Lightning Talks #5: the rules nobody writes down
Three talks about the rules nobody writes down, and what 37 of us wrote down in the room.
By Van Vo on 2026-11-08
Hey,
When I moved to Portugal I thought obrigado and obrigada depended on who you were thanking: obrigada for a woman, obrigado for a man. It depends on who is speaking. So for a long time, every time I thanked a woman, I announced that I was one too. Nobody told me. People here are too kind to correct you.
I told that story on Thursday to open Lightning Talks #5 at Kübe. It is the whole night in one example: every place has rules nobody writes down, and you learn them by getting them wrong.
About 37 of us were in the room. On the sign-up form, 29 of the 47 people who said how they work run their own business or freelance.
Three people each told one story about a rule they had to learn.
Dr. Ana Paula Loures-Elias, "Stop Working Like Everyone Else." The unwritten rules of work, she said: wake up early, sit still in meetings, never ask too many questions, don't be too much. She spent more than a decade in academia following someone else's map, then moved here and asked what she actually had. Her advice was to put your questions in writing, tell people how you work like a user's manual, and build the system around your own brain. Her homework for us: whose model are you following right now, and what would you change if you stopped copying it? Her slides. Connect with Ana.
Lisa Jerahtina, "Be your own CFO." Lisa began with three questions: do you know what you spend each month, do you track it, do you have a budget. Then she told us about being 16 and having just moved out. On day seven she looked at her bank account and 80% of her monthly allowance was gone. She took a sheet of paper, wrote down what came in and what went out, and did not yet know the word budget. In the Q&A she gave the first habit. Take your last three months of bank statements and split what is necessary from what is nice to have. Then work out your runway, the number of months you could live if the income stopped. Connect with Lisa.
Josh Polanco, "Foreigners in Grief: Unspoken Losses." Grief is not only about people who die, Josh said. You can grieve a country, a job, an industry, the person you were before you moved. Going home, he said, we can feel like strangers in both places. His way through: name it when you feel it, build new places to belong, and make sense of what has changed. Connect with Josh.
Then I asked the room one question on Slido: what did you find out the hard way in Portugal? The answer with the most votes, four of them, was "I just count my blessings and be thankful for what I can get here." Others: "complex, slow and inconsistent bureaucracy," "The lies of the low cost of living. I was deceived," and "No cousins, no aunts, no monthly family gatherings!"
The best answer came out loud. A guest sold a used car and kept getting its toll bills, because someone had cloned the plate. The police sent him to Finanças and Finanças sent him back, and a registered letter later asked for 125 euros to continue the investigation. He did not pay, and he told the story calmly.
The obrigada story got a laugh, and I was less nervous than at the last one. The open Slido question did more for the room than I expected, so it stays for the next night.
Thank you to José and Marina at Kübe, to Kirill for setting up with me, to Victoria for the photos, and to Josh for helping pack up. Photos from the night: Victoria's folder and mine. If you would rather not be in one, message @worktugalpass and I will take it down.
If you have not yet, join Worktugal: add your languages, your work rights and what you are looking for. When someone needs what you do, I introduce you. Only if you say yes. worktugal.com/signup
P.S. The next night is still being set. 12 of you ticked "speak" or "help run a night" on the form. Hit reply and tell me which, or fill in the form: worktugal.com/contribute/apply. I will send you the next step. If you have a rule from home that you dropped here, send that too. I read every reply.