Lisbon Tuk-Tuk Diaries

Related to the last post, and an ever interesting subject for me, is the idea of living more in the present. It's often said that taking one day at a time is the way to live, embodied in the famous Carpe Diem motto. Seize the day. Or its more modern counterpart YOLO. First coined by the Roman poet Horace more than 2,000 years ago, the phrase is part of the longer Carpe Diem, Quam Minimum Credula Postero, which is often translated as "Seize the day, put very little trust in tomorrow (the future)". The idea here being that we shouldn't leave to chance our future, but rather start today making our own future better. Related but distinct is the expression Memento Mori - "remember that you are mortal", which carries some of the same connotation as Carpe Diem. For Horace, mindfulness of our own mortality is key in making us realize the importance of the moment. "Remember that you are mortal, so seize the day." In Matthew 6:34, Jesus invites to a simi...

Two weeks have gone by since I last wrote here. The struggle to write regularly and keep a daily blog is real. I was wondering the reason why and I remembered a song that describes it. It's called "Inquietação". That word can be translated as restlessness or disquiet. "Cá dentro inquietação, inquietação É só inquietação, inquietação Porquê, não sei Porquê, não sei Porquê, não sei ainda Há sempre qualquer coisa que está pra acontecer Qualquer coisa que eu devia perceber Porquê, não sei Porquê, não sei Porquê, não sei ainda" The chorus of the song talks about an interior disquiet, a consuming restlessness. The motives are unclear, the author doesn't know why, or not yet. But then he says something that I feel most of the time: there's always something happening, something I should understand (Há sempre qualquer coisa que está pra acontecer, qualquer coisa que eu devia perceber). And that's what the past two weeks have been. Some...

Yesterday I was challenged by Susanne, one of my customers in the tuk-tuk tours I do in Lisbon, to create a blog telling the stories of the people I meet, the daily situations one encounters while driving a tuk-tuk in the capital of Portugal, and at the same time forcing myself to write more often. Susanne is a writer by the way. So I decided to just do it. And here we are. 7 years ago there were no tuk-tuks in the streets of Lisbon. Well, those days are gone. There's about 900 of them nowadays, and the popularity of this means of transportation doesn't seem to stop. Tuk-tuk is an onomatopoetic word formed in imitation of the natural sound made by their small engines. However and fortunately so, the one I drive is electric and doesn't make that tuk-tuk sound. Doesn't pollute too. So it is a quieter, cleaner contrast to the original tuk-tuks from Asia. The story of the tuk-tuk origin in Lisbon, as I was told, goes like this. A Portuguese businessman inspired by what he s...