Attention Brunch-Seekers

One of the things I miss about living in Canada is getting together with friends on a Saturday or Sunday morning and going out for Brunch. Favourite locations in Ottawa included everything from Benny's Bistro, if we were feeling a little bit posh, to Mello's Diner on Dalhousie if all we needed were two eggs, sausages, homefries, toast and coffee for less than $5.00. Since my arrival in Brazil, it seemed to me that brunch as we knew it was not an easy thing to procure here in South America. In fact, when I was in Buenos Aires over Easter, Ysa and I made a special breakfast trip to El Ateneo Café, since it served the closest thing to a North American brunch that we could find. Well, all that changed today.

This morning, I met a colleague to go out for an early lunch and I suggested that we head to Santo Grão, a nice café-restaurant on Oscar Freire [between João Manuel and Ministro Rocha Azevedo for those living here]. I had been to Santo Grão many times over the years, yet always as an after-work kind of place, as opposed to a having-a-leisurely-lunch-on-the-weekend kind of place. Well ... was I ever happy to learn that they have a brunch menu which includes many of my old favourites, even Eggs Benedict! Of course, I had to order the Eggs Benny with a side of fruit and yogurt. The eggs were excellent, the salmon fresh, and the hollandaise sauce, whipped to perfection. English muffins don't exist in Brazil, but the chefs did a good imitation, using double slices of toast cut into circles. Other brunch dishes include classic eggs, waffles, crepes, croque monsieur, fruit, yogurt and granola, etc. If you are looking for an excellent brunch location, with a great atmosphere, this is your place to go! I wonder if they have an affiliate in Recife ...

Improve your Life: Change your Ringtone

When I arrived in Brazil last fall I was presented with my very first cell phone. Not being used to listening for my ring and subsequently missing many a call, I decided that action had to be taken. Seeing that I was now living in Brazil, I choose the Samba Rumble ringtone and set the volume rather high. There would be no way that I would miss another call.

Now, my first months in Brazil coincided with some intense work situations which called for lots of phone-ringing. Since I had recently arrived and very few people actually knew my cell number, a loud Samba Rumble could only mean one thing. Months later, I still cringed when the Samba Rumble would pierce the air. The other day, I had the idea to change my ring tone. I now have it set to Groovey Blue and amazingly enough, I no longer fear my phone and actually look forward to seeing who might be calling.

Update: I swear I had this post saved as draft before reading the Expatters post on the new Axel F ringtone which is topping the charts in Europe!

It's a Small World Part III

Friday morning, I met with a Brazilian-Canadian involved in one of our projects in the State of Sao Paulo. From his email tag, I knew that he worked in the same neighbourhood in which I grew up in Montreal. Once we got chatting, we discovered that he actually lives and works two blocks from my Montreal home! Of course, for the rest of our meeting, we spent more time talking about our common reference points than about the subject at hand.

On his way out, we started talking about the process to immigrate to Canada and the fact that the Province of Quebec runs its own immigration programme which complements Canada's programme. I mentioned that a Brazilian contact of mine recently immigrated to Montreal using the Quebec process. When I mentioned my colleague's first name, my visitor opened his eyes wide and said "do you mean so-and-so?" And of course, I did mean so-and-so!

According to estimates, there are a couple of thousand Brazilians living in Montreal. I would ask what the chances are that a connection like this would happen, but I suspect that we all know the answer!

Benefitting from Other People's Misery (and Good Fortune)

For two days in a row, it has taken me a near-impossible, record-breaking, twelve minutes to get to work [I used to consider twenty minutes record-breaking]. Yesterday, this extreme time was achieved due to the torrential rains that engulfed Sao Paulo between Monday and Tuesday. In a twenty-four hour period, 140mm of rain fell causing major floods and traffic jams. The traffic was so bad, that some of my colleagues spent three and a half hours getting to the office. The reason that I was able to get in so quickly is that the paralyzation was all to the north, south, east and west of Jardins. Since no one had yet managed to make it to the interior of the city, the way was clear and free for the rest of us! It took one of my poor colleagues 17.5 times my twelve minutes to get to work.

As for today, since it is Corpus Christi, a holiday for the rest of the country -- except for us Canadians who pick an even mix of Brazilian and Canadian holidays, and this one wasn't picked this time around -- the roads were once again clear for record-breaking time. When holidays fall on a Thursday, a lot of Brazilians will tack on the Friday to make a long weekend, so tomorrow will hopefully be a smooth ride as well!

São Paulo in 168 Hours

In an effort to fit in as much São Paulo as possible in the next seven days, I have created an ambitious schedule of museums, galleries, and restaurants that I want to go to before moving to Recife. Even though I have been here for close to eight months (disregarding all the travel), there are still tons that I want to see and do in São Paulo before bidding adieu to the megalopolis next week. Last weekend, I went to the Heritage of the Czars exhibition at the Museu de Arte Brasileiro in Higienopolis, which was really good. Between now and Sunday, I would also like to go to the following:

- the Painted Bodies exhibit, currently showing at Ibirapuera Park;

- the Pinacoteca do Estado to see the current exhibit;

- the Sacred Art Museum, apparently the best in the country;

- the Lasar Segal Museum, a Lithuania-Brazilian painter who greatly influenced Brazilian art in the first half of the twentieth century;

- the Brazilian Museum of Sculpture;

- the São Bento Monastery;

- the Central Market [the problem being that I never seem to get out of the house early enough to make it in time for the real Saturday-morning action]; and

- one last look (for now) at São Paulo from above from both Terraço Italia and the Syke Bar [where I was originally going to have my bota fora (literally my kicking out), but then changed ideas].

From the looks of it, I will either have to stop going to work these last few days in order to fit everything in, or I will have to delay my departure date! May the race begin.

Regent Park to the Rescue

The Regent Park in lovely Jardins has saved the day! Several weeks ago when my pending move started becoming more and more real, I confirmed with the Consulate that between the end of the lease for my apartment and my actually leaving Sao Paulo, I would need a hotel that accepted cats. The unexpected response was that in fact, hotels in Brazil did not accept pets. This rather complicated affairs, as the search was now on for someone who could potentially take Felix for up to two to three weeks. Most of my co-Canadians already have cats, and not wanting to impose, I did not ask very many of my Brazilian friends. At one point, I approached a Canadian living here on a three-month contract and much to my delight, he immediately agreed to house Felix pointing to the fact that he missed his cat back at home quite a bit. So two weeks ago, I took Felix to his new temporary home. The only complication being that my friend would be moving to Africa before the end of the month, thus leaving Felix homeless once again.

Realising that matters were getting increasing urgent, once back from the Rock ‘n Roll Tour of Brazil, I quietly enquired at the Regent’s front desk whether or not the hotel would accept Felix’s presence. Again, to my great fortune, the fellow working at the desk during this period had a cat back at home and knew all about their problemlessness [hmmmm … the spellchecker does not seem to like this word]. Ensuring me that he would do his best to convince the manager, an hour later I was informed that Felix could indeed join me at the Regent Park. So two nights ago, I picked Felix up from his newest uncle and brought him back to the Regent. He seems to have settled in quite well and the hotel staff all fawn over him! I must admit, it is a little bit strange to be pretty much living in a hotel, cat and all. But having been a client of the Regent since 2001, it almost is like home and the staff, almost like family.

My only concern is that Felix will start to think that this is the way that things work. Every morning someone comes in to make the bed, change the towels, and clean the bathroom, and then every evening someone comes in to fold back the comforter and make sure that everything is okay. Likely I will have to plan some deprogramming activities once we arrive in Recife!

180 Million and Still Small

Several weeks ago I wrote a post about how I manage to unexpectedly run into people I know while going about my routine even though São Paulo is home to 18 million people. In Canada, the standing joke is that as soon as someone discovers that you are from Canada/Canadian-City-In-Question, the question “Do you know my uncle/cousin/sister/friend/ex-colleague” always follows. Of course, it doesn’t help the stereotypes when we often do know the person’s uncle/cousin/sister/friend/ex-colleague. I am getting the feeling that it is no different in Brazil, even with six times the population.

While in the hotel in Recife, I was riding in the elevator with a colleague from Canada. We were speaking in English, which prompted the third person in the elevator – a Brazilian – to inquire as to our provenance. I responded that we were both from Canada but that I was presently living in São Paulo. Our co-rider responded that he was also from São Paulo and that he worked for Microsoft and was in Recife for a conference. Since the Consulate in São Paulo is located in the Microsoft building, I immediately asked him if he worked in the Torre Norte, which of course he did – a mere eight floors above my head! Later that evening, when work activities were long concluded, we had a drink in the hotel bar and shared a few laughs about the two Paulistanos who work in the same building meeting in the elevator in Recife. Some might say that this really a sign of São Paulo’s immense size, but I don’t believe it for a minute! I can hear my mother humming It’s a Small World right now!

Rock 'n Roll Brasil

I am back in São Paulo after a rapid-fire trip to Fortaleza, Recife, and Salvador with a team of colleagues in from Canada. It was a packed schedule and I am not sure that I can say that I have really visited Fortaleza. I have been to Recife on previous trips and managed to squeeze in a morning of sightseeing in Salvador before heading back to my home [the Regent Park Hotel in lovely Jardims, São Paulo] yesterday afternoon.

One funny moment was when we visited a school in Recife to meet with the teachers and kids who are involved with one of our projects. On our way out, all the kids surrounded us and asked for our autographs! I think that I ended up signing a couple of dozen notebooks before finally making my way out of the school. Were those my fifteen minutes of fame?

Congratulations!

Caipirissima's second contest has a winner! Congratulations to brasiliandaniel who hazarded an educated guess that the lack of walls, gates, fences, barbed wire, broken bottles, etc. made this house a little out-of-the-ordinary. Of course, as a native ... he did have an advantage! Okay, I admit, it was a bit of a perverse contest. But in all honesty, this is the only house that I have ever seen in Sao Paulo which is completely open to the street. It's a nice change! As for the parked cars ... in fact the one on the street is parked in the wrong direction, but that's pretty common here! Many thanks to the two brave entrants. Stay tuned for a third caiprissima contest which promises to be less obscure!

Crazy Travel Schedule

Since I am now officially homeless, both personally [got kicked out of my apartment last Friday] and professionally [got kicked out of my office today], there seems to be no good reason to let the grass grow under my feet before my actual move date which is currently (!) scheduled for two weeks from now. Tomorrow I am off on a four-day, three-city business trip to Fortaleza, Recife (yes, my home-to-be) and Salvador. When moving home just isn't enough!

The Meaning of Everything

I just finished reading The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester. I hadn’t read any non-fiction in a while and really enjoyed this account about how the initial twelve-volume, 414,825 word mother-of-all-dictionaries was put together over the course of seventy-some years [the last volume of the original dictionary was published in 1928]. Not just the story of how a bunch of words made it into neat columns on a page, this is a story of history (of both the English language and the Dictionary), vision, ideas, dreams, romance, determination, policking, intrigue, suspense, madness and death, and is filled with interesting characters and tidbits of information for you to bring up at the water cooler or an upcoming cocktail party.

Just as I was embarking on the book, I read the Expatters' review of Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman, essentially a tangential story of the OED [which apparently should have remained tangential] that prompted Winchester to write the whole history of the Dictionary. An interesting account of one of the OED’s most loyal volunteer readers who turned out to be a criminally insane American corresponding with the editor of the OED from his prison cell in England, the story of The Professor and the Madman are explained in two to three pages in The Meaning of Everything. An enjoyable story, but I cannot imagine reading two hundred pages of it! In any case, I give The Meaning of Everything a 7.75 for overall enjoyment.

Some of the tidbits in the making of the Oxford English Dictionary that I found most interesting:

· Dictionary-makers of the English language have historically chosen to tackle the language from an evolutionary as opposed to a prescriptive perspective, meaning that English dictionaries tend to define words according to how they are commonly used, as opposed to just by the original meaning of the word. In contrast is the French language which is controlled by a board and new meanings for words are only reluctantly accepted after much tribulation. Furley: unfortunately this means that your concern with people using the word regime when they actually mean regimen does not bode well for the continued purity of the language…

· The letter S provides the greatest volume of words. The letter C provides the second greatest volume, equal to A and B combined.

· J.R.R. Tolkien briefly worked as an assistant on the Dictionary

· Set is the most complex word in the dictionary

· The editors of the original OED started, not surprisingly, with the letter A. Later on they admitted that due to the fact that it was the first letter they conquered, not all the quirks of the process were ironed out and consequently the A section was not as strong as it could have been. In order to not compound a double learning curve, the editors of the second version of the OED decided to start with the letter M so that by the time they got around to A, they would not be repeating any inaccuracies that the original team may have made.

· The editors claimed that any humour found in the dictionary was totally inadvertent. Hard to believe when there are entries such as this: Abbreviator: An officer of the court of Rome, appointed … to draw up the Pope’s briefs …

· In 1971, the OED along with its various supplements was compressed into two volumes (with four original pages per page) which required, and came with, a magnifying glass for reading it. We had this version while I was growing up and I remember hauling out the volumes as well as the magnifying glass to check out some obscure word or another!

· Canada’s University of Waterloo was involved in the task of transferring the OED into a computer-based format in the 1980s following a massive donation of computers from IBM.

Canada Moves On

A headline on yesterday’s Globe and Mail website stated “Canada Moves On”. Of course, my immediate reaction was from what? From what does Canada move on? From the politically insecure climate? From the Gomery Trial? From the nose-diving loonie? Needing to know, I clicked on the link and discovered that the breaking news of the day was that Canada had beaten Slovakia in the World Hocket Championship with a last minute goal and would be moving on to the semi-finals. Clearly I have been out of the country for too long if hockey wasn't what immediately crossed my mind after reading the headline!

Memory Lane

This morning as I was waiting for the movers to arrive, I decided to further thin out my collection of receipts and bank slips from the past two years which, in a fit of packing, made their way to Brazil last fall. Although this is a task that truly needed to be accomplished, I felt quite a bit of saudade as I individually verified and then ripped up credit card slips [there is quite a bit of identity fraud here, so ripping up receipts isn’t just me being paranoid] and restaurant bills. Names of restaurants, stores, bars, and even hotels, coupled with their dates, brought back all kinds of memorable occasions spent in the company of friends, and I began to wonder whether it wouldn’t be more fun to keep the receipts in order to haul them out every so often, look them over, and reminisce about days gone by. Some of the best receipts that I came across were:

→ Two receipts from the B&B in Ithaca, New York where Claire, Ysa and I stayed in 2003. The reason there are two receipts is because between the three of us, we could not decide how long to stay in Ithaca. It was labour day weekend, and respectively we wanted to stay two, three and one night. Finally we settled for somewhere in the middle. On Sunday afternoon, all packed up and on our way out of town, we still couldn’t decide whether or not to stay another night. Finally Ysa pulled over, we flipped a coin, and headed back to the B&B for another night! Needless to say, the owner was a little bit surprised to see us back an hour after leaving.

→ A receipt from Forillon National Park in Gaspésie from when Etienne and Florence were visiting from France and we drove 2999 kilometres in eight days [Canadians do things like that!] around the Saquenay and Gaspé Peninsula. Very memorable!

→ A receipt from Luxe, a newish restaurant in Ottawa’s Byward Market. Although the dinner from this particular receipt was rather memorable (Claire’s birthday, I believe, when I unsuccessfully tried to influence the waitstaff into giving us free dessert), it also reminded me of another funny meal which revolved around Luxe. Nell, Ysa and I were in a bumming-around kind of mood and decided to go to Licks, a hamburger joint in Ottawa South, for lunch before heading shopping at the South Keys. Nell and I arrived at Licks and waited and waited and waited. No Ysa. We called the Roots Outlet in South Keys, which is where we were to head after lunch, to see if Ysa was there. No Ysa. We strained our eyes to see if we would see her car drive by. Still no Ysa. We left a message on her home phone saying that we were at Licks, while she left messages on our home phones saying that she as well was at Licks. What could it be? There is only one Licks in town. Confused, but resting assured that Ysa was okay, Nell and I finally agreed that we had to eat and get on with the day. Later that night, I finally managed to get in touch with Ysa, who wondered where the heck the two of us were while she waited and waited and waited for us at Luxe! Oh, the subtleties of Canadian accents! [Yes, the reasons behind cell phones did become clear to us this day.]

→ Lots (!) of receipts from Café Indochine [poor them, no website], a great little Vietnamese restaurant in the Market. ‘Nuff said. Good times have been had with all at Indochine.

→ Many [not sure I should say lots] of receipts from the LCBO [the only place one can buy wine, spirits, or imported beers in the repressive Republic of Ontario].

→ Receipts from MTL, Siam Bistro, The Black Tomato, the Empire Grill, and the Black Cat Café, all of which brought back fond memories.

Is it any wonder that i) I found it difficult to remove these receipts from my life; and ii) it takes me so long to clean my house! What an way to revisit a random picking of events!

The Movers

The movers arrived by 9am this morning and my apartment was a hive of activity for the rest of the day. I think that overall there were ten packers involved, although I never saw them altogether, so it is hard to be totally sure. Actually, everything went very smoothly and I do have to say, apologies to my Canadian packers, the Brazilian packers seemed to exercise a bit more common sense. Mostly empty cereal boxes were not indiscriminately tossed into boxes; open sugar bowls were not wrapped up, contents and all, and packed away only to be seen weeks later; piles of receipts were questioned prior to taking action; and there was a designated location for garbage, which was not in one of the packing boxes! Every item that was questionable was set aside and I was asked what to do with it. How civilized! In fact, so confident was I in the whole exercise, that I found my presence to be rather redundant. Hopefully I won’t feel foolish about this later! Stay tuned for Part II tomorrow when the packers return.

Wasn't I Just Here? (a.k.a. More Adventures in Moving)

Here I am, the night before the movers come -- once again -- to pack up all of my worldly possessions and ship them to Recife, several thousands of kilometres northeast of Sao Paulo. Reflecting back on the lessons I learned a mere seven months ago when the packers showed up at my place in Ottawa, I wonder whether or not it is ever possible to be fully ready for a move. I have worked my way through the piles of receipts and odds & ends which got shipped from Canada and have managed to thin them considerably. But there remains much to be done before 8am tomorrow morning. My fridge and freezer are also in good shape since after leaving a note yesterday to my cleaning lady inviting her to help herself to any perishable items, I came home to find that both were essentially cleared of anything edible! Although it was a bit of a shock to see an almost completely empty fridge and freezer having left them quite full that morning, I was happy to know that the food will go to good use. Stay tuned tomorrow for a comparative study of Canadian versus Brazilian movers!

What's Wrong With This Picture? A Caipirissima Contest

Okay, there is nothing actually "wrong" with this picture. But, there is definitely something strange, something not-quite-Sao-Paulo about this scene, which is just around the corner from my apartment. The first person who can tell what it is that is out of the ordinary, wins. Unfortunately, due my lack of immediate travel plans (except to move to Recife), the prize remains the satisfaction of gloating as opposed to a pound of Brazilian coffee. The contest will remain open until someone hits the proverbial nail on the head. Good Luck!

Grab an Apple While You Read This

Please, grab something to eat while you peruse this blog. Otherwise, don't say that I didn't warn you!

From the Media Daily News:

A WEST NYACK, N.Y. MAN was found dead at his computer apparently the victim of trying to keep up with too many professional forums. Childress H. Wanamaker, 54, an account executive at a New York-based new media company, died of starvation according to the West Nyack coroner's office. Wanamaker's emaciated body was found by Loraine, his wife of 26 years, who told MediaPost she had been bringing her husband meals on plastic trays for weeks, but that he never took the time to eat them.

"He was glued to his computer 24/7," she said tearfully. "He was so afraid he was going to miss an opportunity to contribute a comment or start a discussion, that he just stopped eating." She added that Wanamaker's last words were "OK Picard, stick that in your pipe and smoke it..."

Computer forensic specialists from SUNY at Cortland discovered that Wanamaker was subscribed to 48 different forums and networking communities including one apparently having to do with the elderly called "oldtimers" and another apparently limited to just 100 people. They also found that he posted a comment into one forum or another on an average of two per minute every hour of the day for the past seven weeks..... [more]

As you can see, this blogging can be dangerous business. Forget the stalkers, the people trying to figure out who you really are and where you really live, and what your real name is, the real danger in that we might just starve to death once the true addiction sets in. Bloggers beware!

Neither Here Nor There

It happens every time. Invariably. Portuguese and Spanish are so similar that it always takes me a while to switch from one to the other when I travel to a Spanish-speaking country. For several days upon arrival, I graciously accept light-hearted jibes from friends, and locals asking me if I am Brazilian. There are two issues at play -- the first being the actual words themselves, which are close, but not always the same as the Portuguese words [same same but different, as vendors in Vietnam used to call out to us]; and then there is the question of the accent, so that even when the word is the same, the pronunciation between the Spanish and the Portuguese is completely different.

Most recent was my trip to Chile, which was five days long. By the end, I think that I was speaking mostly Spanish, although the Portuguese accent was hard to kick and then there were those pesky few Portuguese words which keep sneaking their way in. I've been back for almost two weeks now, and yet, the Spanish seems to be here to stay. Several times a day I find myself shaking my head wondering why I am still speaking Spanish fourteen days back into my main language of operation, when I never fully managed to switch to Spanish when I was there. The brain is a wonderfully strange phenomenon!

Learn Something New Everyday

All around town are street vendors who sell hotdogs, hamburgers and other fast foods. Until today, I never fully understood the signboards which advertised the sandwiches available; X-Burger, X-Salada, X-Bacon, X-etc. I got the gist of the message, but never actually understood the logic behind the names. Until today, that is. Although the mode of my discovery was not glamorous at all -- leafing through my Fodor's Guide to Brazil -- I learned that an X-burger is a cheeseburger; with the letter 'X' and the Brazilian pronunciation of the English 'cheese' both being sheesh. X-Burger thus being the Brazilianised abbreviation of an English word!

You'd think it were Christmas

Traffic yesterday in São Paulo was a nightmare. At midday, it took me close to an hour to get from the Consulate to a meeting in the historical centre, a ride which should only take 30 minutes without traffic. At the end of the day, the traffic was so bad, I remarked to a colleague that it was probably a good thing that we had made dinner plans near the office. Otherwise, his trip back to Jardims [five to six kilometres away] would easily have taken an hour and a half to two hours!

When I mentioned the state of the traffic to a local colleague, she said that it was all because of Mothers' Day and that people were either out shopping; going out for dinner; or taking their mothers out of town for the weekend! Indeed, when I got home, I noticed an annoucement on the local website that because of Mothers' Day, some malls in São Paulo and Rio would be open until 1am on Saturday night! Now, the malls in Canada do stay open later than usual during the Christmas season, but as far as I can tell, we normally manage to get our Mothers' Day purchases done in time!

As for dinner, my in-from-Canada colleague and I went to a local Churrascaria and ate a lot of amazing cuts of beef. This time we were quite smart about it, ordering copious amounts of the amazing cuts (picanha and fraldinha) and lesser amounts of the really-excellent-but-not-quite-amazing cuts. Needless to say, we made very good friends with the waiter who had the picanha on his skewer. He was very pleased to come around every few minutes to practice his few words of beef-related English. Rumpsteak rare. Rumpsteak rare. Rumpsteak rare.. He even proposed that if my colleague wanted to open a Churrascaria in Canada that he would be pleased to move there and work for him! In all, a good evening. Plus, the traffic was totally gone once we were done and I got home in record time.

Fall Foliage

This picture was taken during my trip to Chile two weeks ago. Almost looks Canadian, doesn't it? There were several moments during the trip when our surroundings could easily have been mistaken for the Gatineau hills or the Laurentians. There is something very special about going for a walk in the sun and getting to rustle through the fallen leaves.

I'm happy to be catching a bit of the Southern Cone fall before my move to Recife, where it is all summer all the time. The only disadvantage to hitting the beginning of fall here is that it is impossible to shop with my move in mind [there go my capitalist inclinations kicking in again; yes Nell and Ysa, you would be proud!]. The stores in São Paulo, as in Santiago and previously in Buenos Aires, are replete with wonderful fall collections full of knits and corduroys in oranges, browns, burgundies and beiges, which of course would just end up sitting in my closet in Recife. How sad. Can you tell that fall is one of my favourite seasons?

Experimenting with Avocados

Recently I have been doing my share to keep the avocado farmers in business (well, you know what they say, an avocado a week, keeps the doctor ....). Mostly I have been blending them into cream of avocado, which if you haven't tried yet, you really should. It is delicious and easy; but so delicate that everyone will think that you slaved away for hours to create such a rich dessert. After experimenting with different recipes, these are my observations:

- If you aren't feeding an army, aim to buy avocados that are not the size of canteloups. I suspected that no one in northern climates will actually have this problem, but avocados here in Brazil are HUGE. They really are the size of canteloups. Since avocados have to be consumed fairly quickly once opened, make sure the size you buy is the size you need. Does not keep well!

- So far my favourite way to make them is to simply blend the avocado with some milk and a smidgen of sugar. Nothing more, nothing less. It's delish!

- Avocados are a good source of Vitamin E, Vitamin C, thiamine, and riboflavin and are a excellent anti-oxidant.

- For more information on avocados than you can shake a stick at head to About.com's avocado site.

Soccer Moms (more differences between Canada and Brazil)

In Canada, we lovingly refer to those moms who drive their kids and all their kids’ friends around from soccer game to soccer game in a Chrysler Windstar minivan as soccer moms. We also have hockey moms (and dads), but it’s a bit of a controversial topic, so I won’t go there!

In Brazil, being a soccer – or more specifically, a football – mom is a whole different story. This past Tuesday, Alice Custódio Narazé, mother of the Corinthians’ Marinho was kidnapped from the family’s home in the city of Santos. Marinho’s mother is the fifth football mom to be kidnapped in the state of São Paulo since last November. The other victims include Robinho’s (Santos) mother, kidnapped in November, who spent forty-one days in captivity before being released on the eve of a big match after the family paid a R$200,000 (approximately US$73,000); Grafite’s (São Paulo) mother, kidnapped in February; Rogério’s (ex-Corinthians; currently with Sporting) in March; and Luís Fabiano’s (ex-São Paulo; currently with Porto) also in March. Along with the new case, the case of Luís Fabiano’s mother has yet to be solved.

To Work Late or To Work Really Late?

The Consulate's official working hours are 8:00am to 5:00pm. These hours are an hour early than typical Sao Paulo working hours due to the traffic. Leaving my house at 7:30am (yes, this is an extremely painful part of my day), it takes me twenty minutes to get to work; while leaving at 8:00 or 8:30 would require forty or so minutes. The math is clear!

The same is true for the trip home. If I manage to leave at 5:00pm, which is never, it will take me 35 or so minutes to get home. If I leave at 6:00 or 6:15pm, I will take me over an hour to make the journey. If I leave at 7:30 or 8:00pm, the transit time has returned to 35 minutes. The math is no longer so clear ... do I work a little bit of overtime and take over an hour to get home (the consequences being transit rage, but the possibility of completing other activities), or do I work a lot of overtime and get home quickly (the consequences being transit zen, but limited completion of other activities)?

There must be some kind of formula to figure this out! If x = transit time; y = productivity at work; z = loss or gain of after-work activities; and a = general happines, then ....

Just as we always suspected!

This morning when I tried to slip my bank card into the HSBC ATM in the basement of my building, it took me a moment to realise that the machine was not accepting it. After examining the situation for a few seconds, I found that the computer behind the screen had been moved away and was now in complete view through the now-clear window. And what was behind the window besides the computer? Lots of space, the HSBC office and indeed, people! Bank employees moving around, moving bits of money around and around! Just as we always suspected!

It’s cold in São Paulo, but no one believes me

To calm all those who are about to tell me that winter in Canada involves the mercury plunging to minus forty or fifty, I will start off by saying that when we are talking about cold in São Paulo, it is absolutely nothing like winter in Canada. Of this, we can be sure. However … this does not mean that the temperature doesn’t dip down here.

I realise that I am not going to garner a lot of sympathy when I say that the temperatures this past week were well into the low teens. But … it’s a different kind of cold [we’ve heard that before, haven’t we?]. Here the cold is wet and humid and gets into your bones and because housing is not built to withstand any kind of cold, going inside to warm up is not always a successful strategy as the temperature inside is often barely more than the temperature outside. Now, I live in a pretty snazzy apartment where the doors and windows mostly close. I cannot imagine what life is like during the São Paulo winter -- when night temperatures can easily fall below 10°C -- for the millions of people who live in the poorly constructed favelas. To combat last night’s chill, I built a fire in my fireplace and curled up next to it with a good book. Not quite what we expected from Brazil!