Bang & Olufsen are making some startling claims with their Beolab 5 stereo loudspeakers, which apparently detect the acoustic qualities of the room they are placed in and have acoustic lenses to mould the sound for an optimal listening experience!
Well they certainly look good, if you're into Daleks. As for the listening experience, I will have to pluck up courage to enter one of their intimidating, minimalist shops, and make sure I leave my credit card at home.
Sitting in the queue for the bridge this morning, a white car came trundling up the hard shoulder and pushed in in front of me. To show my total integration into local driving habits, I hooted at it.
The driver got out and walked back to me, flashing a wallet full of official-looking documents. "You can't hoot. Can't you see that this car belongs to the State?" I was gobsmacked, but bit my tongue, thinking, "Yes, because it's an unmarked white car DRIVEN BY A COMPLETE MORON!" If I had time, I would have tried to get details of his identification and workplace, so that I could complain to his boss but, quite frankly, what's the point?
I've complained before about this phenomenon. Until this sort of attitude is dealt with, Portugal will have problems convincing visitors that it is not a third world country. Fortunately the welcoming nature of the other 90% of the population goes a long way towards that goal.
OK. The first phone is an unsexy, but solid, Nokia 6021. It's what I'm using now, since I dropped my Palm Treo 650. The Nokia is a very good phone, not trying to be a camera or an MP3 player, just very good at what it does, with a huge battery life and a nice anti-slip coating that means it takes fewer tumbles than most phones.
The second is the ultimate luxury phone, a Vertu Constellation, about 4,000 euros, so they say, in its basic steel and leather version. Wouldn't surprise me if it has the same basic hardware as my phone, but improved software and an extra button for calling a concierge service - very useful!
The right-hand phone is my vote for the current sexiest "normal" phone - the Nokia 8800 Sirocco, which pushes the ultra-thin Motorola V3 into second place. Can't find a price for it yet though. I've never found anybody who is a staunch fan of the Motorola software yet, whereas Nokia's interface is frequently cited as the main reason for not changing brands.
So if I had 600 euros to spend on a new phone, what would I buy? Another Palm Treo 650! Not even remotely sexy, so no photo, but it functions (badly) as a camera or MP3 player and very well for storing huge numbers of contacts, appointments, tasks and emails and even surfing the net if in dire need. Have to get mine fixed...
So much for CD of the week - I don't get through enough music to keep that up, even when I end up stuck in the car in the rain for hours on end.
This week, one of the classic albums from one of the best-ever bands - Supertramp's Crime of the Century. Their third album out of fourteen (so far) is mainstream 70's US pop, contemporary with the Eagles' Hotel California. I think it's the best of their albums, music that I never tire of.
I went to see them at the Pavilhão Atlântico in 2002 - a great show. The location is awful, due to the lousy acoustics, and the public, mostly kids who didn't know the music and spent their time chatting and making phone calls, didn't help at all. Now I'm really showing my age, I suppose.
When the Financial Times magazine reviewed a TFT photo frame in the Technopolis section of its October Interiors editions, I thought it was a great idea, though a 3.5" screen seemed a bit small. After a bit of research, I found that the product reviewed, while technologically advanced in being able to receive photos by Bluetooth, is far outshone by products made by such mundane household names as Philips.
This Philips frame is 7 inches across and will read photos from various memory card formats, easily outdoing the competing product, which has only 32MB of memory. It is also stocked by my favourite photo shop, which deserves a plug for its professionalism.
Guess what the grandparents will be getting for Christmas...
In an interview I saw on TV this weekend, a young British millionaire said "Those who are not prepared to take risks will always end up working for those who are". Obvious really!
So how is it possible for accounting firms to survive? Accountants are by their very nature risk averse. But within accounting firms, those who take more risks are likely to be more successful and thus be promoted to partner level. And it is at that level that they, because of their risk-tolerant nature, take risky decisions that sooner or later will lead to the demise of the firm.
Perhaps this phenomenon will be the downfall of the multi-national firms, returning to local practitioners in "real" partnerships where they personally know all their partners in the firm and accept their professional judgement on technical and risk issues. That, on the other hand, gives rise to scale problems where internal resources may not exist for technical and training issues. The fees charged by those smaller firms would have to rise in order to ensure an adequate level of quality.
It's a worrying scenario if I were to return to professional practice. For the moment I will let my shareholders take the risk and keep my risk-averse head down.
When I went to Rome last month I picked up two travel magazines at the airport, Rotas do Mundo from the TAP free newspaper counter and another, apparently better known publication, which I bought because it had a feature on Rome. (I might review that one too, if I ever get round to reading it.)
I was intrigued by Rotas do Mundo because of its style: first-person reports from people who appear to have travelled independently, not corporate free-loaders. It's hardly of Portuguese origin, with contributions of other nationalities and is simultaneously superficial and oddly focused. Reporters on Brittany, Galiza and Innsbruck dash from cafe to cafe. Those in West Africa, India and French Polynesia try to cover too much area in to little space.
If you are a "Lonely Plant" type of traveller, as I used to be, this may be the magazine for you. Personally I am reserving judgement until I have sampled others.
It is a fine democratic principle that important matters outside the scope of party politics may be put directly to popular vote. The problem arises when the politicians fail in identifying those matters that are important to the people.
Last time round, voters decided that abortion is unimportant - less than 50% turnout failed to produce a convincing result. I fail to see that anything has changed in that respect.
Personally, as a man of few strongly held beliefs, I have no firm opinion on the matter and have never had a personal experience that made it relevant to me. Just as in the European Constitution referendum that never took place, I don't like the "question" approved by the Constitutional Court; technical precision and clarity are not compatible here.
Above all, I hope that a majority of voters turn out, even if it is to spoil their ballot papers. Otherwise all we will have is proof that it was an "unpopular" consultation, allowing the politicians to waste time and resources on debating the timing of the next repeat, instead of running the country, which is what they were elected to do. Unfortunately, I doubt that there will be enough votes, so the saga will run and run.
I feel obliged to "destacar" the awful headline from one of Lisbon's free distribution daily papers today - the Portuguese are losing millions on Euromillions! Over the last three weeks, the difference between the amounts bet and received by Portuguese punters is more than 64 million euros. Brilliant!
Lets see. If 20% of all bets are lost in tax and the jackpot has not been paid in that period, associated with a sharply increased level of bets due to the huge jackpots, where's the surprise? It would be newsworthy if the Portuguese loss ratio were higher than other countries, but that would have required some serious research. Even so, a little work must have gone into arriving at the 64M€ figure - shame it only qualifies as news for its sensation value.
Personally, I got a 11-1 payout last week - enough to keep me betting for another three months. I wonder where the big prize will finally go - luck of the Irish again, or Portuguese underdogs?
