30 abril, 2018

Numa sala perto de mim #370

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018) sheds light on the harsh realities of life under German occupation in the Second World War in the small island of Guernsey on the English Channel. The story is told retrospectively from 1946, so we see how people deal with war trauma after the war is over, and how difficult it is to overcome loss or live with past decisions that will forever weigh in one's conscience... not easy to digest even though the 1946 story is far brighter and full of hope.

29 abril, 2018

Caprichos #482

I found him at the door when I arrived work around 8.15am
normally he comes on weekdays and gathers lots of attention from the staff
but today his loud meoooow had only one reverent listener (in me).
His collar has a phone number and says: "I'm Rolf. I'm not lost."
Rolf likes company so he got closer and when I sat on the corridor sofa by his side he jumped on my lap purring. I brought him to the office and put him on a side chair, but as soon as he saw me sitting by the desk he jumped on my lap again, which he used as a spring board to access the desk.
Once there, he stared at the window with just enough intent to make me realize I should open it. He remained on the table a few more minutes (I want to believe not to hurt my feelings) before calmly stepping outside disappearing shortly after. I shared his company for about 30 minutes... I loved it, but I think he was surprised not to have more attention... too sad not to know the days of the week!

28 abril, 2018

Pormenores #148

View from my window
give it a rainy day and a good camera and you can see awesome details!

27 abril, 2018

Retirado do contexto #244

Não está mau para marca de tomates...
 de Espanha, claro. Em Portugal era melhor escolher outro nome.

26 abril, 2018

Primavera #89

Daffodils are definitively the highlight of spring in England!
Os narcisos são definitivamente a imagem da primavera na Inglaterra!

25 abril, 2018

Parece que estou a ouvir #257

Hard to believe R.E.M.'s Imitation of Life (from the album Reveal) is already 17 years old!
_____________

R.E.M.

Charades pop skill
Water hyacinth
Name by a poet
Imitation of life
Like a koi in a frozen pond
Like a goldfish in a bowl
I don't want to hear you cry
That sugar cane that tasted good
That cinnamon, that's Hollywood
Come on, come on
No-one can see you try
You want the greatest thing
The greatest thing since bread came sliced
You've got it all
You've got it sized
Like a Friday fashion show
Teenager cruising in the corner
Trying to look like you don't try
That sugar cane that tasted good
That cinnamon, that's Hollywood
Come on, come on
No-one can see you try
No-one can see you cry
That sugar cane that tasted good
That' freezing rain, that's what you could
Come on, come on
No-one can see you cry
This sugar cane, this lemonade
This hurricane, I'm not afraid
Come on, come on
No-one can see me cry
This lightning storm, this tidal wave
This avalanche, I'm not afraid
Come on, come on
No-one can see me cry
That sugar cane that tasted good
That's who you are, that's what you could
Come on, come on
No-one can see you cry
That sugar cane that tasted good
That's who you are, that's what you could
Come on, come on
No-one can see you cry

24 abril, 2018

Coisas que não mudam #445

Remnants of St. George in Barcelona
Resquícios de Sant Jordi em Barcelona

23 abril, 2018

Coisas que não mudam #444

Em dia de São Jorge, uma bela imagem da ilha de São Jorge
São Jorge é também o padroeiro de Inglaterra, por cá o google está assim:
Fiquei também a saber que a bandeira inglesa ostenta a cruz de São Jorge

22 abril, 2018

21 abril, 2018

Palavras lidas #376

They started eating in silence, then after a while Pereira asked Silva what he thought about all this. All this what?, asked Silva. What's going on in Europe, said Pereira. Oh don't bother your head, replied Silva, we're not in Europe here, we're in Portugal. Pereira declares he couldn't let the matter rest: Yes, but you read the papers and listen to the wireless, he insisted, you know what's going on in Germany and Italy, they're fanatics, they're out to put the world to fire and sword. Don't bother your head, replied Silva, they're miles away. True enough, said Pereira, but Spain isn't miles away, it's right next door, and you know what's going on in Spain, it's a bloodbath, despite the fact that there was a legally elected government, it's all the fault of one bigot of a general. Even Spain is miles away, said Silva, we're in Portugal here. That may be so, said Pereira, but even here things aren't too rosy, the police have things all their own way, they're killing people, they ransack people's houses, there's censorship, I tell you this is an authoritarian state, the people count for nothing, public opinion counts for nothing. Silva gave him a steady look and laid down his fork. Listen to me Pereira, said Silva, do you still believe in public opinion?, well let me tell you, public opinion is a gimmick thought up by the English and the Americans, it's them who are shitting  us up with this public opinion rot, if you'll excuse my language, we've never had their political system, we don't have their traditions, we don't even know what trade unions are, we're a southern people, Pereira, and we obey whoever shouts the loudest and gives the orders. (pp. 39-40)

Antonio Tabucchi, Declares Pereira: A True Account. Translated by Patrick Creagh. London: The Harvill Press, 1995.

20 abril, 2018

Primavera #88

Ser diferente / To be different

19 abril, 2018

Parece que estou a ouvir #256

Driving with your breaks on
Del Amiri

Driving through the long night
Trying to figure who's right 

and who's wrong
Now the kid has gone. 

I sit belted up tight,
She sucks on a match light, 
glowing bronze, steering on.
And I might be more a man 

if I stopped this in its tracks
And said come on, 

let's go home. 
But she's got the wheel,
And I've got nothing 

except what I have on.

When you're driving with the brakes on,
When you're swimming with your boots on,
It's hard to say you love someone
And it's hard to say you don't.

Trying to keep the mood right, 
trying to steer 
the conversation from
The thing we've done.
She shuts up the ashtray 

and I say it's a long way
back now hon
And she just yawns. 

And we might get lost some place
So desolate that 

no one where we're from 
would ever come
But she's got the wheel 
and I've got to deal from now on.

When you're driving with the brakes on,
When you're swimming with your boots on,
It's hard to say you love someone
And it's hard to say you don't.

But unless the moon falls tonight, 

unless continents collide,
Nothing's gonna make me 

break from her side.

Cause when you're driving with the brakes on,
When you're swimming with your boots on,
It's hard to say you love someone
And it's hard to say you don't.

18 abril, 2018

Numa sala perto de mim #369

The Third Murder (2017)a Japanese film where the truth is hard to find and who knows if it is ever told. A man awaits trial in prison for a murder he may or may not have committed, there are plenty of plausible versions for one or another alternative and quite a few people with an interest in the matter. The movie is slow, but the Japanese traits are ever so present! 

17 abril, 2018

Caprichos #481

Moving to the UK a little over six months ago (and having lived in the US for over a decade), I am becoming acquainted with new vocabulary. For instance, what Americans call potato chips, here goes by crisps. What Americans call french fries, here are called potato chips. And there are more variations. I forget the nationality of the person who told me that the English have some weird eating habits with crisps, which consists of eating them with bread as a sandwich... I said nothing but my heart lit up with happiness as something that I liked to much as a child was not just a weird stuff of my own. So my lunch plans today passed by a supermarket where I got the ingredients. It is not trivial to do in an office with no kitchen utensils around, but it is doable... the tricky part is opening the bread with your fingers. Piece of advice: take some of the white part out to create space for the crisps and when you're done stuffing them inside press and hold the sandwich tight, otherwise you'll have lots of crisp crumbles lying around, when the objective is to have them all either inside the bread or in your mouth! Ah the Brit I had inside since childhood without knowing... but there must still be something southern-European in me given my choice of side to go with the crisp sandwich ;-)
 
A viver no Reino Unido há pouco mais de seis meses (e tendo vivido nos Estados Unidos por mais de uma década), estou agora a tomar conhecimento de novo vocabulário. Por exemplo, batatas fritas de pacote, a que os americanos chamam potato chips, aqui chamam-se crisps. Batatas fritas, que os americanos chamam de french fries, aqui é chips. E há mais variações. Já não me lembro da nacionalidade da pessoa que me disse que os ingleses têm alguns hábitos alimentares esquisitos, como comer batatas fritas de pacote dentro do pão... eu não disse nada, mas fiquei muito contente cá dentro por algo que eu tanto gostava em criança não ser apenas uma coisa esquisita minha. Por isso os meus planos de almoço hoje passaram pelo supermercado onde encontrei os ingredientes. Não é super fácil preparar este almoço num gabinete sem utensílios de cozinha, mas faz-se... a parte mais complicada é abrir o pão com os dedos. Um conselho: tirar um bocado do miolo para criar espaço para as batatas fritas e quando se terminar de as meter lá dentro deve-se apertar e segurar a sanduíche firmemente, sob pena de haver muitas migalhas de batata frita por todo o lado, quando o objectivo é tê-las dentro do pão ou da boca! Ah o britânico que eu tinha em mim desde a infância sem saber... ainda assim, deve restar algo de sul-europeu  na minha pessoa dado o acompanhamento que escolhi para a minha sandes de batatas fritas ;-)

16 abril, 2018

Palavras lidas #375

A The Economist desta semana traz um artigo sobre Portugal acompanhado de um cartoon de António Costa montado na geringonça que voa voa, qual joaninha. Fala o artigo das peculiaridades do governo português que contrariamente a outros na Europa decidiu fazer alianças à esquerda e não à direita, virando assim caso de sucesso em termos de crescimento económico, talvez por não seguir políticas ditas de esquerda. O artigo observa, e bem, que isto é possível em Portugal e não em Espanha, na França, ou na Alemanha (entre outros) porque, contrariamente a esses países, o partido socialista português não nasceu das classes operárias (os socialistas espanhóis pertencem ao PSOE, onde o O representa Obrero), mas sim de uma burguesia descontente com a ditadura e que queria a todo o custo evitar um regime comunista depois de 1974, tal como o PSD se bem que este ainda um pouco mais à direita.

Assim se compreende o sucesso de Costa num cuidadoso equilíbrio de forças com comunistas e bloquistas a quem uma mera etiqueta a dizer "governo de esquerda" parece satisfazer... a meu ver óptimo. Se a esquerda continuar satisfeita com o arranjinho melhor ainda! Já era altura de haver consensos e seguir em frente... mandar bolas para fora não adianta a ninguém. 

Antes de seguir com o artigo na íntegra, fica a nota para o ante-título do artigo "the perky Portuguese." O tradutor do google oferece vários significados para a palavra perky, qual deles o mais indicativo do estado de espírito de António Costa: alegre, empertigado, desenvolto, ousado, vivo, altivo... que assim seja por muitos e bons!
___________

Charlemagne: the perky PortugueseSocial democracy is floundering everywhere in Europe, except Portugal

A small miracle on the Atlantic
Apr 14th 2018

ANTONIO COSTA, Portugal’s affable prime minister, greets your columnist with a broad grin as he settles his hefty frame into a sofa in his official residence. He has a lot to smile about. Lisbon, among Europe’s hottest tourist destinations, is enjoying a mini startup boom. Portugal’s footballers are the European champions, and its politicians have nabbed a clutch of senior international jobs. And above all, he is the winner of a high-stakes political gamble.

When Mr Costa’s Socialist Party lost an election in 2015 to the centre-right (and confusingly named) Social Democrats, who had overseen a harsh EU-imposed austerity programme during a three-year €78bn ($107bn) bail-out, most observers expected the Socialists to prop them up in a left-right “grand coalition” of the sort now common across Europe. Instead Mr Costa, the son of a communist intellectual from Goa, Portugal’s old colony in India, convinced two hard-left parties—the old-school Communists and the modish Left Bloc—to support a minority Socialist government in exchange for modest policy concessions.

Nothing like this had been tried before in Portugal. Mr Costa’s new friends wanted, variously, to write off debt, leave the euro zone, renationalise vast swathes of industry and quit NATO. The fury was swift, deep and near-universal. Foes nicknamed Mr Costa’s experiment the geringonça (“contraption”), and gave it six months at most. Portugal’s president threatened to reject the proposed government outright. Creditors feared a free-spending leftist government would send investors packing.

Yet over two years later the contraption is grinding along and the sky has failed to fall in. Some wage and pension cuts have been reversed, firms are creating jobs at a neat clip, foreign investors are eagerly sniffing around and the public finances are in rude health; the government hopes to balance the books next year. Portugal has become a bond-market darling while claiming to stand in the vanguard of the battle against austerity. “We showed that there is an alternative to ‘There is no alternative,’” says Mr Costa. He enjoys approval ratings most leaders would kill for. Little wonder Europe’s beleaguered social democrats are beating down his door.

Does Portugal have anything to teach them? Mr Costa notes modestly that “every country is specific.” Still, he has one or two ideas. Grand coalitions play into the hands of populists, he suggests, because they signal to voters that political contests are redundant. He cites Germany, the Netherlands and Austria as cautionary tales; social democratic parties in all three are floundering after governing with the right. An aide says that “civilised conflict” helps keep politics, and parties, alive. That is a bracing message in an era of cosy political pacts.

Pedro Magalhães, a political scientist at the University of Lisbon, points out that Portugal’s Socialists differ from many of their counterparts in Europe. The party sprang not from trade unions but from elites desperate to establish a bulwark against communism after the end of military rule in the mid-1970s. The party thus seeks power, not purity, and the election result gave a united left the chance to block a right-wing minority government. No one likes grand coalitions, but in many countries parliamentary arithmetic leaves centrist parties no choice but to team up against the extremes. Mr Costa’s gambit was bold, but also opportune.

The Left Bloc and the Communists hammer the Socialists on matters like foreign policy but hold fire when it matters, notably on the budget. Neither is fully comfortable with the deal, but both know they would find the centre-right alternative less palatable, and they can take credit for policies like raising the minimum wage or halting transport privatisations. Helpfully, the growth in Socialist support since 2015 has come largely at the expense of the right, soothing the leftists’ fear that the contraption would turn out to be their death warrant. Mr Costa says the arrangement will survive until next year’s election. And beyond? “Why not?”

Not a panacea

Even Mr Costa’s opponents concede that he is a canny operator. But his success has been oiled by a healthy squirt of good luck. The Socialists assumed office as Portugal’s recovery took off, aided by growth in the European markets that take 70% of its exports, and built on the measures taken by the previous government. The European Central Bank’s bond-buying had calmed markets. Tourism has boomed, thanks to instability in other warm countries. Perhaps most importantly immigration, the issue tearing apart so many European parties of the left, does not animate Portuguese voters. It is the departure of people that causes a bigger headache: during the crisis 250,000 Portuguese, disproportionately of working age, upped sticks in four years.

Portugal’s squeeze on spending had to be financed from somewhere. The axe has fallen on public investment, which was slashed in 2016 to the lowest level in the EU. Mario Centeno, the finance minister, says this was largely the result of a temporary drop in EU subsidies, and chuckles at the sight of “so-called neoliberals” who now consider Keynes their “god”. He prefers to draw attention to Portugal’s healthier banks and buzzing universities, though he adds that investment is climbing again. Another fear surrounds Portugal’s huge debt, which explains Mr Centeno’s relentless focus on the deficit.

As this suggests, Portugal’s left-wing government is thriving partly because it is not especially left-wing. For now it is fixated on deficits and debt rather than investment and public services. A centre-right government would be doing much the same. And so, despite Mr Costa’s warm words, the contraption will surely prove to be a temporary marriage of convenience; his party is already said quietly to be putting out feelers to the Social Democrats. European leftists may find inspiration in Portugal. But they will have to seek ideas elsewhere.

This article appeared in the 
Europe section of the print edition under the headline "The perky Portuguese"

15 abril, 2018

Ditto #383

The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.

--Alfred Hitchcock

14 abril, 2018

Palavras lidas #374

Peace
by C.K. Williams

We fight for hours, through dinner, through the endless evening, who
even knows now what about,
what could be so dire to have to suffer so for, stuck in one another’s craws
like fishbones,
the cadavers of our argument dissected, flayed, but we go on with it, to
bed, and through the night,
feigning sleep, dreaming sleep, hardly sleeping, so precisely never touch-
ing, back to back,
the blanket bridged across us for the wintry air to tunnel down, to keep
us lifting, turning,
through the angry dark that holds us in its cup of pain, the aching dark,
the weary dark,
then, toward dawn, I can’t help it, though justice won’t I know be served,
I pull her to me,
and with such accurate, graceful deftness she rolls to me that we arrive
embracing our entire lengths.

Caprichos #480

E hoje vi um ganso diferente!
Quem não gostou nada dele foram os gansos residentes
um deles eriçou-se e só descansou quando mandou o outro embora.
Diz o livro que também existe por cá, apesar de eu nunca tinha visto. Por aqui dominam os gansos do Canadá.

13 abril, 2018

Primavera #87

Todos os anos sem falhar onde quer que seja...
seja bem vinda D. Primavera!

12 abril, 2018

Numa sala perto de mim #368

The Nile Hilton Incident (2017). A violent death at the Hilton in Cairo in early January 2011 is not properly investigated because it involves a member of parliament who is close friends with the son of Hosni Mubarak, the dictator in power. But the popular revolt on the streets may change the balance of power... or maybe not. The profusion of corruption is staggering... more than violence in the movie, you see money constantly changing hands. Memorable sentence:

Do you think you're in Switzerland?! There's no justice in this country.

10 abril, 2018

Pormenores #147

A store window in Brighton laden with little chicks all wearing spectacles!
A hairdresser out of all places...

09 abril, 2018

No Times de hoje #183

East Timor on the New York Times in the Sunday travel section. The article talks about the country's beautiful coral reefs, which could be a potential magnet for tourism in the desperately poor country... bout would they be preserved?

It's the age old question: shall they escape poverty and lose their "uniqueness"?

08 abril, 2018

Caprichos #479

Do germânico almoço de domingo
sobrou só a mostarda!
Nota para o crout Brandenburguês...
muito melhor que o chucrute Alsaciano!

07 abril, 2018

Pedaços de Berlim #1

A cidade de Berlim poderá ter muitas coisas, mas foi e será conhecida pelo muro que a dividiu entre Agosto de 1961 e Novembro de 1989. 
Ficam algumas images do muro num fantástico fim-de-semana de sol em Berlim.
Grande parte do muro foi demolida, mas uma secção mantém-se ainda de pé em Bernauerstraße que de um lado era Berlim Oriental e do outro Berlim Ocidental. De um dia para o outro as pessoas de um dos lados da rua deixaram de poder sair de casa pela porta da frente, pouco a pouco as janelas foram cimentadas para impedir fugas e mais tarde os prédios foram demolidos, o cemitério mudado e a igreja paroquial interdita (e mais tarde também demolida), tudo isto para dar lugar à construção do muro vigiado a partir de torres do lado oriental (de onde aconteciam as fugas) onde uma faixa de terreno esvaziada, à custa de despejos e demolições, facilitava a detecção de potenciais fugas.
Não foram poucos os que tentaram fugir saltando os cerca de 3 metros de betão armado ou escavando túneis que aproveitavam o declive do terreno... mas não foram muitos os que conseguiram escapar. A memória dos que perderam a vida nessa tentativa, assim como a daqueles cujas valas comuns no cemitério de Friedhof Sophien II nunca foram mudadas aquando da construção do muro, não foi esquecida.
Ficam imagens de fugas dramáticas, de separações forçadas e do cumprir de ordens, por mais disparatadas que fossem.
No local da antiga Igreja da Reconciliação, demolida em 1985,
ergue-se hoje o edifício da nova igreja com o mesmo nome
com alguns vestígios do que se conseguiu conservar do antigo edifício
e ainda uma cópia da estátua da reconciliação
à semelhança da encontrada na destruída catedral de Coventry.
E não poder passar para o lado de lá
vendo pássaros e aviões fazê-lo livremente?