Dayse do Nascimento Silva
Some of my
translations:
Dayse do Nascimento Silva
Some of my
translations:
This is essentially a photo-essay. It says a bit about my life but is mainly about my travels, the observations I made and the thoughts they evoked along the way. [Português]
My first proper full time job was with the Junta Comercial in Belo Horizonte-MG, Brazil. While there, I went on some very good holidays with a group of my colleagues. Below is a scene of us all enjoying a bath in the sea at Porto Seguro in the state of Bahia. The young 'me' is on your extreme left of the picture.
I had already graduated at the State University of Minas Gerais [UFMG] in languages and literature. However, some years later, my then boyfriend, Rogério, supported me while I studied law at the same university. This enabled me to embark on a good well-paid career as a Federal judicial analyst [Analista Judiciário Federal] at the Tribunal de Trabalho of the Third Region [of Brazil] in Belo Horizonte-MG.
Unfortunately, after 18 years together, Rogério and I broke up. I became very sad. We had never actually lived together. I lived in my own apartment with my mother. I had, by then, become good friends with a new colleague called Valéria at the Tribunal de Trabalho. We were both at a low ebb at this time. So, during our annual holiday period in 1996, we went on a trip to Porto Alegre in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Here is a photograph of us while we were there.
Two years later, in 1998, I ventured for the first time beyond Brazil. Valéria, her cousin Ângela and I went on a packaged trip to Europe. First we visited Rome. Here we are — the Three musketeers — in Vatican City.
I was still very lonely after my break-up, Valéria was getting to the stage of really wanting to find the right man. Ângela had recently lost her husband to the bullet of an armed robber. But this trip was doing us good.
We moved on to Amsterdam, Holland. Here, Valéria and I are cheering ourselves up, assisted by a welcome glass of Dutch beer.
Later, we moved on to Copenhagen in Denmark. Here I am on a bridge over the river with their lovely buildings in the background.
I spent the following years in a bit of a limbo. I was still suffering an undertow of sadness and wanted to find a good life-companion.
During this period, I remember going with a friend to visit the Park of Mangabeiras in my home city of Belo Horizonte. Here I am admiring the flowering trees there.
I later had a brief holiday with that same friend in the beautiful historic city of Tiradentes in the south of Minas Gerais. This really did me good. However, I was still wandering from pillar to post. I needed get on track.
Eventually, in 2002, I bought a computer and turned to the Internet. I did a lot of research on the Worldwide Web, including the then-embryonic social media sites like MSN.
I came across an interesting website: this one! On it, I read essays and articles that I found very interesting. I felt compelled to contact the author. But I was timid. On 19 July 2003, I wrote an email to him but simply couldn't bring myself to press the 'Enter' key to actually send it. My nephew, who was helping me with my new computer, grabbed hold of my finger and made it press the 'Enter' key and off went my email.
I waited and waited in anticipation. Many days passed and I hadn't received a reply. Then it arrived. It came from Robert in the UK, the author of the website. We corresponded intensely by email. We got on very well. We were of the same mind about life, the universe and everything. We wanted to meet but could not see how this could ever happen because we were practically on opposite sides of the planet, separated by about 8,500 km.
Robert and I continued to correspond until, finally, I invited him to come to meet me in Belo Horizonte-MG, Brazil for the first fortnight of 2004. He arrived on 31 December 2003 and we went to see the new year celebrations in the city centre. Later, my friend and colleague Célia threw a welcome party for us at which we met Célia's boyfriend Itamar who owned quite a lot of land in the region of Caeté. Some days later, Célia took us to visit Itamar at his farm. Here we are by his lake.
I was in the process of buying some land from Itamar. I had planned to build a home there. Robert and I later planned to make it a specially designed high-science low-tech eco home. Unfortunately, this never happened. It transpired that Itamar was a crook. As a result, I became one victim of his land scam. I — and lots of other people — lost lots of money to him. Needless to say, Célia dumped him the instant she discovered his ploy.
During the second week of Robert's short stay, I took him on a trip to the city of Tiradentes in the south of my home State of Minas Gerais. Here we are on the bridge over its little river. It is a really beautiful city and hosts an annual conference of national television personalities and professionals.
On 15 January 2004, my new British friend had to return home to the United Kingdom. I cried after I had said goodbye to him at the airport. He said he would return permanently in June, but I was afraid that he might not.
On 24 June 2004, my new British friend returned as he promised; this time to stay. At first we lived together in my apartment where my mother also lived. Robert later bought another apartment for us to live in together.
Here I am in the 'pilotis' below my original apartment. My intellectual nerdiness is alluded to by the book, which is: "The Code Book" by Simon Singh. It is about the history and nature of encryption.
Our daily routine was that we would spend the morning at the gym [I was very keen on exercise and keeping fit]. Below, we are at the tent of our weekend running club 'MG Runners' were we went on runs around Lake Pampulha. I am sitting at the left side of the tent. Robert is standing next to me.
After the gym, we would have lunch at home, after which I would go to work at my job as a Judicial Analyst at the Federal Court that deals with disputes between employees and their employers. I worked a permanent shift from 13h00 to 21h00.
During this time, Robert worked the full 8 hours on his writing. Initially, he used the laptop computer he had brought with him from the UK on which all his data files were already arranged, with the facility to upload finished essays to his web site, which was hosted on a server in the United States. Later, I bought him a good desk computer, which was much easier and less fatiguing to use.
At weekends, we would often go into the city to do shopping, eat out, go to see an unlisted film at my favourite 'art-house' cinema and sometimes meet up with my friends and colleagues. Our conversations were rich and stimulating.
During my annual leave, I took Robert to many places both within Brazil and abroad. For instance in January 2009 we stayed at a guest house at the small resort town of Cabo Frio on the Brazilian east coast. Years later in 2015, we visited Rio de Janeiro.
We stayed in Ipanema and visited the cafe in which Vinicius de Moraes reputedly sat when he saw the girl walk past that inspired him to pen the words of the famous Bossa Nova: Girl From Ipanema.
We visited Rio de Janeiro again, this time staying in the district of Barra da Tijuca.
One of Robert's sons [George] and Robert's daughter [Lisa] have visited us in Brazil. George came in January 2007.
We took George to visit Porto Seguro in the State of Bahia. George was fascinated with the coconut trees and loved to drink coconut water through a straw from a refrigerated coconut.
One day, we went on a boat trip to an isolated lagoon to swim from the boat. George really enjoyed his swim.
The following photograph of me was taken by Robert during the boat journey to the lagoon.
We also took George to visit my original birth town of Brasília de Minas about 500 km north-west of Belo Horizonte.
Robert's daughter Lisa came in May 2012. Here is a photograph of her with her father.
My friend Célia took us to visit the beautiful farm belonging to her extended family in the mountains near the city of Ouro Preto-MG. Here is where we stopped for lunch on the way there in a small town called Itatiaia.
Below we are sitting round the table in the farmhouse of Célia's sister Dora and her husband Washington having a philosophical discussion about life, the universe and everything — including speculations about the so-called "9/11 attack" in 2001.
The scenery on their farm in the mountains was stunning. We walked many kilometres up and down the steep mountain tracks.
Lisa was fascinated with the urubu — the South American vultures. Here is a pair perched in a tree along the way.
I took Robert twice to Buenos Aires, Argentina in August 2012 and April 2016 just before I retired. I remember him being nervous about showing his British passport because of the Falklands war in 1982.
Here we are in the Plaza de Mayo. The presidential palace faces onto it. It is where activists make political protests. There are areas of symbolic white crosses placed by protesters and relatives of the 'disappeared ones' — the 30,000 or so people who disappeared during the dictatorship of President Leopoldo Galtieri (1981—1982).
Below is me in the rain in Parque Tres de Febrero, the very large park of open space in Buenos Aires.
I took Robert on trips Lisbon, Portugal twice. In May 2011 we met all three of Robert's children there: his daughter Lisa and both his sons Matthew and George.
While we were there, Lisbon was visited by a Russian war ship, which was a Steregushchiy-class corvette called "Сообразительный" [pronounced: Soobrazitelny]. The down-town city was full of young sailor boys in seaman's uniforms with the name of the ship on their hats.
The ship's name translates as "Smart" [in the sense of bright and astute]. It might refer to the smart warfare electronics it totes for combat, tracking, and surveillance.
Naturally we walked the 'great places' of Lisbon like the Praça do Comercio, which faces on to the water front, in which Robert is standing below.
Here am I on the water front with the Praça do Comercio behind me and the River Tejo in front of me.
But we really enjoyed exploring the little streets and alleys of Lisbon. Here I am in a narrow street [beco] in the bairro alto [the high district] of Lisbon.
Below, is me taking a pause after climbing the steep alleys of Alfama — one of the oldest and most picturesque districts of Lisbon.
In August 2014, we visited Lisbon again and met up with one of Robert's former business colleagues Bruce and his wife Alison.
In March 2013 we visited Zurich, Switzerland at the invitation of Hajnal, a Hungarian friend of Robert who had married and moved there. Hajnal was living with her [recently married] husband Klaus at his apartment but still had her old apartment, which she made available free of charge to us for the duration of our stay. Robert's three children travelled from the United Kingdom and stayed with us there.
Above is a photograph of me in the kitchen of Hajnal's apartment making coffee with beans we had brought with us from Brazil.
We explored the streets and sights of Zurich and went on a guided tour of the city. I have to admit at this point that I am insatiable Einstein fan.
So we had to visit the ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) where Albert Einstein studied and later taught. The above is a photo of me outside the main entrance of the Institute. I was hooked. I had to visit Einstein's house in Bern. We took the fast comfortable Swiss train to Bern.
I was palpitating when we arrived at Kramgasse — the street where Einstein had lived. So here I am in Kramgasse.
Einstein's house is on my right [left of picture]. It was here that Einstein conducted his famous thought experiment in which he imagined himself travelling away from the clock behind me as he approached the speed of light.
We toured the inside of Einstein's house. Here above, I am inside his main lounge with photos of him and his family on the wall.
One day, we visited Hajnal and her husband Klaus in Klaus's apartment. We had great discussions about lots of interesting topics.
As well as Hajnal [who is taking the picture] and her husband Klaus, there was me, Robert and his daughter Lisa and son Matthew, Hajnal's daughter Rebeka and Rebeka's cousin Lila and Lila's boyfriend who is an airline pilot.
Towards the end of our holiday in Switzerland, we took the train to the city of Interlaken followed by a boat to the lakeside village of Weggis.
There we took the funicular railway to the summit of Mount Rigi. Here I am at the summit.
This was my first experience of snow. Robert commented that I didn't seem to feel the cold. This is probably because it was such a novelty. I couldn't resist throwing my first snowball.
Robert's younger son George got married to a Canadian woman, moved to Ottawa, became a Canadian citizen and got a good job with the Canadian government. We visited George in Ottawa in July 2013 and March 2018. He then moved to Quebec City, continuing his same work for the Canadian government.
George took us for a very long walk in Gatineau Park. Above, I am with George on the long trail through the forest.
I stooped down to admire the daisies after which I am named. My name: Dayse, is spelled the way my father thought it was spelled in English. This is how it was spelled in old-English in which the flower was called Eye-of-the-Day because it looks like a little sun. This was then shortened to Day's Eye, which was shortened further to Dayse. In Portuguese it would be Olho do Dia, which is my email name.
As we were about to leave for Canada, my mother thought that Robert would not feed me properly. So she told him to send photographs to her each day to show her what I was eating.
Above is a photograph of me eating a hearty lunch in the Royal Oak pub on the corner of Bank & MacLaren chased by a pint of London Pride beer.
Ottawa has a wonderful tree park that we visited during our trip in August 2013. On the left is me admiring the ripe berries on one of the many trees.
By contrast, on the right is me in Elgin Street during our other trip in April 2018. I am all dressed up in my super-insulated storm coat. The weather was sunny but the temperature was what Robert colloquially refers to as "brass monkeys", which I understand to be some kind of English colloquial vulgarity signifying extreme cold.
Below on the left, I am outside the impressive Canadian Parliament building, which we visited during our trip in August 2013. We went on a guided tour of the inside of the building, including the main chamber.
Above on the right, I am next to the portrait of Pierre Trudeau, whose ideas I admire. I followed his visit to Brazil in January 1981 and was fascinated not just by what he said, but also his white sneakers and seersucker suit of crinkled cotton. Very stylish.
We also visited the Diefenbunker at Carp, Ontario, 30 km out of Ottawa. It is a must-see for anybody visiting Ottawa. It was the [maybe not so] secret underground bunker to serve as a bolt hole for government personnel and operations in the event of nuclear war.
In the photo above, I am at the status indicator board in the main War Room ready to alert the Prime Minister of any enemy missile launches. The bunker was built at the behest of Prime Minister John George Diefenbaker.
We later visited Parc Omega, which George took us round in his car. There were so many wonderful sights with a variety of Canadian animals.
Above, the elk are following the warden on his quad bike. They know where the food is. The wildlife park also has its own kitchen garden.
Here I am in the middle of this lovely kitchen garden. This is the kind of non-processed really healthy food to which I would love to have access.
During our 2013 trip, we ventured beyond Ottawa into Quebec province, passing through Quebec City and on to the small town of Saint-Georges close to the US border. Below, I am outside the house of George's wife's grandmother in the north west of Quebec City where we stayed the night.
We saw the sights of Quebec City, dining in a restaurant, sampling their excellent wine. We saw the river and the museum. George's wife and I even dressed up as old-time serving wenches in the museum's clothes.
We journeyed onwards to Saint-Georges. There we stayed at the enormous house of George's wife's parents. They took us to stay at their lakeside chalet at the edge of a lake. There we walked through the forest paths. Here I am resting on some logs exhausted by the trek, but very relaxed and happy.
While staying in the lake chalet at Saint-Georges, I made a new good friend called Pierrette. She was the grandmother of George's wife. She was most interesting to talk to on lots of subjects. She was a lover of music, including the work of Heitor Villa-Lobos, the Brazilian composer. Or was she just saying that for me? Well, she seemed to have a lot of records of his music, which she played when we visited her house.
While at Saint-Georges, they took us just over 120 km by car to climb Mont Ham, which was well worth the effort for the view from the top.
We also visited my daughter and son in Edinburgh, Scotland during August 2016, June 2017 and October 2018.
In August 216, we flew from Belo Horizonte-MG, Brazil via Lisbon, Portugal to Manchester in the UK. At the airport, we were met by Robert's sister Jennifer and her husband Brian. They live in a village called Springhead in the foot hills of the Pennine mountains to the east of Manchester. They took us on a nostalgia trip for Robert in and around Manchester, from where he originated.
Here, I am standing outside 14, Holly Road, Swinton, Lancashire, UK. This was the house of Robert's maternal grandparents. It is where Robert lived from birth until he was almost 5 years old. It was the height of World War II. As a child of 18 months old, he remembers the explosion of the one and only V2 Nazi missile to hit Manchester. The sheer noise of the explosion was so overwhelming that it managed to leave an indelible impression in the mind of one so young. To him, it is the one memory that is ever-present.
Above I am outside the beautiful Tudor-style Court House in the small town of Worsley in the county of Lancashire, UK. It is on the opposite side of a large roundabout from the long private road that used to lead to the primary school that Robert attended from the ages of 6 to 11. The school no longer exists. It was in the middle of beautiful woodland which was all cleared to make space for Manchester's ring motorway, the M62.
Here I am on the tow path of the Bridgewater Canal, which was built during the Industrial Revolution. The yellow water is coloured by the local clay from where the canal goes underground into the coal mines.
The canal was used to transport coal from the mines to the homes and factories of Manchester. A single horse, of relatively small stature, walking along the tow path where I'm standing, could comfortably pull a barge loaded with well over 30,000 kg of coal. This place has now been beautified as a haven for passive recreation.
We visited many other interesting places in and around Manchester, including walks in the Pennine mountains and a trip round a stately home built by a rich industrialist at the time of the Industrial Revolution. We then caught the train to Edinburgh, Scotland.
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland. It is extremely rich in history and culture. Many famous philosophers, writers, scientists and engineers have been based there over the centuries and in memory of whom have been erected many statues.
Here I am at the statue of one of my literary heroes: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes detective stories. I also visited the statue of Robbie Burns, the poet. There are also statues of James Clerk Maxwell the mathematician, who worked out that light was an electromagnetic wave, and Adam Smith, who wrote The Wealth of Nations. In the science museum is an exhibit about John Logie Baird, the inventor of television.
We went on lots of walks around Edinburgh and its hinterland. Below, we were walking a lovely coastal path approaching the world famous Forth Bridge — a masterpiece of the engineering of the Victorian epoch.
Below, I am facing the wind at the summit of Arthur's Seat, which overlooks Edinburgh and the surrounding countryside. Notice the climbing boots and windproof coat. Necessary items in Scotland's climate, which is considerably cooler and windier than what I used to in Brazil.
Robert's daughter Lisa works for a QUANGO [ONG] that promotes sustainable transport. One of the projects in which she was involved adapted old disused railway routes to form beautiful walkways to connect different parts of the city. The great advantage of these is that, being originally for steam powered trains, they are almost perfectly level. There are no steep inclines. So they are ideal for effortless walking. Here, below, I am walking along one of 'her' walkways constructed where steam trains used to run.
Lisa and her friend Victoria took us on a tour of the area lying to the south from the Edinburgh. We walked and dined in the delightful small city of North Berwick and later visited Tantallon Castle.
With great effort, we managed to climb Berwick Law. The term 'Law' is nothing to do with rules and regulations: it is a word from old-English signifying a conical mound. Berwick Law is only 167 metres high but being on its own, it seems totally out of place geologically on the coastal plain. However, as I am given to understand, it was formed as a volcanic plug from which the ancient volcano itself was shaved off by glaciers.
Here I am at its summit with Robert's daughter Lisa, with the glorious expanse of the East Lothian plain behind us.
Below, I am in the famous Botanical Gardens of Edinburgh. It has beautiful small flowering bushes and climbers. I loved this little archway linking two sections of the gardens.
On Tuesday 25 June 2019 we flew from Belo Horizonte to Lisbon and from there to Berlin where we arrived the next day. There we met Robert's daughter Lisa and her new husband Daniel who got married in Edinburgh, Scotland on 02 January. Robert's son Matthew also came.
We stayed in an apartment in the district of Friedrichshain located in what used to be East Berlin. It was a re-modelled standard people's apartment of the pre-communist era. I was absolutely amazed at its spaciousness. It was able to accommodate all 5 of us with ease. Shown above is me in the apartment's main lounge with modern island-style kitchen.
One must-see sight in Berlin is the old East German television tower near the major city square of Alexanderplatz where we also saw the international clock that shows the time in all parts of the world.
Here I am in the bar/restaurant of the television tower with a loud American woman pontificating to her son behind me. The expansive plain of Berlin's hinterland can be seen in all directions from here.
Lisa lived and worked in Berlin for a few years. She looked up many of her friends who still live and work there. Some were German but most were British and Irish ex-pats who, like Lisa, taught English to Germans.
One day we met up with one of Lisa's friends Deirdre to lunch at an Indian Restaurant. Above are all 5 of us, plus Deirdre at the front on the left.
We took a day trip by train to the city of Potsdam. which is just over 35 km out of Berlin. We walked for many km in open country along the banks of the River Havel.
I really liked the country house we encountered along the way. Here above I am standing in front of it and its lovely garden. The house was enormous and included a small restaurant where we had lunch.
We could not visit Potsdam without walking across the Glienicker Brücke [Glienicke Bridge]. It is the infamous bridge across River Havel over which the US and the Soviet Union exchanged their captured spies.
It was across this bridge that the U2 spy-plane pilot Gary Powers was, on 10 February 1962, exchanged for KGB intelligence officer Colonel Rudolf Abel. As I walked gingerly across the bridge, I could feel the historic presence of the spies and the soldiers on opposite sides with their rifles at the ready. Unfortunately, in the above photograph, I am almost lost in the shadow.
We couldn't say goodbye to Berlin without having a drink at Die Tagung [The Conference]. Below, I am sitting outside enjoying a strong German beer with Matthew, Robert's son.
Inside this pub is lots of nostalgic memorabilia from the Communist Era of East Germany, which was quite interesting to see.
On 01 July 2019 we left Berlin. We caught the Pomeranian Express train to Gdansk in Poland. We travelled across the plains of Poland, sitting in comfort while its expansive fields and forests flashed by. We arrived the same day and established ourselves in the apartment we had rented in central Gdansk.
The whole purpose of our epic trip to Gdansk was to attend Lisa and Daniel's Polish wedding reception, which was held for those of us, including Daniel's mother, Robert and me, who for one reason or another couldn't attend their main wedding in Edinburgh. However, the photographs pertaining to the reception are private family photos so are not included here.
We then walked the relatively short distance to the small apartment of Daniel's mother. I was fascinated by these beautiful hollyhock flowers I saw in the front garden of a house along the way.
During the following week we saw a lot of Gdansk. We visited the Museum of War and also the Dockyards Museum of the now-closed dockyards, which were made famous by Lech Wałęsa, who became the leader of Solidarność, the dock workers' union. We happened to pass his house in the Gdansk suburbs during an excursion by rail to Kartuzy, a small traditional town with a cathedral and a beautiful park featuring two large lakes.
Back in Gdansk we visited its famous Amber Market, where above, I am seen waiting my turn at a stall to buy some amber jewellery. Not far from the Amber Market is the old dock area.
Here I am with a traditional 3-mast square rig sailing ship. We dined at a Chinese restaurant that is just visible on the other side of the dock.
It was difficult to fit all 5 of us plus Daniel's mother in one car. So Robert and I were driven by Daniel's mother Kasia [Katarzyna] in her car most of the time. She is partially disabled as a result of spending her working life lifting hospital patients: she was a nurse. But she can drive with ease.
Kasia and I took to each other and became good friends. Here we are looking out onto the Baltic Sea.
Addendum by Robert: Shortly after arriving home in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, it transpired that she was rapidly falling victim to Alzheimer's disease. We can no longer travel. She can no longer write. Even so, she continues to inspire me. For instance, her condition provoked me into deep thought about time and memory, which resulted in my essay: Memory and The Nature of Time.