Photo Chop Shop

There are a lot of examples of bad Photoshop work around, in fact there are sites dedicated to it. Normally it doesn't bother me but the other day I was browsing through the Oceanico Signature magazine and was appalled by the obvious cut-outs of their star players and unit owners placed in front of sundry landscapes. With different colour temperatures and opposing lighting angles, these stars had obviously not been present when the landscape was photographed.

Then I came across this, on a bus stop. I think Keira Knightley has done herself no favours with this image. She was great as a skinny, flat-chested tomboy in her many film roles. As a girl, it just doesn't work, and the photoshop guys have done her no favours.

But I'm rarely a fan of advertising...

Tough Choice

Many thanks to Miguel Lobo, who persuaded me to go with him to test drive some Porsches this week. It was AWESOME!!!

Among the models driven were:
Cayman S

and

Carrera 4S



Surprisingly, I preferred the Cayman. It feels lighter and more responsive. Maybe I would have preferred the 4S with more time to get used to its brutal power.

I don't suppose I will get many other opportunities, or ever have enough disposable income to buy one, but it was a morning well spent!

100% Turnout

As a responsible, upstanding citizen, I went and voted in last week's local elections. EU citizens can vote in their place of residence, so I can vote in the local council elections, though not in the Portuguese parliamentary elections, only in the UK.

Imagine my surprise when I was greeted by enthisiastic scrutineers and coordinators. Then I found out that foreigners have their own electoral roll, and in my parish I was the only person on that electoral roll! So they had a special list for me, not I think a separate scrutineer, though that could have been the reason for their enthusiasm. Imagine if I had gone and voted early in the morning - he could have had the rest of the day off...

Anyway, my electoral roll had 100% turnout. There can't have been many of those. Fortunately I put my ballots in a common box, otherwise everyone would have known how I voted.

Now I have to go and hassle my other expatriate neighbours. If they are to be entitled to complain about local services (which they do frequently) they should at least get out and vote to improve them.

Green Day

In Lisbon, Monday September 28, 2009


FUCKING BRILLIANT!!!!!!!!

Planning and Politics

Manuel Pinho is the surprised minister, always expressing surprise at what goes on around him and with an extraordinary talent for opening his mouth and inserting his foot.

This weekend we have seen him complaining that the investigation into corruption in the Freeport planning approval process is politically motivated. I didn't hear him complaining when the media guns were pointed at members of the opposition. I was also surprised that he risked talking about anything located south of the river, but we all know he's thick (skinned).

Unfortunately, planning approval is a process so rife with corruption, that any commercial project approved in less than five years must have involved backhanders. But even then, the most important part of any commercial planning approval process is usually that it should bring political benefits to the planners who approve it. That doesn't appear to have been the case at Freeport, where large sums changed hands to allow construction of an Outlet that nobody wants, in the wrong place.

Nevertheless, I'm optimistic for the building industry in this triple election year, where sitting mayors will need to deliver on the promises made four years ago. Of course, they run the risk of being called to account in four or eight years' time, but that's politics!

Leaf Blowers!

Just what I needed, first thing Boxing Day morning - the neighbour's gardener and his damned noise machine (not necessarily this brand).

When I stuck my head out of the window, the guy was apparently using it to blow all the leaves and pine needles off the neighbour's deck, spraying them anywhere else, including into the pool! I suppose it's democratic - in the current economic climate both the gardener and the pool boy need to keep their jobs, so why shouldn't they make work for each other?

Haven't yet understood why these things are so bloody loud though!

New Year

Well, looks like I didn't find time to post anything in December. Too much depressing news to comment on, like the effective collapse of capitalism, where all economic sectors find themselves over-stretched and needing government bail-outs, or the ridiculous Portuguese consitutional crisis!

So here we go with another year - arbitrarily starting on January 1, which has no astronomic significance nor is the anniversary of anybody in particular, but the year has to start somewhere, right? No resolutions, great ambitions or so forth. Just a case of keeping ones head down and waiting for the worst to pass...

CD of the Month (12)

It will be no news that I am a long-time Dire Straits / Mark Knopfler fan, so here's the track that really got me hooked, on late-night radio 30 years ago.

A Filha do Capitão

My third review of a José Rodrigues dos Santos book. I do read other things, but people keep on buying me his work - I've already got the next one waiting to be read.

This story, set at the turn of the 19th to 20th century, was of particular interest to me, taking place in locations that I know and depicting the trench warfare in Flanders in World War One, where my great-grandfather died. It traces the life of a boy born to a poor family, through his seminary education and expulsion, and into the military academy, from where he ended up being posted to Flanders in the Portuguese Expeditionary Force.

There is a great detail of descriptive writing, detailing life in rural Portugal at the end of the 19th century, impressions of a youth's first visit to the grand city of Lisbon, doubts about theological matters, a lot of football, all of which described with JRS's cutomary skill. But, just like the allied forces in Flanders, the writer gets really bogged down in detail when describing in interminable detail the layout of the trenches and their ridiculous names.

Fortunately, that purgatory is relieved by the romantic liaison between the Captain and a French girl, whose life up to that point we have been following in parallel to his, visiting Lille and Paris with wonderful details that fit in perfectly with my memories of both cities.

Not a book for everyone, as it's rather heavy (perhaps even muddy) over large sections, and the title is a bit optimistic, since even two chapters from the end the daughter hasn't surfaced in the narrative, which rather gives the game away. But I enjoyed it!

Market Prices?

Under the Portuguese government's residential housing rescue plan, the government sponsored property fund will buy your house and rent it back to you if you can't meet the bank's instalments.

Sounds like a reasonable measure, until you ask what the price of the house will be. "Market price" Of course the existence of a market price depends on there being a functioning market, which there isn't! So written valuations must be obtained from two Stock Exchange approved valuers. But even that doesn't get around the problem, as the valuers' comparative valuation basis must be "market price".

While they will be in huge demand, they will probably continue to be badly paid by the banks for their expertise. I'm glad I'm not in their shoes. Actually I am a valuer, but I'm not risking registering and assuming that responsibility for the pitiful fees that banks have paid in the past. It's a sad reflection on the risks of doing business, don't you think?

There is a twist in the tail though. Property tax (IMI) is payable based on the tax department's formula-based valuation of your property. So surely, either the fund should buy your house for that valuation, or the tax office should re-base the valuation formula (downwards) to reflect the new reality of market prices, for there to be fiscal justice!