I was meaning to publish this post last night but a horrible thing happened - the most scary and frustrating to ever happen to a poor blogger like me. I inadvertently deleted the whole entire texts when I was only supposed to highlight them to change fonts. Darn my effing mouse, I knew I should have replaced it since last month! And before I realised what I just did, Blogger promptly auto-saved! Grrrrr.
Anyways, I didn't allow it to dampen my mood. Last night I was excited to post this postcard, and still am, today - the city featured is Guimarães -- and surprise! surprise! Back in the Philippines we also have a province named Guimaras...
Postmarked Municipio Porto
Dated 5 February 2010
It came as a surprise to me because most of the Philippine towns are named after Spanish towns and discovering about Guimarães in Portugal piqued my interest. After all, Ferdinand Magellan, or Fernão de Magalhães, the dude who discovered the Philippine islands, was a Portuguese explorer who later in his life obtained a Spanish nationality and served the King of Spain to search for the Spice Islands. Also, back in time when I used to attend international conferences, colleagues mistook me for a Brazilian owing to my family name. Others also asked me about my unusual name - an English name and a Portuguese family name (most of them said it's Portuguese rather than Spanish). All the while my family thought we have a Spanish surname... there sure is plenty of room for me to learn more about this interesting Spanish-Portuguese influences in my country of birth.
Let's go to the stamp now... The fantastic stamp used in this postcard features an appetizing no caloeira a tempura (from Japan) and is from the series of seven stamps and souvenir sheet issued by the Portuguese Postal Office in 2009. The series is called Sabores da Lusofonia - which means Flavours of Lusophony. I didn't actually know what Lusofonia or Lusophony is but it sure does look delicious!
I also like the cancellation marks... it's so clean that you can still see the featured food through it. Sabor in the Bisaya-Hiligaynon dialect in the south-central Philippines means taste or flavour. Lusophony, I learned, is a collective word to mean Portuguese-speaking countries and territories. A little visit to the ever-reliable Wikipedia never fails to educate me every time!
