12.07.22 - Arroz de festa

Hallooooo,

Hope all well in the sunlit uplands, we'll be heading there soon so it had better be! In the meantime we have finally cast off the shackles of rurality and have moved back to the Big City. The move itself went about as swimmingly as a gruelling three-day process could have gone, but the flat is a) exponentially smaller than the house we moved out of and b) not finished yet. 

None of the rooms have doors yet, for example (not even the bathroom), I was almost burnt to a crisp by exposed wiring and there was no functioning kitchen sink until yesterday. The builders, with whom we are now essentially coexisting during working hours, are bafflingly slow but hopefully now we're constantly around to tell them exactly what to do, they'll pick up the pace (out of awkwardness if nothing else).

Having said that, now that we're past the scariest part (Saturday morning, when the movers filled up almost every square inch of the flat with furniture) and have made a significant dent in the cardboard boxes, it's looking pretty cool and, crucially, rent-free. It's also a massive relief not to have to look over our shoulders for fleeing cats anymore, even if Berry seems a bit heartbroken by the lack of a back garden. I reckon it should be fully liveable by the time we leave for three weeks in late July.

No compilation this week for obvious reasons, but my phrase of the week is a good'un - people who are seemingly present at every social gathering are referred to as "arroz de festa", i.e. "party rice", a nod to the tradition of throwing rice at newlyweds (which is a thing outside Brazil, right?). A harbinger of a newly revitalized social calendar for Gabi and I, hopefully!

Speak soon,

"Life is a Fred that someone untangled" - Fernando Pessoa