Finding positivity through food
Well that was a bit of a shock wasn’t it? I actually started writing this post before the US election, but what I started then seems to be getting more appropriate by the day. I hope you’re all hanging on in there – 2016 has been a real stinker hasn’t it? I can’t help wondering if this is the beginning of some larger process by which our civilisation destroys itself (there’s a cheery Friday Thought for you!). Or, who knows, maybe this painful shake-up is needed in order to fix some fundamental flaws in the system. Here’s hoping it’ll all work out for the best…
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Posts on Eat Rio have been pretty sparse this year for a couple of reasons. There were two very busy periods during which I just didn’t have time to blog – I was writing a guide book in the first few months of the year and then we had the mayhem of the Olympics.
But for the rest of 2016, things have been very quiet. Business has been tough for everyone working with tourism in Rio – guesthouse owners, tour guides, restaurant managers and even taxi drivers all tell me that things are slow. It makes me wonder whether the net effect of the Olympics was really as positive as many people seem to think. Sure a lot of people came for the event itself, but the Olympic spotlight meant that every negative story related to Brazil was picked up, magnified and printed in sensationalistic headlines across the world.
So why wasn’t I bombarding you with a plethora of posts during the quiet times? Well, to be honest, current events have been so depressing that it’s been hard to know what to say. Both in Brazil and further afield, you have to wonder if some kind of previously undescribed form of insanity is taking hold of the world. Symptoms include aversion to logical reasoning, intolerance, lack of compassion for others, angry outbursts and hysterical demands to return to “the good old days” (which actually weren’t that good when you stop and think about it). One small cause for optimism is that younger generations appear to be less susceptible to this worrying condition.
Well, whether it’s a nose-diving local economy or the direction of global politics (or a spouse living in a different continent!), I guess we all have to find ways of dealing with aspects of the world that make us miserable. My main source of positivity this year has been food.
