Things which keep me entertained

The most popular person on the blog thus far has been the lamb so here's proof that its is alive and well (and fat!) plus it has two new friends to play with. This fence is right outside my office window therefore during the day I can practise talking Nu Zuland.

For la Bias - toilet signs which dont classify gender by clothing style. Instead gender is distinguished by habit as females always sit down to go to the toilet and males always stand..... hmmmm.....

The many and varied faces of politics in Portugal:

To explain - during the recent presidential elections in Portugal these boards were placed in the town square to allow equal opportunity to display posters/propaganda. However the local branches didnt get around to putting up the posters for a couple of days. So they stayed like this - identical faceless grey metal squares only distinguished by the name at the top. Oooo political satire.

My road home every night involves crossing a creek using a ford - fun with a decent runup, but after a decent rain it becomes even more fun.....
Phunny road signs. Cos they're phunny.
Its a rainy weekend here again after spring looked like it had settled in. Hence this posting of photos Ive been meaning to put up for a while but didnt quite fit elsewhere. Spring means the flowers are out and the extra rain should mean they stay out. This is "Alentejo Snow" - although earlier this year the real thing made an appearance for the first time in 20 years.

As its a rainy weekend theres also more time for introspection which is always dangerous. Playing with Google Mars only works for a little while. So back to TV - BBC world had an interview with Spike Lee which was more thought provoking than I had expected, in spite of him wearing an Arsenal shirt. It wasnt his willigness to believe the US government was capable of flooding parts of New Orleans after Katrina, nor his comments on racism and his assertion that only 3 of his films have dealt with racism (my analysis is that any film he makes contains a representative mix of ethnicities and therefore inadvertantly makes a comment on racism just by that mix and his handling of those characters) but his observation that marriage and kids had changed his outlook on life. A simple quote, fairly innocuous and almost unbelievably normal for him, a man who has spent a career communicating his point of view to others, a view which has been often confronting and controversial. Its the sort of quote you expect from Matt Damon, Tom Cruise and the rest of the Hollywood A-list.....

Changing your outlook, getting a new point of view, expanding your mind. So many young Australians go travelling for that reason, new landscapes, new experiences. Its something Ive had to explain over and over here, why we travel, why people actually know where Im living now. Travel isnt essential - everyone kept telling me it was when they were travelling and I was in Perth but I still had so many different/bizarre experiences to warp me. In Portugal the young people arent really great travellers but their culture helps them develop their point of view. I had a flashback this week talking with a mate at work about buying a house as that was all we seemed to talk about at Rio a couple of years ago. Now bigger changes are happening - friends becoming couples/engaged/married, kids on the way. I have this belief that going back to Perth means booze til late hours but I haven't accounted for these changes happening there, that perhaps those days are past. Similarily here most people my age are part of a couple, or have moved on from getting hammered (unlike the English tourists who "just want to drink as much as they can because its cheap"!), which could be why I havent been out as much as I expected I would. Maybe its me who should change my expectations. Maybe leaving Perth to experience new things was also a way to escape some of these changes, to keep expanding my mind with places not events, but Im learning that its not just the environment which changes your outlook, like Spike Lee the natural flow of life does as well and thats harder to escape.

So today I ended up watching "Maid in Manhattan". It provoked much less thinking.