ecto, blogger and dates is a mess...
21st of march, 2005
got up at 3:30 in the morning to catch a 8:30 train to the zurich airport. after a weekend of skiing my heart out, or my little ass to exhaustion, i crashed on sunday night before i could pack and take care of a few imperative back office tasks. the day was all preprogrammed in the way that travel days tend to be. traveling for me has only one hassle, that of moving around all the sensitive electronic gear that i tend to thug along with me which leaves my hand luggage much too weighty a matter for airline restrictions. i checked in with air portugal in zurich, my checked bag was way underweight, and i fearing the worse volunteered my carry-on onto the scale, it was past and beyond overweight. i looked at the clerk as though i was really surprised, she dealt with the matter with a smile and said it was ok! rarely, but rarely have i had such friendly check-in clerks when it comes to my carry-on.
after a delayed departure i got to enjoy special service on economy and wondered how i can be so lucky. somehow i have yet to get excited about the lisbon airport, it works, it is there when i land, and i never miss it after i leave. on the other hand landing in faro is always the first step of being back home. barely landed and my first action was to go to the beach. on mondays my favorite café is closed, but i was not going there for the coffee, i go there for the beach, the surf, the sand, the air and just being there. even on a windy and grey day like monday, it was heaven for me. the beach is home.
being home is a rather strange concept for me. i am much less of a foreigner in switzerland than i am in the country where i was born. still, this may remain a permanent irritation. on the flight from zurich, a rather typical portuguese working couple sat next to me and proceeded to assume that i would not understand a word of their conversation, then the lady gets a bit of a surprise when i addressed her in portuguese. on the other side of me, there was a swiss lady, and she then asked me what nationality i was, i gave her a dirty look and said swiss and then she was confused since i do not speak the swiss german dialect. at that point i really gave the woman a good dirty look of irritation, one that i am rather used to using when swiss germans always assume that the french speaking folks speak either no german or do not exist, and that "real" swiss speak swiss german. one of my typical cases of "damned if you do, damned if you don't." all of these rather limited exchanges with my fellow passengers just had me feel rather arrogant and a bit irritated, so much so, that my conclusion was that the difference between flying a swiss or a portuguese airline is that one gets much better service with the portuguese and in either case one is surrounded by peasants of either nationality who will try to find a nice little bin to put me in. the lesson could also be that i ought to just sleep while flying. on the two and a half hour flight to lisbon i did however make the mistake of opening up my PowerBook and have the swiss peasant making big eyes and asking what kind of PC that was... all i wanted to do was to read a bit.
from the beach in faro i called my aunt and went to see her "second" thing. driving the 20 or so odd kilometers to her house i was thinking of my brother and the conversations that we have been having lately about his interrogation into becoming a physicist. it has been very revealing and painful to realize how low my brother's self-confidence is. painful, painful is what it feels like to discover his lack of self-confidence.
it was already fairly late when i finally got to quarteira and made my bed, had dinner at a place called "dallas" and a coffee at the bar downstairs with a bunch of africans watching the football game on the tube, FC Porto lost, and most people were happy about it. i will never understand football and one of my best friends here is a total addict.
