I am spending the week in Portugal to attend the Queima das Fitas 2008 in Évora.

In case you don’t know, this is a party that lasts one week to celebrate the graduation of senior students at the University.

It was really nice to meet my friends with whom (most of them) I wasn’t since I went to Spain last February.
So, hail for beer and music!
It’s good to be back.

I just came back to Seville from a nice weekend in Portugal.

Since I’m a good person I thought it’d be cool to get my coworkers to taste a little bit of life , I mean, Portuguese life. And what’s so good in Portugal that makes it the very thing that Portuguese people (including myself) don’t complain about? The food (and drink)!!
My parents brought me a nice Honey Cake made by a neighbor of them and I bought 48 bottles of the finest Portuguese beer (to be consumed outside of working time):
- 24 Super Bock;
- 24 Sagres;

I am a big fan of Super Bock. Let’s see which of them my friends like more…

And just so you know, we’re smart and educated people so, we’ll not drink those all at once.

So, last week I got sick on Tuesday. My throat was hurting and my head aching.

3 days like this convinced me to go to the hospital…
I was prepared to wait hours as it’s normal in a Portuguese public hospital.

For my surprise, after I payed the 2.15 € tax, the girl who took the record about me told me to go upstairs and enter office #3.
I was like: “what? to enter like this? without waiting?”
When I got upstairs I was walking on the side of a women in white (who could be a doctor or a nurse I thought, not surely a bride…) and I asked her: “Please, the lady downstairs told me to enter the office #3, is it like this?”
She replied: “Yes, go on! I’ll go and assist you right now!” all with a nice smile.

WTF? I thought. It must have been some mistake. But NO! I got in the office with like the nice Portuguese female Doctor who rapidly assisted me. She used a computer with a fullscreened Firefox and some Oracle application to write my prescription. Man, I felt like I was in another country! Computers in the Doctor’s office! The nice mood and manners of the Doctor! The non-waiting… I got out of there with a smile.

In Portugal we *had* this situation where we’d wait for hours until the Doctor would assist us. Sometimes this Doctor would be still at lunch and some would treat us with real bad manners.
The problem is that some (not so long) time ago and even NOW some people think Doctors are like god. A job above all. The right to treat however they wanted, like you owed them money. People in Portugal still talk to Doctors referring to them as something that can be translated like “Sir Doctor” and all with a little tremble on their voices like if the Doctor could refuse to treat them.

It was also normal for people to refer this way to Engineers (”Sir Engineer”). So, I’ve got nothing against Doctors, they surely helped me a LOT of times. I’ve also got nothing against Engineers (actually I am studying to become one). What I am against is to elitism and sense of superiority when we all need a place in society.

Fortunately this seems to be disappearing.