Sunsets in Portugal are special. They are different and they wrap Miguel’s thoughts if someone asks him about missing something, about saudade.

This aerospace engineer was born and raised in Lisbon, but he spent a lot of time away from the capital. Both his parents come from the inside of Portugal, from rural areas located in Santarém, 100 km northeast of Lisbon. Throughout all his life, specially throughout his childhood, he was regularly going back to his grandparents house. As intermitências da infância. The summers were also a time to taste there, helping their grandparents in the fields.

He likes to make clear that he is not a pure city person and that is important because when clarifying something, we focus on lights and shades. Miguel always says that he is made of pieces from the people that he loves and from the people that like him. He feels himself as an individual who strongly depends on his loved ones. He is a determined person and, why not to say it, sometimes stubborn, as we all are.

Since October 2017, Miguel works at CERN. He is part of the Project Office of the HL-LHC Integration and (De)-installation group. Before the take-off of his professional career, Miguel studied Aerospace Engineering at the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) in Lisbon, and a double master’s degree, “Flight Dynamics & Control and Avionics”, between Lisbon (IST) and the Netherlands, at the Delft University of Technology.

It may happen, that a regular Thursday morning, while teleworking, someone asks you, who are you? And although it looks like a very deep question, you end up answering it. Miguel considers himself as a regular guy in many aspects, which does not mean he is flat or boring. A regular guy trying to find his way in life with the people that he appreciates, never alone, that is for sure.

He might not believe in Karma, maybe a bit, but in Miguel’s head there is a mantra spinning around: quem semeia ventos, colhe tempestades. Bad feelings feed negativity, but also good feelings spread happiness, and Miguel belongs to this second team.

When he hears the word beauty, so many things come to his mind. Beauty can be found in love, and when he says love, he means a very broad number of  things (which are not things) that go from his family, his girlfriend, his dogs Boss and Chefe, two german sheperds, also to nature, wild animals or a snowing mountain.

One of the heteronyms of the Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa, wrote that “a beleza é o nome de qualquer coisa que não existe”. He also wrote that “a realidade não precisa de mim” and Miguel disagrees: reality as a whole may not need a specific person, but Miguel’s reality needs him. No doubt.

Miguel still does not know his dreams, and there is no rush. As long as he does something that makes him happy, that makes him motivated to wake up, to go to work, to collaborate improving something while being involved in a team. As long as he enjoys with his dear ones, he feels good. No need to dream bigger.

There will be a place in the world waiting for him, with a Portuguese sunset and some bossa nova played in the background.

Like Nietzsche, Blanca is a friend of the slowness. Now, from Madrid, she enjoys her own calm in the non-hegemony of the Fast & Furious. Life, like philology, demands above all to distance oneself from the rest, take time, decelerate, and our engineer lives her days on those margins.

Blanca was born at the Mediterranean’s foot, in Mojácar, a city located in Almería (Spain). After studying industrial design engineering in Seville, she worked in the Andalusian capital and also in the country’s one. Years later, she opened a door to England, and from there she jumped to CERN, where she has worked and enjoyed for five years.

She is not currently working. Her stage as a CERNie was very intense, and that is why Blanca has given herself a time of reflection, changes and rest. One way to avoid, in Nietzsche’s words, “the age of the rashness, the indecent and sweaty rush that aims to end everything immediately.” That age, which is ours, which is the Work’s one.

From that stand-by terrace, our engineer takes a look at the most special memories of that time. The disconnection from those yoga classes, which started with four cats in a park in Saint-Genis-Pouilly and grew to full capacity at CERN itself. The sweet Geneva dance academy that kept her in touch with contemporary dance that she has practiced since childhood. And, of course, those rides in a white cinquecento singing sevillanas loudly, like someone celebrating a goal in the last minutes of the game. An oasis within the High Level and the international ties.

That relaxing doses did not occur in solitude. The friendships that Blanca forged at CERN still accompany her, and she speaks, smiling, about the illusion with which they work, about their brilliant minds and their big hearts. She well remembers how excited she was when she arrived to CERN. She felt like a little girl again. It was difficult for her to shrink her smile from ear to ear when, ready for taking the photo for the access card, she was told not to smile that much. How to control so much emotion?

During her five years as a CERNie, Blanca was part of several projects. She started in civil engineering and, later on, she went to do a more mechanical design, an integration design, within the HiLumi team. She made sure that everything fit and that it was in accordance with the project’s requirements. Blanca was the link, the smiling piece that brought together the work of the different teams and departments.

She believes that it is important to find a balance between the personal demands and the enjoyment of the experience to make the most of each coffee and conversation with other CERNies, those more or less random beings who are the most beautiful things in this place. For Blanca, the beauty was in the mix, in the diversity that fitted everything, in the small big family that CERN is.

Blanca dreams now of breadcrumbs, no big loaves of bread. To engage every little wish in her daily life is enough. Go back to work? Yes, but only from a perspective of calm and serenity, because Blanca is a friend of the slow reading of life and, as Nietzsche wrote in her Aurora, reading well is reading slowly.