’ll keep everyone informed when I choose my new distro. I’m really impressed on how I came to hate my user experience with Jolicloud after only one week. These guys know what they’re doing – NOT!

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It’s funny what’s been a REAL shock for me: greeting people. In Brazil you usually hug and kiss everyone. The number of kisses you’re gonna give depends on where you live: people from Rio give two kisses, in São Paulo it’s just one, but in Minas Gerais they must really love the kissing, because it’s three. And the kissing keeps changing from state to state. I was born in Rio, and lived in São Paulo, so I was kind of used to one kiss. But, still, kiss and hug.

Canadians shake hands and that’s all and you’ll scare the hell out of them if you try to come closer. I tried to do this a couple of times (I’m sorry I totally forgot) and the guys were totally freaked out. The funny thing, I was hugged by a greek-canadian, and hugged-and-kissed by an italian-canadian at a concert – exactly like you do in Brazil and you meet someone. So, I believe in latin-ish communities, the hugging/kissing is allowed because of the cultural background.

Although I think I’m gonna miss the “touching” in the beginning, I believe this is totally cultural and I can get used to this as I got used to the one-kiss in São Paulo. It’s just a matter of time and going out with different people, so you can get more adapted to the local habits. But, it’s funny how a small thing like this is affecting me more than the weather.

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