7.15.15
I spent the first block of classes today- we technically have two classes each morning, though it seems like a formality- watching what I thought was going to be a Portuguese film but turned out to be French: "A Gaiola Dourada" is really "La Cage Dorée". 95% of the movie is in French, but it was subtitled in Portuguese, which probably confused a lot of people. I was thankful for the subtitles, because if it had been completely in Portuguese there's no way I would have been able to follow the movie well enough to take a quiz on it afterward.
Today was also the first of our afternoons spent visiting museums. I ended up on the bus headed to the Museu Marítimo, while I think I signed up for the trip to the Centro de Ciência. I didn't feel bad about this- I was less than thrilled about going to what I imagine is a generic science museum- and I doubt my being on the bus cost anyone a desperately-desired trip to the Museu Marítimo. If it did, then desculpe, colega.
I told myself last night that I'd take it easy today in terms of walking, but I didn't. The first afternoon showers rolled in just as we got to the museum, cooling things off a little, and when I was done at the museum I went off up the Rua da Barra and finally got to see the Quartel dos Mouros, as well as a couple wonderfully decrepit old lanes around the Largo do Lilau. I was tempted to visit the church and seminary of São José, which I think was the haunt of Padre Manuel Teixeira, but I felt somewhat underdressed- not that anyone would care, but still- and it's close enough to the Largo do Senado that visiting at a later date won't be any problem. I ended my trek by eating a 豬扒包, or pork chop bun (the best one I've had yet), and going around the corner to Caravela again for a cold beer and a leisurely perusal of 澳門平台/Plataforma, a bilingual Portuguese-Chinese newspaper. In addition to the usual stuff it also publishes poetry, which earns it high marks in my book. Then it was back on the MT3U to the ol' Universidade.
My complaints about the Macau Corner in the UM library have, as I suspected, turned out to be unfounded. There are the locked cases I mentioned, as well as a good chunk of stacks of books in Portuguese, Chinese, and English. I only barely skimmed them and found enough to keep me busy indefinitely, and enough to obviate the need for a trip to the Arquivo Histórico. For the time being I've settled on a long out of print novel, António Rebordão Navarro's As Portas do Cerco, that I've been wanting to read for a while. Like everywhere else on campus, the library is currently a ghost town, which makes for good reading.
Had some good chats with a couple of the professors at different times today. I still need to drop by Professor Cavalheiro's office and schedule that trip to the cemetery where Pessanha is buried. Right now, however, I have to go get my laundry out of the washing machine. I went to check on it a little while ago and found the floor half-submerged. In yet another example of what's either Chinese ingenuity or laziness, or probably some of both, the washer's drainage tube doesn't connect to anything, since there's a drain in the floor less than a foot away; and even though it'll take a while and turn the room into a slippery death trap in the meantime, why not just let the water go down the drain?
At the very least, shit like this guarantees I won't be bored anytime soon.
7.17.15
So much for not mocking the slapdash construction of this university. The interior side of our door's lock mechanism- which requires a keycard- was barely attached when I got here, and sometime yesterday it gave up the ghost entirely. Rather than just falling off, however, it managed to render the door completely inoperable, which meant me and my roommate had to ask our suitmate to let us in through his room and the bathroom. After some wrangling, which included being told that I marked a checkbox on the maintenance form improperly (what the fuck), we were told we could move back in tomorrow and were put in temporary rooms for the night. Darren was in the room next to mine, along with Ethan, a guy from Macau whom I met not long after moving into my new digs. Ethan is friendly, studies medicine in Taiwan, and reminds me in several ways of my old friend Brad Plumb, who I didn't realized I missed as much as I did until now. Today I was informed that I could move back into my old room, but since I currently don't have a roommate, I don't think I will unless Darren is dying for company; I doubt that's the case.
This campus is a year old and already falling apart. It'll always be falling apart. I feel bad for students who don't have the luxury of bailing on it after three weeks, not just for the inconveniences they'll face, but for the fact that Macau is taking cues from the Mainland in its preference to build grandiose, disposable eyesores. (To be fair, Macau already has some experience in that field; one need only look at the Grand Lisboa.) This place is a massive investment in the territory's youth, who apparently don't deserve anything better than endless acres of unshaded concrete and pre-ruined facilities. It's a shame.
Fortunately, the human aspect of the university makes up for its infrastructural failings. Everyone I've talked to in the Department of Portuguese has been great, and I hope the staff in other departments is just as friendly and helpful. My professor, Leonor Seabra, is quite interesting, and that's just judging by her thirty-minute discourse on the history of Macau earlier this afternoon. The grammar part of class is a drag- when isn't it?- but the culture half is pretty solid, thanks to Professora Seabra's knowledge of the material. As it turns out, she's an historian, not a language teacher, and has been in Macau for a long while. (There's a link below about her, though it's in Portuguese.) I'll have to bend her ear after class one day. Doing a little more cursory research also shows that Jorge Cavalheiro, of whom I spoke before, also has quite the academic pedigtree in Macau. (Link also below.) I'm even more fortunate than I first realized!
I signed up next week to participate in the declamação de poesia, or poetry reading, since I'm very fond of poetry. Before I left Houston I picked up a bilingual edition of selected poems of Carlos Drummond de Andrade, a famous Brazilian poet, and I've been kicking myself for not bringing it along. Fortunately I found an anthology of his work in the library, and one of the poems that struck me back home, "Segredo", is in this one, so that's what I'm going to read. I should read something by Camilo Pessanha since I'm in Macau, but screw it. It's funny how being in one place gives you a greater appreciation for another; in this case, it takes being away from Brazilians to realize how much of my Portuguese education I owe to them.
A girl named Gertrudes from Timor-Leste ended up in my class yesterday. Her Portuguese sounds good- more Brazilian than Portuguese- and I hope I get to talk to her more than I have. Timor is one of those Lusophone places I've read about but don't really know much about, save for some weird events a few hundred years ago and the general details of its turbulent post-independence history. The text on Gertrudes' t-shirt today advertised in Portuguese and Tetum the Arquivo & Museu da Resistência Timorense/Arkivu & Muzeu Rezisténsia Timorense, which sounds like a place worth seeing should I ever make it to Timor-Leste.
Let's see, what else. I've done a terrible job of giving myself much rest. Every day, almost as soon as classes are over and I've eaten lunch, I'm on the bus and out walking for the next few hours. I'm probably not eating enough, and when I do eat it's greasy canteen food or rich Portuguese or Macanese food. If I was going to be here for more than a few weeks I'd be concerned, but as it stands I think I can afford it. I'm being good today and not traipsing about all afternoon; I took the bus to Taipa, ate arroz de pato no forno (baked rice with duck) for lunch at Restaurante O Santos, and took the bus back to school. O Santos is a delicious, but not particularly cheap, Portuguese joint, unlike the very basic and very Macanese restaurant A Vencedora, where I had minchi for dinner last night. I heard almost as much Portuguese in there as I did Cantonese, and none of it was spoken by homens brancos like me. It was the reverse of O Santos, where I heard the Portuguese owner cheerfully conversing in Cantonese to some of his guests. That was pleasant; I love seeing proof of the continued existence of real Luso-Chinese ties.
Speaking of Taipa, or what was once Taipa since it lost its island status a while back when they filled in the land between it and Coloane to build more fuckin' casinos, the old village there is pretty charming, and not what I expected. I thought it'd be a little more open, but it's similar to Macau proper in that it's a network of narrow lanes and closely-packed buildings, with larger Portuguese edifices here and there. I visited the Casas-Museu de Taipa, which is a series of old Portuguese-style houses arranged in different ways: there's a typical Macanese interior from the turn of the 20th century in one house, a museum of Taipa/Coloane life in another, and displays of traditional Portuguese regional clothing in another. Oh, and I tried the pork chop bun at 大利來記 Tai Lei Loi Kei, which is rumored to have the best in Macau. I won't deny that it was damn good, but I liked the one I had the day before better. Tai Lei Loi Kei's came on a warm bun, which seemed like a good idea but sapped some of the fresh-outta-the-fryer quality from the pork chop.
It's Friday afternoon now, and I have no idea what I'm going to do tonight. In the morning I'm probably going to visit the Farol da Guia, which is the oldest lighthouse on the China coast and is scheduled to reopen to the public tomorrow. On top of the trek up the Colina da Guia I'll most likely have to deal with massive crowds, but so be it. When I get back down the hill I can go to the Bairro de São Lázaro, take in the architecture and find something tasty to eat, and then- who knows? All that's certain is that I'd better make the most of my time, even if it means walking until my legs ache and every age-displaced cobblestone feels like a dull blade against the soles of my shoes. When it gets that bad, it's good to know that a cold beer and a table at which to drink it is never very far away.
You may be wondering why I'm not writing this in Portuguese. 1) Most of my already limited audience doesn't read Portuguese; 2) I have to write enough in Portuguese for class as it is; and 3) I'm lazy, if you somehow forgot that.
Até próximo, caras.
Leonor Seabra:
http://www.revistamacau.com/2009/06/15/leonor-seabra-a-historiadora-que-encontrou-uma-casa-em-macau/
Jorge Cavalheiro:
http://macauantigo.blogspot.com/2011/06/homenagem-jorge-cavalheiro.html
No comments:
Post a Comment