Auction’s website in Germany

This past week was pretty rough for me because I had some “extracurricular” activities to do, most of them demanding from my creativity and skills. Anyway, to compensate for not having written to this blog this last week, this week I will wrote not one, but three posts, each handling a different subject.

So, the first one is about an article that I read on the news. It happened in Germany, which means not much far from where I am (NL). The title of the article is (after translation): “Sexual auction’s website forced to give names of users”. In short, the article was about a woman who had sex with 6 guys (website’s users) and one of them knocked her up. Then, the woman wanted to find who the father was but the company didn’t want to reveal the real identity of the men claiming confidentiality of data. Well, she went to court and won.

I brought this article because of the idea behind it. First of all, my intentions are not making any judgment or criticize, but just to wonder about it. I’m realizing that more and more sex has become so ordinary that sometimes it looks like it is the same as buying a pair of socks: you look for what you want, then pay, then “do” it.

I’m not worried about the existence of such “activities”, but I start to wonder when I find that they are expanding and growing. I don’t even really know how to address this topic. Is it good idea to censor it? Is it good idea to just ignore it?

The way that this looks to be heading, one day people will do like in the movie “Demolition Man”, where people, to have pleasure, put a kind of virtual reality glasses and then their brain receives electrical impulses simulating the feelings and emotions of someone having sex.

I don’t know, but sex is more than physical and matters who the other person is. It gives a special meaning to the moment and makes it somehow special.

I’ll keep thinking what these kind of news mean…

Canadian driver

Now the second post… The subject comes again from an article that I read on a newspaper’s website few days ago.

The “action” takes place in Canada and it is astonishing. A drunk driver was found by policemen wondering around inside the police station with his car parked just in front of it. Then he was put into custody for irresponsible driving.

This is something really hard to imagine in the place where I come from (PT), where a drunk driver would always try to avoid the police. But these are the small things that show the identity of a country and the people living in it.

However, what I don’t understand, no matter how I think of it, is that Portuguese people act differently when they live outside Portugal. They usually live according with the local traditions and customs though trying somehow keeping their identity and showing the positive side of the Portuguese people.

It’s a pity that Portuguese have an overall good reputation outside their country, not only by the image they give, but also by the results they obtain, and still Portugal is growing and developing so slow. I think one of the things missing in Portugal is people actually concerned in defending their rights and fulfilling their duties as citizens. And I’m not referring talking and giving opinions. I’m referring of real actions and attitudes like, for example, participating actively in politics or know the constitution of the country. People who delegate their rights and duties to others end up being explored by those others and won’t live better and happy.

Wake up people and start caring about Portugal! Don’t let others do your “job”! Start contributing to make Portugal a better country!...

Cool car

Finally, the third post for this week is about a light subject. Since in the last post I was writing about drivers, why not write about cars and new models.

Very recently I read (another) newspaper´s article regarding a new car. What this car had different from others that made me wrote about it? Well, it’s based on an existing car (Lotus Esprit) used in a James Bond’s movie. Second, it’s a convertible. So far, nothing new, but now comes the interesting part: the car also works under water, making it a king of submarine car. Cool hein!… Look at the photos:

Oh, just to make a small quote:

“The sQuba can go up to 10 meters under water thanks to its structure 'Carbon Nano Tubes', two propellers and two jets. Rinspeed, the manufacturer of sQuba, inspired on the car Lotus Esprit of a movie of James Bond. The list of equipment includes a system to give oxygen to the two people on the car.”

Well, that’s all for this week. See you next week…

European Airliners Association Ranking

This is just another topic that in the end covers another downside of the Portuguese society.

A few days ago I was reading a newspaper on the internet when one of the news captured my eye. The title was: “TAP is the European airliner that gets more often delayed and that looses more luggages” (literal translation from Portuguese). Was that fact supposed to surprise me!? (I’m being ironic of course). All the flights that I did with TAP none have left at the right time, though sometimes they did arrive almost on time. How is that possible?! They fly at a higher speed, but at the expenses of a lower efficiency of fuel. So, in the end the company is losing something with that.

Then I continue reading the article and it says that the Association of European Airliners made a study to analyze some aspects of the European Airliners (the study includes 26 airliners). The conclusions of that study consist of tables that show the percentage of flights that depart on time and flights that arrive on time. TAP is on the end of those tables with 59,5% of arrivals on time and 62,5% departures on time. Hmmm… this fact kind of contradicts what I’ve said before because it states that the number of flights on time on arrivals is lower than on departures… but maybe not because the universe (number of flights) that I know is very small compared with the total amount of flights of TAP. Perhaps the captains of the flights that I did preferred to arrive on time and spend more fuel. Who knows?

On this study the Luxembourgish “Luxair” is the top company with less delays followed by KLM (the company in which I flew last time). I think that I should try to choose that company more often because not only I liked a lot the trip like also the studies confirm that the company is really good. Then I think… Portugal is integrating many European directives, laws and rules and when people in Portugal complain about something wrong in Portugal there is always someone pointing to the examples in Europe and that we should do the same. Well, this could be a matter where TAP could look to their competitors on Europe in order to improve its services, don’t you think?...

Well, the study also refers another point, the percentage of loss luggage. Also in this field TAP is in the last place of the table with almost 28 luggages lost per 1000 passengers. What else can I say? It’s a shame, is what it is. Unfortunately here the examples come from countries outside the Schengen space, with “Air Malta” and “Turkish Airlines” on the top. This makes sense since they need to have tighter security measures resulting from having “closed” borders.

This is a topic in my field, that’s why I decided to bring it up. Nevertheless, it illustrates how the Portuguese society is. See you…

Emergency services in Portugal

Today (Monday), I'm going to write this post during my flight from Lisbon to Amsterdam like I did to my blog on MSN. The idea is, like I wrote on the other blog, to give better use to time when I'm travelling. Let's see if I also get inspiration for writing this time. Before, I just want to add that I'm flying again with KLM on a Boeing 737-800 and the flight has been pretty similar to the last one a couple of days ago: comfortable, with “xpto” food, a nice crew and quick boarding time (no use of bus to get from the terminal to the aircraft).

So today’s' subject, like the title suggests, is about the way emergency services are working in Portugal nowadays. A week ago, on the news of every television and newspaper's website of the country there was shown a recording first between the family and the emergency services and afterwards only between emergency services (112 operator, doctor and firefighters). Here it is a copy of the recording on "Sapo Videos"...

Unfortunately the movie is in Portuguese, but I'll explain what it shows and why I'm writing about it. I have to start saying that this movie could have been taken from a comedy show, but the sad part is that the movie is very real. The first part shows the content of the call to the 112. It's stupid the amount of questions the operator asks to the victim's family and moreover the number of times the operator ask the same questions (on different times of the call) and the time spent just to do a simple call to 112. But this is not the worst...

The second part, the first time I saw it I started laughing, but then I realized that I was listening to a actual conversation and then I was amazed... I know that Portugal has several serious problems, but such incompetency, plus the fact of human lives being at stake, was too unbelievable for me. Why!? The 112 called to a fire department and there was only a firefighter on duty that was also using is cell phone while receiving the emergency call so that you can clearly see that he's not paying attention to the call. Moreover, he asks what he has to do. Come on, didn't he received training for doing his work on an emergency situation!? Oh, and when the operator is giving him the number of the emergency registration, he answers that he doesn't have anything to write. How can just a jackass like that be working as a firefighter?

After a certain point, the operator decides to call another fire department to quickly try dispatching an ambulance. The fire department, she called was on the next town, but again it had only a firefighter as well. With such incompetency shown so far, more one stopped surprising me.

At some point they found a way to solve the situation by making the second firefighter call others to enter on duty and head with the ambulance to the place where the emergency call was made.

Some days after this news, the firefighters' services were changed so that they would be able to give assistance on new similar situations. But that doesn't change the fact that there are serious problems with the emergency services in country such as Portugal, a country in Europe and member of the EU. Part of me still can´t believe that the video is real.

This is just something that I wanted to share with you that I think is cause of concern, specially for the people living in Portugal away from cities, because the call is made for fire departments of small villages or at least, really small towns (you can see where the place is at http://www.castedo.eu/googlemaps.htm ). Bye...