Yesterday evening

 

This is the end of our dead-end-road at the end of the day. Picture by Chang, of course.

Didn't we tell you that our property borders on the country(side)?

 Here's the proof, picture taken from a bathroom window:

 

 

Has VAN GOGH finally risen...

 ...to paint our garden?

No, it was Chang who took this picture through the kitchen window. 

Rain, finally rain. We never get enough of it during the summer, when the lawn gets thirsty.

And here's, as a bonus, another of Chang's pictures, taken two weeks ago of the kitchen wing:

He posted it on Twitter, where it drew comments such as "fairy tale," "haunting," (one wonders) and yes, "nice sunrise." Chang, the owner of a Tesla Model Y, is becoming very popular on Twitter, drawing hundreds of reposts and uncountable likes for his posts. (We shouldn't crow, we hate social networks).

What is this (?)...this is Portugal...

 

...but this is also a little path, slanting away from a gas station to a zebra crossing. And why does this little path do this? Because a new little commercial district rose behind the gas station with a Burger King and an ALDI supermarket here in Alcobaça, creating pedestrian traffic towards the zebra crossing. 

And what do the Portuguese do? Rather than erecting VERBOTSSCHILDER -- warning the errant pedestrian not to trample on the GRÜNANLAGEN -- they insert a little TRAMPELPFAD across the Grünanlagen, and everybody is happy. Wouldn't have happened in Germany, where yours truly originated.

Make LOVE, not WAR!

Anybody interested in Alcobaça, our new hometown?

Here's a new, very informative YouTube clip about us:

Have fun!

 

What is this --- Carla, Arfai, MOMA, Robots, TESLA, Dolly

This looks like a famous exhibition piece in the garden of a museum, doesn't it? The Getty Museum in LA, for example, or the MET cloisters in New York City, or the MOMA.

MOMA? Yes, the Museum of Modern Art, also located in New York City. 

Hold on, the MOMA doesn't have a garden. But our house here in Alcobaça, PT has one:

And the hands themselves, then? Well, they are a good-bye present from our neighbor Carla Moreira.

Carla in front of her offices

She sold her house next door and moved to an apartment atop her ceramics factory nearby, where these hands are made. 

One day, the hands will be famous, since Arfai, Carla's company, is a prime maker of high-end ceramics, and you must absolutely have a look at Arfai's web site.

Why, then, do we talk about the MOMA?

Because we wrote a play, a comedy about robots, in which the MOMA plays a role. And yesterday was TESLA's AI-day, which was also about robots, in pacticular about their new inhouse robot Optimus.  

It's practically finished, our play, and here is a fragment:

(Context: Robert was built long ago by Steve as a protoype of his future line of household robots and given to his then-girlfriend Eliza as a parting gift with the promise to return 25 years later with the latest version of said household robots. Today is the day, and the name of this latest version is Dolly. Dolly is urgently needed because Robert--technologically outdated--will no longer supported/updated. Robert knows that he'll soon be redundant, and he has just complained that he'll be ending his existence in a garbage container. One more thing: Dolly is still wrapped up in a garish gift box. Here goes:)

DOLLY (TO ROBERT)

  You're Generation One. You've been discontinued. You're no longer supported.

ROBERT

  I know, I'm on my way out.

DOLLY

  Before you go, please get me out of here.

ROBERT

  Why do you want to get out? Are you afraid in the dark?

DOLLY

  I explained this 10 minutes and 11 seconds ago.

CO2, or F--- PC

We are no friends of CO2, but we aren't friends of Victorian excesses either, (Queen Victoria, remember, the patron saint of the Victorian Age), and so we loathe POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, the neo-Victorian instantiation of prudeness, censorship, and a generic fear of unpleasant truths. 

And it just so happened that our new hometown, Alcobaça, has it's annual street fair, and here you are looking at the stand of a vendor of used cars. And look at the vendor's name. CO2 Auto. Do you blush, dear reader? Do you feel offended?

We don't, of course, since we own a Tesla (the car on the right, enjoying the sunset on the Praia do Norte, the beach with the largest surfable waves in the world). Plus, Tesla has just released a new version of it's self-driving software (10.69, wink, wink) Here, fresh from YouTube.

Craftsmen in the house

 You haven't heard from us in a while--for various reasons, obviously, such as slosh, long covid, more slosh induced by long covid, plus the painters that arrived to redo the house who forced us into temporary retirement in Switzerland. But they finally left (the painters), so we could return to Alcobaça and put the house back in order. And here we are with a new view of the entrance hall:

Note the difference? You don't? This is how our entrance looked before:

And the difference? Well, the colors, but also the metallic print on the wall. Here it is enlarged:

"Tata, the Beatles also survived," it says, and it's a quote from our second GREEN-EYES book, where John's neighbor Joe instigates John's friends to face/ignore the exalted crowd outside and exit the building urgently (the Beatles, remember, the first boy band, facing exalted crows all the time during the exalted part of their career).

 

Here's a brief fragment of the episode: 

The bell rings again. I walk to the buzzer, and there’s commotion on the parking lot below, thrilled voices on the intercom asking for Ben. And now it arrives from the other side, a mid-level pitch of cheers and shouts traveling around the condo and through the windows on the canal side. Ben, holding on to a window catch, peers nervously at the sound waves. 

There’s a knock on the main door. I peek through the peephole, but it’s not a groupie (if there was one there would be all), it’s a middle-aged man with no trace of fandom on his face—-my neighbor Joe. He looks upset even though he lives in the duplex penthouse above and owns the latest model of my jalopy. I open the door.

“This is you, right?” he says with an abstracted gesture while staring past me at the girl on the couch. “What is this?”

“That’s Juliette,” I answer. “She’s just back from visiting her sister at the hospital. The festival, you know, yesterday. The doomsday, the storm. Professor Bienpensant.” 

He shakes his head. “Not her. The hullabaloo below.” 

“It’s not us,” I say.

“It’s hem,” he replies, and points a finger at the nervous Ben near the window.

“Ben is a friend,” I say, “he’s staying with me because he was working for the festival.”

“Working, ha! It was on TV, this woman with her name like ice cream.”

“What can we do? It’s not our fault.”

“Look,” he says, “I ain’t no nigga-haitin’ redneck, and your Ben, with his third leg, that’s what it is all about, ain’t it—-I’m from the South too, from Louisiana, I’ve seen guys like him in the locker room. You must get him out of here. This is a quiet, unspoiled neighborhood. We want to keep it that way. Now!”

The doorbell shrills—-amped-up electrons working their way into everybody’s nerves.

“How do we get him out of here?” I ask.

The shrilling has ceased, and the jeers below segue into a sing-song: “Happy Birthday to you...”

“They’ll storm the building before you know it,” Joe says. “This structure is way less solid than it looks. Five floors of pure timber. If these hoi polloi get up here to your floor, God help us.” Meanwhile, the singsong has disintegrated into high-pitched shouts, “Ben, Ben, Ben.”

“We can’t leave, they’ll tear us to pieces,” I say.

“Tut-tut,” Joe shakes his head. “The Beatles also survived.”

Stay tuned...

Alcobaça yesterday

Alcobaça holds a weekly market on Saturday. It's in walking distance, so we walked the pitoresco walk to the venue along the Alcoa, the river. To the left, the blue structure houses the catholic kindergarden.

The market. We bought eggs, flowers, and parsley.

The Alcoa again, on the way back.

The monastery (which is huge) (as you possibly know). This corner is being transformed into a FIVE STARS, (or BOUTIQUE) hotel. Come and visit.

(Nice here, isn't it. Another gorgeous day.)

Yesterday's barbecue --

(Clip by our friend Charlie:)


There were raindrops, that's why everybody huddles under the pergola. The evening became very cosy and congenial, though, and no political incorrectness occurred.

Yesterday on the beach

September was a bit rainy, but the summer is back.

October is the season for big waves...

...which has started now (the season).

Forte de São Miguel Arcanjo (Fortress of Saint Michael the Archangel) the locus vivendi for surfing championships.

The street view of our house this (Sunday) morning

 

Note the bamboo on the deck to the left of the gate (click on the pic for enlargement)

Last week

The newly acquired Tesla MODEL Y (one of the first delivered to Europe) in front of the Alcobaça monastery.

Lunch at "Meat", the hamburgeria around the corner from the monastery.

Around 9:00 in the morning.

Antique market on the square of the monastery.

A morning around 7:30.

Our Model Y again, now paired with Tesla's Model 3 which belongs to the vet of our neighbors.

Praia do Norte in the afternoon.

(Pictures, as usual, by Chang Man Yoon)

There is always hope...

 

...at the end of the rainbow.

 

Our garden a few days ago.

Hannah & Andreas

 (Click on any picture for a slideshow with larger images; it's worth it:)

We had been invited by our new friends Hannah and Andreas for lunch.

Hannah is an artist, a writer, and many other things. 

She also ran an antique shop, which shows in the interior.

Andreas had been a professional software designer in the olden days (Cobol), then became a professional cook, and finally build a seagoing vessel which took the pair from Germany to Portugal, where they settled 14 years ago. They even speak Portuguese.

So, Andreas cooked for us. This is the main dish, beef filet with a true sauce Béarnaise over an intricate heap of rice.

Michael drank too much, which was wonderful...

...as wonderful as the views of this olive grove across the street*        

Hannah & Andreas, thank you so much!

(*)which looked exactly like the olive grove across the street from the hospital in St. Rémy de Province, immortalized in countless paintings by its patient Vincent van Gogh, who also drank too much.**

(**) Namely this one:

How are you doing...?

Michael is posting this especially for Alex (Irene Hogan), the famous editor of GFF, who was wondering how we are doing...

This is "us" (Chang and Michael, plus Charlie, our saviour (in the middle), in November '20, in the garden of our new home in Alcobaça (click on any picture for a slide-show)).

The last couple of years, when Michael was looking at his posts on these pages, he felt that people were being misled to think that we were living in paradise. 

The view from our home on the Cote d'Azur ("Nichts ist schwerer zu ertragen als eine lange Reihe von schönen Tagen" (Goethe))

This was far from the truth, unfortunately, since we were in financial trouble and had to sell the place and leave France. But the housing market was down, we could not sell, and in our suppressed state of mind we suffered under this ruthlessly glorious sun rising each morning over the glorious Mediterranean.

A passing cloud comes to the rescue, for once.

But then Covid struk, the markets turned, and we sold the house and moved to Portugal, where we found---for a song---an underrated hilltop villa in Alcobaça, 100 km north of Lisbon, near the coast.

It's the structure with the red roof, not far from...

 

...the Praia do Norte, the beach with the highest surfable waves in the world.

But then, the internet hit in too many ways and our relocation became much more complicated than expected. Here's one trivial example, concerning our print-copy subscription to The Economist. It's a "chat" with their "advisor": 

The Economist (TE): Hi, Ampersant, you are now in a queue and we'll have an advisor with you shortly. 

Michael (M): I am not receiving my print edition since 2 or 3 weeks

TE: Your current position is 1, thank you for holding. 

TE: Your current position is 1, thank you for holding. 

TE: Your current position is 1, thank you for holding. 

TE: Bill has been allocated to the chat.

Bill: Please bear with me for a minute, while I check the information for you.

Bill: Thank you for your patience, Ampersant.

Bill: I've extended your subscription by a further 2 issues to compensate for the missing copies.

Bill: Is there anything else I can help you with?

M: You have no explanation? Did you send the copies?

Bill: Actually there is a issue in delivery, I apologize for the inconvenience caused.

Bill: Hereafter you'll not face the same issue.

M: Could you just be a bit more precise..."issue in delivery"...is that the language I can expect from THE ECONOMIST?

Bill: I'm extremely sorry to inform you that there is an delay with the postal department is I meant.

M: Shall I cancel my subscription, then?

Bill: But now I have forwarded to concerned department, hereafter you will not face delivery delay.

M: I'm not happy about this "chat", I can tell you...

Bill: I'm sorry that you've decided to cancel.

M: I have not decided to cancel...I asked: "Shall I cancel"...

Bill: I'm extremely sorry for that, Ampersant.

M: You are sorry for what?

(Here the chat ended; the "advisor" disappeared from the line).

Are you still there? This is how people have to spend their days these days when they move countries.

Plus, our underrated villa revealed some underrated problems which required all our attention. Plus, Michael developed a problem with his knee.

Not so underrated after all---street view of the house in Nov. '20.

Charlie working on the gate of the driveway

Not all problems are solved yet; we are still somewhat in limbo (etymologically the first sphere of  hell, "limbo", if we recall correctly from memory).

And Michael is not---he's excepting Chang from this, because Chang is everything---we are really not self-help people that believe in self-help slogans.

Anyhow, there we are.

A recent morning lensed from the bedroom; note the pergola.

The new front deck

Entrance; note the ridiculous double doormat

Street view of the house in August 2021