Minimalism - and why it is not about things

As everything in this blog, this post doesn't mean to be 100% term correct, super duper informative or extreme, just my view about this theme.
Yesterday I went on a "Video Session" called "The Minimalists". This even was hosted by my inspirational friend Bernardo Conde at his "workplace" Trilhos da Terra.
In fact this session was about this documentary and allowed us to discuss about it after watching it.
This was not my first attempt to know more about minimalist, I was reading about it on reddit here and here.
I was already "in love" with the idea of less possesions, why? Because I am lazy, and more possesions means more tidy up, more cleaning, more caring about them.
Most people will say, so what? That is normal!
Well, that may be the norm, doesn't mean we all have to follow. Less time spent with things could mean more time with yourself or with others.
And in the end of this session, that was my opinion about minimalism: it isn't about reducing frantically your possesions, but how to maximise your quality time. Reducing your purchases, buying what actually is necesary/brings joy to your life, is just a tool to achieve it. It will  bring you more interest to people, yourself, the world, etc.
But also, if you maximise your quality time, with yourself, with people you truly find inspiring and somehow you will see your interest in material stuff decreasing.

So, take one hour of your day, cook some pasta with mushrooms in fifteen minutes and invite one of your best to dinner in the balcony. Spend the other fourty five minutes enjoying each other, talking and eating =)

Portuguese made bathroom choices

This days I see some people looking for alternatives to plastic bottled shower gel, so I decided I should show what I use and why.
Again, this may not be the "perfect setup", but so far is where I am. Suggestions accepted.
In fact it may be easier to explain my "method" for choices:

Everything I try, I try to fit in this method.
Now about the bathroom products:
1) Bar soap - more than one year ago I ditched plastic bottled shower gel. First I tried those "supermarket brand" 3 bar soaps for 2 eur. The experience was bad, they would disappear in my hands and were oily. Later I read that "ordinary" bar soaps are mad with animal fat.
Then I tried Portuguese brands. As fair as I know there about 4 or them: Confiança, Ach Brito, Castelbel and Foz.
I started with Confiança, having the cheaper alternatives, from about 1eur a small/medium bar soap and 100% vegetal. I can recommend them and I find the size nice for taking on trips. Confiança also has limited edition and premium soaps which cost about 6-8eur pack of two rounded soaps which are very nice. The minus on this edition is that they come packed in a box+plastic wrap.

Then I tried Ach Brito soaps, again 100% vegetal, a size bigger than confiança, and with a price tag of about 2.5eur per bar soap. I find them also good quality, but at least in the super market there aren't many "flavours" available.

Again, the ones that I have tried said 100% vegetal on the paper wrapping.

About Foz soaps, I only found 100% vegetal glycerine type, and I wasn't keen on it. Used it for hand washing. Can't remember the price but they were cheap, something like 1.3eur per bar.
This brand also manufactures deodorant, the one in the picture. I find it very effective and it has very little plastic in the packaging (in order to reduce the plastic I am thinking of trying Alumen Rock deodorant).

Due to my "passion" for bar soaps I decided to try Castelbel bar soaps. In fact I guess I saw somewhere that Castelbel "slogan" was something like "We don't produce bar soaps, we produce gifts" and I can attest that. I guess they make my "consumism" side grow with their collections.
Their prices are high, from 6 to 12eur per bar soap, but their sizes are large and the fragrances are trully orgasmic.

Since I only use bar soap, no shampoo sometimes I am getting dandruff. I also had it in the past and some shampoos didn't work very well.
Thanks to my friend Carine from Minimal Impact I discovered that Apple Cider Vinegar could be used as a softner and dandruff preventer. I decided to choose the one from the Portuguese Brand Paladin. Unfortunately it comes with a plastic bottle.
One day per week I mix two soup spoons of this vinager with water in a cup and brush my hair with it. My hair is soft and without dandruff.
No worries about vinegar smell, after rinse the smell will disappear.

Finishing on toothpaste, I use the "old one" from Couto. This toothpaste can be found on pharmacies and cost about 1.8eur. I use it from my teenager days and never had problems with my teeth.
From what I've read it is made with vegetal only ingredients.And not tested in animals!
The bad part, the packaging that brings an unecessary manual (in my point of view).

Well this is my setup and hope to help you. Feel free to share what you use.

A phone in 2018

First about the title, why phone? Because most of us now have a smartphone, not a phone (which for me means either a dumb phone or a feature phone).
Some months ago I was feeling too much connected to my smartphone, and constantly thinking that although I was connected to it I wasn't getting anything in return.
Most of my social networks only show me products and not people. Most people will only show me cats and dogs and products and...it make no sense...since I am all day on the computer.
I started searching and came to the conclusion that I wasn't the only one. In fact people do videos about it, and this one for me was one of the best:

After watching this video I decided I would go back to a basic phone. In fact I always had basic phones laying around, from the simplest black and white Nokias (iconic models like the 6510 and 8310) from the color screen ones.

But this time I went on the consumist side and bought a new in box Sony Ericsson C702 for 20eur. This is one of the latest feature phones, dated from 2008 that is waterproof, has 3G, integrated GPS, bluetooth and whopping 3.2 megapixel "cybershot" camera.

This was the phone that I decided that would "substitute" my iPhone SE. Why?

- I wanted bluetooth to connect to my car's handsfree (you can always use corded headset)

- I wanted to be able to receive more than 160 character sms (B&W Nokias don't, they split it)

- I wanted to still be able to take pictures

- I wanted a featurephone that could sync my contacts with a cloud service or at least could import the ones that I have (thanks MyPhoneExplorer)

And a month later what I have learn with it?

1 - This things are slow, so you train your patience, and you value much more sending an sms.

2 - Since GPS on this phones is almost as paper map and not turn by turn navigation you end up planing your trips and be sure you have your old GPS charged (I had a TomTom One from 2006 laying around)

3 - Since you don't have social networks (in fact you can have facebook but the experience is so horrible that you don't use it) you end up doing more things, in my case I started reading again.

4 - Again with no social networks on your hand, you end up being more assertive and booking meetings immediately.

4 - Old games are amazing, specially puzzle bobble or frozen bobble.

5 - There are still some "apps" for this phones that are usefull, like "Weather", Trekbuddy and Opera Mini.

Did I stick with it forever as I meant? No. Why? Mainly because of Instagram.

What will I do about it? Whenever I feel to I will go back to my featurephone. In fact the more I use the smartphone the more I feel the need to disconnect.

If you feel to, try for yourself and let me know your feelings!

Reduce, reuse and Re Cycle

Most people (me included) whenever approach a more ecological life style just think about buying.
Buying new and more ecological stuff. Kind of going backwards right?
That's it, if we want to be more ecological we must follow the 3R rule: reduce, reuse and recycle.
And in my opinion by this same order.
Due to my passion about bikes, riding bikes and being outdoor I was lurking a new GPS unit, since my Suunto Ambit 2 has very limited navigation capabilities.
As anyone would do, I went and search what the market has to offer and how much would it cost.
Most of this equipments cost about 180-200eur or more.
I decided to try another route. The 3 R Route.
First I evaluated how much I needed a navigation equipment: well I have my suunto watch wich can read routes but don't have maps. I have my iPhone, which has maps, and to be fair those will do for 90% of my outdoor adventures, so I decided I don't really need that gps navigation equipment so much.
Still, I wanted to be on the safe side when outdoors. Gps+phone+data in one device means low battery in a short time, and what I don't want is to be without phone to contact anyone if needed.
There are many paths possible to solve this issue, if one really wants to use his phone:
-Using a powerbank - for most of us means buying one, so I try to rulle out this option. You can always ask someone to lend you one, or to give you one of those freebies. But still I am kinda against this option.
-Taking a second phone, if possible a basic one. I guess everyone has a basic one laying around! This was a nice option, but I kinda preserve my iPhone and don't want it to be exposed to hours on the sun, damaging battery in the long run.

So I decide to take another route: turning old smartphones that I had laying around (from family members and friends) into gps navigation devices.
In my case they were 7-8 year old devices like the original Samsung Galaxy S i9000 and HTC Incredible S, both powered by 1GHz single core processors and whopping 512-768mb of ram.
After a factory reset I installed GPS Status to help finding gps sattelites faster and test their gps functionality.
I installed Codesector Maverick, in fact Maverick Pro Version (paid version to help the development) and with this app I could load track (gpx) and download maps at home.
I went on a small test and it seemed satisfactory. I had some problems with Maverick (map/route orientation) and I couldn't get an answer from the devs.
Also I noted that battery life of this smartphones and not that good, and in the case of the samsung the gps reception either.
I decided to mitigate this problems the following way:
-App: Orux Maps, in my case the older 6.5.10 version worked better.
-GPS: Nokia LD-3W GPS Module

Orux Maps has lots of functionality and works as good as maverick. I am still learning to deal with it, but at least I have friends that confirmed me it has no problem with orientation and map downloading.
About the Nokia LD-3W bluetooth gps module. As many tech guys may know, back in the Feature phone days you bought this to have gps on your phone. So many people have them laying around, and most will sell you one as low as 5-10eur.
What are the advantages? GPS Work is done by this device and not by your phone and the precision is much better (in case of old phoneS). I already had this laying around. I suggest you to only buy one if really needed (latter I will try to test batterylife with internal gps and with external gps).
Well now I just needed a mount for the bike, I searched for used ones (smartphones get so big that users must sell the old mounts) but they were more expensive than one in decathlon outlet (my bad buying new stuff, but still better than going to waste land or buying a new gps device).

After that I just loaded the GPX route, download the map using wifi (zoom levels between 11 and 16 on maverick) and all I can say is that it worked more or less good in my 200kms ride.
The bluetooth connection between the Nokia module and phone failed sometimes (I guess it may be some powersaving feature of maverick, will test it further with orux also) but I found it satisfactory.
If you have a more recent smartphone laying with stronger gps signals I guess you won't have any problems.
All in all I got a "good" gps for about 10eur (the price of the mount). Even if it is no garmin, it will help and it will not go to the wasteland =)
All in all, reduce, reuse and re-cycle!