Hello everyone. I’ve been a little lazy with the blogging recently so I thought that even though I haven’t had time to prepare anything interesting, I should at least post a quick update. As the post title suggests, I’m leaving Brazil! I’ll fly back to London at the end of the month.
All together now: "Leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again..." - I snapped this plane taking off from Santos Dumont airport last night.
I arrived in Brazil just over 18 months ago and during that time there have been some major challenges. Finding a job, getting married, obtaining my visa, finding an apartment and finding some friends! But the biggest challenge has been learning the Portuguese and dealing with communication difficulties.
I’m not only talking about the obvious issues of struggling to understand the locals and struggling to make myself understood. There are other things that I have also found difficult/testing. I am always being asked “So, how is your Portuguese?” – I honestly don’t know how to respond to this anymore! Even worse is the performing monkey routine: “This is Tom. Yes, he speaks Portuguese! Go on Tom, say something in Portuguese for them!” – I realise, of course, that all these issues would go away if I just improved my Portuguese!
And it is slowly improving. I mean, the pace is glacial, but nevertheless I’m getting better and becoming more confident. But now I find there is a new problem emerging.
A few weeks ago we had a small air conditioning unit installed in our bedroom. It was a present from my father-in-law which is probably just as well because I have always been rather resistant to buying one myself. Not because of the expense so much, but because air conditioning has always seemed a bit wrong to me. Sure it’s hot, but do you really want to breath air that has been processed? It’s so artificial! You pay a lot of money to have air sucked in from outside, passed over refrigeration elements and then pumped into your home, just so you can achieve optimum temperature?
Ha! You can tell I grew up in chilly England can’t you? Getting A/C felt pretty wrong to me, but do you know what? It feels oh so right when we switch it on 10 minutes before going to bed. Especially when the funk party raging outside makes opening the window a bad option if you want to get to sleep before 6am. I think it is safe to say that I am an air conditioning convert.
Often when I’m searching for ideas and inspiration for Eat Rio, I will ask my wife about whatever subject I have in mind. “What have you got on X?” I will ask, and she will tell me about a saying, a news story or some other cultural oddity that I can work in to the post (my secret is out!). Well I just asked her “What do you Brazilians think about air conditioning” and her reply was “Everyone likes it”. Great, thanks for that! But it appears to be true:
I reckon there are around 70 A/C units visible on the outside of this office building in Rio's Centro district.
A curious thing happened last night as I made my way home. A curious light seemed to fill the sky. Seriously, it was really odd – everything went a weird shade of yellowy-green. Now I’m fairly sure this mysterious light was a perfectly natural phenomenon – perhaps the low cloud was being caught by the setting sunlight which was being refracted by particles suspended in the upper atmosphere to produce that particularly mysterious shade of yellow. OR, maybe it was aliens!
As I sat on the bus, I gazed in wonder at this strange new version of Rio and felt the need to make blindingly obvious comments to strangers. You know, things like “Wow, look at that. It’s really yellow isn’t it?” and “Doesn’t the sky look weird?”. You know, sometimes I think my timidity with communication saves me from some pointless conversations.
As I neared my destination in Glória, the sun went down (or, if you prefer, the alien mothership flew away) and the strange light faded. I hopped off the bus and was just about to make my way up the steep hill I have to climb to get home, when I happened to glance over my shoulder. Seems aliens were in Rio after all! This is what I saw:
A clear-cut case of aliens, right? Look at them, hanging in the night sky – there is no other explanation for this. I have to say, I was surprised too. But the camera doesn’t lie does it?
How are you feeling today? Are you experiencing a faint longing for anything? Is your heart a little heavy? Do you feel listless and melancholic? Well you should do, and not just because it’s a Monday. Today, 30th January, is Dia da Saudade. You didn’t know? Didn’t you see the Brazilian Google Doodle today? For those of you who missed it, here it is:
You may find this hard to believe, but I’ve had no formal training. This is natural, raw, diamond-in-the-rough, talent…
OK, so Eat Rio and Google haven’t really teamed up (well, in a way, I teamed up with them, but that makes it a rather one-sided arrangement doesn’t it?). I made this myself as apparently Google forgot to check their calendar today.