Curso de Verão: Update #6

7.26.15

    I realized yesterday, in yet another case of "D.A. doesn't pay attention", that all my references to "Ferreira Amaral" should really be to "Ferreira do Amaral", since that's the man's proper surname, and what's used on street signs. This oversight, while embarrassing, is made a little less so- but more confusing!- by the fact that all the Macau bus maps, and the signs on the buses themselves, refer to "Praça Ferreira Amaral". Oh well.
    Saturday is spent visiting the historic center of Macau, which is another way of saying I spend it dodging the hordes of visitors touring the ruins of São Paulo, the Largo do Senado, and everything in between, which is mainly old buildings tenanted by places selling rather mundane consumer goods, the ubiquitous baked treats (almond cookies and pastéis de nata; I take the opportunity to finally eat one of the latter) and, for as of yet undiscerned reasons, jerky. Rather than mill around for an hour in the sun, I go to Cafe Ou Mun for an espresso, joined by my classmate Ambera. We chat, and I find just enough change in my pocket to pay for my coffee, since they won't take my $HK500 note- it's too early in the day and they don't have change.
    Returning to the façade of Macau's most famous landmark, the 200 or so students from the Universidade make a rather rushed visit to the Museu de Macau, where I buy a Macanese cookbook. I've been to the museum before, and while there's a temporary exhibit about trade between France and China during the 18th century worth examining, I get the feeling we shouldn't linger, as there are more places to visit and lunch to be eaten at the Hotel Metropole. Turns out there's only one more stop, the Casa de Lou Kau or 盧家大屋, the significance of which (aside from some good examples of Chinese architecture) is lost on me, seeing as how it's packed and I don't get the chance to read many of the placards. From there, it's off to the hotel, where the Curso de Verão takes up an entire banquet hall and is fed several courses of Chinese food that doesn't quite rank as good, but certainly beats canteen food.
    And thus ends our day with the Instituto Cultural, which feels more like a free-for-all than a guided tour, but so it goes. I'm mainly here because I've arranged to find Camilo Pessanha's grave with the help of Jorge Cavalheiro, the sagaciously-bearded gentleman ("Cavalheiro" is Portuguese for "gentleman"- get it?) who's been in Macau for decades. We meet at Caravela and set off toward the perpetually-being-restored Bairro de São Lázaro, situated next to the cemetery. "I've visited this grave many times and always have to look for it," Professor Cavalheiro says as we walk through the densely packed graveyard, which he says does not actually require one to be Catholic in order to acquire permanent residency. We find the grave fairly quickly, I take some photos, and, after making sure I can get back on my own, Professor Cavalheiro bids me farewell: a friend of his lives nearby and he's going to take advantage of the proximity. I'd hoped for more time to converse with him, but I'm happy with what I get, as he answers all my questions about Macau and himself straightforwardly and doesn't hesitate to repeatedly correct my Portuguese.
    Professor Cavalheiro says he'll be going back to Portugal for good sometime in the next couple of years, and based on our discussions of Macau's astronomical real estate prices ("renting is expensive, and buying is impossible") and the general surge in the cost of living, I can understand why. There's more to it than that, I'm sure- based on what little I know, the city has become all but unrecognizable over the past couple decades, and no matter how much one loves a place seeing it transform that much is never easy, even if it's for the better. In Macau's case, it could be argued that rapid development has not been quite the blessing some might think, but I'm not in the mood to get into that right now, nor does my opinion count for much in the first place. I'm just pleased to have spent some time with someone who knows so much about this remarkable city.


7.27.15

    Man, I didn't even finish talking about Saturday in my last entry, though there isn't much more to add. I visit the Jardim de Lou Lim Ioc/盧廉若公園, a classic Suzhou-style garden, which I'm a total sucker for. There's an art exhibit, complete with the artists involved, going on in what I think is usually the Casa Cultural de Chá, or Cultural Teahouse. I see some neat paintings and some good calligraphy and try a couple thimble-sized cups of tea, one of which I think is an oolong and quite delicious, the other a pu-erh type that's a bit too earthy for me.
    Having spent most of the day on my feet on Saturday, Sunday rolls around and I tell myself I'm not gonna do shit. Except, of course, I'm totally gonna do shit, because I'm leaving Macau in a couple days and there's no rest for the wicked. I decide to visit Coloane, which once upon a time was the southernmost island of the territory and its least developed area until- you guessed it- the gambling laws were loosened and foreign gambling interests, mainly American, arrived, which resulted in much of the sea between Taipa and Coloane being reclaimed and covered in casinos and hotels. Taipa's now a horrible mess of perpetual construction; the Cotai strip, as the new patch of land was so christened by professional greedhead/shitheel Sheldon Adelson, lacks any of the little charm and none of the nominal walkability possessed by its Las Vegas counterpart; and Coloane, while currently not under assault by developers, remains a tempting target, since the Macau government continues to straddle the fence with regard to building casinos there.
    Fortunately, Coloane remains home to Macau's biggest park, a vast, hilly, tropical sprawl which covers much of the island. The village of Coloane is quiet and fairly picturesque in a run-down, rural way. The Chapel of São Francisco Xavier is supposed to contain one of the saint's arm bones, though I don't spot it during my visit. (There is an exceptionally creepy, dead-eyed baby Jesus, though, and copies of O Clarim, the trilingual Catholic weekly newspaper, are available for 12 patacas a pop; I buy one because I want a copy of each of Macau's Portuguese papers, and it's interesting seeing the presence of an English section- a wise move given that the Filipino Catholic community here probably outnumbers the native Catholics.) I get the feeling half the buildings here aren't inhabited, and I hope I'm wrong, because if I'm not it means the real estate speculation Professor Cavalheiro mentioned has extended even to this easygoing corner of the RAEM. Strolling along the waterfront is pleasant as long as you don't look at the sea: at low tide the sand is studded with broken concrete and trash, and there are people out there jet-skiing and kayaking on water that makes Galveston's look downright inviting. Have fun, dudes.
    From the vila de Coloane it's back on the bus, past some Chinese nuns, the prison, and some nice tropical landscapes, to the Praia de Hac Sá, or 黑沙海灘, Macau's major beach. 黑沙 means "black sand", though these days it's mostly grey, and even then only in places- I've read that they filled it in with regular ol' yellowish sand due to erosion. That said, it's a pretty nice place to spend time: I take off my shoes and stroll back down the beach after following the inland course along campgrounds and barbeque pits, the latter already claimed by Filipino families, groups of Muslim women in hijab, and shirtless, tattooed Chinese dudes. When you read, over and over, just how special Macau is for being a tolerant crossroads between east and west, it's easy to roll your eyes and think of such claims as being overwrought attempts at selling the city to the world. But here I am, some barefoot American longhair, watching all kinds of people enjoy a leisurely Sunday of sun worship and grilling outdoors- and, far as I can tell, this sort of behavior is the norm here.
    I ran into Professor Cavalheiro on the bus from campus, and he recommended a place called Miramar for lunch. I have no luck finding it, so I hit up my first choice, the world-renowned Fernando's, where a sign out front announces "Não temos ar condicionado, ketchup ou cadeiras para bébés, mas temos comida e bebidas!" (We don't have air conditioning, ketchup, or booster seats, but we have food and drinks!). It's a good thing I'm not very hungry, because the place is packed and the wait, based on the number of people milling about and killing time at the bar, is long enough for me to not even bother asking for a table. Instead, I find a stool at the bar next to a couple Europeans whose language I can't decipher- one minute I think I hear Portuguese, but they speak to the bartender in English; the next minute I hear Dutch syllables, and the next, French, so who knows- and drink a couple bottles of Super Bock in styrofoam coozies. The predominance of Super Bock rather than Sagres in Macau remains a source of curiosity for me. I prefer Sagres, which some places have, but I'd like to know why the other is so popular. I can only assume there's some specific distribution deal in place, or some division along regional, or more arcane, lines among the Portuguese community here that puts Super Bock on top. Anyhoo, Fernando's is a nice place to relax for a bit before catching the bus back to campus, and the beers are reasonably priced.
    Sunday night I go to Henri's Galley, purported origin of one of my favorite dishes ever, galinha à africana. Henri's, situated on Avenida da Republica two doors down from a Lotus dealership and commanding a good view of Nam Van and the Macau Tower, has been around since the '70s, and to my surprise doesn't feel like it. The furniture's been updated, as has the lighting, and while there's still a heavily Portuguese nautical theme going on, it's not too kitschy. The overall atmosphere is really nice, I gotta say. The staff is attentive and friendly, and the food- I get torradinhas de camarão, or shrimp toast, and galinha à africana- is great. The recipe for galinha à africana is printed on the placemats and is nearly identical to the one I've followed since I started cooking the dish at home, but there's no mistaking the difference between mine and Henri's. The restaurant's version achieves an amazing balance of coconut and peanut flavors, with the finely-minced shallot and garlic providing a perfect texture and the paprika giving everything a smoky background and lovely red hue.
    Suffice to say that I leave contented, and set off up Barra hill to walk off the meal and see the Palacete de Santa Sancha and the surrounding neighborhood, which includes the former Hotel Bela Vista, now the residence of the Consul-Geral de Portugal em Macau e Hong Kong. I walk by a woman offering treats to a stray cat in a tree, which makes me smile. (The cat was on his way down by the time I passed.) There's hardly anyone around save cops on guard duty outside of Santa Sancha and a couple other buildings, and everything is quiet. In short, it's readily apparent that I'm in a wealthy neighborhood, but not once do I feel like I'm being eyeballed or hustled along, nor do I get the impression that the locals with whom I share the street are, either.
    When I get back to campus I expect to hear from Calvin and his pals about getting together to drink wine, which we discussed earlier in the day, but no dice. I figure I missed my chance, and then, around 11:30, there's knocking at my door, and I hear Calvin and his friends talking in Cantonese. I'm already in bed, so I ignore them. I'm too old to start drinking at midnight, man, good as it sounds, which honestly ain't that good.
    Later, folks. Expect one more update before I get home, probably from Hong Kong.

Curso de Verão: Update #5

7.24.15

    So there's a student in the Portuguese program, Rafaela, who's from Hangzhou and likes to tease me about not being social enough, going so far as to have called me boring for not participating in the Portuguese folk dance classes offered every Tuesday and Thursday. There's nothing mean-spirited about it, and we always speak in Portuguese, filling in gaps in Mandarin as needed, so I don't mind her needling. Anyway, on Thursday evening my suitemate Eason (yet another misspelling/misunderstanding on my part), who's from Macau, invites me to eat Portuguese food at a place in the Areia Preta/Mong-Ha neighborhood, which is situated in the northern part of town, and says that Rafaela is coming with us. The look on her face when she sees me follow Eason out of the elevator and announce that I'm tagging along is priceless.
    We take the bus to Praça Ferreira Amaral, then catch another one that crawls up to the Terminal Marítimo do Porto Exterior, where all the ferries from Hong Kong come in, past the city reservoir, and through a stretch of looming industrial buildings and residential towers that started being built around the middle of the last century, if memory serves me right. Eason points out that the various "associações desportivos" (or something along those lines- I can't recall the exact phrase), for which one sees signs around town, are probably fronts for the triads.
    O Porto, which is the name of the restaurant, reminds me of A Vencedora, but a lot smaller and with way more Portuguese football memorabilia on the walls. There's a group of Portuguese dudes out front, smoking and drinking beer and shooting the shit, and the clientele seems pretty family-oriented. I don't think Rafaela's eaten Portuguese food before, so we order a few different things and share them: morcela (I don't tell either of my dining companions that it's made with blood), pastéis de bacalhau, braised oxtail, and bacalhau à Brás, which was new to me and should have been too much salt cod and potato after the pastéis, but was just plain delicious. The meal runs us around 450 patacas, or twenty bucks each- not great, but not terrible. I ate lunch at me and Tracey's favorite, Solmar, earlier in the day, and a meal of pastéis de bacalhau, galinha à africana, and a beer cost me a shocking 300 patacas. While it ain't the best, the food in the canteen is lookin' better and better just by virtue of its price.
    Eason's arranged a meeting with someone whose importance I don't quite understand, and insists that going by her place at 9:30 at night is perfectly copacetic. Rafaela and I are both tired, and of course it's way too warm and humid out, which only compounds the problem of exhaustion, but he insists we come along, which involves a slightly less snail-paced bus ride. (Eason informs me that said route is his favorite, because the hilly nature of the route makes it "like a rollercoaster". I concur, though I've never been on such a slow rollercoaster. Fun fact: the Portuguese term for rollercoaster is "montanha russa," or "Russian mountain.") We get off near the Igreja de São Lourenço and wander around until our contact, who I finally learn is a Portuguese folk dance teacher, shows up. When she does, it's with a guy who reminds me of a Lusitanian Tim Robbins in tow, and she lets us into the building and onto the premises of the Grupo de Danças e Cantares de Macau. Here I was thinking I'd be intruding on some poor woman's evening at home, but instead I'm in a series of low-ceilinged rooms with parquet floors, one of which contains a dancefloor and another a wide variety of traditional Portuguese costumes. It remains unclear as to why I'm here, but I play along and talk a bit in Portuguese with a local woman who says their group is going to Portugal in August.
    Eason says that people in Macau are lazy about walking, and proves it by insisting we take another meandering bus to get back to Praça Ferreira Amaral. I balk at that shit. Neither he nor Rafaela knows where we are, but I do, so I lead us on foot past the Palácio do Governo and the Grand Emperor Hotel to where we need to be, which takes less than ten minutes. Eason promptly falls asleep on the bus, Rafaela and I compare notes on our respective classes, and then we're back at the Universidade de Macau. It's been a pleasant little adventure, and having some company makes for a nice change.
    It's Friday afternoon now, and I think I'll spend it and the evening reading. I want to finish As Portas do Cerco before I leave Macau. Tomorrow morning we're going to tour the historic city center with someone from the Instituto Cultural, followed by lunch; after that, Professor Cavalheiro and yours truly are going to visit Camilo Pessanha's grave. I suspect I'll end up spending the remainder of the afternoon in town as well, so I'd better spare my poor corpse any undue wear any tear until then.
    Até logo, caros leitores.

Curso de Verão: Update #3

7.20.15

    It took me a few days, but I figured out that the university is laid out in a pretty clever way that minimizes the amount of time you have to spend in the sun or rain (the latter has finally started, and usually arrives in the afternoon but doesn't last terribly long). There are covered arcades linking most of the buildings, but in many cases they're only useful if you have the time or inclination to do so, since they're rarely the fastest route between two given points. Still, they're really nice to have.
    I passed the weekend pretty quietly. I went back to the Livraria Portuguesa on Saturday and had coffee at Caravela, but that was it; on Sunday morning I climbed the Colina da Guia to visit the old chapel and lighthouse there. There's a nice park and jogging trail incorporated into the hill itself, and the lighthouse afforded a pretty good view of the city, albeit one somewhat obscured by haze and tall buildings. I could spot certain landmarks anyway- Tap Seac, slivers of the Porto Interior, the Cemitério de São Miguel- and the experience of climbing the narrow, twisting lighthouse steps reminded me of when Tracey and I visited the Torre de Belém in Lisbon earlier this year. On the way back home, soaked in sweat and devoid of the will to do much of anything, I ate lunch at A Vencedora (not bad this time, but I ordered badly; I'd forgotten that arroz chau-chau is basically fried rice with some random stuff in it) and rested a little in the Jardim de São Francisco, which is close to the Hotel Lisboa and the Clube Militar and decorated in the same shade of pink as the latter. Then I spent the rest of the day reading, doing homework, and dozing off.
    Prices here lean toward the expensive, but are also just strange. Take the Livraria Portuguesa, for instance: for almost twice what you'd pay in Lisbon (which would be, say, 13 euros) you can get an book of average length printed in Portugal, while a boxed set of four dense volumes of Macau history published by a local outfit translates to a pretty reasonable $75 American. An espresso at Caravela is 15 patacas, or two bucks, about what it'd be at home; meanwhile, a large coffee on campus (if you can wait until 11 to go there, since it's the only coffee shop in the history of coffee consumption to not be open first thing in the damned morning) is 26.6 patacas- again, similar to US prices, but quite steep by local standards: I can eat lunch at A Vencedora for about 70 patacas, for example. The bus is pretty affordable, thankfully, with the most expensive round trip you can take being something like 13 patacas, or less than two bucks. (It's even cheaper with a Macau Pass.) Pastéis de nata, or the Portuguese egg tarts for which Macau is famous and which I still haven't eaten on this trip, run about eight patacas, or a dollar, each. I haven't looked at the prices of staples in any of the markets yet, but I'd wager that they're higher than they are on the mainland China side of the Portas do Cerco. I also get the impression that renting, much less buying, real estate is horrifically expensive, but the Chinese habit of writing 萬 (10,000) instead of Arabic numerals imparts a certain kind of sticker shock to begin with: "200萬? Holy shit, that's a lot of zeros, and now I gotta convert the currency..."
    My former roommate and his friends invited me to go walk around Coloane this afternoon, but canceled their plans due to rain. I've been meaning to get down to Coloane village and thence to the famed Restaurante de Fernando on 黑沙/Hac Sa beach, and it'd be nice to do something with somebody for once. I haven't really gotten lonely at all, or unbearably homesick, but I get the feeling that a lot of my fellow students aren't getting out and seeing much of Macau, so it'd be fun to tag along with them. The cost of doing anything has to be a significant barrier to, well, doing anything: if I'm trying to be careful with money even in my fortunate position, I can only imagine how much harder it has to be for a college kid from the mainland.
    That's about it for now, folks. I'll write more later.

Curso de Verão: Update #2

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

This is the last day of 34 years' worth of days.

Since I'll be 35 in six and a half hours or so, I thought I'd chime in with some observations about life as a dude who hasn't quite reached the median age for white males of his particular nationality.

 (Some of these things are knowledge gained since my 30th birthday; most of them are slight variations on the same slack-jawed opinions I've held for a decade or more. In some cases, those opinions are watertight to the point of being balls-out facts, and should be identifiable as such; arguments against will be regarded as evidence of mental deficiency on the part of the arguer. Under no circumstances should anything I say be taken as gospel, save for those words which are pure scripture, of which there are far more than one would imagine.)

-English is a pretty awesome language, primarily because it knows how flexible it can be in terms of grammar and its absorption of foreign words and terms. Other languages are just as flexible, however; thinking only of those of which I feel I have a decent understanding, Spanish, Portuguese, and Mandarin are all equally chock full of loanwords and comparative homonyms. (Please don't let my own ignorance stop you, dear reader, from finding examples of your own.) English has particular words that are utterly amazing: among my favorites are sigh, wreckage, hoard, sword, eave, roof, lamp, betwixt... the point is, it doesn't matter. Every language has a bevy (add that to the aforementioned list of awesome English words) of words that are just fucking awesome, and the full comprehension of which requires some knowledge of the native tongue. Long story short, learn thine own tongue well, and learn others as equally as circumstances allow.

-Heavy metal, as Helloween and I have both stated repeatedly, is the law.

 -Sleep (the band, and the experience, too, though the latter isn't under discussion here) is still deserving of a church dedicated to their music. If I ever find myself alone in the world and in possession of serious funds, I will erect a temple in which the massive hymn known to the world as "Dopesmoker" or "Jerusalem" is always played, to be accompanied by censers of the finest ganja swung by priests of the highest, and highest, caliber.
 
-With age, friendship becomes an increasingly valuable commodity, supplanted as it can be by family ties, work, and distance. I've long valued friendship as one of the greatest of human endeavours, since it is not based solely upon biology or habit, and is one of the most underrated and under-described of relationships. It's a shame, seeing as how since friendship requires- or at least implies- an equality rarely required of other relationships. Friendship can be boon or bane, but for those who take part of it, the benefits or disadvantages do not matter, and that is wherein lies its greatness: hearts and minds are tethered, by choice, to a common purpose, and severing such a bond is no easy task.

-H. Bruce Franklin's introduction to Herman Melville's Mardi is wont to make one put said novel down before reading it. Fortunately, for those with stronger literary constitutions, the book is somewhat easier reading than the insane introduction would have one believe. (I may change my mind once I'm further along in the book, of course.)

-If you want to lift weights at home, use kettlebells.

-Smoking is fantastic, but it's probably a good idea to quit.

-Read more.

-Read more. (Redundant, surely, but it's the best advice I could ever give.)

-MC Lars rules. So do MC Frontalot, YTCracker, and Adam Warrock: all of them have written songs that have helped yours truly get through some hard times, and I all but guarantee that if you look, you'll find one that'll help you too. Nerdcore is rising, perpetually. Disagree? Format c:/ and move along.

-I've learned to dress well over the past few years. One aspect of putting your sartorial shit together is shoes. The Corpse recommends Sawa Shoes, which may cost a few more bones than you're used to paying for casual footwear, but trust me, motherfucker, they're as comfortable and durable as they come, and far more stylish that you are capable of appreciating at first glance. These shoes are awesome, end of story.

-"Don't be a dick, be a dude!" You will always underestimate, usually without knowing it, how much you value folks. Not just friends, but family, coworkers, acquaintances, enemies, significant others, friends' significant others, relatives, pets, waitstaff, mail carriers, apartment managers, bartenders, neighbors, the dudes (m/f) at convenience stores. Say hey to them all, treat them as people, give 'em the thumbs up or a high five. We're all dudes, and a world with more dudes than dicks is a better world.

- Be kind to animals. Whether or not you eat them, you can't go wrong acknowledging the inherent dignity of nonhuman species. Decency toward animals, I've found, usually reflects in decency toward humans. (Note that I say "usually".)

-"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Love is the law, love under will."

34 down, 51 to go. Later, folks, and thanks for sticking around with me for as long as you have.

Your friend,
D.A. Smith