Hey City Zen!

So we are about to hop over the pond for Christmas again. This was a very hard and busy year, and so I am looking forward to my Zen retreat in the Algarve right after Christmas in Lisbon. Re-charging is the goal.

Below you can hear a track (É Natal Agora) I made for the first "song" my son Alexandre "wrote". I taped him singing a year ago (when he was 5) and made the track soon after on one of my many hops across the Atlantic. The story of the song is that Alexandre (and all of us) were very sad that my father had just passed away, so I told him to sing a song about going to visit grandma who needed all his love. Naturally, I dedicate this song to the memory of my father.

P.S. I anti-dedicate, in English, this track to Nuno Galopim, who in one of his columns mocks the Portuguese-Canadian singer Nelly Furtado for speaking Portuguese rather poorly in a dreadful Portuguese soap opera she guest-appeared in. You know? It is only through very hard work that people raised abroad maintain their bi-lingual skills. Nelly Furtado should be praised for speaking the language---and for engaging---in the culture of her parents. After all, it's not like she needed Portuguese (or lame-ass Portuguese soap operas) to be the global superstar she is. Right now, my children are pretty fluent in both languages, but who knows what and how they will speak when they are older? I just hope they are secure enough to tell the Nuno Galopims of the (English or Portuguese speaking) World to bugger off.