Monthly Archives: July 2013

Road trip

Ana’s flat is nice but I don’t think I want to settle in Porto or Portugal. I’m thinking again about life on the road (for a few months say) and how practical that would be.

We have the Land Rover and Portugal has the Umm.

This one is for sale near me. I’ve seen a few around town and I really like them. There is plenty of room to sleep in the back. Could I really travel around in something like that? For some reason I think I could. All I’d need is your usual camping gear. One of these to work on:

One of these to chill out on:

My laptop can be powered with one of these:

It’s going to be sunny most of the time!

They key requirement is the internet so that I can work. globalgig might just have that covered. 2GB/month in any of 36 European countries for less than £60/month. I’m pretty sure that’s enough for work. Especially if I download documentation and don’t use G+ and Facebook and all that during the working day. For the non-essential browsing I’ll go have a coffee and use some free bandwith.

So…I should just go buy that Umm and head to the camping shop. Right? Not sure what’s holding me back. My track record of astonishingly poor (and expensive!) decision making is one thing. The last time I bought a car privately I bought an illegal death-trap. How can I buy with confidence in a foreign land? Hopefully Portugal’s equivalent of the RAC can do vehicle checks for you.

Other than the practicalities of getting a vehicle I don’t think much else is stopping me. Chasing a good 3G signal could be tedious. The data rates might be annoyingly slow. I’ll not really know until I give it a go. The basic living is no problem. I spent two-odd months in Africa sleeping in sleeping bag and eating off picnic tables.

Hmmm…

No fear

Cats have excellent balance and can seem to perch on very narrow fence tops. They are also good at jumping down from a height. If it’s high enough they kind of run down then leap.

By ‘high’ I meant 8ft maybe. This cat seemed to have no fear.

I’m pretty sure that’s too high for a non-bone-breaking landing. Also it’s not sitting on a window ledge. It’s sitting on the window barely more than 1” wide!

You may have guessed this is a quiet week. But everyone loves cats on the internet. Right?

 

Cereal for tea

My first day in the apartment alone. The lounge has more light than the bedroom so I set myself up in there.

There is something quite liberating about being able to work in pyjamas. It’s probably a terrible habit that I should nip in the bud right now!

At lunchtime I showered and went to check out one of the local eateries. The flat is on the 6th floor. The way out to the streets behind the block is via the 4th floor level where there are some nice gardens.

Those recesses have benches and if I manage to get some WiFi out there I might sit and do some work in the sunshine.

The gardens lead to the private drive which ends at a large gate that opens onto the streets of the older part of Porto.

Yards from the gate there is a cafe that Ana takes her morning coffee in. The poor chap behind the counter was looking quite stressed.

€5.90 got me a baguette American, Pepsi, pingo (espresso with a drop of milk) and pastel de nata. I can’t keep spending this much money on food!

Having prepared and eaten such nice meals with Ana I was determined to keep the habit going. After work (and a nap) I headed off to the local Mini Preço. As soon as I got inside the wheels came off. My mind goes blank in supermarkets. I hate shopping. For dinner I ended up with a bowl of chocolate muesli, half a pizza, another pastel de nata and some Doritos. No fig salad with lightly toasted seeds all dressed with the finest of Portugal’s olive oil tonight.

Because I bought so little I get to repeat the exercise tomorrow too. There has to be a workaround for this!

Man bag

One of the attractive features of Porto is that it is higglety pigglety. While sharing many common design features the buildings are often very irregular.

You can see the houses above are in various states of disrepair. This is evident all over Porto. In some areas the old houses have been beautifully restored. In others they are crumbling. It’s a real shame to see these places falling apart. I imagine a canny investor could make a bit of money in rescuing these old properties.

While wandering around looking for somewhere for lunch I snapped another set of attractive buildings. These are more regular but still differ in colour, choice of windows and choice of tiles.

I’ve not yet got bored looking up and around and there are many, many more streets and buildings that could be photographed.

We found a nice shady spot with a view over the river for lunch.

Afterwards we decided to go over to Gaia and El Corte Inglés (a huge mall). Ana needed to buy a swimsuit and I offered to give my opinion.

The top of the Pont Louis I bridge is some 60m above the Rio d’Ouro. The walkway has a railing but it’s only just above waist height. Those uneasy with heights should just avoid! The views up and down river are spectacular.

I’d love to have a place that hugged the hillside and had a rooftop terrace with these views.

We got to the mall and I was dragged around the swimwear department. While Ana waited for a changing room to become free I retired to the café for some coffee and nata.

Really she was fairly efficient at choosing something. We both dislike malls so wanted to get in and out sharpish. On the way out we passed by some bags. I’ve been looking for a man-bag for ages. Lugging around a rucksack when all you have is a laptop, wallet and keys is annoying. One bag stood out. It looked designed for a 13” laptop and was unfussy and not too big. With permission we took the bag upstairs to the computer department to make sure the bag accommodated a MacBook Air. It fitted perfectly. I was a little indecisive as, now I have that flat, I reasoned I wouldn’t be carrying the laptop around much. But it seemed silly to have been looking for so long and not buy the perfect thing when it came along. Anyway my old laptop case was slightly passed its best.

Hopefully the new one will last a little longer and not deteriorate in condition quite so badly.

Proudly sporting my new bag we walked home and made some dinner. Aiming for a Jamie Oliver style we presented things ‘rustically’ on wooden boards. Tortilla, nice bread and some Polish dumplings with yoghurt. Lovely!

Cleaning lady

For the past few weeks I’ve had either an omelette or tosta mista (ham and cheese toastie) for breakfast. Both are very nice but it was nice to have some porridge for a change.

The cleaning lady came around at 11.30 to discuss the schedule while Ana was away. The only thing I managed to get from the conversation was quinta-feira – Thursday. I have to keep the place tidy but it’ll get cleaned and my bedding changed every Thursday. Travelling is so hard.

Ana told me the cleaning lady was aghast that she’d let a strange man into her house.

I wish I liked spending time on food more. I tend to see eating as a hassle and being hungry is annoying. But when you sit down to a lunch like this,

it all seems much more worthwhile. Given that I’ll be alone from Monday I suspect that may have been my last such lunch.

Around five we headed out for a wander. First to the library and then on down to the river. We crossed to the Gaia side and found some deck-chairs to sit and enjoy the view.

Not that view! This one.

Next we continued along the south bank of the river to the fishermans’ village. If I don’t get a van then this would be my other choice of vehicle.

How awesome is that!? I want one. Maybe I don’t need a van. Just that and a tent.

The first plan was pizza for dinner but after a queue-jumping incident I decided to leave.  We ended up in a more local place which was much nicer.

Salad, batatas swimming in a butter and olive oil and a platter of freshly grilled sardines. Delicious!

A little boat puttered across the river to take us to the north side and the walk home which passes under the Arrabida bridge.

Moving in

Usually moving is a real pain but when all I have is a carry-on suitcase and a rucksack it’s not so bad. I spent the morning in my office.

Ana, my new landlady, arrived around one. After lunch we headed off to her flat.

From my dark, spartan basement room at the Bela Star,

it was nice to move into a proper place to live.

Work occupied the rest of the afternoon then it was time to make cake. A little strange perhaps. Ana is still here and she’d invited me out to a dinner with some of her classmates (she’s studying medicine). One of the girls is leaving for an Erasmus stay somewhere so this was a farewell dinner. Ana decided to take some cake as a gift.

The closest I’ve come to baking is making pancake batter. I was fairly skeptical of how it’d turn out. Olive oil instead of butter. Ana decided to omit all the sugar. The result, however, was both aesthetically pleasing and very tasty!

Dinner was in a student restaurant.  8€ for a plate of breaded meat and all the sangria and receita (a mix of beer, wine and sugar) you can drink. They were all horribly healthy and happy looking. The innocence (or ignorance) of youth!

After dinner we popped along to the regular CouchSurfing meet up. Apparently things don’t really get going until midnight and they carry on long after. I only had the energy to chat to a few people at the end of the table. A Serb who’d just arrived. A Trinidadian who’d been here two years. And a Romanian software-developer who was researching into computer generated music. His program has one button to control the ‘groove’. You can select more or less. The software does the rest.

 

Graffiti

Taking lots of pictures is hard. On coming to Portugal I resolved to take snaps often because I always end up forgetting what happened on holiday. That seems like a big waste! Despite having my phone in my pocket and wielding it frequently the photos I collected still seemed to miss out a lot.

With that in mind I saw some graffiti tonight and snapped it.

Some kind of alien down-and-out living by the tracks.

One thing I might try is setting up a ‘nag’. There are surely web-apps for this but if not it’d be trivial to write. Something that prompts me, hourly say, to take a photograph. The interval could even be random. Most shots would be me sat at a table but I might capture some gems that I otherwise wouldn’t think to take. There’s no costly film involved so what’s the harm!

Another thing would be to learn how to take good photographs. I’ve done a little reading around and know about the rule of thirds, fill the frame, leading lines and the like. Still, I can’t get a satisfying photograph most of the time. In a way it’s not too important. Other peoples’ photos are usually boring so mine are really only for me. To remind me of ‘stuff’.

UPDATE: Little nag script set up on my nitrous.io box. Sends me an email every hour which causes my phone to vibrate and reminds me to take a snap. Coding is awesome sometimes!

The Borg…

…have landed.

That’s the Casa da Musica. Free concerts throughout the summer and club nights too.

Sadly I wasn’t there to visit but to go the main Optimus store in Portugal which is housed beneath the Casa. As with the chap in the other shop the girl I got speaking to here had no knowledge of the tariff advertised on their website. She disappeared for about fifteen minutes presumably to speak with someone higher up. On her return she told me how I could get the tariff. I thought I finally understood but when I got home I checked the terms again. She wasn’t entirely correct.

Here’s how I think it works.

To start I buy a 100Mbps USB stick (99€).

I then activate the ‘Always on 4G’ service via the website.

The minimum top-up is 7.5€. That buys 360MB and is valid for 1-week. There is a sliding scale up to 8 weeks for topping-up up to 40€. The cost of the data is a flat 0.0208€/MB.

The connection speed is ‘up to’ 50Mbps but the sneaky buggers throttle you in proportion to the amount of credit you have loaded. They don’t publish what speeds you’ll get for different amounts of load.

My data usage during this afternoon’s work was around 60MiB. Let’s say a typical day might be 150MB. That equates to 3.12€ which doesn’t seem so bad. Six espressos.

Probably I should buy it, use it and see how it goes (I suspect most other people would have just done that already!). We’re not talking huge amounts of money here. Almost 100€ has been spent in bars on a couple of occasions.

Why do I need mobile data again? From Friday I’ll be in a flat with super-fast fibre broadband. Well, I still want to experiment with “work anywhere”. Be that by the beach, a river or in the mountains. I like the idea of going off randomly in my camper, staying somewhere nice while still being able to put in a day’s work. The obvious caveat is that these places have to have a mobile signal. If I do a few days away a few times for practice, and it works out, I can hit the road proper!

 

Tech troubles

The battery on my Mac is only giving me about three hours running time now. There is an authorized reseller in Porto who can replace it. The laptop needs to be taken in for a test first. The store is open in the morning from 0930 – 1300. Allegedly. I took a trip out there this morning and sat and waited. By 10am no-one but the cleaner had turned up. I left for ‘work’. My letter of complaint has been emailed but I’ve not had a reply yet.

This evening I went to the Optimus store to get sorted for mobile broadband. The guy at the counter hadn’t heard of the tariff I was talking about. He pulled out a catalogue and showed me prices that I’d never seen on the website. To make sure I wasn’t getting things wrong I showed him the website. “Ah, we can’t sell you that in this store”, he said. “You know Casa da Musica?”. That’s where I’d been with my Mac in the morning! I have to go there tomorrow to be able to access the full range of tariffs. One possible silver-lining is that there might be some room to haggle on the cost, bandwidth and data cap.