Friday, August 15, 2008
Normal service will be resumed on Monday
There'll be no bank robberies today – but only because the banks are closed for a holiday. Instead today is a feriado, a Bank holiday, in this case for the Catholic holiday of Assumption, when the Virgin Mary was transported into Heaven with her body and soul united. However, for many Portuguese it'll just be another long weekend and they'll be turning to their other great passion: killing each other on the roads.
Portuguese driving is notoriously bad, so much so that even French drivers have a good reputation. Since the holiday season started in the middle of July there have been over 2.000 accidents, 60 deaths and over 300 serious injuries. In the weekend of 1st August there were 16 deaths, and last weekend alone 20 people were killed in a 24h period.
For a London driver, rarely able to get above 30mph most of the time, this need for speed is baffling. Portuguese drivers, mainly in black or silver Seat's or in expensive Audi’s or Mercede’s, will rocket past our little Modus, sometimes forcing cars coming in the other direction to move to the side of the road. Often speeding drivers will be in commercial vehicles, easy to spot as all company vehicles are two seater's with a metal grill behind the front seats, or in company vans. Because the drivers don't own these cars, they'll drive like Tiago Monteiro around the Portuguese roads. In the Aveiro/Oiã area there are vehicles from two companies that we are always wary of: Würth (who co-incidentally sponsor Formula 1) and Centroauto. When we see these on the road we always get ready to move out of the way.
The GNR do what they can, of course. There is a road safety campaign operating at the moment, to get people to drive slower, and the TV news reports the statistics each day as they show images of crushed and mangled cars. The worst thing is to see images of the bombeiros hosing down big pools of blood on the road, but it hardly seems to have any effect.
Mind you, bad driving is not limited to the daytime. Since today is a holiday, last night the bars will have been full of people drinking and getting in the mood for their long weekend. After necking umpteen beers, or whiskies, they'll think nothing of getting in their car and driving home - or to a club. At night the police set up checkpoints and give people random breath tests. Over the holiday season they adopt a zero tolerance policy to drink-driving, in an attempt to demonstrate it's a stupid thing to do, but driving while intoxicated seems a difficult habit to break in Portugal.
So if you’re going away this weekend, take care on the roads, enjoy the beach, and bom fim-de-semana.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Another day, another hold up
A day can't go by without mentioning a bank robbery in Portugal. After last weeks hostage situation, and yesterday's attempted robbery of a Millennium in Loures comes news of yet another bank hold-up in Lisbon.
This time, a branch of the Banco Popular was the target, when a 50 year-old man wearing a wig held up the staff with a gun. The man fled the bank on foot, and the police have yet to reveal how much was stolen.
This robbery comes on the same day that the Diário Económico reported that in the first SIX MONTHS of 2008 there has been a bank robbery, or an attempted robbery, once every 40 hours in Portugal, with a haul of approximately 439.000€.
Topping the list of banks targetted was Millennium bcp, with 15 robberies, followed by the Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD) with 13 and Montepio with 12. Santander, which was fourth on the list, with 8 robberies, actually lost the most money, with a total of 86.000€, while CGD lost 66.000€ the banks Funchal and BANIF lost 48.000€. Aside from the hostage situation last week, BES actually had the least number of branches robbed.
With aprroximately four robberies per week, the survey identified, unsurprisingly, that Lisbon was the city most at risk, followed by Porto in the north and Sétubal in the south. On average, the haul from each robbery was 4.400€.
One thief that won't be contributing to the figures for the rest of the year was Jaime Jímenez Arbe, 51, the robber known as ‘El solitário’, who was caught by police last week after robbing 26 banks.
The daily free sheet Destak compared the figures in Portugal with those in Brazil and the US. With a population of about 10million, if the numbers of robberies continue at their present rate, there will be 100 robberies by the end of the year. By contrast, with a population of 180million there were 529 robberies in 2007, and in the US over 10,000 robberies. On the other hand, Portugal can't compare with Baghdad, officially the bank robbery capital of the world, where approximately $1million a month is stolen.
While the police are chasing bank robbers, the funeral of Paulo Salazar, the 13 year-old killed in the foiled warehouse robbery on Monday, will take place tomorrow. Although family will be there, and no doubt a completment of GNR keeping an eye on the service, one person who won't be is the father of the boy, who hasn't been seen since being driven away from court yesterday. Odds are he won't turn up for his court date, either.
Justice, the Portuguese way
Remember the story about the thieves who broke into a warehouse and when they were confronted by the police a 13 year-old boy was killed? Well this one is just going to run and run… literally.
OK, let's summarise: We have two criminals, caught red-handed on Monday evening in the act of stealing from a warehouse by the police, In the altercation that follows, a 13 year-old boy, the son of one of the men that they took along with them, is killed. They went to court in Loures yesterday (which coincidentally, recently lost its ATM from the courthouse lobby in a robbery) and are freed on bail. All they have to do is report on a weekly basis to the police until their trial.
Now it turns out that the father of the boy, Paulo Salazar, presented a false ID and address to the police when they were caught, and that in February 2007 he had previously escaped from prison, which the judge wasn't aware of when they were released. As they were driven away from the courthouse by a relative, in a very expensive looking Mercedes, Portuguese TV were reporting that the father was a fugitive. That was the last anyone has seen of him, and the police are now on the hunt. The father, Sandro Salazar, was in prison for his part in an armed robbery in the Algarve.
In the meantime, the family of the boy who was killed has accused the police of racism - they were ciganos (gypsies) and of having a ‘shoot to kill’ policy. The fact that they were ciganos has left the family with little sympathy in Portugal. While there is sadness that a 13 year-old was killed, many people have condemned the family for taking the boy along on a criminal act in the first place. One cruel comment in the daily newspaper Correio da Manhã was that it was one less cigano that will commit crimes in the future.
In the meantime, while the Portuguese news were reporting the latest developments in this case, there was another bank robbery in Loures. A Millennium BCP bank was the target this time. The robbers burst into the bank and robbed the staff and customers of their possessions. Of the four robbers, three were caught, with a total of around 3.000€ on them. One unlucky customer was in the process of depositing a cheque for 2.000€, which is presently being held by the police. The fourth robber escaped in a Honda Civic, and is presently being hunted.
This sudden surge in robberies seems to be a part of the increasing effects of the crisis presently affecting the country. Earlier in the year, a business owner attempted to rob a bank to pay his debts, the number of carjackings increased 55% in the first six months of 2008, and robberies of ATM's were reported once every other day (this is robberies OF cash machines, not FROM cash machines.)
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
A Wedding, in a galaxy not so far away
It’s not often that the news brings a little joy, but congratulations to Rebecca D’Madeiros and Bill Duda, who were married on 21 June with a Star Wars themed wedding.
The bride and groom were dressed as Mon Mothma (she was the head of the Rebel Alliance), and Admiral Ackbar (in charge of the Rebel fleet in The Empire Strikes Back). Yoda presided over the ceremony, of course, and the ring-bearer was Princess Leia, in her gold bikini from Return of the Jedi.
The bride and groom were dressed as Mon Mothma (she was the head of the Rebel Alliance), and Admiral Ackbar (in charge of the Rebel fleet in The Empire Strikes Back). Yoda presided over the ceremony, of course, and the ring-bearer was Princess Leia, in her gold bikini from Return of the Jedi.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Robbery, murder, theft. Just a typical day
After yesterday's upbeat posting, normal service is resumed in Portugal. Like most of the western world, Portugal is in recession, it even has a name: the 'Crise' (crisis). Suffering from fuel high prices, ever increasing taxation and higher unemployment, people are becoming more desperate.
ATM machines have always been a target, first from shopping centres, and increasingly from local court buildings, where security has been lax. Now there is a new phenomenon: a resurgence of armed robbery. In the past week, we have seen three robberies, two of which have ended in tragedy.
- Last week there was a 7h stand-off between police and two Brazilian immigrants in a branch of Banco Espirito Santo (BES) in Lisbon. This ended with the death of one of the robbers and the wounding of the other. Relatives of the wounded Brazilian cannot understand why he committed the robbery, since he was in the middle of completing his application for Portuguese residency.
- A 13 year-old boy was taken along on a warehouse robbery in Lisbon. When the robbery was foiled by police, the boy was killed in the crossfire. The lawyers of the boy's family are saying that the police overreacted, and could have shot in the air.
- Yesterday, two Brazilians robbed a butcher in Sétubal (pronounced 'Stubal', where José Mourinho comes from). All 8 staff, and four customers, were locked in the basement and by the time the police arrived, the thieves were long gone.
Thieves are also concentrating on robbing elderly Portuguese from small villages. In the north of the country there has been a spate of people knocking on pensioners doors and saying they are from the Segurança Social (the equivalent of social security). They have been saying that people owe them money and taking cash. Mostly this has been in 500€ lots, but last week, one pensioner was robbed of over 5000€.
...and the Crise has had casualties. A bar owner in Silveiro, not far from where we are living, committed suicide at the weekend when he couldn't cope with his debts any longer. Like many bars, takings fell after the changes in the law on Jan 1st. Together with the effects of the Crise, as people just don't go out as often as they did, many businesses have found themselves in trouble. Faced with increasing debts, the owner couldn't take any more pressure and took what he saw as the only option remaining.
Other businesses have suffered because of the Crise, and while one aspect of the government is to look forward, to cheap laptops and electric cars, on the other hand they are adding to the problems of the country. Many people don't pay their Segurança Social payments on time, or at all (in one instance last year, a company closed only to have the employees find they couldn't claim unemployment benefits because the owner hadn't paid their Segurança Social). The owner had taken deductions from the employees' salary, but hadn't paid these, or the contributions he should make, to the Finanças. So now, the tax office, the Finanças, have decided that if people don't make their payments, they'll send agents into their homes to repossess their property.
A Country in Crisis
Portugal is officially a company in crisis. The opposition says so, the economists say so, the media say so, even the government says so. It even has a name, "o Crise" (the crisis.) The government, of course, blames the Crise on the international scene: high petrol prices, poor financial markets, but the International Monetary Fund (IMF) swiftly retorted that this Crise was all the fault of the government.
To a degree, both are right, the Portuguese government has created an economy, with over taxation and little support, that is increasingly like the Brazilian one. There is a huge wealth gap, people either have money or they don't, the middle class is disappearing. This has been made worse by international pressures such as the high oil price and the credit crunch, which has put pressure on the financial markets. Mind you, they are trying to be progressive, which is a part of the problem. For example, today it was reported that every new school child will receive a small computer. The idea is that Portugal will be a technological leader, in 10 years time, when these kids are
In a country where the average wage is 800€ per month, and the price of petrol at the pumps is similar to that in London, with a minimum wage of 1.300€, people are suffering. Businesses such as cafés, restaurants, and of course bars, in fact all service industries, are suffering because people just can't afford to go out any more. A recent article on SIC news said that 25.000 construction companies have failed since the beginning of the year, and a survey on RTP2 news reported that 75% of people thought things were getting worse over the previous year (0% thought things were better). Only today, the Jornal de Notícias reported that in June and July, over 5.000 people lost their jobs due to factory closures in Braga alone.
One of the unusual customs in Portuguese employment is that although they work for 12 months, Portuguese are paid for 14 months, receiving an additional monthly salary in July and December, called the subsídio. However, in the current climate some companies are even finding it difficult to pay the subsídio for July to their employees. For example, the University of Aveiro caused a furore when they announced that money for research was to be withdrawn from some departments to pay the subsídio, an amount of approximately 10€ million.
The government said that the Crise began about 1 year ago, and will most likely continue for some time to come. Public confidence in the country remains low, businesses continue to struggle. Even traditional businesses are suffering, since the actions of ASAE, the equivalent of Home Office inspectors (but the paramilitary wing, ASAE officers can be armed) have closed many traditional sweet and cheese businesses for poor working practices. Many of these regulations were brought in to bring Portugal in line with the EU, which is a good thing, but rather than being a gradual change and applying common sense, as in many European countries, the Portuguese government has been over enthusiastic in introducing new laws.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Who Killed The Electric Car?
With the high price of oil, the cost of a litre of gásoleo or gasolina in Portugal went through the roof. Drivers near the border with Spain were flocking to petrol stations (bombas) in Spain, leaving the stations in Portugal deserted. Now the price of a barrel of oil has come down, and although the major retailers Galp and Repsol have reduced their prices, it still costs a lot more to fill a tank with petrol than it did just a few months ago.
With the holiday season in Portugal in full swing, Portuguese who work outside the country have returned home for the summer. A lot of them have had a shock, with basic essentials far more expensive than they remembered. One emigrant (as they are called), commented that the price of petrol was over 120 times more expensive than was paid when they were last in the country in 2004.
So it was interesting to find an article which seems to have been missed by much of the Portuguese media:
When fuel was at it's most expensive, in around the middle of July, José Socrates, the Portuguese Prime Minister, signed an Article of Understanding with a Nissan-Renault alliance to produce an infrastructure for the production and charging of electric cars. Socrates is reported as saying that the government wants Portugal to be:
"a laboratory for future electric cars... So that we are not at the mercy of others."
After a four-month discussion phase, the intention is that Portugal will develop a national network of recharging stations, and the cars will be available in 2001. No details were readily available of the cars themselves, aside from it being a five-seater vehicle with a top speed of 90km/h and a capacity of 160km on a full charge.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
International Day of the Orgasm
Today is 31 July, which means it is the International day of the Orgasm.
The 50€ laptop is here
In Lisbon today at noon, in the presence of the prime minister, local officials, and representatives of Intel, the first 50€ laptop will be launched. News was leaked yesterday, by local officials and the government, who promised to order 500,000 units for all primary schoolchildren starting in September, at the heavily subsidised price of 50€.
For the Portuguese government, this cannot come to soon. The country has been in the grip of an economic crisis for the best part of a year now, with no apparent end in sight, and despite everything they have done, and to be fair they have been as much of the cause of the crisis as the solution, the creation of 1.000 new jobs in Matosinhos, near Lisbon, can only be good news.
The new computer, called Magellan (Magalhães), is intended to be the flagship of Intel's Classmate PC. Originally, Intel was a part of the One Laptop Per Child programme, which aimed to create low-cost PC's for education in third world countries, but disagreements at the start of the year meant they went their own way, and developed the Classmate PC.
In brief, the Magellan is a small laptop with a 7-inch TFT screen and no hard disk. It contains a 900MHz Celeron M CPU, with 256MB of RAM and runs Microsoft Windows XP Embedded Version 2002, with Service Pack 2. To give additional memory, the computer contains a 1Gb flash memory drive, but also has two USB ports, one for additional memory, and one for a wifi adaptor. It also has an ethernet connection and headphone sockets. For a full review see here.
The Portuguese government has been supporting new technology in schools as a part of it's e-schools programme (“e.escola”), which has subsidised laptops to students (discounting the VAT) and a deal for schoolchildren where they could buy a laptop for 150€ plus a monthly 15€ fee for wi-fi internet access. This deal, to provide the Magalhães to all primary school children, is part of a new programme called “e.escolinha", or little e-schools.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Friday, July 25, 2008
On Ronaldo and being Portuguese
The weather has taken a turn for the worse today. Last night the clouds came in and when we woke up there was rain falling. The high temperatures and orange alert in the north have given way to sub-20º temperatures and accidents on the roads. When a little snow falls in London, the whole capital grinds to a halt. When a little rain falls in Portugal, the drivers keep driving as if the sun was out and end up slipping and sliding all over the place.
Portuguese believe that it is their right to be tanned. When the sun comes out, the first destination of any Portuguese is the beach. At weekends, cities are deserted, the lines of traffic snaking toward the seaside are never ending and the beaches heave with people looking for a space they can erect their umbrella. Getting to the beach, to achieve that perfect shade of mahogany, becomes an obsession.
So it was interesting to see an article on the Daily Mail website ("Becks vs Ronaldo: Who is the biggest metrosexual of them all?") comparing the attention that Beckham and Ronaldo pay to their grooming, with an earlier article saying Ronaldo
has spent so much time on sun loungers and by the pool that he could almost be mistaken for the Cuprinol man from the television adverts for the wood preservative... The £100,000-a-week star, who is recuperating from ankle surgery to cure a long-term injury, passed the healthy looking bronze stage some time ago, but is still soaking up the rays on a daily basis."
Well sorry guys, but Ronaldo is Portuguese, and like him, if you spend the bulk of the year in rain-swept and sun-free Manchester, you'll take every opportunity to get a tan. Portuguese will lie in the sun until they can't tan any longer, and then they will lie in the sun some more, mocking us poor English for our factor 15 protection while they lather themselves in factor 2, or olive oil as I prefer to call it.
Today the weather in Portugal is a little dull, everyone in the north of the country is looking towards the sky for the clouds to clear. As soon as they do, the beaches will be filled again, the bars on the beach will be happy, and normal service will be resumed. A Portuguese without a tan is not a Portuguese.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Tensions remain high in Quinta da Fonte
Following the disturbances in Lisbon last week, in which shots were fired between the gypsy and immigrant black communities, tensions have remained high, despite the Câmara Municipal and the Police advising people that they should be going home.
In the days following the shootings, which was caused by a dispute between two rival groups, the Police saturated the area, and made a few arrests. Four of the arrests were made at the Câmara Municipal in Loures, where some of the gypsies have been congregating, when police found four guns in the camping gypsies.
According to reports yesterday, more gypsies are going to the area from all over the country, presumably in support of the residents of Quinta da Fonte. This will not please the local Câmara or the Police, as they will be anticipating an increase in tension just at the time they are trying to defuse it.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Há Caracóis (We have Snails)
Cleaning the car this morning (it was becoming a disgusting shade of yellow rather than it's usual white) we spotted on the neighbour's wall hundreds of little black dots. Amazed, these were hundreds upon hundreds of caracóis, snails: on the wall, on the plants, everywhere.
Like in France, and I believe in Spain, caracóis are a Portuguese delicacy, and are eaten by the plate-load, in café's and restaurants across the country. Outside the shop, there will be a poorly printed, or hand-written sign "Há Caracóis," "we have snails" (or more precisely, "there are snails"). Now these aren't the beautiful, hand-reared, French snails, cooked in a beautiful garlic butter and served with a fine wine, but small wild snails, soaked in salt water, boiled and eaten either with a beer, or with the poorest glass of 50c wine that is available.
Personally, I can do without them, they are far too bland, and if not prepared properly contain 'coco', which is basically a mixture of snail crap and earth inside the shell. As you can probably guess, when first eating these, I also ate the coco, which is a bit lumpy and hard, and not very nice. So my opinion is biased.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Chris Martin kept out of his own party
Portuguese news is a little slow sometimes. They reported this morning that Chris Martin, the Coldplay front-man, was refused entry to a party by security at a Beverley Hills hotel because his name was not on the guest list.
This happened last week before their pre-show party in Los Angeles. Martin was left sitting dejectedly in the foyer while his friends tried to persuade security to let him in. This is not the first time this has happened, last year he was refused entry to the New York screening of his wife Gwyneth Paltrow's movie, "The Good Night", when he tried to sneak past the crowd waiting on the red carpet.
While we were relaxing on Meco Beach
We took an unexpected, but very welcome, few days off to clear our brains of all of the stuff that had been clogging our minds since the end of March. While we were lying on the beach, the world continued around us as normal:
- In Lisbon, there were gunfights on the streets of Quinta da Fonte, between the gypsy community and the black community. Sparked by an event the previous evening, gypsies (ciganos) and the immigrant black community too to the streets, shooting at each other. The police were swiftly on the scene, although the main perpetrators escaped. The cigaanos started to leave the area, apparently in fear of their lives, and have been camping outside the town hall ever since, refusing to go back.
Not content with cutting flights because of increasing fuel costs, TAP, the Portuguese national airline, are now multitasking their cabin staff.
- When a TAP flight between Guinea Bissau and Lisbon experienced engine problems, the pilot wasted no time in rolling up his shirt sleeves and climbing onto the engine to fix the problem. Watched by admiring ground crews, the unidentified pilot fixed the engine starter, before taking off for Lisbon, only four hours late. The representative of the air mechanics union, the Sindicato dos Trabalhadores de Aviação e Aeroporto (SITAVA), was not surprised, “the pilot’s are equipped to do many things that don’t put the plane at risk… sometimes if they don’t have a screwdriver, they just use a 5c piece.”
- As you heard here first (probably), Carlos Queirros agreed to manage the Portuguese national team until 2012 for an annual salary of €1,5 million. Queirros was the first and, according to the FPF, the only candidate to replace Luis Felipe Scolari.
- In a country which is becoming increasingly polarised in terms of who has money and who doesn’t, criminals have been stealing ATM machines from outside shopping centres and banks. In Loures, an ATM machine was stolen from the lobby of the city courthouse. Apparently the security cameras weren’t working, leaving the criminals with a clean getaway.
- Farmers were protesting about the high price of fuel, while at the same time the taxi drivers were increasing their fares because of… the high price of fuel. Convoys of tractors poured through Lisbon causing traffic mayhem, and ironically giving the taxi drivers an entra bonus as they and their fares sat in traffic jams with the meter running.
- The iPhone went on sale in Portugal, amid much fanfare in Lisbon. Celebrities and new adopters all turned out at the Vodafone store to be the first to get their hands on one. While prices have been falling all over Europe, the prices in Portugal were pretty steep. Pre-paid iPhone’s were available for 499,90€ and 599,90€, for the 8Gb and 16Gb versions, respectively. Monthly payment options, including 500 free minutes and texts, were also available starting at 65€ for the price plan and 125€ for the iPhone.
However, bearing in mind that the average monthly salary in Portugal is 800€, and most people are paid little above the minimum wage of 426€, take up of such an expensive item may be limited. Already prices across Europe are coming down, and although mobile phone companies in Portugal are notoriously greedy, it surely won’t be too long before they follow. My suggestion is to hold out for a couple of months.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
El Camino del Rey
Have you ever had one of those bad dreams, where you are climbing up stairs, and there are bits missing and it's really unsafe, but you have to keep on climbing..?
Well here is that dream. Be afraid, and if you suffer from vertigo, hold onto something solid...
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Is waterboarding torture? Ask Christopher Hitchens
I don't often get too serious on this blog, it's aimed at being a bit of fun, a bit informative, football news during Euro 2008, that sort of thing, but sometimes you just have to make a comment.
While I can't always agree with what Christopher Hitchens says, he is an opponent of the war in Iraq. He has always believed, however, that the US forces don't stoop to torture, but use "extreme interrogation". His critics thus argued that he thought waterboarding, which the US military are known to use, and which GW Bush has denied is torture, falls under extreme interrogation, and the editor of Vanity Fair challenged Hitchens to try waterboarding, to see if it felt like torture. Amazingly Hitchens agreed, and published an article in this month's Vanity Fair.
What gives this article, and Hitchens, some kudos in my eyes, though, is that he actually submits himself to waterboarding. I am not sure that I would do the same. No let me rephrase that, there is no way I would do the same. They produced a video of his experience, which is presented below. Please don't watch this if you are sensitive..
He compares arguments for and against whether the US should be using the technique, and compares waterboarding to foreplay, stating that 'a man who has been waterboarded may well emerge from the experience a bit shaky, but he is ...unmarked and undamaged and indeed ready for another bout in quite a short time.' His position is simply that because a group like Al Queda would use waterboarding against their enemies is reason enough for the US to use it as well. Is that an argument in favour, I'm not sure that it is. He reports that after his experience, he has 'woken up trying to push the bedcovers off my face, and if I do anything that makes me short of breath I find myself clawing at the air with a horrible sensation of smothering and claustrophobia.'
Queirós to leave Manchester United?
According to the Portuguese sports daily A Bola, and reported on the Portuguese TV news earlier, the Federação Portuguesa de Futebol, the equivalent of the FA, is in talks with Carlos Queirós to take over from Scolari. Quierós is reported to have left Lisbon yesterday, although the Guardian reported that Gilberto Madaíl, the head of the FPF, flew into Manchester, without having made any decisions.
Surely this would not please Alex Ferguson, who is facing increasing pressure to convince Ronaldo stay at United, and will be facing Scolari in the dugout from next
season. A Bola reported that the deal could be worth €1,1million to Queirós, not a deal to be dismissed lightly.
So the question arises, could United see the departure of their star striker AND their number two coach?
Technorati Tags: Carol Queirós,Alex Furgeson,Manchester United,Portugal,National,Team,Ronaldo,Football,FPF
Monday, June 30, 2008
Make Money Online
We've recently joined this organisation called My Homepages Friends. What it claims to be is a opportunity to make money while searching the Internet, something most of us do a lot anyway. All you need to do is log onto the website, by clicking here, and complete the simple form. You then get a page asking you to change your homepage to the My Homepages Friends search page.
At the moment this is fairly basic, they seem to be developing it as they go along, but they have some gadgets, and promise online shopping and a blog. They promise to pay around 2p for each search, and in the few days I've been a member this has amounted to the princely sum of £1.20. Payments are made when you reach a threshold of £20.
There are a couple of catches, it works best with Internet Explorer v7 or Firefox, as you define your search box in the top right hand corner, and you can only search with Yahoo!, with whom they have made an exclusive agreement. If you want to Google, any searches won't count towards your total.
You can see your search totals as you go along, although in monetary terms these are 1-2 days in arrears. They say one day, but we only saw our income from Thursday and Friday appear the following Monday. As well as getting 2p for each search, 10% of any referrals that you make are added onto your account as friends. Payments can be make by bank transfer or by PayPal. I wasn't sure about entering the bank details, so I joined via PayPal.
MyHF discourage repeat searches, or not following a search through with a click, and can terminate accounts for misuse. They will also flag up searchers who just sit and make random searches each day. But if you make your usual searches, then this can gradually add up. It's no Get Rich Quick scheme, but could be a useful little bit of pocket money.
Incidentally, rather than making the My Homepages Friends page your homepage, an alternative is to save this in your favourites. My home page is still our broadband provider, but if I want to make a search, or log on to see my results, I use the Favourites page.
Technorati Tags: make money online,my homepages friends,search,yahoo,blog,affiliate,favourites,paid to search
Sex or Football?
One casualty of Euro 2008 was the Festival do Filme Erótico de Madrid. Normally, this annual festival attracts over 50.000 visitors, but sadly this year, only 15.000 turned up.
What most irritates you?
I was awoken at 4am this morning by a mosquito buzzing around. I'd already been feasted on twice while I was sleeping, for some reason they ignore everyone around here and just pick on the fresh English meat, but I couldn't find the little sod. I could hear the high-pitched whine of his little wings, but eventually just had to 'deny' his existence in my mind and make believe he wasn't there, otherwise I'd never have got back to sleep. (Postscript: Got him in the end…)
In Portuguese, mosquitos are melgas, as opposed to moscas (pronounced 'muscas'), which are flies. Melgas is also used as a slang term for an irritating person who hangs around for no apparent reason. One of our friends calls his girlfriend 'melga', but as a pet name. Flies are everywhere in Portugal, and getting rid of them can be a major effort. We call flies potos, (pronounced, putus) which is a slang term for kids, like annoying 14-16 year olds who hang around in shopping centres, playing crap music at top volume on their tiny little mobile phone speakers. Incidentally, this is as opposed to potas, (pronounced, putas) which is a slang term for prostitute, a distinction which was lost on me for quite some time, until someone kindly pointed it out.
We used to get potos coming to our bar in the afternoons, they were the groups of kids who would come in after school and sit around drinking one cola between seven of them, before going home. Occasionally they would go on the computers and collect more friends on their hi5.com profiles, which is like Facebook in the UK.
Still, I digress. The appearance of the melga got me wondering about the most irritating things in the world today. We've covered a couple already, moscas/melgas and potos with mobile phones, but what else is there?
The following is not a definitive list by any stretch, I’m sure there are many more that can be added, so over to you. In the meantime here's my list:
Chain emails, containing PowerPoint presentations with pictures of babies/sunsets/landscapes, etc with text in a script font saying how wonderful friendship/the world/god is before telling you to pass it on to 10 friends and you'll receive good fortune/money, etc. These get deleted. Instantly.
Facebook/hi5 applications. No, I really don't want to add another cuddle or funwall application, I don’t want to be poked or prodded or be asked by some total stranger if I want to add one of the over 20,000 applications (yes, that many) that are on Facebook. I really don't want to know which celebrity couple we are (Tom and Katie, dammit) and vampires and zombies were deleted from my profile long ago. All I want is to stay in touch with my friends, and add the occasional photo, is that too much?
Internet money-making schemes. In our present situation we've been looking at all avenues, and have inevitably come across these money-making websites. Why do they all look the same, like the one's here and here, and why are they all so long, without actually saying anything. Does anyone actually read all of this stuff?
Bank commercials offering great returns. On the radio at the moment are loads of commercials for credit, loans, etc. One is a 30 second commercial from Millennium bank. The bit where they tell you that you can make loads of money with their new product is 15 seconds long, and sounds great (high interest, etc), but then there is another 15 seconds of verbal 'small print' giving the actual conditions that you can only achieve these savings if you tie your money up for a certain length of time, and if you invest a minimum amount, usually 1,000€, each month. In a country where the average salary is just over 800€ per month, this automatically excludes a lot of people, yet the idea is that people miss this bit and go into the bank, where they find they can’t get this product but we have this one… it’s not so good, but…
Why can't they just be honest and say 'give your money to us and we'll keep it and make loads of money for ourselves and chuck you back a pitiful return after a year or so. Oh, and by the way, if you earn less than 1,000€ per month don't bother because you're too poor. But you can give us your money anyway and we'll collect it all together and give 12 million Euro loans to our children.'
Commercial breaks on Portuguese TV. British TV used to be called the best in the world. I’m not sure whether that is true now, with Big Brother, I’m a Celebrity, and all of those cheap reality shows, but at least you don’t have 15 minute commercial breaks! In the UK, a break was just enough time to make a cup of tea, or get a beer. In Portugal, you can eat lunch, have a nice glass of wine, and still have to sit through trailers for the next Brazilian novella before your film continues. By which time you’ve forgotten what is going on. Alternatively you surf onto another channel and only remember what you were watching about 30 minutes later, by which time you’ve missed a chunk of the programme you were interested in. The only redeeming feature is the breaks are about 90 minutes apart, and we have a DVD recorder, so can record and fast forward through the boring bits.
Lists of the greatest… Be this comedy sketches, songs, or viral emails, just how irritating is it to see lists of things on TV hosted by some ex-soap star or d-list celebrity, with talking heads of other d-list celebrities reminiscing about great songs of the 1980's that you've never heard of or can't remember. Or lists created just for another excuse to show crap commercials from the seventies, or lists of stuff that irritates you about... Oh...
By the way, if you were wondering where the obligatory football posting was today, since Germany played like such a bunch of numpties yesterday I thought better not prolong the torture. Congratulations to Spain, the better team certainly won.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Scolari accusations of fraud
When he was manager of the national team, Luis Filipe Scolari was hailed as a national hero, taking Portugal to the final of Euro 2004, the semi finals of the World Cup in 2006, and of course to the quarter finals of Euro 2008.
But once he announced that he was leaving to manage Chelsea, citing money as one of the reasons, then the accusations begin.
Unsurprisingly the Portuguese FA came out and accused him and Chelsea of upsetting the team after the match with the Czech Republic, causing them to lose against Switzerland. This was despite Portugal having got through the group stages, and the team against Switzerland being woefully under strength.
Now a Lisbon paper, Sol, has accused Scolari of salting away funds received from a business venture in 2006 in an offshore account, and not declaring income to the Financas (the Portuguese Inland Revenue). As a part of a long-running national fraud investigation, Operação Furacão, the Departamento Central de Investigação e Acção Penal (DCIAP) are investigating. All Scolari has said is that he has fulfilled his obligations towards the Financas, and nothing illegal or fraudulent has taken place. No details of the amounts are available.
Whether this will cast a shadow over his deal with Chelsea is not known, this sounds more like a small circulation newspaper digging around for dirt now that Scolari has announced his departure. I can't imagine this ever having been reported if Scolari had not announced his intention to leave. I also found it ironic that it was a paper called the Sun that started this story.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Celebrities to take to the sky
Just when you thought that television had plumbed the depths of reality TV comes a new offering from ITV2, CelebAir. Apparently, ITV2 is in negotiations with Monarch airline to repaint one of it's aircraft in CelebAir livery and then to get 12 celebrities to be "cabin crew and complaints handlers while real passengers pay to fly to destinations, including Ibiza."
According to a spokesperson from ITV2 quoted in the Guardian, "This isn't frivolous or celebrity TV for the sake of it – there's a genuine outcome at stake - such as people's business trips and holidays... It won't be like a normal reality show, where celebrities are picked purely for their entertainment value and nothing else. This is a big project and not one we'll be undertaking lightly."
Not everyone is happy with the idea, though, in the Sun Bizarre reporter Gordon Smart sneered, "I HAVE never suffered from air rage before — but I feel it coming on. Annoying celebs are being hunted down from the panto circuit to appear in a new ITV2 show called CelebAir. Sorry to report, but they will be trained up as . . . airline trolley dollies," and they added some photos to show what it might look like.
Fortunately, none of the celebs will be flying the plane, I'm sure although John Travolta would be more than happy to climb into the pilot's seat, but you could see Jade Goodie telling you where the exits are, before trying to sell some of her perfume at 35,000 feet. Also, with the ITV2 website reporting that Peter Andre and Katie Price's reality show is in its seventh season (can this be true?) then perhaps Pete and Katie could combine their show with this one?
With this programme in mind, here are some ideas for a few other celebrity reality shows:
Celebrity Enduring Freedom: Join 12 celebrities who go through basic training before being shipped off to Afghanistan to fight the taliban and hunt for Bin Laden.
Celebrity Guantanamo: 12 celebrities are kidnapped at random off the streets and flown in secret CIA flights to Guantanamo Bay. Each week, one is evicted and flown to Heathrow, where they'll be picked up by Scotland Yard, interviewed by the anti-Terrostist police and held for 42 days before being released without charge into the custody of Davina McCall.
Celebrity Diva: 12 celebrities each act as a gopher for other celebrities, such as Mariah Carey and Diana Ross. Watch as egos flare.
Celebrity Office: 12 celebrities are employed by a fictional paper company to take part in a mockumentary.
Celebrity Russian Roulette: The public gets to choose 12 celebrities to take part, only one leaves.
Euro 2008 Final: Spain x Germany
That is more like it. After a lacklustre performance against Italy, Spain actually played a decent game of football last night in their 3-0 win against Russia. After dissing the Spanish team yesterday, I was happy that they played convincingly, with the game turning around significantly after Fabregas was substituted onto the field early in the first half.
It was surprising to see from the statistics that Russia was actually dominating the possession of the ball in the first half, but Spain came into their own with three fine goals, setting up what looks like being a thrilling final. As mentioned before, most of Portugal will be supporting Spain, along with our friend from Café Santo Antonio. I'll be supporting Germany, being in the minority as usual.
It was interesting to see the coverage of the match on the Portuguese TV. During the previous matches, when Portugal were playing, there were extensive reports from the big squares in Lisbon and Porto, with thousands of screaming fans. During the half time reports of the two semi finals, Euro 2008 might as well have finished, it was business as usual. Let's see what happens on Saturday night during the final...
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Another team I have backed has lost...
I'm beginning to see a trend here. First I backed Portugal to win, but they were knocked out by Germany, and then Turkey to beat Germany, which never happened. Turkey made a valiant attempt, though. Briefly going ahead after 20 minutes, and then pulling back an equaliser to go 2-2 after 80 minutes. But the German team proved overwhelming in the end and Turkey let in a third goal in the final minutes of the game.
It was really sad to see them lose, they had done so well, especially in their win against Croatia - wasn't it Croatia who effectively knocked out England? The Portuguese commentators were saying that the German tactics were "efficient", there was no spirit to their playing. Whether this was pandering to a German stereotype, I'm not sure, but at the end of the day the German team won, which of course is the aim.
We went for a coffee at the Café Santo Antonio in the afternoon, the owner is Portuguese, and her husband is German. After the quarter final, she made him sleep on the sofa, and she was really behind the Turkish team last night. I wonder if he slept on the sofa again?
Now the next match is between Russia and Spain. Most of Portugal is supporting Spain, but I am in two minds. I am really not in favour of Spain winning, I'm not sure why, they have done nothing to me, but perhaps it is because they put on such a lacklustre performance against Italy. OK, so they hadn't won against Italy for over 80 years, but it was almost like watching England play their usual defensive "let's not lose, but we don't have to win," kind of game. On the other hand, I don't want Russia to win either. Mainly because Russia has already won the Eurovision song contest this year, so surely that is enough? I suspect that the final will be between Germany and Spain. If this is the case, I will be backing German "efficiency" this time, and I will be vastly outnumbered by all of the Portuguese. Still, It's my telly.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
David v Goliath, again?
Tonight, the underdogs Turkey take in the mighty German behemoth in the first semi-final of Euro 2008. OK, a bit over dramatic, I think, but according to most pundits it looks as though the odds are in favour of a German victory.
Even the Portuguese, despite Germany beating Portugal in the quarter final, seem to be rooting for the Germans, so it'll be interesting to see the half-time reports on the news this evening. Will there be the thousands of people in the squares in Porto and Lisbon waving their German flags and cheering on the national team, or will it be a quiet Wednesday evening?
Personally, being English, I root for the underdog, so come on plucky Turkey, give 'em what for - as The Sun would say (if they weren't backing Germany also...) En buyuk, Turkiye, as they say: Turkey, the greatest.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Tales of Meco Beach is Moving...
Having blogged with WordPress on and off for a while now, it's time for a change. We are going to try another site, at Blogger.com, to see how easy this is. The WordPress site will be run alongside Blogger for a while, while we get to grips with the foibles of a new service.
Why the move? Well we are hoping to try new things with our blogging, and hopefully Blogger will be able to provide this. You may notice a Twitter widget appear, if we can think of things to say, or polls, blog rolls, etc., and hopefully the blog will get a little more exciting and interesting
So, please, give Blogger a go and let us know what you think.
See you there...
Friday, June 20, 2008
"And so, the end is near..."
So the time came for portugal to bid farewell to Euro 2008. In front of over 30,000 screaming fans last night, Portugal lost 2-3 against a superior German team. That is not to say that Portugal were outclassed, in my opinion, but that the Germans were just able to convert their opportunities better than the Portuguese team were.
Germany scored from two excellent set piece free kicks, and a third when Ballack made a lovely cross to Schweinsteiger to push the ball past Ricardo. In contrast, Portugal claimed two goals back, the second in the dying minutes of the game when Postinga converted a cross from Nani to head the ball into the net.
All in all it was an equally matched game, but on the day the German team converted their chances better than Portugal. Personally, I feel that there was some gamesmanship, when Chelsea announced that Scolari was leaving for Chelsea after the tournament, clearly he has more time to pack now. Chelsea should really have kept quiet about this until either Portugal were knocked out, or until the end of the the tournament. This was going to be upsetting news, and put a lot of pressure on both Scolari and the team.
Some will say that Scolari wasn't trying hard enough because he was going to Chelsea, but after the game last night Scolari denied this, saying; "If I hadn't announced I was going to Chelsea, we would still have lost the two games. We lost because we didn't do things right or with more quality. It was nothing to do with Chelsea. Some people will imagine it was, but that's not the case."
The other question is what will Ronaldo do now? Will he be going to Rael, or will he stay at Manchester United? According to him after the game last night, he'll be making a decision in the next few days. Stay tuned.
In other news, there were a couple of events during the match that show the crazy side of football. In Lisbon, a german fan watching the match in a bar was beaten up by Portuguese supporters when he couldn't contain himself after the second German goal. And in Porto after the match, a fifty-something year old man ran through a packed public square with a knife. Two people were taken to hospital with stab wounds.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
April 1st Already?
I'm not sure whether this is actually a joke or something serious that they are planning to do. But knowing companies nowadays, anything is possible.
There was a report on the news yesterday that EDP, the nationalised electricity company, want to add 1-2€ to everyone's bill to compensate for those people that have not paid their bills. So if you haven't paid your bill, don't worry because EDP will charge everyone else for your debt.
Can this be true?
In other news, with the increasing price of fuel TAP, the national airline, is being forced to cancel flights because either they aren't receiving deliveries of fuel, or because they can't afford to buy more fuel.
The Portuguese refer fondly to TAP as 'Take Another Plane', as the service for a national airline can be pretty awful at times. Having said that, apart from flight delays we've always had a pretty good service from TAP. Clearly Portuguese will soon be forced onto other planes.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Exclusive! - New Portugal Coach Spotted
Following the defeat of Portugal on Sunday, and the impending departure of Scolari at the end of Euro 2004 (or if Portugal are defeated by Germany on Thursday, whichever comes first), the Federação Portuguesa de Futebol (FPF) has wasted little time in searching for a successor.
In an exclusive, for the first time anywhere, we can reveal the new Portuguese coach. Spotted in Lisbon after the match against the Czech Republic, probably following a meeting with the FPF, the new coach was seen scouting out potential players.
Don't forget, you saw it here first...
Monday, June 16, 2008
The Sound of Silence
After several glorious days, weather-wise, last week, the omens were not good. It was a cloudy day here in Aveiro, with a light rain from time to time, and after the euphoria of the week everyone seemed a little jaded.
There was excitement about the match, of course, Portugal was through but Switzerland had failed to win a game, so it looked like a slam dunk (to mix sports metaphors). However, when the team came out there was a collective, 'huh?' What was Scolari up to, where was Ronaldo, or Simão, or any of his good players? OK, he's resting them, and besides it's only Switzerland.
Ninety minutes later, there was a stunned silence from the Portuguese fans, in fact after that ludicrous penalty we couldn't bear to watch any more. During the game, we were watching through our fingers, it was car-crash television, like watching Steve Carell at his most embarassing in The Office. At half-time, when the players came back onto the pitch, there was a shot of a clearly embarrassed Ronaldo waving to the crowd. Great, we thought, they're going to substitute their better players, but no.
With over 30 yellow cards, by the end of the game practically everyone had been carded apart from the goalies. The refereeing was appalling, each time a player fell, or dived, out came the yellow card. There were cards for dissent, cards for running in a funny way. The penalty was given for such a blatant dive, we wondered at first who was getting the card, and the Swiss players were congratulating each other on such a smart move. We were asking what on earth Scolari was up to. Even when Portugal was 1-0 down there was time to put in Ronaldo or Nuno Gomes, or any of his first team players. But no, he carried on playing a weak team, saving his better players for the quarter final match against the runners up of group B, whoever that is (probably Germany). It was like watching Switzerland play Beira Mar, or Sporting, the Portuguese team were so outclassed. The referee didn't help.
In the post-match press conference, Scolari apparently took on all of the responsibility himself. We were thinking that he was concentrating on all of the lolly he'd be making at Chelsea, but if I was Abramovich, I'd be wondering what the hell was going on.
Unlike the previous games, especially after the game with the Czech Republic, when the team guaranteed their place in the next round, there were no celebrations, no dancing in the streets or car horns blaring. There were just sullen people going home through the drizzling rain. Sad and alone.
Apparently that was not the only upset of the evening, as in a surprising twist Turkey beat the Czech Republic 3-2. So it looks like Turkey will be going through to the quarter finals instead of the Czechs. With a mistake from Cech costing them the game, it was not a good day for Chelsea.
Friday, June 13, 2008
"A good day to bury bad news"
The Guardian was reporting this morning of panic buying of petrol in the UK ahead of a possible strike by truckers over the high price of diesel (gasóleo). In Europe, including Portugal, the fishermen and trucker's have been on strike for a few weeks now. Since the beginning of the year the price of gasóleo has nearly doubled, from 90c in December to over 1,40€ now. The price of petrol is even higher, around 1,60€ in some places, making prices comparable with the UK.
But when you consider that the minimum wage is 426€ per month in Portugal, compared to 1,190€ in the UK, with an average salary of approximately 800€ per month, then increased petrol prices put a real burden on many incomes, and if the price of a litre of fuel is the same, or more than, the equivalent in the UK, then the economy is in real trouble. Fuel in Spain has been costing only about 1,10€ per litre, so many Portuguese living near the border have been crossing over to fill up, leaving huge queues at petrol stations (bombas) and empty petrol stations in Portugal.
The fishermen got what they wanted within a few days of the strike starting. Tensions were high with some fighting at ports between police and fishermen, though nothing like the street battles in Belgium. In the truckers strike, one trucker has been killed and three injured when they were trying to stop other trucks, and the government has now sat down with the trucker's, especially when the they vowed to ratchet up their action and paralyse the country. On the news this afternoon there were reports of milk being thrown away because there were no lorries to transport it, and one mushroom supplier lost 300.000€ worth of mushrooms because they were sitting in the warehouse.
While the strikes were on there was little news, actually no news, of further increases in fuel. But as soon as the truckers announced they were going back to work, the two main fuel providers, Repsol and Galp announced that they were increasing the price of fuel by 1c. .
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