The Portuguese are impressive

I've been in Portugal for the past couple of weeks (hence the lack of posts). I don't speak Portuguese (much), but that is largely irrelevant to travel in Portugal: most people there, at least those who work or interact with the tourism industry speak English.

And French.

And German.

In one hotel in Evora, the woman behind the reception desk easily greeted me in English, provided directions to the hotel over the phone in French, and then switched over to Portuguese again to ask a coworker about the breakfast setup. Wow. I've never seen anyone do anything like that. My own brain is far more sluggish: after just reading Portuguese for a couple of days, it refused to call up even the word for "thanks" in Spanish.

And oh, yeah, it was an awesome trip :)

What I'm reading

Every so often the topic of books comes up - and someone asks, "so what do you read?"

I pause. I rack my brain frantically for whatever it is I'm reading right now. Then I realize that - wait - no - I can't say that - what I'm reading right now doesn't accurately represent what I really read!

And no matter what I'm reading, that is always the case.

For example, right now I'm reading Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon; a collection of essays about Canadian summer vacation cottages; an Elizabeth Hardwick lit-crit collection; and a crime-caper novel by Donald Westlake. If there's an obvious common thread, I at least don't see it.

And so I'm experimenting: over on the sidebar of this blog is a new list called "What I'm reading." I've tagged some books I'm reading (and have read) in my De.licio.us account; they auto-post here.

And maybe one day, as the list grows, it might actually become representative.