It looks like Manuel Cardoso isn’t the only Comedian coming to London this month – Hugo Sousa is too. That’s two portuguese comedy shows in the next week! Get in!
Author: Colin Lusk
Just a data nerd
Lisbon by Neill Lochery
I’ve had the audiobook of Lisbon by Neill Lochery on my listening list for a while now and finally got around to it simply because I had started Enquanto Salazar Dormia by Domingos Amaral And wanted a little more background about wartime Lisbon to give me the context.
I learned a lot! I’d always known Portugal had a slightly odd place In World War 2 History: Salazar, as a fascist, was probably more inclined towards Hitler’s world view, but Portugal and Britain have been allies since way back. I also knew we hadn’t always been good allies (see this post about the portuguese national anthem starting life as a diss track about the treacherous land-stealing British empire).
What I hadn’t realised was how many different schemes and counter-schemes were swirling around the capital, or how delicate was the balance that kept the Iberian peninsula out of the war.
Nor had I any idea that part of Portugal’s reason for distrusting Britain was that Neville Chamberlain had offered Angola to Hitler as part of his appeasement negotiations. Or about the delicate situation regarding Wolfram (Tungsten) mining that was necessary for both sides’ war effirts. At one point, a network of SOE agents had recruiters portuguese sub-agents and poised then to blow up mining infrastructure and assassinate some key people in the event that Portugal was invaded by Spain at the behest of the nazis and there wasn’t a padeira around to hold them back.
It’s absolutely amazing. I love all that stuff.
O Tate da Tuga
I heard Joana Marques, on her podcast, “Extremamente Desagradável” talking about this silly, silly boy called Afonso, who is trying to style himself as the Andrew Tate of Portugal. Cigar, sunglasses, aspirational videos of him standing near hot gajas and red lambos, and of course he has a fake university where you can hand over your hard-earned cash and learn to be just like him. He hasn’t been arrested for human trafficking yet, but give him time.
He’s being interviewed here on the podcast of a bodybuilder guy called Hugo Mestre. For some reason, the first 7 minutes are completely silent, but all good things most come to an end and they start talking after that.
Aaaaanyway, look, I don’t want to bum you out by telling you about the worst of Portuguese social media, so if you need a soul cleanse after seeing this lad, can I recommend that you go on Instagram and look up dinis_o_mini_biologo, who is one of my favourite social media peeps at the moment. He’s only little, but he knows a lot about the creatures in the hedges and the rock pools of Portugal and he’s really confident in handling them while he tells you all about their habits and why he likes them. He’s basically everything social media should be and I hope he’ll have 1000x more success than the Tate Wannabe.
The Struggle Is Real
Manuel Cardoso Brings His Comedy Show to London
This event, happening in London next week, looks like it could be fun. The guy is a comedian who does sketches, and he’s put together a show about bad behaviour (“red flags”) which he’s touring around 10 cities including London.
I assume he’s still going to be speaking portuguese in the London gig… It’s a bit confusing though because he’s given it a title in english and there are no warnings to say it’s in portuguese, so aren’t there likely to be punters who just see it in the What’s On pages, fancy a night out and just buy a ticket on the off-chance? The fact that there are no warnings make me wonder if he’s doing an english version. On the other hand, the online ticket purchase is all in portuguese, so… assuming that’s the only way to get one, hopefully that will keep the riff-raff out and it’ll be safe to do the portuguese show for teh portuguese crowd. Anyway, I’m crossing my fingers. It’s on the day before the exam so I am counting on it being equal parts funny and challenging!
I’ve seen quite a few of his videos and he’s very good, but comedy is always tricky since there tends to be a lot of slang, fast talking and references to events that maybe don’t make sense to outsiders. An hour and a half of that might be pretty challenging if I lose the thread of what he’s talking about! Anyway, I’ll listen to a few more of his videos and try to get really familiar with his accent and the kinds of things he talks about.
You can book tickets on this page (which,just to thicken the plot even further, has a description in both languages!)
Punning with the Brazilians
I really like being able to make puns in another language. That’s me, the first comment u der the main post.
As you probably know, or can probably guess a Centavo is a hundredth of a Real (Brazilian currency)
I think the people following up are mocking the collapse of the Argentinian Peso. It’s lost more than half it’s value in the last year including a sharp drop-off when the sensible candidate got knocked out if the election race.
Underlining
I have been practising Compreensão do Oral tests recently. They’re th hardest part of any CAPLE exam because even if you have read the answers, you still find yourself having to parse each one while trying to listen to what the recording is saying. This is nigh on impossible, and so it’s easy to drop marks.
What I’ve been finding works really well is to use the minute to scan each answer and underline one or two words that act as key words for the whole thing. That way, when the speaker answers the question, you only need to look at he underlined words. If its more ambiguous, maybe it’ll need more work, but over all, I find I can answer without wasting so much time, which means I don’t end up feeling left behind and panicky.
I find it works pretty well. I’m not getting perfect marks or anything but I feel much more in control and I am definitely going to use this in the DAPLE exam itself.
It Was Acceptable In the Nineties
This advert is a truly magnificent example of casual boardroom sexism. Imagine being a woman working in the office at the ad department that came up with this thing!
Oh well, as usual, it’s something we can learn from. In this case, about words used for punctuation, so…
Halloween Costume Idea
Sexy Infinitivo Pessoal.
Tourists
Rewriting a text with corrections from a Produção e Interação Escrita section of the exam. Just like yesterday I’ll probably drop some clangers in typing it but it should help understand the errors I made in the original timed run-through.
The theme was something like “A tourist is someone who buys a return ticket, a traveller is someone who buys a one way ticket – Discuss” but I’ve lost the paper now.
Existe um grão de verdade nesta situação. Pensamos em turistas como os que vão de férias. Compram bilhetes de ida e volt porque pretendem ficar no estrangeiro durante uma semana ou duas. Depois voltam ao seu dia-e-dia sem pensar mais exceto quando veem as “curtidas*” no seu Instagram ou qualquer outra rede que seja. Um viajante, por outro lado, viaja sem saber quando voltará a ver a sua casinha.
Mas na minha opinião está diabisao e demasiado simplificada. Turismo tem mais a ver com a pessoa que está a viajar e menos com o bilhete no seu telemóvel. Um turista quer que os lugares adaptam-se à sua conveniência. Não prestam até aço à cultura, a não ser que fique bem no pano de fundo das suas fotografias. Mas este jeito é comum nos turistas de ida sem volta.
As redes sociais fornecem milhares de imagens de “viajantes” a tirar selfies perto de uma catarata ou uma estátua qualquer. Mas o viajante é que é o foco destas imagens. Não respeitam os lugares onde aparecem.
Hoje em dia, geralmente chamamos está gente “influenciadores” mesmo a que a influência que tem no mundo é negativa! Atraem mais turistas aos sítios desconhecidos e é breve, ficam sibrelotados.
Elossivek viajar com os olhos e o coração abertos durante um fim-de’semana, e é possível viver como turista durante um ano (se for rico!)
Afinal, o que conta não é o bilhete mas sim o respeito.
* Should probably be “gostos” or “likes” because “curtidas” is Brazilian, but the Internet afflicts these things on us and if we have to put up with it from the yanks, the portuguese should share our pain.
Luso 