A house in Rio de Janeiro
In between getting older and being old, have I left living in Brazil a bit late? I have always felt that there must be places that offer more excitement than Australia. “Oh Gerard, have you not learnt enough yet. Excitement is what you make yourself?” This is what reasonable people have always told me. “You are out of your mind”, from the same reasonable people. Another favourite saying thrown as a morsel to keep me sated or even sedated. ” You will never find anything better than Australia”, “it is the best country.” Is this last bit an attempt to quell their own uncertainty?
Perhaps it is nothing more than my own wish to escape from getting old, pretending that moving about will stop ageing, I have a tendency to dream that a nirvana exists always somewhere else except at the present place. Another bout of useless dreaming of foreign countries. It could also be, that reasonable people are possessed with a lot of sangfroid but bereft of coping with anything much more exciting than a change of direction of stirring the tea and milk anti clockwise. Their major concession to adventure. I am surrounded by a sea of tea stirrers all in tandem. Round and round they stir.
I know, that Christmas always brings out in me a kind of melancholy. Contrary to what most people seem to want, my melancholy runs its course and doesn’t stop just because of a looming deadline. Perhaps unreal expectations are running rampant in others and I know and feel that too keenly. Does a certain date of 25th of December make necessary for a total mayhem of life? Is the 26th or 29th of Dec not very much like any other date? If the 25th is such a nice date, why is every day not like the 25th? Yes, I know it is Christmas and very special, but we still continue breathing, laughing, or not, like every other day. The sun comes up and goes down, just the same as any other day. It also often rains.
Today, it is still more than ten days till Christmas. Even so, in the shopping avenues there is a certain tension building up already. You can see an increase in tempo. Is time starting to run faster? Is the minute now getting shorter?
Brows are furrowed and people are nervously lugging huge trolleys laden with mountains of food. Today I saw a lady wearing a floral dress who would normally, (I assume somewhat brazenly) calmly go through the dairy division (small goods) of the super market to buy a small diet yoghurt. Today though, she threw all caution to the wind, loading 12 six packs of apricot smooth yoghurt with attached spoons in her groaning trolley.
Later on, while I was studying the different bags of garden potting mix outside, this same lady was ripping into one of the six packs apricot yoghurts with the spoon now unattached. After I bought and rolled my two bags of potting mix on my trolley to the footrest car and taking the trolley back, this same lady was on her third yoghurt. Is the Christmas spirit causing a hot fever resulting in an uncontrollable urge to slurp fruit laden yoghurt?
I remember last year finding a half eaten leg of ham in a bin just outside the Woolworth super market. It was in the full sun and would have gone off. In any case, flies were busy buzzing. It had teeth marks on it. Did some soul’s hunger get the better of him or her? Later on I speculated on who could possibly have partly eaten a leg of ham and then discard it in a bin. Did some people hold an impromptu ham eating party around the corner on the grass verge to celebrate the Christmas. Did they eat it late at night?
It is not unusual to see people buying food at the supermarket only to see them outside the door and start eating. They wrestle with the plastic wrapping. Their hands are shaking. This eating seems urgent and the need to satisfy hunger is immediate. Not a second to lose. One can assume that food had run out at home and that finally only hunger drove them to the shop…
It is therefore not surprising I started dreaming of how life would be in Brazil. An escape from the tedium. I can hardly believe that those sort of strange Woolworth eating cultural habits would exist there as well. I know that hunger thrives in Brazil. The slums of Rio have hordes of hungry kids going around for food. But they also laugh and play soccer. From my experience in Argentina, people do have different life habits. Hunger here seems lonely and suffered in isolation. In Brazil, I hope and speculate, hunger if it is still rampant there, is shared and communal. A shared hunger is preferred to an isolated one. Shared anything is better.
I found a house outside Rio de Janeiro with twenty five hectares and two waterfalls. Here it is.
Ricrado said:
Hello and Christmas Greetings. Having lived in Sydney for 12 years I often used to pine for the ability to pop over to Europe for a weekend (I have just spent 3 nights in Brussels sampling their amazing 9% beers and slightly less amazing frites with mayonnaise…) so I can imagine Brazil would indeed be a great place to live but I would still pine for Europe! I think the trick is to have one property in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern hemisphere.
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gerard oosterman said:
Yes, that is right. We know a lady from Sydney who bought two little cottages in France, the Languedoc area. She rents them out but in our winter goes to France and enjoys the summer there.
I remember being totally wiped out by the history at every corner of rural France. I had a haircut in shop where Molière used to get his hair cut. It might have just been clever use of a famous name by the barber, but Molière did live in that village of Pézenas.
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Venise Alstergren said:
This looks to be a fabulous hacienda. Two points only. 1) Be careful what you wish for; 2) Do you speak Portugese Brazilian? There is a world of difference between that and Portugese Portugese.
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gerard oosterman said:
Well, I do have the grating guttural bit mastered, now just for the lingo.
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lindyp said:
I love this one Gerard -love the look of the house too -I like the way the chairs in the kitchen are all different -my German friend has a different dinner plate and bowl for each person at the table.They all look very special -and it makes the guests feel special.
And yes I agree tis better to share hunger than to be alone and feel you are the only one who is starving -perhaps that’s why we always see smiling faces on young children in Africa .
Wish we could do more for these people-
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vivienne29 said:
Nice piece Gerard. Just go there for a holiday if you can. Or perhaps pop down to Bermagui for a week.
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helvityni said:
Mr Oosterman, from whom, or from what are you running away…. Maybe you need more Silverwater time to ponder about your life and your misdemeanours…
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Hung One On said:
Nice story Gez especially the word order. I reckon you are never too old. Me and Tutu or should I say Tutu and I are thinking about retiring in Batemans Bay, that starts with a B just like Brazil or Botswana or Bulli, wow, what an association.
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Big M said:
Batemans bay sounds lovely. We drove through that part of the coast a coupla years back. I wondered why it was so under-developed. I guess we need to keep a piece of paradise for future retirees!
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algernon1 said:
Until everybody “discovers” it!
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Big M said:
Ssshhhh!
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sandshoe said:
Babinda starts with ‘B’. It’s good there. (It’s close to the wettest place in Australia). It really truly is good there and it too starts with ‘B’.
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Hung One On said:
Hi shoe, looked it up, 4200 mls of rain a year, Adelaide gets 560, I’m moving, see ya there 🙂
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algernon1 said:
Looks great, even the dry months are wet and 4 months have an average rainfall larger than Adelaide’s annual rainfall. Even their wettest month has nearly as much rain as we have here in a year.
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Hung One On said:
Sorry. I read the rest of the stub. Not my kinda town. I couldn’t live in a town that gets a Gumboot award.
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algernon1 said:
Hung you could buy one of their heritage listed properties, like the air raid shelter. You could rebuild every time a Cyclone passes by.
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Hung One On said:
Hmm, just being diplomatic about the census, you know me Algy never one to offend 🙂
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algernon1 said:
So I’ve noticed 🙂
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sandshoe said:
Hung, I’m kinda disappointed that you read out loud the fine print under the bit about the muchness of rain. It really is a great place if you can cop it. 😉
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sandshoe said:
I know all the bars there with my eyes closed and my gumboots on. If you change your mind see y’ on the frog and toad.
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Big M said:
That property looks like it’s set in the garden of Eden, just gorgeous.
I was fascinated to read the biography of Richard Feynman, the Nobel winning physicist who helped develop the A-bomb, and later, worked out what caused the space shuttle Challenger disaster. he had unhappy relationships with women, so sought solace by holidaying in Rio every year, where he appeared as a guest percussionist, like many, working out his frustrations with manual activity.
perhaps we all need to get away to South America.
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gerard oosterman said:
Amazingly my blog had over 90 hits from Brazil yesterday and just now I noticed quite a number from Brazil on the P/Arms as well. Perhaps Brazilians are dreaming of whooping it up on the Central coast.
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Hung One On said:
So Gez, are the Brazilians nuts or what?
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Hung One On said:
Like Ronnie?
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gerard oosterman said:
Yes, he must have lived of those Brazilian waxes for years.
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Big M said:
I believe he was ‘big’ with Brazilians.
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algernon1 said:
didn’t he do it his way?
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gerard oosterman said:
Yes, amazing. Just imagine the ambition of someone wanting to become a Brazilian waxer. Worse than a dentist I reckon.
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Big M said:
Those Brazilian Waxers are always looking for someone to pluck out the stray hairs.
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gerard oosterman said:
Do you have to get a certificate or do a tech course, practise on the teacher M/s Cuantita?
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Big M said:
…and tutorials with Fanny Trichotillomania!
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algernon1 said:
Now now big, this is a family show.
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Big M said:
Sorry Algy!
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algernon1 said:
Yesterday Mrs A and I went to Bondi to do the Bondi to Bronte walk on the way back I noticed a shop describing itself as a Brazilian Hairdresser. Seemed a bit of a contradiction to me.
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