26.09.17 - Desculpe qualquer coisa

Bom dia!

Really swell talking with you yesterday, in a variety of languages. As you know I am still confined to my robot ankle brace - more machine than man - following a check-up with my foot guy, who confirmed that I need to just wait it out until it gets better / less purple.  

Undeterred, I've been out and about a fair bit, including a drive to São Bernardo do Campo for a gourmet-burger-making session with some of Gaby's schoolfriends (I was on caramelized onion duty), a hobble round the local trendy food truck scene on Friday lunchtime for polenta and a "papelón" (a non-alcoholic mojito from Venezuela, apparently), and a trip to the cinema to see "It", a nice film about dancing clowns, while Aerosmith played next door.  I've been asked to do another Travelling Spoon gig, but it's in a city two hours away so we're trying to figure out when we can duck out of work...

In the meantime I've made a new compilation, as is my wont, and my phrase of the week is one that has irked me in recent times - it seems people in the service industry (waiters, Uber drivers, etc), cowed by demanding customers and a rocky economy, have taken to apologizing preemptively for anything they might have done wrong ("sorry for anything"), which seems a bit needy even to someone from a country as apologetic as England.

On a related (and topical!) note, Uber's recent ad campaign in São Paulo has been amusing me no end - billboards with talking heads saying that they drive for Uber to "look after my daughter" and "take care of my house", which are worded so it sounds like the company is literally holding their family hostage until they work off their Uber-debt. A chilling glimpse of the late capitalist dystopia to come? Or just a bit of fun?

Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.

Dun-nu-nu-nu dun-nu-nu-nu

The Fred Pill

19.09.17 - Estar de bode

Hallooo,

I write to you from the confines of my rather steampunk "robofoot" cast, after I took a tumble at the football on Thursday and bashed my ankle up something propah. I've been put on a steady regimen of drugs and no exercise, and will surely lose my mind before long, but it could be worse - at the doctors we met a guy (also called Freddy) who had just broken his arm in a freak go-karting accident which was live-streamed on Youtube, making my mishap seem quaint by comparison.

Despite being in the wars we've had a few people round over the weekend - one of Gaby's recently-graduated mates came round to give her a crash course in masters etiquette and a perspective from the other side of the dissertation-related craziness; and on Sunday we had a family BBQ, the leftovers from which I am still making my way through. 

Otherwise I've just been crafting TWO compilations (two), and being "de bode" (literally, "goat-like"), which means sulking around at home instead of heading out. Soon I will be up and about, hopefully with more Travelling Spoon assignments, etc.  'Til then,

The weather in Vladivostok is very clement this time of year.

You are not Fred Squirrel?

12.09.17 - Tem caroço no angu

Tally ho wot wot,

As mentioned last week, I made my début as São Paulo Ambassador for Traveling Spoon on Wednesday, and Gaby and I were treated to a market-tour-slash-cooking-class-slash-meal-slash-review courtesy of Sofie, an affable Swede who lives near the Avenida Paulista.  She had us chopping rocket and grilling halloumi in no time, and taught us a mango-peeling trick which was worth the (figurative) price of admission on its own.  Fun was had, and veggie pointers were picked up, surely never to be used again.

The next day - a national holiday here, not that it spared me a full day's work, grumble grumble - we had some folks over for dinner and tried to recreate Sofie's avocado chocolate mousse with mixed results; the takeaway pizza, cachaça and "Uber wine" went over better, leading to extremely merry scenes and a late-night jam to Guns 'n Roses' greatest hits around 1am.   The weekend was spent mainly recovering, although we checked out a new burger place on Saturday with Andréia and Bruno, and discussed plans to stage our own Traveling Spoon host experience in the distant future. 

I've walloped together a new compilation, and today's phrase is a good'un: "caroço" is the pit of a fruit or an amorphous lump, and "angu" is a traditional dish of the common man, made from mandioca/cornflour and water.  So when you feel something is slightly off with a situation or proposal, you can say "there's a lump in the angu", roughly equivalent to "there's a fly in the ointment", or indeed a "floater in the bowl"...

Ciao for now,

Fred Lobster

05.09.17 - Cair a ficha

Oy oy,

How's things? I've got a new job, as São Paulo Ambassador for Travelling Spoon, a sort of Airbnb for food - Gaby and I are going to check out our first potential host tomorrow, have a free lunch and decide whether to include her on the site, so I'll let you know how that goes!  There's some nice-sounding "packages" on the site already and it's only been going here a month, so hopefully in time I can reestablish my free food racket after all...

Otherwise we've been going birthday crazy, heading to Condimento for some fancy grub on Friday night to celebrate Adny's birthday and then hitting the road to Claudio's house outside Campinas for a BBQ on Sunday. And on Saturday night we went to one of Gaby's coursemate's house to celebrate her hitting some kind of masters milestone (I didn't ask which, as it's a particularly fraught time for everyone there at the moment), and have a singalong.

And it's another week, another compilation, and another expression, which applies to situations where you finally realize something after prolonged ignorance.  Apparently Brazilian payphones used to only accept tokens ("fichas") and often didn't work properly - when the call eventually went through, the token "fell" into the machine, hence the saying (no doubt "the penny drops" has similar origins...)

And on that bombshell, it's bye for now,

Fredibility