Friday 12 September 2008

Portugez in a Where's Waldo brand new version!!


It is quite universal that Americans in general (I sincerely apologize for generalizing and of course it doesn’t mean that all Americans are ignorant but those who are not, I suppose I don’t need to apologize because they also know what I am referring to).. Anyway, as I was saying, Americans are generally bad in Geography, they may be very good in other fields but not in Geography.
Besides Americans (poor them), mostly everyone seems to be pretty good localizing countries in a map and from my experience everyone I know had no doubts where Portugal is located even all the Americans I met so far.
Now, despite all this prejudice about Americans it happened that they have got competitors!
Who?
British people? Of course not, British people know very well where Portugal is on the map, it is a very popular country amongst British people! Reasons:
Futebol (1st), holiday (2nd) and Magdelene MCainn (3rd). Wine, Beer, beaches, chicks, good weather, surf, bla bla bla .. For intellectuals they may eventual remember "The Pink Map" (Portuguese: Mapa cor-de-rosa) where Portugal disputed with Great Britain over the land between the colonies of Mozambique and Angola which led to the British Ultimatum or when the British navy came to help Portugal and Spain during the Napoleonic Wars... etc, etc.. So, lets say, very popular!
However, I found ONE, a single one BRITISH person who did not know where is Portugal! That person thought at first Portugal would be in Europe, which is not too bad.. but more than that was already too much.. First trial was to put Portugal somewhere in between France and Germany, followed by some other places in Eastern Europe ending with the probability of Portugal being an island very close to England! I suggested to have a look in Goggle maps and that person wrote "Portugez" when searching for Portugal... before the Google could correct it I did.. and under that person's surprise, Portugal is just there.. on the Western coast of Europe on the left of Spain!! "wow, how could that be? I knew every single country except Portugal.. I had no clue where this country was really, is there anything important related to Portugal?".. Quite offensive though but not going to tell you what I taught this person because you may know enough but one thing I am pretty sure is that this person is now as almost as proud of Portugal as I am of being Portuguese.. I was called Patriotic!! :))
If you still have questions I can promise you that Portugal is located on the that map on top where I tried to confused the readers in a Where's Waldo map fashion.. Have fun! By the way is Friday night and I am still in the bloody lab instead of having a good super special nice, awesome, splendid, great amazing time... I am off now!

No comments: