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Portugal: The future is green and cubist
photo by Joaomorgado (Wikimedia Commons)
When I go shopping for groceries in Portugal I have the choice between two major supermarkets plus several bakeries and fruit and veg places. When I hit the big supermarkets I can either buy flimsy biodegradable bags at one or stand in the exclusive eco queue at the other. Since I’m a dedicated eco-fascist I like the eco queue, which doesn’t provide any cheap plastic bags and only sells large reusable ones. As it is the lines are always short and using it makes me feel smug. Maybe people will start to catch on and it will have a longer line than the regular checkout, which will cause them to open more eco-queues. If environmental apartheid doesn’t work, I don’t know what will.
The two-mile walk to both supermarkets is paved with sights: a beautiful aquamarine ocean, incredible mansions in various states of disrepair and later examples of architecture ranging from the concrete futurism of the totalitarian Estado Novo to the far out, down right science fictiony designs of some new landmark projects.
Imagine if the Borg from Star Trek: The Next Generation became property developers. They would build something exactly like the new, ultra-exclusive Estoril Sol Residence. Many people hate this overbearing collection of black glass cubes because it dominates the skyline and contains flats with a starting price of one million euros. I call it the Death Star and I actually like it. It replaced a really fugly hotel of the same name, which was falling apart and besides a few squatters and an electric car sales lot, looked like it hadn’t been a going concern for years. Admittedly, I kind of liked the old Estoril Sol too. It had a “They’ve finally done it!” Planet of the Apes bleak ugliness that I find fascinating.
As you can tell from the starting price, the new Estoril Sol is beyond exclusive. Rumor has it that the daughter of the president of Angola has bought an entire floor. I think I saw her on the promenade one day with a minder. She was cute as a button and had two designer, gold-plated razor mobile phones. Actually I just googled the Angolan president’s daughter and that wasn’t her, but you get the idea about the kind of moneyed people who live in the Death Star, besides your northern European tycoons with champagne taste and money to burn.
Luckily, it’s got a lovely garden with reflecting pools and a big tiled tunnel to the beach, which are both open to the public. It also leads to a nice forest park. But you just can’t keep the riffraff out. Drunks are occasionally seen stumbling through the echoing passage and some dummy has already painted some graffiti (sorry, “street art”) on its entrance. It’s just a tag with a picture of one of the ghosts from Pacman – Inky or Blinky, I’m assuming. It made me laugh at least.
And Portugal is suffering. Wages are being cut, working hours lengthened and pensions slashed, supposedly to pay off debt on a €78bn international financial bailout. And sure, a Chinese corporation may be buying Portuguese public utilities, but they can never own the waves… can they?
Tags: cubist, estoril sol, Green, Portugal
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Hehe.. why would anyone replace a chicken egg with an artificial one? You just feed the bird some seeds or grain and it makes an egg. Not expensive or complicated!
Never underestimate Chinese capability, they could even produce a fresh looking chicken egg without having a poultry and coop going on , just some well combined chemicals and there you have it.. an egg with a shell !!! I’ve watched that in ‘ Bizarre Foods’ so, they can have the waves too hahahahahahahhah