October Musings

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted.  To be frank, not only have we been doing a lot of unpacking and filling-in of empty spaces in the house (we’ll do a post of our new home once things are tidied up a bit more), I’ve been incredibly busy at work.  That is both good and bad - good because having work is good, bad because Ann has been doing most of the unpacking and I’m mentally wiped at the end of each day so I’ve not been much help.  I’ve just completed a big project and decided I needed a few days off.  Not only does it mean that I can finish off the last of the unpacking (and getting my office into shape), I have some time and mental space for a blog post!

Before I start with the stories, we have a couple of new subscribers to the blog. Thank you. I hope I don’t make your eyes roll to the back of your head too much.

This is another of my musings posts, partially because of the fact we haven’t really done anything special - we’ve been too busy.  But that doesn’t mean we’ve hibernated the whole time.  While we haven’t gotten out to eat as much as we had wanted (my workload has put a damper on the eating our big meal at lunch time, and we still haven’t gotten into the eating dinner at 7 pm or 8 pm at night thing) we have managed a few outings for food.

Instead of tempting you with plate after plate of images (don’t worry, you will get some of those, I assure you), I decided to also show you some of the iPhone shots I took on our wanderings around town.  One of the images I took is one I’ve shared before, except this time we were there during the later part of the day and with overcast skies, which is how I suspected it would look its best.  It is, of course the Dragon Fountain we passed by after our fantastic lunch at Restaurante Ignácio. 

If you recall from a previous post, Restaurante Ignácio was a recommendation made by a shopkeeper and she described it as having great Portuguese food.  It does, everything we’ve had there (twice now) has been incredible.  The waiters we’ve had have been engaging and the recommendations simply fantastic!

A week or so later we wound up at one of our favorites, La Piola.  What can one say?  Italian food!  That Saturday I had a vegetarian gnocchi.  As usual - excellent!

While dining with Ann, I kept looking over her shoulder at the “graphic art” (ok, spray paint) on the alley wall behind her and finally realized that one of the images looked like Malcolm Gladwell.  I’ve loved listening to his Revisionist History podcast and pretty much everything he discusses.  He has described himself as a thinker and that’s what he does - he makes you think.   His books are well worth reading.  Perhaps the story of his that people are most familiar with is his analysis of David and Goliath.  In Malcom’s view, it wasn’t the amazing feat everyone thought it was.  It was a massacre; in fact pretty much murder.  Goliath didn’t stand a chance.  Curious as to why?  Read one of his books or watch one of his YouTube discussions!  You’ll eventually come across it.  The answer has to do with technology.

Actually, turn on YouTube - then you’ll know why the graphic reminded me of him, especially a younger Malcolm!

And finally, for food at least, last weekend we decided to return to the RetroKitchen, definitely one of my favorite restaurants we’ve found.  It’s a really small place, perhaps 7 indoor tables, a few outside in the back.  And their menu changes daily and you get a choice of three or four appetizers and 3 or so main courses (and desserts too!). 

The above is a Portuguese fish and shrimp stew (moqueca) with rice. So far I’ve been 2 for 2!

Moving on, Ann and I have voted.  We were worried about whether we were registered or not (despite the fact that I’d had to change our registration after we moved to Jim’s so we could vote in the primaries, and then again after that to our address in Portugal after we’d voted . . . but this time really mattered and we were nervous about it given we hadn’t heard anything).  So I sent them an e-mail back in September and they said yes we were registered and absentee ballots were being sent out in a few days.

It took about 3 weeks for our ballots to arrive but they did.

Oregon is all vote-by-mail, so nothing was unusual about the ballot itself.  However, being absentee meant we had a couple of other options - vote by fax or vote by e-mail.  Given we couldn’t trust the normal mail system (it’s not just the well-documented USPS shenanigans, mail delivery time between the US and Portugal is slow, and we weren’t going to drive down to Lisbon to drop it off at the US Embassy to go by diplomatic mail), our options were to pay for special courier delivery (our DHL package of signed documents to our Portuguese bank cost us over $100.00) or go electronic (fax?  What’s a fax?  Where in the world do you find a fax machine this day and age?  And how do you find one in Portugal?  [that’s the sort of things we still have to deal with in our transition here]).  So it was fill out the forms, scan them and e-mail them (checking multiple times that we did everything required correctly).  The only drawback to electronic is that it is not a secret ballot.  Well, in this case, it’s not like there’s any question who I’m voting for.  (Hint, it’s definitely not for cadet bone spur).

Later that day I received confirmation that my vote will be counted!  Ann got her confirmation too!!!!

Getting around and getting things done continues to be interesting.  That said, it’s amazing how well some things work out (and how difficult some “easy” things have been to do) and we continue to make progress.  A couple of stores let you set the language of a self-check stand to English, so we now do that with no problem.  Also, I pretty much have ATM machines down pat.  And I really couldn’t tell you in English what my NIF number is - I have to either say it in Portuguese or type it (actually I know it best in sign-language and then verbalize it into Portuguese, and then translate it into English when I need to do that - crazy I know!).  

Then there was the interaction at El Corte! Inglês (one of the food stores we visit - best chips in the world [Tyrrell’s Sea Salt and Vinegar] and a fantastic collection of Scotch [despite no Macallan’s]) a few days ago (what inspired me to do a musings post).  We went through the check out counter with the common routine that most of the time is exactly the same and to which I’ve become familiar.  Olá, bom dia! . . . Tenho sacos. (I’ve got bags.) . . . . Sim, 3-0-0-2-4-3-2-0-0.”  All fine and dandy there.  Then an unexpected question, “Francês?”  “Não.  Inglês . . . não, Americano, EUA.” It had dawned on me that she hadn’t asked me if I spoke French, but whether I was French.  So my response went from, “No, English,” to “No, American, USA.”  The clerk then started speaking English and that sent a flood of memories back from an incident during my DLI days. 

At one point during my year of Russian studies in Monterey the flu swept through our faculty.  So for a couple of days we had a whole team of substitute teachers from the other Russian school (that had a class that just graduated) teaching our classes.  One of them was particularly memorable.  She was a stern-looking, dark haired woman who was very precise in how she spoke.  We first had her for a class on speaking, where we had to respond to simple questions.  For some reason she winced every time I answered.  Now, my Russian wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad either.  So I wondered, “What’s up with her?”

Well, a couple classes later - our reading out loud class - she’s back.  So we get to work, everyone reading a paragraph or two from the passage in the text book.  I get about half-way through my paragraph and she says, in English - “Stop!”  She catches herself and then says, in Russian, “You, you don’t have to read any more today.  In fact, don’t say anything for the rest of the lesson.”  By that point folks are looking around and I’m sure I have a “WTF?” look on my face.  Then she says as clearly and with as much disgust in her voice as anyone has ever said anything to me - in Russian of course - “You speak Russian like a German!”  At least I didn’t have to speak for the rest of the class!

So the next week, when we had our usual teachers back in class  I asked my favorite teacher, Gospozha Mankina, if she knew what was up (because we always tried to get the teachers off-topic to discuss something more interesting).  She would be the one to ask for any number of reasons.  Not only did we get along very well and I could pretty much ask her anything, she was also a German teacher back in Russia.  I started, “Well, last week when we had Gospozha ??? (I don’t recall her name), she said I speak Russian like a German.”  “Well, you do.”  “Yeah, but there was a disgust in her voice that was pretty obvious.”  “Yes, I heard about that.  She apologized to me about what she said.  Let’s just say, unlike me who likes the sound of the German language, there are Russians who still don’t think kindly of Germans.  And with what her family went through during the war, she has reason to.”  Now understand, this was coming from a woman who lived through the siege of Leningrad as a young child.  I can’t imagine what the other teacher had gone through.

To bring this story back to the present, well, I guess I speak Portuguese like a Frenchman!  

Oh, and if you want to hear the story about the Siege of Leningrad (told to us on another one of our in-class diversions), which was the basis for a comment that she frequently made that infuriated all of the macho-males in the unit, you’ll have to come visit us in Portugal.  Just ask me to tell you the story about the Siege of Leningrad and I’ll pull out a beverage of your choice and we’ll sit down for a nice (well, not so nice) chat!

One of the things we’ve done way more of in Portugal than the US is go to malls.  Not our idea of a fun time.  But given that certain stores (like the one store that mimics an Apple store but isn’t really an Apple store) is in a mall, and all of the IKEAs are connected to malls, we’ve unfortunately spent more time in malls than either of us would like.  

That’s what brought us to the mall by the IKEA in Matosinhos, just north of Portugal, last Saturday morning.  For some odd reason, IKEAs do not carry everything in their catalogs at each store, so we find ourselves sometimes heading over to Matosinhos to get things we can’t get in Braga (not everything is worth an extra €30 delivery charge).  We had some storage furniture we needed to get to finish our unpacking (earlier in the week we’d pretty much cleared out Braga’s allotment of wired shelving units) and the items are not available in Braga.  

We arrived early and didn’t want to stand in the long line forming in front of IKEA, so why not take a walk around the mall (for health reasons, and I suspect to remind us why we don’t like malls, as if we needed one [do you get we really just do not enjoy the mall experience?]).  Well, we got a bit more than we bargained for . . .  call it reaffirmation of our beliefs.

First we came across a storefront that I just had to post in Facebook. The comment basically went along the lines of: Yes, they celebrate Christmas in the same sort of way they do in the US and I guess I can’t complain about Christmas decorations coming out before Thanksgiving because they don’t have Thanksgiving here (why would they?).

Well, a few minutes later we came across this - another question answered.  Yes they do celebrate Halloween.  I guess, because this is the only place where we’ve seen halloween ornaments hanging.

Now I have to figure out whether or not to stock up on candy.  Not such a good idea for my waistline if no kids show up.  

This period of transition, where we’re not out photographing, is trying.  Ignore for the moment the fact that everyone is going through a similar experience with Covid-19 (and how thankful I am that this is happening now and not two years from now) and everyone is a bit tired of it all, but Ann and I are pushing the unpacking and getting our lives here organized so we can start doing some of the things that attracted us to Portugal.   Most of all satisfying our desire to explore and photograph.

Facebook has been helpful to me in that respect with their “memories” that come up periodically.  It’s been especially present this past month because it’s been that late-September through early-October period where Ann and I have planned most of our bigger annual photography trips.  Take this “memory” from a couple of years ago that came up recently . . . 

Now, we don’t just have unpacking to do before we can start the bigger adventures (again, setting aside Covid-19 for the moment), we are now without a rig.  Still, that is in the works and at some point down the road (read: about a year and a half) we will have our Bimobile.  That in itself will be another blog post.  So for now we periodically cruise YouTube for overlanding and travel stories (to include trade-show videos of Bimobiles in general as well as the one we’re getting) not to mention photography videos in locations we might try and visit.  It won’t be too much longer before we start actually planning trips and, well, some of the videos are giving us ideas . . . 

Now the question is whether we’re as adventurous as some of these other people!

While some people may feel like looking at Facebook memories can be a bit depressing (reminders of what you no longer are doing or able to do), it can very much be the opposite in some instances.  Take this one below for example:

This came from the trip that convinced Ann and I that we wanted to get a rig and get out there on our own (and off-road to boot).  Within 2 months of taking that photograph, we’d put our money down on the Sportsmobile (Beast).  The more I thought about the memory the better I felt.  Why?  Because the time between when we took that photograph and the time we picked up the Sportsmobile is now about the time between now and when we pick up the Bimobile (yeah, the wait time for that is 25 months - thank goodness we ordered it during our trip here in January).  Even more so, it reminded me that all of these incredible adventures Ann and I had in the Sportsmobile occurred in the short period between when we picked Beast up and when we sold her.  

So the wait is bearable, there’s lots of planning to do, and the adventures will come quickly afterwards.  That’s the type of optimism I can use right now.  

And while we haven’t been photographing recently (heck, not yet really exploring towns), photography hasn’t totally left us.  A week or so ago I got an e-mail from Charlie Waite about a special edition book (nice book, in a slip cover, with an original black and white print [from a traditional wet darkroom nonetheless]).  The e-mail arrived about 9 pm and given that there were only a couple dozen copies available, I went downstairs and ordered my copy as quickly as I could.

It arrived on Monday.  It’s a lovely book and a beautiful image.  I must confess that I’ve taken artistic liberty with the slip-cover face.  It’s a solid dark grey (almost black) material; the gradation from dark to light is my doing.  I hope Charlie doesn’t mind.

Well, that covers our musings for now.  Not too long from now we should be doing a post showing our home (question is whether we wait for our bench from Penafiel, and/or whether we put up our prints on the walls before we photograph the house - I doubt we’ll have the rugs cleaned [another one of those, how do you get this done in Portugal? issues] by then).  And we have to wait a bit to totally finish out our photo area in the basement because IKEA is out of the tables we want as well as a couple of storage cabinets.

But as a teaser, let me leave you with the image below.

Yes, that’s the copy stand Ann bought me just before deciding she was going to retire, which meant I delayed copying my old 4x5 negatives and other work from the old days.  And yes, I’ve unpacked and have stored my 4x5, 120 and 35mm negatives and slides from those days (check out the drawers).  It will be a lot of work, but I’m looking forward to digitizing the old images.

Also, I’m hoping to get back to more photography posts.  While it may not involve trips quite yet, I’m hoping to start working on those old images and ones from our trips from the past few years.  If I’m diligent, you should see posts about individual images that I or Ann (if I can convince her) have taken.

And, finally, we’re in the planning stages for getting another printer, so we’ll hopefully be doing posts on what we’ve printed.  We found out that we couldn’t just bring our old printer here, so we forwarded it to a good home (Len, you better be taking good care of it).  Right now we’re trying to decide on the printer - Epson has come out with a new line that isn’t comprehensively available yet so we may (or may not) be switching over from Canon to Epson.  A lot will have to do with the easiest way for us to get inks, etc.  More research to do on that . . . .  But it’s all happening, slowly but surely.

Now to finish unpacking my office!