Flour Power

Today, the 10th of June, is Portugal Day. I usually don’t celebrate it that much when I’m in Portugal and I don’t even remember there being any huge celebrations like for some other countries’ national days. But at least it’s a national holiday, and it kind of bummed me down that I had to work today. It triggered that “I wish I was there” feeling.

So, a little bit of history (taken directly from Wikipedia). Not that I don’t know it… but it’s just so easy to get it from there…

This day marks the date of Luís de Camões‘ death in 1580. He wrote the Lusíadas, Portugal’s national epic poem celebrating Portuguese history and achievements, more specifically the 16th century Portuguese explorations, which brought fame and fortune to Portugal. According to popular lore, Camões saved his epic poem by swimming with one arm while keeping the other arm (the one holding the book) above water.

He became a national hero and now the date of his death is the Portuguese national day. And there’s also a statue in his honor in Lisbon oldtown.

Lesson history over, off to work again now.

The Green Dragon resting at the Galway docks.

My video reporting of the Volvo Ocean Race in Galway continues with a couple of videos of Lucia Evans‘ performance at The Topaz Main Stage in the Galway docks yesterday (May 26). A very windy night, as you can see and hear in the videos, but that didn’t keep everyone at home, and the turnout was quite decent. Nothing like the previous day, though.

The third day of the festival celebrating the Galway stopover of the Volvo Ocean Race had Oleku Band playing in The Topaz Main Stage. I headed down there to check it out, although I wasn’t expecting much, because it was a quite cold (and almost raining) Monday.

But what I saw left me positively surprised. There were actually quite a lot of people outside, and the majority was actually dancing to the African rythms presented by the Nigerian band. Near the end of the performance a few of the audience members started dancing Capoeira which rapidly gathered a big crowd around them. Fun stuff.

Here are two movies I recorded of the Oleku Band performance (no video of the Capoeira session because there wasn’t enough light):