Some of you know already I will never live in Portugal again!
Following my return from 6 months studying in USA 4 years ago I felt like a foreigner in my own country. It all changed, I realised great, really great things about Portugal but there are others which make you wanna run away immediately..
This week, I was urging for a new passport otherwise I could not book my flight to Japan. Tuesday morning I arrived to the Portuguese Consulate here in Paris to get the new biometric one asap!
Everything seemed well organised there, and even reasonably fast too.
I order the fastest service possible.. Wednesday 3.30pm I was calling the Consulate and my new passport was already there!!! They took a bit more than 1 day to print and post it from Portugal to france.. WOW!! I was impressed.
Thursday morning I was there at 8.30am to pick it up. There was a small queue by the entrance..
I wait.. 5min ..and wait.. 15min ..and continue to wait.. 30min ..and start to get desperate .. 43min later, the lady announces the entrance ticket machine was facing problems and they could not let anyone in since all the service is computerised!!!
Less than 2min later the "technician" arrives to fix..
Guess what??! The technical problem was LACK OF PAPER and the lady did not know how to change it!!!! AAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!
This is a typical example of Portugal, it is capable of the best and the worst. The contrast between bright and intelligent people who develop create amazing things, and the illiteracy issues, lazyness and stiff hierarchic structures which allows older less educated people to relegate younger proactive pleople to the 'corner'. Fortunately it's getting better.
Here's another reason why I LOVE my country: read this article in the Wall Street Journal [Big-Time Barbecue]. It's about my favourite dish, tasty like no other.. There are really good things about our tradition I hope they will never change.
0 comments:
Post a Comment