In a ....... Posted by Gabriel on 12:33 am

In short, I was born and raised in a small town in south-western Ontario, Canada. My parents are Portuguese immigrants that moved in to Canada in order to provide a better living for their children, and they were, on the whole, successful.

I had a completely typical childhood (and by typical I mean carefree and with few responsibilities, with all my time spent playing with friends... good times...). I did denote some mildly racist behaviour, though rare, toward myself and my parents, due to being the son of immigrants and immigrants, respectively, but I believe it was mainly ignorance. At the time many people didn't really know where Portugal was (some said it was somewhere in the Middle East, other in South America), and were therefore somewhat mistrusting of us. Fortunately this was quite rare, most embraced the diferences.

I was always a huge nerd. I love all things electronic; computers, gadgets, smart phones, etc. I have had a computer and been on-line since a very young age. I spent, and spend, hours reading about the Napoleonic war, or World War II, or Cold War cover-ups. History fascinates me much more than fiction for some reason. For me nothing was better than curling up over the heat register with a blanket (creating a pocket of heated air, usually baking me alive) and reading "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" while it was snowing outside. It was actually quite immersive, reading about the Russian winter of 1941 while the wind and snow was howling outside.

My teens were also quite normal. Like most students of my age, I had a part-time job during the school year and a full-time job during summer vacation. After finishing high school I left my hometown in order to study in one of Ontario's top universities.

I finished my university degree in 2003, and, for some reason that is still to me entirely unknown (maybe I will find out while I write this), I decided to move to Portugal to study law.

Ever since moving here life has been a series of ups and downs, but always interesting. Actually that is not really true; there have been some horribly tedious parts.