Happiness is ...

... two kinds of ice cream, finding your skate key, telling the time. Happiness is learning to whistle. Tying your shoe for the very first time...

Happiness is also finally finding my favourite Brazilian coffee and tomato sauce here in Recife! Ah, yes. Such simple pleasures. But, really this is a big thing. Back at home of course I had all my favourite brands, makes, and styles of everything and could easily do my grocery shopping in a smooth twenty minutes. There was a routine. There was a floorplan. There was a schedule. Thirty minutes if I hadn't been shopping in a while. The grocery store was around the corner from my place. Life was sweet.

And then I moved to São Paulo. Grocery shopping no longer took twenty minutes, at least not to start with. All of a sudden I was faced with making choices. Hard choices! We're talking major decisions, here. Slowly, I started to test and try the local brands and within a short while ended up with new favourites. Yeah! Grocery shopping was back to taking twenty minutes!

It never occurred to me that I would have to go through this routine again after moving to Recife. But, in fact, I did. The brands here were either different from the ones in São Paulo or the same brand would be double the price [transportation costs, I guess!]. I managed to discover a new coffee brand aided by a Best of Recife review done by one of the media houses, but I still hadn't been able to settle on a new tomato sauce. Then the other day, when I was shopping in a large but unfortunately totally out of the way superstore, I found both my coffee and my tomato sauce. Not knowing whether it was regular stock or a once-in-a-posting offer, I greedily filled my basket up to the brim and brought my goodies home.

Tasty cappuccinos and italian for all!