About Preferences/Sobre Preferências

Posted on 09/03/2016 by Tariana Pestana

Allan

EN/ About Preferences, Part II

Before reading this, please read Part I here!

I started observing the reasons that people who did not like cats because they are: traitorous, selfish, that attack. I never understood that, how can someone not like cats? And worse, if you do not like it, why stay badmouthing? Talking about things you don´t know …

I had already gone through this stage, but it seems that there are people who never leaves that. From the moment I started to have contact with dogs and cats, I could analyze better the dog lovers that dont like cats. Noticed that like me, some had had a bad experience in the past, and others simply could not get to know cats to be able to change it.

When Allan came into our lives I’ve become daily conviviality with a dog in the house. The funny thing is that on the day he arrived, came straight towards me on the couch, leaving behind my sister, his “owner”.

We were lucky, what a sweet and obedient pet! Over time I noticed how much he is easy going, just by saying the word “walking” that he forgets who his family, who gives food, and goes running after that person. And how he is dependent, sticks to your feet, and gets excited how many times you arrive home in the same day.

I started to do a deeper analysis of human behavior, what he hopes and the feelings he directs to animals, especially to man’s best friend. No wonder the slight preference to dogs (which was higher before), the human being has a need to feel required, loved, to have something or someone that depends on it. Something that dogs can provide well, as the man is their leader, respects a hierarchy as if we were superior and they fragile. Dogs sociability really is much warmer, but for me the mystery of cats, with a certain seduction to win trust, is much more attractive.

Humans like this ease of approach of dogs, easy involvement of them to their leader. For this reason dog lovers find cats snobbish and do not confortable with them, just because they do not fall in love at first sight. The independence of cats is very often confused with detachment from the owners, their nature has always been free to explore. But that does not mean that they do not love their owners, they just have a different way of showing it, just as people also have and so some identify more with dogs and other cats with.

Another thing that people often talk about is that cats abandon the owners, which is not true. The truth is that the nature of cats, especially the stray, is they go around the neighborhood, socialize or fight with other cats at night. Many of them come back the next morning or in the middle of the night if the owner keeps a way to get the cat into the house. But nightlife can be dangerous, they can suffer accidents, poisonings and violence from ignorants, and never return home. So it’s important to think about the decision to keep them at home. Another thing that can happen is the cat does not have the basic home care or attention, enough affection and so they begins to attend other houses, and sometimes moves to another house. So think again before saying that they just abandon their owners.

Also please note that cats have a lot of personality, and each has a different personality, some have traumas. So generalizing will not make you an expert in this spicie. If by chance a person has a bad experience with a cat, whatever the reason, it does not mean that all are like that. It will depend on the person opening the mind and / or have the opportunity to live with other cats and learn from the experiences.

Therefore, I believe that people had to be aware that there are issues and differences that they do not understand enough, and they should not opine negatively before getting to know it. It is very unfair to make an animal a villain, whatever the feature you get attached to. It is also very bad to insinuate that people who like cats are weird or that are similar to those bad characteristics that “you” created for them.

If there is something I learned is that we have to learn, to know and have experiences before you think you own the truth. We have to respect the differences and know that there will always have someone who likes what you do not like, some prefer cats to dogs and prefers someone else to “you.” And so we would live happily ever after.

Milo

PT/ Sobre Preferências, Parte II

Antes de esse texto, leia a Parte I aqui!

Comecei a observar as razões que pessoas que não gostavam de gatos por serem: traiçoeiros, interesseiros, que atacam. Eu nunca entendia isso, como pode alguém não gostar de gatos? E pior, se não gostam, por que ficar falando mal? Falar do que não sabe…
Eu já tinha passado por essa fase, mas parece que tem gente que nunca sai dela. À partir do momento que comecei a ter contato com cães e gatos, analisei melhor os apaixonados por cachorros que não suportam gatos. Vii que assim como eu, alguns tinham tido uma experiência ruim no passado, e outros simplesmente não puderam conhecer gatos para mudar isso.
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Is Facebook your friend? / O Facebook é seu amigo?

Posted on 28/10/2015 by Tariana Pestana

Pinhole photo of a computer / Foto de um computador tirada com uma pinhole

EN/ Is Facebook your friend?

This year I questioned myself about the way we collect friends on Facebook, and what are the real importance of keeping them. From long time ago, I’ve always been the type that deletes people who I added because I met through a friend or colleague, but did not remain in my life. But now I took it to another level.

I began to question myself why I still had those classmates, I barely spoke at school, and had acquaintances who only saw twice in his life and all of them I never really cared (and neither them) to stay in touch. So I started to “clean up” my friend’s list, passing through filters that I created, such as:

– Have I talked with this person over the past 5 years?
– Have I met that person in the last 3 years?
– How many times I met that person after we first met?
– Was s/he part of some important moment of my life / my childhood?
– Do we have common interests or am I against the ways that person thinks and acts?
– Do we maintain some kind of virtual contact (likes, comments), even if we do not talk a lot?

According to the answers I delete or keep the person on my list, it seems very simple but sometimes by external influences I can’t get rid of a few. These are either someone present in my best friends, partner or family’s life. I realised that would be “rude” if I delete that person.

Something that bothers me a lot is to know that many people keeps me in friends list for imagining that one day, they may need me for something. Well, if you keep someone in your Facebook friends list thinking this way, you need to rethink what friendship really means.

If by reason of work contact, opportunities of whatever the purpose, for this they invented LinkdIn! People, make a profile on LinkedIn, the idea is to have there people whom you only have professional interests and that are not part of their circle of friends and neither are part of your personal life.

Especially for me Facebook has always been a very important tool to keep in touch with people who are far away. It’s the easiest way to group friends and family, share photos, ideas, events and messages in a way that everyone can see it. So I consider it something very intimate, and over time I’ve been noticing my selectivity about the content I share there. There were moments that I stopped myself from sharing for worrying about what people would think.

But hey, shouldn’t I have just people who knows me and won’t judge me? I noticed that I did not want to share my life with certain people, and so I started to use that filter.

Another measure that I’ve taken was to get some people I didn’t want to see their 10 selfies a day, 15 religious messages, and other stuff like that in my news feed, in a filter Facebook created called “Acquaintances”. When you put them there, you do not see their posts so often. And by contrast, I gathered my best friends in the list called “Best Friends” as Facebook prioritises posts from this list in my feed. There are a few more other tricks I use, but it would make another post here. If you are interested to know them, comment here and I’ll do another post.

I have also noticed my friends expressing the same questions by commenting:

“Honestly, for me I would delete all, would leave only 50 Facebook friends, I don’t like so many people seeing everything I post.”

“I need to do a clean up, a lot of unnecessary people”

“I have X person on Facebook just to laugh at what X posts, very ridiculous”

“Would rather not post this, not to cause discord”

We have control of selecting who we have, who sees what you post, etc. It’s all about using Facebook and tools to make it a healthy and positive experience, not a vain and futile circus exhibitionism, or a timid and neutral presence that makes the idea of being in a social network lose its meaning.

Tell me what you think about it, if you have been through the same situations.
Do you use these filters and tools?
How has your experience on Facebook been?

PT/ O Facebook é seu amigo?

Este ano eu comecei um sério questionamento sobre a forma que colecionamos amigos no Facebook, e qual a verdadeira importância de mantê-los. De tempos há tempos eu sempre fui do tipo que deletava as pessoas que havia adicionado por ter conhecido através de um amigo, ou colega, mas que não permaneceram na minha vida. Só que agora eu levei isso a um outro nível.

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Conscious and Braveness/Consciente e Coragem

Posted on 07/10/2015 by Tariana Pestana

Innocent Fun at Favela Jardim Colombo, Sao Paulo, Brasil.

EN/ About Conscious and Braveness

Over the years I realised that my courage to the adventures, changed a little its attitude. The maturity made me more conscious and aware of danger, a vision of possible variables that can make things go wrong, and not only wrong, being unsafe.

Always noticed that people who never had such an experience and are the optimistic type, are even somewhat naive when facing situations and end up running into something worse than imagined and discover they were not prepared for that.

The lack of knowledge about a subject that individual immune to fears and insecurities, perhaps braver and therefore happier, since there is nothing to worry about.

From the moment that you have an understanding of the problems around you, either about work, marriage, family or personal, is enough to prevent yourself, thinking and worry about them, beginning to develop ways to solve them. This would already cause some anxiety, but if the individual is not aware of these problems, or are not seeing them clearly, would never give proper attention until it comes to an extreme that reaches directly to then, forcing a reacting to it.

I always wonder: will be better to have the knowledge and prepare for it, which involves concern and anxiety, or to keep away from them and they just have an attitude when there is an explosion?

Photograph from Brazil 2014 project, on Wembley to Soweto Workshop during Brazil 2014 World Cup. See all photos on my Flickr.

PT/ Sobre Consciente e Coragem

Com o passar do anos fui percebendo que a minha coragem para as aventuras, mudou um pouco de postura. A maturidade trouxe uma consciência de perigo mais alerta, uma visão de possíveis variáveis que possam fazer as coisas darem errado, e não só errado, passam a não ser seguro.

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