2005 Year in Review

“Pois pois”

After graduating from college, the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, N.Y. in 1975 I was employed by an offshore drilling company then called SEDCO, Inc. I interviewed for the job at school just prior to graduation and thought that living overseas would be more fun than just visiting port cities. So, when I was given the option of working offshore in the U.S., Canada, or somewhere else, I chose somewhere else. I learned a couple days before I was scheduled to leave that my first assignment would be in Portugal.

My sea year experience at school had given me a little taste of what it would be like to live in a foreign country, but not the complete picture. When you are on ship, in port, you come “home” every night so all experiences are little experiments with a known safe haven to return to. When you live in a foreign country where few speak your language, and your standard lifestyle is not the norm, you suffer a little bit of culture shock. Still. you do what you can to live, survive, and fit in as much as possible. During my sea year at school I had visited Brazil. When I arrived in Portugal I thought they were speaking another language.

In the old days, when entering a new country of assignment, someone would meet you at the airport and basically baby-sit you until you made it to the rig. Here you would work with a multi-culture crew and this aspect of the job would never change during my career. Only the people and nationalities would change. But, when I got off the rig for my days off I had to go somewhere and my employer did not care where that might be. That was my problem. So I followed the crowd (the other 5 or 6 expatriates) to Estoril, Portugal a playground for tourists and rich Portuguese just outside of Lisbon.

Just 1 year prior to my arrival the Portuguese people led a bloodless coup that toppled a dictatorship and established a democratic government. Occasionally, when I was there, there would be a standoff here and there between rival factions (we are used to a 2 party system here in the US, but in Portugal with a much smaller population there were almost as many parties as people) and there would be tanks in the street and armed patrols. Every night had a curfew, but for the most part Portugal was a quiet place. The Portuguese might have hot Latin blood, tempers, machismo, but when it comes to fighting and violence they don’t have it. The standing joke (although not very funny) was that there was enough carnage on the streets due to motor vehicle accidents that no one had the desire to shed any more.

Anyway, in the tourist area of Portugal where I settled, there was lots of opportunity to speak English and less of a need to learn Portuguese. The British had long ago established friendly relations with the Portuguese, probably as a result of a common enemy at the time – Spain (you know, the Spanish Armada and all that kind of stuff). Thus, there were many British tourists and expatriates in the service industry and lots of northern Europeans who came to escape harsh winters much like the snowbird exodus to Florida that we have here in the U.S. Estoril had a casino, nice beaches and I lived in an “estalagem” or inn, like a hotel/bed and breakfast that I could share with someone working opposite to me on the rig so that the cost was minimal.

Portuguese food is delicious. Since every cut of meat was tough and full of fat, by my standard, it had to be tenderized and cooked to oblivion, however excellent sauces made it all palatable and enjoyable. There was no bad wine, only some better than others. The seafood was always fresh and seasoned to perfection. I used to order an espresso coffee and milk called a “galloen” which was very similar to if not exactly the same as the drink we now know as a “latte.” It was novel to me at the time.

The Portuguese were also very kind to me with respect to movies. Movies were never dubbed and always subtitled for the local patrons. When I saw “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” I would be laughing out of phase with the local clientele who had to read the punch line. Plus movies cost like 25 cents to attend so it was a very cheap form of entertainment. Actually, at the time, everything was cheaper than the rest of Europe if not the U.S. which also accounted for the many tourists.

The golf courses were beautiful and well maintained. Tennis was played on clay. The Portuguese tease the bulls and do not kill them during a bullfight. They sing “fado” which is kind of a Portuguese blues and the heyday of old was some 5 centuries ago.

“Pois pois” (pronounced poish poish) is another one of those expressions you learn, but never know exactly what it means. You say it when someone is talking to you to kind of express interest in what they are saying and to encourage them to go on whether or not you are paying any attention or not.

But thank you (“obrigado” is what a man says, “obrigada” for a woman) for listening.

by Marc Adami, Guest Columnist
May 11, 2005