Firstly, do you remember me mentioning that on the various hop on hop off buses we used in Europe, the recorded announcements had various language options, two of which Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese. I want to know how different these same languages are. Can they understand each other?
Let me look. As a last resort I will ask Sami. Yep, easy to find out. Yes, it is a bit like British English and American English, differences and accents, but mostly understandable. I guess for ease for the listener they use the two different forms of Portuguese on the buses.
Next, I understand how air conditioners cool. They are like your 'fridge. A gas is compressed and becomes cold and air is blown through a grill where the gas circulates. Easy, but how do they heat. They take warm air from outside and pump it inside. Really? What warm air? It is freezing outside. How can they find warm air outside? I am sure there is an electric heating element somewhere. Maybe you can tell me how it works. I have given up after reading too many times about how an air conditioner heats. And are heat pumps the same as air conditioner heating?
Back to Portugal. I have been reading a biography of Dame Daphne Park on my electric reading machine, she being one of the first women in Britain's MI6 or SIS as it was known. I haven't finished the book but I expect she becomes head of MI6. There was a reference to communist uprising in Portugal in the 1970s, and naturally enough, British spooks interfered so that there would be a good outcome for the the west. I know nothing of this uprising. Let me look. Right, that is all to do with Carnation Day, celebrated on Australia's Anzac Day, also the day we arrived in Lisbon. Why did I not connect the two? Sami wrote about it back here.
I haven't finished with air conditioners yet. You may remember our air con evaporative tray, with the steam off the water heating element that failed. I was extracting about five litres of water a week by sucking up the water with a soft plastic bottle and a car wash sponge (thanks River) , but the amount of water slowly reduced and now the tray has dried out altogether. Why do they produce water and why has it dried out? Another easy one.
The Greens??? They are toppling out of our Federal Parliament at quite a rate because they are dual nationals. I agree with the principle that you should only be citizen of Australia and do not have an allegiance to another country, and therefore will only govern in Australia's interest.
Having said that, it is most unfortunate that two Greens Senators have had to resign. That they did not know they were dual citizens is beyond belief and they are suffering the consequences of their 'ignorance' and have had to resign from Parliament. In the case of Larissa Waters, how did she not know she was born in Canada and was also a citizen of that country? (Later, she was an unfortunate victim of a change of Canadian law when she was one week old, but still, she should have known) How can she get rid of Canadian citizenship? Google answers me satisfactorily again, yet it won't tell me the meaning of life. Apparently it is quite simple. You fill in a form.
R is more up to speed about such matters for a change, and tells me the Liberal and Labor Party members have already been put through a machine and come up clean on the citizenship front. How unfortunate. I hoped we might be rid of conservative party Mathias Cormann. Apparently his Australian citizenship killed his Belgian citizenship. Not so in the case of Larissa Waters and Canada. Even the idealistic Greens Party disappoints.
Back to the Dame Daphne Park biography, of course she was in MI6 during the time of the unmasking of the English spooks who were double agents, serving Russia. It was a field day for the British tabloids, with tales of sex, naked pool parties, homosexuality and spies. I was very amused to read a learned American back then offering his opinion that while his country understood sex and understood spying, it could not understand how the British had managed to combine the two.