Milestones

Ever had one of those moments when you realise you recently strolled obliviously through a milestone? Well, I just noticed yesterday that I have now 102 posts (103 if you include this one). There I was, waffling on about my bedroom walls and using that as a tenuous excuse to show you my photos of flowers, when I should actually have been playing a fanfare about the fact that I was writing my centurion post!

I believe that it is traditional to use an occasion such as this to do some big retrospective about what has changed since you wrote your first post, where you want to be this time next year, all that kind of stuff. I don’t know though – it strikes me as a little self-important. I will say that I have enjoyed writing this blog, it’s been really nice making contact with people (some I knew before from back home, others I’ve never met, but who hang out here with me in Blogland), and it’s kind of flattering that you guys can be bothered to come back and read what I have to say once in a while.

The presence of this is explained at the end of the post. Piqued your curiosity? Good, so read on.

I would also recommend blogging as a nice way to engage with the place you live. Instead of just looking at stuff blandly, nowadays I ask more questions, look a little deeper, tried to understand what’s going on and why. Because in the back of my mind I’m always greedily thinking “hmmm, maybe I can wangle a blog post out of this…”.

Another tradition (I believe) is for people to say which are their favourite posts from the past. This strikes me as a bit of cheat – like those episodes of The Cosby Show, Happy Days, etc, where the characters would spend the whole 30 minutes just ‘remembering’ stuff that happened in past episodes as an excuse to re-run past scenes. The writers must have been on holiday or something. Anyway, I’m all in favour of cheating, so here are 3 posts I enjoyed:

Ônibus – the buses of Rio: The first post I wrote that people seemed to like! I did some illustrations in that sophisticated graphics package MS Paint, showing you which hand signals to use to hail a bus.

As if I was going to leave the buses out of my top 3…

Beautiful Ugly Rio

Beautiful Ugly Rio: This starts off with a helicopter ride around Rio in the 60s, accompanied by Gilberto Gil singing Aquele Abraço. For me, that makes this worthy of a look already. But I also think it’s good to acknowledge that Rio is quite ugly in many ways, but also very beautiful and not just because of the mountains and the beaches.

Palma Mater – The Emperor’s tree

The Emperor’s Tree, Freed by Slaves: For me, this is one of those lovely examples where you think you’re going to write a fairly boring story about something like Jardim Botânico (Rio’s botanical gardens) and suddenly you stumble on an amazing and fascinating story. That there is a living connection to Rio’s past makes this all the more poignant.

So now I feel happy that I’ve marked the occasion of my 100th post, even if it came a little late. In other milestone news, I’d like to say thanks to everyone who ‘Liked’ the Eat Rio Facebook Page – we recently scored a half century and big thanks to Paul Reeve for being Mr Nifty Fifty himself – the first and last images of this post are done by Paul.

I like this one – somewhat calming and it appeals to my inner geek. Just think Paul, having your work featured on such a popular and successful blog (I’m talking about Eat Rio there) could be the start of something big! Don’t forget me for your private viewing at The White Cube – cheers mate!