16.05.17 - Não põe água no meu chopp

*100TH POST KLAXON*

Hallooo!

Good to speak to you the other day - as you may have gathered on call, we had the extended family round on Sunday for a Mother's Day BBQ, featuring plenty of meat, grilled pineapple and 'appy laughter.  And the night before Gaby and I went out for a romantic date at Pizza Hut, which is bizarrely seen as quite an up-market restaurant here, despite the pizza not being any better than across the Atlantic (still hit the spot though).

Otherwise the week was spent stumbling around the flat fighting the twin scourges of early alarm calls for work and rib-ache, for which my doctor has prescribed a sort of old-lady corset to hold everything together until it heals. I'll be wandering around in a muumuu and orthopaedic shoes by age 40 at this rate, but whatever works...

We're gearing up for Europe in less than a month - as is my way, I've channelled my excitement by turning our itinerary into a compilation, on top of this week's regularly scheduled, and rather mellow mixtape... And my phrase of the week ("don't put water in my pint") translates roughly as "don't kill my buzz, Captain Buzz Killington". A "chopp" being a mainstay of Brazilian bars, often derided by tourists for being very small and mostly head, but that's another story for another entry.  

Speaking of, please accept this complimentary lemon scented towelette to mark Gringolândia, SP's hundredth entry. Until then it's goodbye from me,

And it's goodbye from me.

Fred & Butter

09.05.17 - Por fora bela viola, por dentro pão bolorento

Tally ho my fine young fillies,

The nights are drawing in over here as the actually-quite-warm hand of winter tightens its grasp.  We spent most of last week trying to work our way through the leftovers from my birthday BBQ (including a truly post-apocalyptic amount of rice; we've learnt several new recipes for shifting it, but any others would be much appreciated!) and going to physio sessions for my ribs, although a 5:30am start time for work usually means I fall asleep face-down on the operating table and wake up dribbling profusely - not a good look.

On Saturday we went to the Mercadão to eat massive pastéis and haggle with outrageously camp fruit vendors, before heading east for Bruna's new man's birthday party, which was most fun and involved cake, a DJ and an after-hours jam session spent trying to cater to the guests terrible, terrible taste as best I could (Whitesnake? John Mayer? They'll get "Kiss" and a string of Beatles covers, and be grateful for it).

Otherwise we've all but wrapped up the transport and accommodation side of our Eurotrip and can now focus on what we're actually going to get up to in, say, Marrakesh on a Wednesday afternoon. I've made a compilation (new LCD Soundsystem!) and my phrase of the week loses quite a lot in translation as "on the outside a pretty guitar, on the inside mouldy bread", which seems an oddly specific way of referring to people whose good looks mask the flaws in their personalities.

And that's the waaaay the news goes! Speak soon,

All My Freds

02.05.17 - A noite, todos os gatos são pardos

 Bom dia!

Lovely to speak to you at the weekend, as I turned 30 in style with a weekend-long bash. 

The preceding days were spent in preparation, from getting in supplies, setting up a caipirinha bar and blowing up balloons to strong-arming our estate agent after it transpired (the day before the party) that he'd failed to pay our building upkeep dues for the previous month, jeopardising the whole thing. We also had to take Roniron to the vet on Thursday after a bout of vomiting, and ended up holding him down and shaving his belly for an ultrasound, before trying to mend the irreparably damaged trust between us afterwards (he's fine now though).

After much commotion the party ended up a complete success, with a rotating cast of guests, presents (champagne! Baci! "The Force Awakens" on DVD!), free-flowing drinks and MEAT on tap courtesy of an elite BBQ team outside, an amazing chocolate and fruits-of-the-forest cake by Adny ("such an emotional day, even the cake was in tiers", etc), a brief unplugged concert and jam session, and a frantic clean-up and stocking of fridges around midnight.

Faced with a surplus of leftovers, we had Adny and Ridaut round the next day to break in our flat's BBQ, which worked a charm - plus a couple who turned up with their baby, obviously a day late and unaware, but we incorporated them into our lunch seamlessly and had a lovely time. And yesterday was a bank holiday too so we're now fully rested and relaxed for the week ahead.

In the meantime, here's a regular compilation, and another one charting the end of my twenties - a rollercoaster ride from denial to acceptance and back again. My phrase of the week translates thus: "at night, all cats are dark", i.e. anything goes under cover of darkness. Make of it what you will...

Speak soon!

Fred xx

25.04.17 - Quem não tem cão caça com gato

Hallooo!

Got yer card, and Bowie mask, so many thanks for that - I will wear it proudly at my impending birthday BBQ bash, even though it will probably confuse many of the guests and I've already frightened Gaby by creeping up behind her wearing a "scary clown mask".

After a brief Easter break I'm back to work now, as much as is possible with a boss on the lam in Central America, and I've enlisted in a crash course in physiotherapy after I sneezed unexpectedly and spent the rest of the day in rib-based agony - they hook me up to an electric hot water bottle on a daily basis and I feel better already, but the fact that I'm in the last week of my twenties, and on the threshold of official old age, is definitely not lost on me.

On Saturday we met up with an old friend from the International Hall days, who has bagged himself a Brazilian girlfriend (also called Gabi) and was on his way back from a month-long meet-the family culinary tour of Minas Gerais, which was most fun and involved jabuticaba caipirinhas, among other things. Then on Sunday we met some of Gaby's family who were in town from Ridaut's hometown of Lins and elsewhere, and there was much rejoicing.

Otherwise we've been planning for my party - fretting about the ever-increasing guestlist, delegating most of the actual cooking and serving to a team of professionals, and going to a massive bulk-buy hypermarket by a motorway to stock up on supplies. Should be a blast!

I got carried away and made two compilations (two), and today's amusing phrase of the week translates as "he who has no dog, hunts with a cat", i.e. "make do with what you've got", or (keeping it feline) "there's more than one way to skin a cat". Obviously coined by someone who doesn't know a thing about cats - god forbid if I had to rely on any of ours to hunt for me...

Speak soon,

Fred Velvet

18.04.17 - Álcool, talco e água velva

Hallooo!

Hope all well.  My boss is on his boat and rather predictably wrote the whole of last week off, but then the whole country basically shut down for Easter, so not a great deal happened despite the reprieve from work.  Highlights included a Sunday stroll around the Horto, a rare swim and a massive rabbit chocolate cake from Gaby's grandma.

To conclude:

• a compilation;

• a much bigger compilation drawn from Haruki Murakami's record collection;

• a saying: we'll have to take Ridaut's word for this, but apparently in the olden days people would go to the barbers and ask for a haircut and a shave with "álcool, talco e água velva": alcohol (as a disinfectant? or just to have a good time...), talcum powder and aftershave.  This sounds funnier with a strong provincial accent, trust me.  Nowadays, to the extent that anyone uses the saying at all, it stands in for "the whole nine yards", "the whole kit and caboodle" and other expressions which one doesn't really hear anymore...

• a blog, about one grad student's quest to teach a neural network to cook, with hilarious consequences;

• Patrick Stewart baa-ing at lambs;

• and a joke: I made an online payment to my local Catholic church the other day, but it didn't go through properly.  So much for PayPal infallibility...

Ciao for now,

The Fred Iceberg

11.04.17 - 茶の心がないなら、彼は、真理と美のわからない人だ

Greetings and indeed salutations,

Not much to report this week from ye olde Brazile - I have made my comeback at the footy, aching ribs be damned, and scored a few to boot; we had the in-laws over at the weekend to make pasta from scratch and put up more wallpaper; and my boss has gone off on a cruise around the Adriatic so there's not much happening on that front.

In the meantime I've made another compilation for your listening delight, and am taking a break from the usual weekly Brazilian phrase to bring you an awesome Japanese proverb I came across, meaning "A man without tea in him is incapable of understanding truth and beauty". My bulk shipment from St. Denis finally ran out this week so I'm about to test its veracity...

A plus, Superbus

Our Daily Fred

04.04.17 - Não vou deixar barato

Halloooo! Glad to hear of your péripéties, change of status to legal resident, open studios etc.

A low-key week here, as we recover from our various ailments and make incremental improvements to the new flat.  Bill was round a few times to do various odd jobs beyond the skillset of us layabout millennial snowflakes (laying tiles, hanging guitars on the wall, sewing on buttons, etc), and on Saturday we had our début dinner party, with Giorgio, Beth and Carla coming round for mounds of sweet 'n sour chicken (we really need to learn a new dish) and gossip about their big fat Greek wedding in June. No futurist leitmotifs or multisensory overloads, but baby steps and all that...

I bring you fresh beats! And a phrase of the day that means "I won't let it lie", which you can practice saying in a defiant manner in the mirror, should the mood take you. I also recommend the short stories of David Sedaris, which are funny... but also make you think.

Skype soon!

Fred Moon