Fagging, 2-hole punches, and 9 other reasons why Portugal is not America

When you move to another country, that first day is exhausting.  The jet-lag pretty much kills you, and all you want to do is sleep.  When you wake up for that second day, you're a little more rested and alert, and that's when you start to notice it.  I mean, notice how weird everything around you is.  All the cars are tiny, the plugs look funny, and all the men seem to think it's acceptable to wear capris.  During that first month you cant help but make a mental list of all the subtle ways your new country weirds you out.  So while that list is still fresh in my mind I thought I'd write down a few of the lesser known reasons why Portugal is not America.



1. Fagging.
Ok, I'll admit it, I used this word just to get your attention so you'd click on the blog.  But it's a real word and it's not that far off from what I'm trying to describe here. Technically, fagging is a British term which refers to a practice in British schools where younger boys were forced to act as personal servants to older boys.  (Seriously, it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fagging)  In Portugal, they have a very commonly accepted practice called 'praxe'.  Now praxe is not quite the same thing as fagging.  It would probably better defined as: "week long hazing ritual in Portuguese universities which is pretty much completely condoned by everyone".  Yeah.  It's amazing.  Here is the gist of it, as far as I can tell.

The hazing is divided up by major, Mechanical engineers abuse freshman mechanical engineers, older econ. majors abuse their econ incoming freshman, etc., etc.  (Before I get to far into this, I should probably take a second to reassure you that nothing they do is too bad.... for the most part.)  When you are on campus, the most notable feature of praxe is the sound of constant yelling.  Each major has their freshman do something like, line up in rank and file (sometimes wearing some really strange outfits) and then periodically scream a chant about how great their major is.  They do the traditional, write Freshman on your face in marker, write stuff on your clothes (but they give you a special shirt that says something like "Praxe 2012!!" on it.), egging, and make the freshman drink lots of alcohol(usually done off campus, I think).   Then there is my personal favorite: a line of freshman chanting while wearing diapers on their heads.  Once the freshman have been good and vandalized, they march them off of campus for a public debut.  It seems pretty common for the group to make a big sign that says: "Mechanical Engineering Rocks", and then march around town holding it up.

Occasionally they will have pranks which get a little out of hand.  The best one I heard about was a few years ago, a group of freshman who had to pretend they were robbing a bank. Not that they really robbed a bank.  They just went to the bank and sort of pretend robbed it.  Well apparently their pretending was good enough to fool the police, because they were all arrested.   Following that incident, the praxe was banned from that campus

The strangest part is that the attitude of the freshman isn't all that resentful.  They're pretty OK with it, and a lot of them seem to really have fun with it.  I guess it builds a spirit of comradery amongst the victims.  Apparently the roots of the tradition go back to an idea of wearing down the the bonds of social expectation so that the freshman can learn to ignore social pressures and truly devote themselves to their studies.  Or some kind of nonsense like that.  So here are a few pictures I got of this years praxe at IST.

 Some diaper heads.  

 A small diaper lineup.  

 A chanting lineup.

Ha ha.  I feel like a terrible person, but I think this one is hilarious.  I'm not sure how far they had to walk like that.

 The view of center campus from my office.  I guess these guys had to dress funny, put on pointy tin foil hats, and chant stuff for a while.  It's really non stop yelling outside for a whole week.  Very distracting if you try to work with your window open.  

These guys have their praxe 2012 shirts on.  

2. Hogwarts clothes.
Yet another weird academic tradition in Portugal... dressing like wizards.  Not all the time, but the official academic regalia is, in fact, a suit with a cape. And for some reason, people are wearing it all the time during the first week of school.  Now that I think about it, I think it's part of praxe to have the freshman wear their academic formals all the time.

A witches sabbath?

closer up.

From the front.  I think they they cover their capes in some sort of academic merit badges as they become more accomplished students.  I saw a few that were loaded with patches.  Nerds.

Complaining about the last potions lecture, no doubt.

3. Light switches.
Not much to this one.  It's just that literally all light switches look like this:

I've never seen a normal light switch here.


4. Negative floors.
... and zeros floors.  Pretty self explanatory, but weird right?

5. Bides.

Yep.  Not in public places.  But in private residences it seems pretty typical.  And as long as were talking about public bathrooms, I should warn you before you come visit me.  Don't worry, I'm not going to tell you that public bathrooms are gross.  They just don't always exist.  For example, in Lisbon's tourist downtown area, I wandered around looking for a bathroom for like, 30 minutes.  I found two.  One was out of order, the other had a big sign proclaiming it to be: "The sexiest bathroom in the world!".  In the end, I decided not to sacrifice money or virtue on that bathroom and I held it until I got home.  Places like shopping malls always have them, but if you're out doing some touring, just be careful.


6. Keyboards.

Ok, yeah.  The keyboards look weird, but that's not the real story behind this picture.  The really interesting thing is that I don't think I've met a single Portuguese person who types with ten fingers.  Nope. Just two index fingers.  It looks like a pair of hungry pigeons going after bird seed.  (go ahead, try it!)  I guess typing isn't in the regular curriculum?



7. Crust, or no crust?

Remember how your mother always use to say: "people are starving in Africa, eat your crust".  And you'd respond by telling her that the crust is not soft, and not slathered in jam, and you were not going to eat it, because if enough children stopped eating their crust, bread companies would have no rational choice but to all start producing crustless bread.  Then your mother would always come back with that same retort that given the extremely large number of children in America, the system is essentially modeled as a continuum, meaning that your infintesimal contribution represents a case of strategic insignificance, so just eat your bread, because the systems not gonna change.  Well I've got news for you, your mother was wrong.  As proof, I present you the bread shelves in an average Portuguese supermarket.  On the left we have loaves with crust.  On the right, loaves without crust.



8. Milk boxes.

Milk sold in boxes isn't a totally new experience for me; Brazil does the same thing.  Milk is sold, un-refrigerated these little boxes.  I'm not sure what the pasteurization process is, but it's not nearly as tasty as good old fresh US milk.  Now that I know both Brazil and Portugal do this, I wonder if US isn't in the minority with our delicious fresh milk.


9. Two hole punches.

When Portuguese people want to stick something in a binder, they don't go looking for the 3 hole punch.  There is no such thing as a 3 hole punch.  It's a 2 hole punch.   And I know what you're thinking now.  So do they have two hole binders...?

The answer is yes.  ONLY two hole binders.  And it gets worse.  They ONLY use A4 size paper.  That is, paper with dimensions (297mm) x (420mm).  It's really tall and skinny compared to US paper.   But, really?  I thought you guys used the metric system?  297mm?  I mean, that's only prime divisible by 3 and 11, which is pathetic for a three digit number.  Anyway, I've had to prematurely start volume 2 of all my notes because of this.



10. People who dress nice

It seems a lot more common here to see people dressed nicely.  Not like they just came from the royal banquet nice. It's not like there are ladies walking around in ornate rococo dresses everywhere.  But people don't seem to need a special reason to wear a flowing dress, you see them just walking around the supermarket sometimes.  Same goes for guys.  For no particular reason, you see guys walking around, rockin' some style.  The picture I took for this does not do a very good job of making this point.  I tried to take a million pictures that would have been better than this, but none of them worked out.  You'd be surprised how hard it is to casually hold up your ipod and pretend your doing something innocent, when your really trying to take a picture of someone walking towards you.  Thus, the best we've got is a distant shot of someones back.

11. The purpose of cargo pockets.

In America, the purpose of cargo pockets is... well I'm not sure what their purpose is.  But in Europe, they at least have a little more direction.  From my many people watching sessions, I have deduced that Europeans appear to consider the primary purpose of cargo pockets to be: carrying cargo.

12. Lines.
Now, this is in part, a triumph for Portugal. America can really learn something from them.  But its also a despicable, terrible, terrible, bad failure for Portugal.  A strange dichotomy, I know.  Allow me to explain.  First the good news.  The "senha":

This is truly a thing of beauty.  You walk up to the counter, and you pull your number, aka "senha", out of the little ticket dispenser thing.  Then you go sit down and read the paper, or go walk around the store and look for free samples, or go to the bathroom, the options are really wide open here.  And when the number that's on your senha beeps up onto the display, you walk up to the counter and get served.  They have these everywhere.  At the meat counter, cheese counter, supermarket bakery, city hall, any customer service office, etc.  You get the idea.  I know we have these in america too, but the Portuguese take it to a whole new level.  It's wonderful.

Now for the bad news...

Checkout lines.  Oh my dear goodness.  Why, Portugal?  Why?!  The first time I went to the grocery story, it was just to buy a few snacks and bare essentials to hold me over while I got settled in.  By the time I got to  got to the checkout counter I was looking around for the entrance to space mountain.  Nobody should wait in line that long if there's not multi-million dollar roller coaster at the end!  The grocery store checkout lines are unbelievably long.  It's amazing.  As Americans, we take for granted that if we are buying less than 10 items, we wait in line for 5 minutes, tops.  I don't know why, but if you go at the wrong time, you can pull 20-25 minutes, easy, just to buy some milk and eggs.  It's not that lines are all that lengthy, either.  They are just slow.  I've gotten smarter since that first time, now I bring a book with me whenever I go to the supermarket.

So why on earth are their lines so slow?  I've given this some thought, and I've only been able to come up with two reasons.  First problem: no grocery bagging people.  You and the cashier do a sort of team bagging job, and she ain't got no hustle.  Second problem: I think the people just have no idea what they are missing. They've never experience a quick, smooth checkout process.  They just sit in those lines forever thinking that's just the way it has to be.  And since they don't fuss, the supermarket doesn't change anything.




And finally, at least one reason Portugal is like the US:
1. Apparently, in neither society is it very acceptable for a 25 year old to have a mustache.  I thought the Portuguese would welcome it with open arms, but no, they are just as prejudice against the stache as America.

As usual, comments welcome.