Category: Uncategorized

Location update: Porto, Portugal!

Manuel Marques December 21, 2012 No Comments Uncategorized , ,

Hardly a surprise now, especially when considering my previous post. 🙂

Anyway, yes, I’m back home for a couple of weeks – not that I enjoy a month-long holiday in Portugal in the middle of winter (even though it is quite warmer than England, it is a lot better during the summer months!), but as you’d probably guessed by now from my previous rants I am stuck at home, recovering from my nose surgery which happened last weekend. Apparently everything is OK and I am returning back to normal as expected… it is only a terrible nuisance, that’s all! 😛

Fortunately, the weather is helping – it is so miserable and damp outside that I cannot feel sorry for not being out there. And I’m trying to keep myself busy – a truckload of lab reports to mark were electronically delivered to me this Wednesday, and alongside a lot of reading and TV series I think I won’t grow bored.

Now, the biggest expectation is that I can get back on a boat before heading back to the UK… nose, I’m counting on you! 😀

Season’s Greetings

Manuel Marques December 18, 2012 No Comments Uncategorized , ,

Well, apparently this is the first Christmas where I actually keep my blog running during the actual holiday season, so I have no choice but to drop my Christmas card here as well. This year it wasn’t anything terribly fancy or geeky, particularly due to my lack of time associated with a surgery I undertook during the weekend (more on that later on), but, you know, it is the intention that counts and the photo isn’t bad, either! 🙂

So… Merry Christmas, dear readers, and a happy 2013 full of goodies and happiness! 😀

Yum!

Manuel Marques December 10, 2012 No Comments Uncategorized ,

Yum! by Manuel Jorge Marques
Yum!, a photo by Manuel Jorge Marques on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
But nothing fancy! I’m just clearing up the fridge since I’m heading home in a few days…

And the English classics, baked beans on toast, cheese-n-ham scrambled eggs and some tomato always work nicely!

Francesinha night… in Canterbury!

Manuel Marques December 8, 2012 No Comments Uncategorized , , ,

Yes, indeed! Our latest meeting of the Portuguese group involved a fairly elaborate Porto delicacy, the famous francesinha. 😀

Looking
Yum! It looks absolutely gorgeous, doesn’t it?

Even though I’ll head back to Porto in a few days, one can never say no to a francesinha, especially one that was completely home-made, following a fairly complex recipe for its sauce (I lost track of the ingredients after a while, they were so many! 🙂 ).

And to our vegetarian friends, the chef Bela Soares created a masterpiece – a “veggie” francesinha featuring eggplant and mozarella, which looked also fairly well-composed, and the “unusual” ingredients in it made it look fairly smart and sophisticated. (and it also tasted brilliantly, according to our vegetarian friends!)

"Veggie"
I think it is fair to say that it would be viable to open a Porto restaurant here in Canterbury!
(well, perhaps they wouldn’t like the tripes as much as the francesinha… 🙂 )

All in all, it was an excellent evening. I do miss speaking Portuguese when I’m out and about (skypeing does not count!), and this kind of events really help making that happen. And I’ve also had the opportunity to meet some very nice people, while at it!…

The
And here it is, the whole group.
Yours truly is over there on the left, grinning stupidly for no apparent reason and making a sad figure of himself…

 

Vistas do Porto (Oporto views), circa 1989

Manuel Marques December 8, 2012 No Comments Uncategorized , , ,

This is an old video I digitised a while ago from a pile of my grandfather’s old Betamax tapes. I think Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (Winter) is the perfect soundtrack for such a dramatic landscape!
(and note the two rowers on the double-scull – my old grandfather’s Sony camcorder has quite a good zoom, as you can even see the colour of their blades 🙂 )

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