The Vacs Facts

Well, just in case you haven't heard, I'm leaving Portugal and going to Bangladesh. New job and all that. And so I needed to get some vaccinations done, to cope with all those nasty diseases that eastern mozzies carry.

Had I been in England I am fairly sure that I'd have spent an hour on the phone, making enquiries, being put on hold and eventually, possibly after making a second phone call to a different number, booking an appointment with someone who could stab me viciously with enough needles to make me invulnerable to all the different sorts of nasties that are abundant in Bangladesh. Well, maybe not; who knows? Then it would have been a simple matter of turning up and enduring the Pain Of A Thousand Needles.

Here, in Portugal, I was not so sure of the routine, and so I made a few enquiries. The Nurse at my place of work gave me the advice that I needed to send an email to a special clinic in Lisbon to arrange an appointment to get the vaccinations done. My wife's Nurse at her workplace gave differing advice; to book an appointment with the travelling work doctor to get the prescriptions filled out and then pop into the "drop in clinic" in Oeiras to get the vaccinations done. Given the choices, the chance to speak in English to a doctor and then use the drop in centre was a clear winner. So my wife booked an appointment.

The Doctor clearly explained the routine to us. The Hepatitus A and B medicines would need to be bought, using the appropriate prescription, from a pharmacist's shop in advance of visiting the drop in centre. No problem, or so it would seem. Except when we tried to buy the vaccines, the pharmacist explained that she hadn't got enough in stock for all five of us. Ah well, we took what we could get, which was two adult doses and one children's dose, and decided to head to Oeiras anyway.

Upon arrival at Oeiras, we were greeted by a most helpful guard, who on hearing us talking in English about which option to select at the ticket dispensing machine, asked if he could help us. After explaining what we were there to do, he led us swiftly straight through to the desk (for some reason bypassing the multitudinous people waiting patiently for their own numbers to come up on the plasma screen) to be dealt with right away. More luck! The lady sitting at the desk also spoke very good English! (Or did the guard know, and that's why he rushed us through?) It was probably just as well that the lady spoke English, because four hours later, after much form filling, passport checking and even more form filling,  we were eventually led two at a time through to the doctor's room, for our jabs. The adults were brave. The children cried. The paperwork got a bit mixed up again. However, it was not long before we left the clinic with plasters on our arms and paperwork to prove it had all indeed happened. Oh, all except from the Japanese Encephalitis jabs, which we found out that we should have bought from the Farmácia in advance along with the Hep ones. Ah well.

Round Two. Ding Ding! We were much better prepared for round two. We went to the pharmacist well in advance and booked the vaccination drugs. We also decided that we'd look into getting them done at the Private Hospital, "Clinica CUF", in Cascais since it opened late and (most importantly) at weekends. So, Saturday morning comes along and we're all up at the crack of dawn, prescriptions and drugs in a bag, heading down to CUF. We find the reception and take a number. And sit to wait. There were not many people before us, so we didn't have to wait long. Our number comes up, and we approached the desk to explain that we needed to have some vaccinations done. "We only do that on weekdays."

Round Three. Ding Ding...  Phew. This is tiring. It was a Tuesday and I'd already been to the Farmacia in advance, two days before, and bought the Japanese Encephalitis drugs (which were blooming expensive!) and so we were at this point most definitely winning. Off we trotted to CUF once again. We were getting used to this now, and since we were already present on their computer system, it was only 30 minutes later that the jabs were done, the paperwork done and the payment, which was less than before, all done. Knockout!

Of course the Second Bout is coming up, when we have to all get the "second dose" of all the drugs that we've already had, enduring once again the pain, cost and children's tears all over again.

A New Sun

Winter seems to have dragged on and on and on this year. Spring has been a long time coming. There was a time about a month ago when we had a few days of glorious springtime sunshine and everyone was saying, "That's it. Summer is coming." Except it didn't. A few days of sunshine and then the rain started again. Then, again, a few days of rain, and cloud, for maybe a week and the sun came out, gloriously brightening up the sky, and once again, people were saying, "That's it. Summer is coming." Except it didn't. Again. And that pattern has repeated itself over and over it seems, never quite shaking off the bitter cold winter weather.

So today, for the fifth day in a row, we have sunshine once again. Will this be it? Is Summer truly on it's way? I certainly hope so. It feels a little different this time. The dark clouds on the horizon are gone and the sunshine definitely feels like it's here to stay. Except those dark imposing clouds that sit, ever present, over the Sintra hills, creating a micro-climate that insidiously surrounds the hilltop town of Sintra, envoloping it on all sides with a shadow of low black clouds. On an otherwise clear day, from the viewpoint of Cascais you can actual see these clouds tumbling down the hillsides. The historic town of Sintra is the location of the historic Palace of Portuguese Royalty of years gone by and so, in reverent honour, this weather phenomenon is affectionately named by the locals "The Queen's Fart."

Summer here for my family and I though will be a hectic one. I'm hoping that I will get to spend at least a few beach days doing not much in particular except enjoying the sunshine, the sea and building castles with the kids. But there is lots to do. Lots and lots. And lots. Because there is some important news. I have a new job in Bangladesh. There, I've said it. Actually, my wife and I have both managed to secure new jobs out there, and so my family and I will be moving out of Portugal and heading East, to the city of Dhaka in Bangladesh, where I will once again be a full time employee, earning a full time wage and enjoying all the full time hours at work. It was about time I got myself fully employed though, to be honest, and gave my career a swift kick up the rear end. I was getting nowhere fast treading water in part time employment. But there is simply oh so much to do before we leave Portugal. There's packing and arranging and sorting and selling stuff and more packing. Not to mention vacinations and visas, change of address forms and the small matter of a UK tax return, and probably a million other things that I haven't even thought of yet to do before we get on that plane to Asia.

I've made a start on the new "Expat in Bangladesh" blog though! Click the flag on the right to see it! (And don't forget to bookmark it in your favourites!) For the present I have decided to stick with the familiar theme, but it may change. Of course there are no posts to show right now, and that will most certainly change, and probably well in advance of August. I do plan to blog on both blogs, at least for the foreseeable, so don't go wandering off yet! I have a whole stack of draft posts about all sorts of Portuguese topics that I need to finish off and publish.

In the meantime though, the sun is very definitely shining down on Portugal and I shall endeavor to make the most of my time left here. This weekend is destined to be a beach weekend with swimming and sand castles. After that, I think most of the weekends through the rest of May and into the start of June are taken up with "Life Stuff" and "Work Stuff" and "Bangladesh Stuff" until we take a quick trip, just for a few days, to the UK. Then it's back here to Portugal for the rest of June and July. We move out to Bangladesh in the first few days of August.

Spring Break!

Sorry that it has been so long since I blogged. It's been a busy month. And indeed it has been a month. To be honest, it feels like longer, and yes I've missed blogging. I mean, I did slip in a quickie about football last week, but that aside, I've not been doing much blogging.

(Oh my gawd, trying to type this on my old English layout keyboard is sooo difficult! All the punctuation keys are in the wrong place! I'm so used to typing on Portuguese keyboards these days, especially since my old English Desktop machine died and was out of action for a few weeks until I managed to source out a replacement Power Supply Unit. But that's another (decidedly boring) story.)

Anyway...

A couple of weeks ago, on a Thursday, Spring started. And it must be said that it started with a bang. With the kids being on their mid term break we decided, with some persuasion from the littlest one, to go to Lisbon Zoo. The littlest had been to Lisbon Zoo before, but way back when he was still being pushed around in a push chair and he was too young to remember. So, with guilt sitting in the pit of my stomach brought on by his albeit incorrect protestations that he'd never been to the Zoo, and a little excitement at the prospect of actually going there again myself, we decided that as Thursday was deemed to be the first day of Spring Sun, to go to the Zoo.

We set off with a plan, in the car, towards Lisbon. The eldest needed some new school uniform, since he just refuses to stop growing, and so a sensible plan was hatched. We'd drive to the El Corte Ingles Department Store and park in their car park for the day, visit the Zoo and upon our return, would pop up to the top floor to purchase the required items after our day out looking at the Lions and Gorillas, etc. There is a Metro station at El Corte Ingles, and so after a brief and somewhat amusing miscalculation involving three flights of escalators and the eventual realisation that we should have gone up to reach the Metro station, we were sitting on a train with two stops to go before the Jardim Zoologicos.

Tired and weary we headed out for the underground, dutifully helping a cheery American couple in succesfully re-charging their Metro tickets along the way, and boarded the tube to El Corte Ingles, to the car park and eventually home. What a tiring day.

Two days later the top of my head, where the hair no longer grows, started peeling from the sunburn. Honest. What a fantastic day!

ACM to host National team before Brazil!!

Just a quickie...

I stumbled across a blog, with some exciting news for fans of Estoril Praia. What is more, it seems to be the blog of one Alexandre Faria, the Vice President of our fantastic football club! The post that I actually came across, was this one...

http://alexandrefaria.blogspot.pt/2014/02/estagio-nos-eua-e-jogos-com-mexico-e.html

...where we find out that our beloved stadium, the Estádio António Coimbra da Mota, will be used to host Portugal's national team before they head out to Brazil to join the World Cup! (I'm sure that most of you not-speaking-Portuguese types like myself have a "translate" button installed on your browsers by now, huh?) So, I'll keep you posted, and if I get to shake hands with Ronaldo, I'll be sure to have someone take a photo!

Spring Already?

It's very strange, nay, weird, to say but Spring seems to have already Sprung around these parts. It seems like it was only Christmas yesterday, and yet suddenly Spring seems to be here, bursting out of an overly large fake cardboard cake and shouting, "Ta dah," in it's very best and loudest voice.

The Hail on the Roundabout...

Yet the rain still comes. The wind too. And a couple of weeks ago we had Hail. Portugal being Portugal of course, with it's penchant for extreme weather phenomena, meant that it was not just any old hail. Oh no. We had hailstones the size of Garden Peas falling so hard, so fast and so intensely that on one particular roundabout that I have to navigate on the way to work every day was iced up with compacted hail. It was indeed very strange. As I approached the roundabout I could see that traffic was queuing up and thought that someone must have broken down or had an accident. As I continued down the hill, along the dual carriageway towards the roundabout I could see that there seemed to be what looked like snow piling up on the edges of the carriageway. It all seemed very reminiscent of England when the snow starts to melt and the slushy polluted black ice builds up at the kerbside. Eventually, after moving steadily along with the queuing cars I could see that the edges of the carriageway were lined with what looked like snow frogspawn, with the compacted hailstones revealing dark centres spread throughout the semi-translucent icy mass. Traversing the rather large roundabout revealed that the other side was awash with molten hail to such an extent that the inside of the three lanes wash flooded to a foot deep. I later learned that the majority of the hail had fallen overnight, and with the early morning sunrise the melt had begun, and hence caused the flooding. It was still very strange though, since the hail did seem to be confined to this one particular large roundabout.

And yet Spring is almost here. You can feel it in the air. There is a freshness and clarity to the atmosphere. The rainstorms, which although currently frequent, seem to be cleansing the air, refreshing the soil and rejuvinating dormant plant growth. Our own hedges have started to sprout new brighter, greener leaves and branches. I pointed out to my children last week, as we drove along the road, that some of the shrubs in the verges had started to sprout delicate little white flowers. The hedges that line the gardens of our neighbour's houses have started, just in a small way, to sprout their springtime purple flowers.

That said, perhaps we're just having a very mild winter. It does seem a little warmer than it did last year, and having bought some more firewood only last week, it does indeed fell like I am burning a lot less of the stuff this year, well, so far at any rate. Mustn't grumble though. I know that all along the West coastal regions of Europe have suffered some pretty intense storms this winter. Wales got hit really bad, with my old home town of Aberystwyth taking a right battering along it's seafront promenade. I heard also today that Cornwall is battening down the hatches once again in preparation for "round two" of the big swell of extreme weather coming in from the Atlantic. Down south here in Portugal of course we've had the good and bad side of the winter storms. On the bad side there has been a couple of seafront bars which quite literally have been reduced to nothing more than floor boards and insurance claims. On the up side, the surfers around here, of which there are many, are loving the big waves and the popular surfing towns are inundated with travelling surfers wanting waves to ride and with money to spend. Today I noticed that yet another brave soul, a plumber from England by the name of Andrew Cotton has joined the ranks surfers attempting to out-perform each other riding ever increasingly large waves at Nazare.

A cloudy day in Estoril, on the beach with the gulls.

For me though, I'll be glad when the rainy weather is finished. And I know my kids will be too. For them it seems that winter brings a time when we don't get to go to the park. Or the beach. Well, certainly not as much as they would like to. It's a case of grabbing each break between the rain and wind that you can, taking the initiative and getting out there and doing something. You might have to put a couple of extra layers on, especially as the wind down on the beaches can be harsh and biting, but with a little preparation, and a swift decisive mindset, one can still find the occasional moment to enjoy the currently empty beaches, sharing them only with the multitudinous seagulls and the occasional dog-walker.

Loud and Proud!

Over the last few months my musical taste has acquired a new slant. On the drive to work and back I often have the radio on, tuned in to the local Cascais station, "Cento e Cinco Ponto Quatro", that is, 105.4. The station plays a mix of Portuguese and English songs, and often with a leaning towards rock music of the 80's and 90's. It is not uncommon to hear bands such as AC/DC, U2, David Bowie and many other popular artists that I would have been listening to as a young boy. Each trip in the car is like a flashback to halcyon days and when a song comes on that I remember well, and liked, I crank it up!

Like I said though, the station plays a mix of songs English and Portuguese music, and consequently I'm getting to know some of these Portuguese songs to the point where I can sing along. However, I am very much aware that I am probably making a lot of the words up and hearing them incorrectly, so occasionally I try and look them up on the internet. One song I managed to figure out was "Cavalos de Corrida", which was written in 1980 by Portuguese rock band UHF. They regularly play the song and when they do you will find me driving along, singing (badly) along to the correct lyrics in the choruses, "Agora, agora, agora, agora, tu és um cavalo de corrida." (Translation: Now, now, now, now, you are a racehorse.)

UHF - "Rua do Carmo"

Another song that is played quite frequently on 105.4 is "Rua do Carmo" which I also recently spent some time on the internet looking for the correct lyrics. I suspected from listening that the two songs were by the same band, and a quick search had confirmed this. "Rua do Carmo" is a song written about a street in Lisbon; a street of some historical importance as a through-fare between the popular districts of Chiado and Bairro Alto and also a very popular shopping street. So this morning, driving down the dual carriageway towards work, there I was, singing loudly along, "Olha como é, a Rua do Carmo," through the choruses! 

So today I decided to try and find out a little more about this group, UHF, and after finding their Wiki page and piling it through Google Translate, I was very pleasantly surprised and quite enlightened. It seems that since they formed in 1978 they have shared the stage (during the 80's) with such greats as The Skids, The Ramones and 999. Since the 1980's the band have grown ever more popular, if not calming down somewhat from their punk roots, and have recently released acoustic versions of some of their more popular songs and an football song for Benfica football club, which presumably has become anthemic among their fans. In 2011 their "Rua do Carmo" became the theme tune for a Portuguese soap opera.

I'm not a good singer, and I really only do it in two places. As already mentioned, in the car, with the windows up. And the other place is of course at the football, singing along with the Estoril Supporter's Gruppo. There are many songs that I do not the words for, but some of them I do, such as the classic, "E só que bate as palmas, Estoril" (Clap, clap!) and the immutable, "Saltar! Saltar! Azul e Amarelo!" There is one other song that the supporters sing, which is of course the memorable, "Come On Yellows," sung in English and I suspect a point of some fun-making for the fans of other teams maybe? It is nothing though. Everyone in the Gruppo is obviously very proud to support the team, in either language.

One thing that occurs to me when I look up the lyrics to a song, or ask a supporter at a game exactly what we're all singing, is the hope that in some small measure, it is helping me improve my Portuguese. Hopefully.

Cycling Proficieny

My daughter wanted a shiny new pink (obviously!) bicycle for Christmas. When we moved out here my daughter's bike came with us and at the time, both it and she were small enough to ride up and down our very tiny cobbled yard. But that was a couple of years ago now and just like all kids, they never stop growing, and inevitably, the bike is now far too small for her. She still rode it around the garden, and even once or twice we stuffed into the car so that she could ride along the promenade, but with each growth spurt she got more and more unstable on the old thing. So, a couple of weeks before Christmas, she and I went down to the local sports shop, Decathlon, to sit on a few bikes, try them out for size and decide which colours were pink enough. Handily, they had a height chart to stand against telling you exactly what size bicycle your little tearaway would fit the best. I was expecting to have to order one for delivery in a week's time or something like that, and have to assemble a half built bike on Christmas day, but no. The helpful young man plainly told me that what I could see were the actual bikes you could buy, right here, right now. So, after choosing of course the pinkest bike with cutest little basket, it fell upon me to choose a bike for me. After all, I'd need to be able to keep up with my speedy little daughter, and (cough, cough), I could do with the exercise too! My choice was easy enough. "Large cheap mountain bike please."

Ten minutes later I was wheeling the pink bike across the car park, folding down the back seats and off we went. I would have to come back for my bike later and ride it home, since it was too large to fit in the car. No matter. It's not far!

Strange! Although I've been driving around on Portuguese roads for over two years now, riding a push bike on the right hand side of the road somehow seemed really odd. Not sure why. And I didn't really notice it until I came to the first left turn, where of course I would have to cross in front of oncoming traffic to turn into a side street. Suddenly, at that moment, it just kind of felt really strange. For the first time in ages, I really had to think about which side of the road I needed to aim for on the other side of the junction. Weird.

Christmas has of course now been and gone, and I've been out on my bicycle a few times now. First time out I cycled up over Monte Estoril and down to Cascais, along the promenade and back up the hill through Estoril. I'm certainly happy that I bought a mountain bike. These hills are fierce! It felt good though.

This afternoon I took it upon myself, after a little cajoling from my better half, to fix the punctured tyres on my daughter's old bike and re-attach the stabiliser wheels so that her little brother had a bike. He came over to me to watch me remove the tyre and inner tube from the front wheel and of course had loads of questions. He followed me into the kitchen to help me dunk the inflated tube under water and spot the bubbles. Lots more questions. It was only when he saw me putting on the stabilisers that he asked the important questions, "What are they for?" and, "So, is this so I can learn to ride a bike?" Oh, you should have seen his little face light up! And so, after that I spent the rest of the afternoon watching my two youngest cycling up and down and up and down the cul-de-sac a few streets away with huge grins on their faces. Better still: No accidents!

I'm itching to get out more this weekend. The last few mornings we have had rain, but I'm hoping to grab a quick trip back down to the seafront, early in the morning tomorrow. The seafront always looks fantastic in the morning sunshine. I hope the rain holds off. Or I could just go anyway. There will be less people on the promenade if it's raining!