What can we do? This is a recurrent question in the European countries in the last days. The tsunami killed thousands, affected millions and seven countries need help rebuilding. As Kofi Annan said today “we have to help the poor that lost everything”, there are more than 2 million people without clean water to drink. Help is needed and now. People in UK have already donated around £25m, I don't know the value in Portugal but it's lower for sure. I donated €15. If each of us donates this small amount the global total will be enough to help everybody, but if we're all counting on the neighbour to donate for us… then I'm afraid no one will get the help they need.

Friendship.

Solitude is one of the greatest problems on the actual society. Some people stop meeting new people at their early 20s and during their life, lose all their previous friendships. There are some reasons for this, but the main one is the routine that rules their lives. They get up early, go to work and came back in the evening. Their job doesn't involve contacting with other people. Their spare time is spent watching TV and they don't have any other activity, and as they don't have friends and don't go out, they end up lonely without interacting with other people.

All this could be different if we kept more of our childhood.

Yesterday I was in a shopping mole and there wore two young kids that obviously didn't know each other. After 5 minutes in the same shop one of them was begging their mother to invite the other over for tee. In five minutes she had made a new friend, without needing excuses to talk to her, without needing a middle kid tbhat would introduce them to each other.

I think I can say that my Christmas wish is that we learn how to meet knew people with children, so that next year there less grownups living monotones, lonely lives.

Four American soldiers died today in Iraq .

http://fallujapictures.blogspot.com/

Note: For those that didn't understood, in Iraq wore killed since the begining of war more or less 1500 soldiers and 15000 civilians.

Note: This blog has been offline

Not even five moths in front of the government and the Portuguese prime minister achieved the unthinkable. He was today “dismissed” by the Portuguese president. He will stay in front of the government until February when new elections will be held. What drove to this was a four month government that when you thought that they couldn't do worse, they would do some nonsense that was proper of a Hollywood film. It starts with the nomination of this government. Instead of being elected they wore nominated. It was an ambiguous decision, because the Portuguese Constitution wasn't clear about what to do when the prime minister got out, but wasn't fired. Jose Barroso was the Portuguese primer minister he went away for the presidency of the European Union. The Portuguese President preferred the nomination of the president of the party that was most voted in the last election.

This government was accused of everything… unfortunately most of it was true. They wore accused of pressing the media; a commission was appointed and conclude that the pressures existed. They wore accused of lack of coordination… it wasn't needed any commission to verify that… on the same day the Portuguese primer said that taxes wore going down and the finance minister said that it was impossible to get the taxes down.

They wore accused of lack of preparation on some deals; one week later the EU failed a deal that would get together Gas and Electricity. The “drop of water” that made the glass full was the resignation of a minister that was re-nominated 4 days ago, and his reason was lack of confidence… this minister was seen as one of the closest to the prime minister.

The big issue (at least for me) is that the main figure in the opposition, the one that could also be prime minister is almost like a twin of the one dismissed today. So they will continue to have my blank vote, and my hopes that in near future competent persons will be part of a competent government. Last elections (for the European parliament) 9% of the Portuguese that voted, voted in blank… I'm curious to see how many will vote in the beginning of the next year.