Yipee! Freedom..... at least for the next 3 days

Phew! Finally - the project which I have been working on was release at 4.15pm today. Now I get 3 days of peace and quiet... before coming back and dealing with the mountain of other stuff.

I'greja.... mentaga....limau.... sabun????

The Portuguese came to Malacca back in... errrr (can't remember the date but it was a long long time ago) and so I went to Portuga, last week end. That's only fair.

The firm organised the handover meeting for the project which has been keeping me awake for the last 4 months in Lisbon. So I got Tina and Sook to join me in Lisbon last week end.

The weather in Lisbon was a nice warm 16 degrees Celsius. I had forgotten how warm that was - given that I've been freezing my not so tiny tush off in London. It was so nice to walk around and not have a million layers on.

Sook suggested that we try to find some similar words in Malay (since the Portuguese had some influence on our national language) and so a word hunting we went.

I first spotted I'greja when we visited the Castle George on the hill and yes - that was the root for geraja (meaning church).

Then Tina found limau on a menu (meaning lime) and then she was really on a roll. She subsequently spotted mentaga (which was butter) and sabun (which is soap).

Poor Sook - was trying desperately to sell us that perigi (meaning well) also had a Portugese origin. Unfortunately, she was unable to corroborate this.

So we came away with 4 words - not bad I must say.