Reportagem da RTP1 sobre a situação dos Bolseiros de Investigação Científica em Portugal

Another thing to think about: Slippery start for Portugal's young workers

For young Portuguese workers, so-called "Green slips" are often the best way to find a job. But with companies exempted from social security contributions, the slips have turned out to be a great deal for employers and a bad one for workers. See the france24 report here.

Inspiring

My friend Paula da Silva sent me this link to an inspiring video about an inspiring man, Steve Mccurry, National Geographic photographer, and author of *that* cover that everyone remembers, of the girl with deep green eyes...
Best of all... can you guess where he is explaining the things in the video? Yeah, that's right :-)

And now for amazing Portuguese TV!

No, I'm not kidding, these were actually pretty amazing!



"Duarte e Cª"



"O tal canal"



"TV rural" - for those who understand Portuguese, you can see that not much has changed since back then... :-)



I think that everyone in Europe can remember these! "Jogos sem Fronteiras"

Some more songs from our childhood

"As aventuras do Bocas"



"She-ra (He-man's twin sister :-) )"



"Transformers" (I actually thought this one was pretty annoying)

Songs from our childhood

For all of those who lived their childhood in Portugal, back in the times when we could go outside and play, there were no computer games (well, there were, but you had to go to a cousin's or neighbor's house since they weren't for everyone), and cartoons were amazing:



("Abelha Maia")



("Calimero")



("Tom Sawyer", one of my favorites)



("Pica Pau" - Woody woodpecker in English)



("Fábulas da Floresta Verde", one of my favourites as well)



("Panda Tao Tao", or "Cute overload", like Twine usually says :-) )



("A Corrida mais Louca do Mundo", "Wacky races" in English)



("A formiga atómica", "Atom ant" in English)



("Homem-elástico, "Plastic Man" in English)

... there are many more, I'll post them when I get the time. Enjoy!

Portugal is good for vacation

This is a sentence I hear a lot among Portuguese people who are working abroad: "Portugal is good [but only] for vacation". 

Well, where else are you going to find places such as these. For all of you, Portuguese and non-Portuguese who are looking to know more of this country (it's really worth it, trust me), go and take a look at the site wonderfulland.com.

The critical situation of critical life support in Portugal

Now this is the real thing:



The things that happen in this country are simply amazing. You'd think this is a parody, but it's not. It's a person calling 112 (991 for those in the USA), requesting help, and the subsequent dialogues among firemen and medical emergency corporations... Some only have one person on duty and thus can't leave with an ambulance, some have a very bad telephone connection and can't hear, and it's a complete mess. Total time for all the calls, in a critical case: 15 minutes.



The second videoclip is a parody made by "Gato Fedorento", probably our best comedian team in Portugal, and when I first saw this I thought that it was just a parody because the government had shut down tons of medical emergency units, and thus they couldn't operate well. Well, the similarities are amazing.

I'm filing this under "bad" and "comics" labels because what else are you going to do... !!!! I have no words.

Criminality in Portugal: let's look at the trailer

Again... Brazil is a good preview of what Portugal is becoming.
Let's see...

1. Disappearance of the middle class; larger difference between the rich and the poor every day that goes by;
   
2. Chaotic (nonexistent?) Education;
3. "True" criminality (and everyday, all the time...);
4. Corruption...

Haven't we seen this movie before? And we're just looking at the trailers...

This chronicle by Ricardo Araújo Pereira, in Visão, August 2008, is an amazing critic of point (3). Unfortunately it's also very true...

The future of education in Portugal

No comments. Actually, just a comment. But WHY? It seems that Brazil has been a "preview" of what is going to happen to this country: first the increasing differentiation between the rich and the poor, then the criminality, then the education. I know they descend from our genes, but where is it going to stop?



For those who can't speak Portuguese, it is the enumeration of political changes that led to an education where kids can't make simple addition operations, write and even read. Among those, is one that is being implemented here: making it easier to pass the year and almost impossible to fail. Kids just don't have an incentive to learn, and they just continue until the basic flaws are just too important and widespread to be able to learn. The result is that parents are making pressure on the schools for them to fail their kids!!!