Great Big World Out There

all good (or not so good) things must end

You know, I just remembered something.  When Val and I left for Brazil, we had a very general plan of where we were going, what we would be doing the week after we left Salvador.  We had flights booked since it was cheaper to get the travel pass from Tam airlines and fly about than travelling by the seat of your pants and getting on a plane when and to where you felt like.  We'd booked the flights using an extremely detailed itinerary that Airell had gotten from a group in Saskatchewan. 

I? Am not so much with the detailed itinerary making myself.  I can sure as heck follow one, though. Eventually.  I like to wait til the last minute to book things, because usually there are more interesting things to do than make a decision about what flight to take and what hotel to stay in.  Even with an extremely detailed itinerary Val and I put off making plans until the last minute. 

Anyway. I'm getting ahead of myself.  Wednesday. Conference stuff over, and time to wander off to our hotel.

A view from the 4th floor of the conference centre:

We (Irene, Val and I) went back to the Bompreco, which was crazy full of people.  We ran into Airell and Cibele in the store - who wisely gave us their stuff to purchase since the lineups were that long.  That reminds me - I ended up paying for all the stuff because I was at the wrong damn end of the line-up - AGAIN - and I don't think any of them ever paid me back.  

How exactly did I become my mother, and so quickly, even to the paying for things in stores and restaurants?  

As it turned out, Val and Irene headed back to our hotel and I wandered over to the beach.  It was cold, it was windy, and I think it was raining.  It was still more awesome than whatever you were doing that night. At least to me.  What you were doing was probably pretty awesome too.  Then it became time to think about getting ready for the closing party.  There were busses coming to pick us up and we'd made a collective decision to depart from the other hotel.  Val and Irene were waiting outside our hotel when we walked up - they were hoping there'd be a conference shuttle to shuffle them off to the hotel.  There was talk of walking over to the hotel. I'd have been down with that but I was not in any state for a party. Sitting on the beach, salt spray, wind, rain, hot sweaty day. Umm. No. I needed 9 minutes.  I announced that I would be back in less than 9 minutes if they could just wait for me that long.

This was met with basic disbelief but damn, they have no idea.  In 9 minutes I showered, changed, put on some mascara and called it good. I might have been back in 8 minutes.  Val and I took a cab because she was afraid of getting her party hair rained on. So naturally we beat the other walkers back to their hotel. It did not rain. 

I was ok with this.  Then. We. Waited. For. Everyone. Else. To. Get. Ready. 

Don't get me wrong, I can take an hour to get ready myself.  I didn't mind that they all took so long to get ready. We had fun making fun of ourselves and each other.  Irene's suitcase had finally turned up after days of waiting so she was pretty excited to see her stuff.  I can only imagine.  

Eventually, after much time, we set off for the busses down in the lobby. And that's when it happened. I was standing in the hallway and my back just gave out. I was standing. Not moving. Not even wearing foolish boots or shoes. Standing.  

I may have sworn. I may have walked very carefully down the stairs, very slowly, leading the group down to the lobby. Eventually someone asked what was up and I shared my tale of woe.  Damn, that hurt. I needed some booze, stat.

Thankfully the Brazilians had thought of that.  We got into a bus, and were whisked away to another bus a few blocks down the road. (Weird). Then we were hauled to the venue, somewhere across town. My back hurt like hell, I don't mind saying.  

When we got there we were initially disappointed.  A meeting of 3000, no idea how many tickets they'd sold to this thing but there was probably seating for less than 100 people. They made up for this by having free flowing alchohol. Seriously. Everywhere you looked there were waiters with some kind of whiskey shots, beer, and you could go get a fruity caiphirinia thing made at a booth in the corner. 

I was underwhelmed by the whole thing at first. Nowhere to sit and it hurt like hell to stand.  I actually sat on the cement out in the covered patio area just outside the venue.  Eventually I found a comfortable chair in the foyer, away from the people and I rested my back there. Read a book on the kindle app on my phone. Texted with various people back home. Had a lot of time to sit around and think.

Lordy. This was the first time that was a bad idea.  My head is screwed on pretty straight most of the time.  I can make some stupid, spur of the moment decisions any day of the week but at that time? My head was not screwed on anywhere close to straight.  Visions of test results and nasty papers about prognoses with the numbers and the type of cancer I had (and I hadn't told anybody what I'd read. I figured me going crazy with the knowledge was quite enough, thanks).  So I think maybe people thought I was over reacting. 

I said it before, and I'll say it again. No matter what kind of cancer you have in you, it's going to mess with your head. No matter how level headed you might be.

So yes. I got a little crazy sitting out there in my comfortable chair.  Then I got a text message that changed everything.  At least for a while. At least long enough to send me to the bar, anyway.  I was watching the dancers, sort of watching for the people I'd come with, nursing my drink and wishing my stupid back weren't so stupid. I don't remember who found me, but the evening just improved the hell out of itself from there on in.  I couldn't begin to tell you how much I drank. I had conversations with a lot of people. Eventually I had enough alcohol to kill the pain in my back, and dammit, I danced to celebrate.  My recollections from there on in are hazy. There are pictures of the crazy, but I got obsessed with photographing the desserts instead of Val with a rose between her teeth. We did wear flowers in our hair.  Any night where you can since and dance with Abba's Dancing Queen is a good night in my books. 

See? Dessert: 

I have about 40 more pictures with varying degrees of focus. I could not possibly tell you if these were any good. I expect yes, since I didn't eat anything I didn't like while I was in Brazil. 

Oh. Did we have fun.  Fuuuuuuuuuuun.  I switched from beer/vodka/whiskey to water about half an hour before we left.  To make sure the next day would be fuuuuuuuun. The funniest part about that? Pretty sure the water came straight out of the taps. When we got to Salvador we were afraid to even use the water to brush our damn teeth. Heh. 

You know how you have weird conversations when you've had too much to drink? I had one that still has me scratching my head a little and really hoping I misunderstood. 

Albertans have a bit of a rep at large scale poultry events. We close down the parties. Well, when we got to this party I didn't think that would be happening. However. We're true Albertans, every one of us because damn if we didn't shut the place down.  The bus ride back to the hotel was... interesting.  We'd met a Japanese scholar that had been in school with someone that hadn't come to Brazil, and we were supposed to bring greetings. Except. Not a one of us knew who he was, and I think he might have been speaking Japanese when he asked us to pass on the greetings.

The next day we'd made plans to tour Salvador once the conference wrapped up.  Cibele's taxi driver was there to pick us up at the appointed hour and we proceeded to see the sights. I've got pictures of some it! 

We went to this church - the taxi driver told us in no uncertain terms to only buy ribbons from a specific shop, so we did. Then you took certain colors and tied them to the fence, making a wish as you did.

Fascinating church.  People come there, pray to be healed, or a family member or friend. They'll even bring the body part they want healed, or take a picture. That was kind of creepy.  

Next we went to a fort kind of area, with a shack that sold cold coconut water directly out of the coconut. This was awesome, because they open the coconut by attacking it with a machete. I have video, somewhere.  The coconut water was so damn good - trust me when I say this was not my last coconut water. Apparently it is supposed to be awesome for recovering from a run or exercise (so says the teenaged kid bagging my groceries last weekend. He was making fun of the cashier for drinking the stuff from the can - I told them about the real deal and they were all into that).  

We did some shopping in a giant market. Val was blown away, she'd never seen anything quite like this before. I was once again blase, because I? Have spent a whole lot of time in these types of markets. Across the world.  Call me a jerk, but I was pretty selective in what I wanted from there as a result.  I bought a towel (THANK GOD!)

Later we rode this giant elevator that takes you from the lower town up to the pelhourino. The elevator was basically terrifying - it stopped a few inches off the actual floor and I was the first one off the damn thing. If I am going to fall to my death, I want to see it coming. 

We went for lunch in the Pelhourino after being driven over to the square we'd been at the other evening.  We'd all been told in no uncertain terms that we were to say Nao! to anyone that tried to give us anything, or sell us anything, or basically look at us crooked.  We practiced and everything!

Airell got out of the cab and immediately was met by someone that sensed weakness. Bless his heart, he said sim! (yes!) to whatever the guy was offering. 

We made fun of him for the rest of the day. I think Val and I made fun of him the next week too. And I might have brought it up from time to time after that.  

I cannot remember much of what we did in the Pelhourino other than complain about how hungry I was and for the love of heaven, could we just pick somewhere, anywhere, I don't care where, to eat? Please? Pretty please? FOR THE LOVE OF GOD?

We ate.  We drank. We took pictures. We had ourselves a good time.  

 

And when we ended the day, we ended up in our hotel room once again. There were plans to be made! (Ha! I came full circle in this post. Go me.)  

The next morning Val and I were flying to Rio de Janiero. For the weekend. As you do. We had nowhere to stay. No idea where we could stay. My laptop (brought along only because I neded to write my stupid talk the week before) became the device of destiny - what would we all be doing with our first Friday in Brazil?

For Val and I, it was the weekend in Rio. Hee. I still love saying that. I used tripadvisor to find us a nice hotel on copacobana beach. It was #3. I didn't want #1 because it was $600 a night. And under major renovation.  #3 seemed just about right, we got a suite right on the beach with ocean views for $200 a night (seemed good at the time) and I justified it with the 'I had cancer' argument. 

Martin, Doug, Cibele, Irene, et al were in the market to see some turtles and golfing.  

Airell was off to the Amazon with the other group from Saskatchewan.  We were going to meet up a few days later in the Pantanal.  I still had to book all of that. That wasn't until Tuesday though, and this was Thursday so I figured I had plenty of time. Airell did pass on the contact information so I could email when we got to Rio.

Cibele, bless her heart, before she left gave us the phone numbers where she'd be staying with her family while she was still in country. In case we needed help. What we needed was her traveling with us, but alas. That was not to be.

So. That leaves us with this installment with Val and I ready to flit off to Rio (for the damn weekend! Ha! I never get tired of saying that).   Foreshadowing - before I left Brazil I'd have spent 3 weekends in that city. 

And I say this now - those won't be the last weekends I spend there either.  I will be back. 

saudade

I remember going to a thesis defense about 2 weeks after I got home and having a conversation with my friend Soledad (who'd also gone to Brazil).  She was the first one to describe saudade. She told me that was what was wrong with me at that moment (based on her reading of my facebook and blog posts). She told me that saudade is a Portuguese word without a direct translation into English and in the simplest sense, it is a longing, an emptiness, for something that is (not) there.  

Wikipedia provided me this definition: "intimate feeling and mood caused by the longing for something absent that is being missed. This can take different aspects, from concrete realities (a loved one, a friend, the motherland, the homeland...) to the mysterious and transcendant."

I've thought of saudade off and on over the past few months.  Perhaps saudade is the reason I've started to write about my trip - to bring it closer to me by purposely walking through those days again while they are still mostly clear in my mind.  

I think about this a lot though - what is it, exactly, my saudade? Is it the country? Or is it the friends I made? I have a hard time separating the two. Then I start thinking about the person I was at that time and I know they can't be separated. There was an almost perfect confluence of people, places and my own self at that particular time that made that experience so life altering. So life changing. So awesome. One of the friends I made in Brazil wrote about her own experiences and led off with saying God is everywhere. I knew that before, I knew that then, and I know that now.  But the hand of God in my life is sometimes not apparent until well after something has happened and my goodness, do I see that now.  It may have seemed to some of you that it was an impulsive decision to stay an extra couple of weeks without any real plan other than a willing travel partner but believe me when I say this: I was absolutely where I needed to be, exactly when I needed to be there.  

This journey back through Brazil is my way of living with the saudade.  Writing can be such a selfish exercise - especially on a blog.   But for the writers among us, it is as necessary as breathing. If that doesn't make sense to you, sorry. I can't explain it any better than that.

***

Salvador was a mixture of fun and drudgery.  If you've never had the good fortune to attend an international scientific conference, well. Sorry about your luck. This conference may have been the worst organized of any that I've attended, but that didn't mean that the science was universally terrible. In fact, quite the opposite. I got to see some great talks (and some not so great talks) and for some reason, my abstract got chosen to move from a poster presentation to an oral so I got to add myself to the list of great talks . Heh.  The conference started on Sunday evening, and if memory serves, my talk was on Tuesday. Right before lunch.  

I'm not a nervous public speaker.  Thanks to years of 4-H I lost that deer in the headlights feeling decades ago.  If I may toot my own horn a bit, I'm actually pretty good at speaking in front of a group. This skill has often shocked people that have known me for a while but never seen me give a presentation or emcee an event. Heh. I like being surprising. Just because one doesn't like being the centre of attention does not mean that one cannot hold a crowd in the palm of their hand.

I don't want to relive the whole conference.  The really good bits of the week in Salvador? Were the evenings spent with some of my favorite people, who also happen to be people I work with. Everyone should be so lucky.  

Ha! I just remembered a text conversation I had with one of them - I was asking if he'd gotten his visa, he had, just in time, and I replied (from Miami) that I was quite excited that I'd be seeing him in Brazil. We'd (along with his lovely daughter) spent a memorable couple of weeks in Australia 4 years before.  His reply was a shocked - 'you're going to Brazil?' 

When we first met up at the conference it was extremely gratifying to be met by this old friend with a hug.  It's nice to know people care.  

Anyway. What did we get up to in the evenings while we were in Salvador?  Well, our first night, Monday, was kind of random.  One of our number, Cibele, a charming grad student from Brazil, made it her mission to find us good places to go AND ensure we didn't get ripped off.  I think we took a taxi to a seafood restaurant recommended by... someone Cibele met/knew. It was just down the street from my hotel.  She ordered us basically... a bit of everything.  

Full disclosure: I do not like shrimp.  Nasty little things if you ask me. HOWEVER. Salvador, and the state of Bahia in general are noted for their seafood stews and such.  We tried our first moqueca divine fish stew, even with the shrimp. There was another type of stew/soup thing, I want to say it was a bo boa? I will have to ask my brazilian friends what it was exactly.  Delicious.

I have a terrible picture of a moqueca:

Do not let the crappiness of the photo distract you from the truth that this was delicious. And it was there, at that restaurant, that I had my first one of these:

Oh, but it certainly wasn't the last.  Oh my heavens, no. That, my friends, is a caiphirinia.  Made with cachaca, a sugar cane rum, and utterly deadly.  Trust me.  We arrived at the restaurant around 630 (which we learned later was entirely too early for most Brazilians) and didn't leave until well after 930 - pickled to the gills and entirely happy with our lot in life, walking back to our hotel under a full moon along a gorgeous beach.  We had to cross the street in front of the Bompreco so naturally we all went in.  There was more booze to be bought! Cibele wanted to teach us about Brazilian produce! The night was young!

It's like all your good sense runs out the window after you've had a shot or two of anything with cachaca in it.

I have pictures of us in the store that night. But they are on my other computer. I've put them in my dropbox folder but it is taking a long time for them to upload. The pictures that were the most entertaining are on facebook anyway, so there you go.  Future posts will have more photos once dropbox is all synced up. (Try to restrain your excitement).

Our hotel was on the way back to the rest of the group's hotel, so they came in for a while. We played games and ate Brazilian oreos.  The games? They stuck oreos on their head and waited for the icing to melt.  For fun.  I did not play this game because it was stupid.  But I did pull the photo off facebook so I can be amused by this in the future when I reread this:

From left to right, meet Cibele, Martin, Irene, Airell and Val.  

Eventually the elderly among the group (which actually, now that I think about it, both I and Val can be counted) were tired and wandered back to their hotel a few blocks away. Safety in numbers.  I kinda remember Airell and Cibele staying behind and the 4 of us drank what was left of the beer that we'd just bought and killed whatever was in our mini bar.  I may have looked at my presentation for the next morning. I think not.  Eventually they went back to their hotel, braving the creepy Salvador streets (against later advice).  They texted us when they got back so we knew they weren't dead and we didn't have to send out the search parties. Not that we'd have known how to do that without a lot of studying of the phrase book.

The next night was Tuesday. I was excited to be done my presentation.  Cibele had heard about Olodum and their weekly show in the Pelhourino and she wanted us to go there instead of Rio Vermehlo like she'd been planning up til that point.  I'd read about them in my guide book so I was totally game.  We found ourselves a cab that was almost a mini van, and just barely fit the 8 of us.  There were 2 seats in the very back of that cab and we managed to fit 3 of us back there. I was the fool that sat (crouched?) in the middle on the way there.  After that? I totally pulled rank, age, cancer, you name it, so I didn't have to 'sit' there again. We used the same cab because? Cibele made friends with our driver and he became our official driver for the rest of our stay in Salvador.  

We drove through Salvador's main shopping district and dang, was it different than the convention centre area.  Fancy shopping malls, a huge Bompreco and a giant football stadium going up or being refurbished for the World Cup in a couple of years.  I think that was the first time I heard Airell say that he wanted to see a football game while he was in Brazil.  It was on my list too, but further down in my priorities.

When we got to the Pelhourino, there was a giant kind of fair/street party happening in the main square.  We wandered off in the direction Cibele thought the Olodum show was and we came across the African catholic church (also a thing from my guidebook). I've been in a few catholic churches in my time, but this one was totally different.  They were in the communion part of the mass so the choir was just going for it. Awesome.  I could have listened all night.  BUT! We were hungry. We needed food!  And tickets to Olodum.  Eventually we found a ticket seller, found the Olodum venue and carried on to find something to eat. And drink, naturally.  We ended up in a teeny little cafe and ordered an assortment of stuff.  I had my first bejiu. Here's a picture of the one I had for breakfast the next morning:

Holy crap. So good. It's a pancake basically, made of manioc root. My first one had bananas and caramel sauce or similar in it. So. Dang. Tasty. I could eat that every morning. And I think I want to try making them.

Then we were off to the Olodum show.  I don't think any of us knew what to expect - I'd read about them so I knew there were drums and they'd worked with Paul Simon and Michael Jackson. I was unprepared for how infectious the music was, how you could dance to it all night long.  Cibele, bless her heart, tried to teach me how to Samba that night. It was mostly a failure, BUT, I did learn the basic steps.  I've got a great sense of rhythm, I just can't make my feet move in time to it.

Sigh.  I still had fun.  And a lot of beer.

Ha! A funny thing from that night.  One of our group named Doug is not really a party pooper, but he's not a singer, he's not a dancer and well, maybe that constitues party pooper in your book but Doug is still a lot of fun.  We were all pretty pickled that night and dancing in our own special ways. Doug did not dance. Doug didn't even bob his head in time to the music. I made a bet with Val that Doug would not dance before the end of the night.  

Imagine my surprise when a while later he was actually dancing.  It didn't take me long to figure it out though - Val'd told him about the bet and offered to split the proceeds with him. Ha! It would almost have been worth it if I'd actually paid out the bet. I didn't, because Val cheated. However. I've now seen Doug dance AND 3 years before, after another conference, I actually heard him sing. I was the only one who heard it, so it's kinda like it didn't happen, but trust me. There was singing. Now there was dancing. 

We stayed almost til the end of Olodum, but had to meet our driver at midnight. We drove home to our respective hotels, basically happy with the world and our place in it.  I think the back of that van was the first time I fell asleep in a random place (other than my bed) in Brazil. I know Airell fell asleep because he? Can fall asleep absolutely anywhere. I wish I had that gift. 

The next day was the last full day of the conference. We all had tickets to the closing party that night.  Based on how the conference had been organized to that point, we weren't optimistic about the party.

Were we wrong about that.  Heh.  Sweet heaven. Were we EVER wrong. Brazilians? Take the party part of the meeting SERIOUSLY.

But that's a story for another day. 

Brazil. Episode 2.

When last I sat at this keyboard to record the story of my trip to Brazil I kinda went on a bit.  Let's see if I can do better this time - I should have taken some time to edit. Good grief.  

So. Where was I? Oh yes, arriving in Salvador.  Let me start with a wee geography lesson. Salvador is in the northeastern part of Brazil, in the state of Bahia.  It's got some amazing culture with African influences from colonial times.  I could go on about that, but you can google just as well as I can.  The conference was at the convention centre in Salvador, which was located a fair distance away from the more fun parts of the town like the Pelhourino neighborhood. 

We landed early in Salvador. I think we were scheduled to land at 1am, and I think we actually landed at 12:30am. This was not the first time we arrived before we were supposed to. I was kind of baffled by this. In North America, they actually stick (or at least try) fairly close  to departure times, and simply add on flying and taxiing time and voila, that's your arrival time.  The departure and arrival times (based on the 8 separate flights I took within Brazil) seemed to be mostly guidelines.  Don't get me wrong, it was usually to our benefit - arriving early is awesome.   Just unexpected.  

I'd booked a taxi to come get us and deliver us to our hotel.  Since the conference was starting later that day there were a lot of signs with familiar company names in the arrivals area.  Eventually we found my name and we were off to our beachfront hotel.  I had sort of gotten my phone to work while we were in Salvador, but only in a really limited way.  By the time we got to Salvador I'd taken out the battery and rebooted the phone and now it was really working.  Dozens of texts and emails were flying on my phone, and I, having been cut off from the world for 12 hours, had a need to catch up.  

Val was utterly mystified by this for she was utterly transfixed by our surroundings.  She got mad at me at one point - she couldn't figure out why I wasn't interested in our surroundings - people were living in shanties! She was blown away that people could live in conditions like that.  

Here's where I probably look like a jerk - but I was pretty blase about it. I was actually surprised at her - how had she never seen anything like this?  She's travelled quite a bit BUT just in North America and Northern Europe.  I went to Mexico for the first time when I was 9 years old. I was blown away then when I saw someone sweeping the dirt with a broom made out of wood.  Things were dirty.  The sidewalks weren't even.   In the next 30 years I've spent a fair bit of time (as a privileged tourist, mind you) in similar places. So it just wasn't new to me to be seeing that.  

It was also dark.

And our taxi driver was driving REALLY fast.  We arrived at our hotel, the Sol Plaza Sleep.  It was across the street from one of the most lovely beaches I've ever seen.  

Checking in was interesting. We'd paid for the hotel through the conference so I handed over my voucher.  We needed our phrase book and google translator to make it all the way through the check-in process.  

Our room was actually kind of nice by my standards. Val? Was not so sure.  I think she asked me about 5 times in the first 10 minutes we were in the room if we were going to be safe.  She didn't even want to take her shoes off in the room.  We went to bed fairly soon after we arrived. It had been a looong day.  

We spent the next day getting our bearings - we took our first walk down the beach.  Then we found a Bompreço about a block down from our hotel.  We thought it was just another Brazilian drugstore/grocery store.  When we got inside we found Walmart branded stuff and with some quick googling we found out that Walmart owned this chain of stores.  All that way to end up in a bloody walmart. Crazy.  It worked out well though - we'd each forgotten some stuff and frankly we were both kinda interested in the meat/seafood/produce sections.  Also the beer and bottled water.  For we? Were terrified of getting something from even brushing our teeth with tap water.

I shake my head at myself now.  By the time I left I was drinking water straight from the tap to stave off the hangover I deserved for another night of way too much drinking.  I took that disgusting Dukoral stuff to avoid issues after the travel immunization nurse scared the hell out of us with all the nasty stuff we could catch if we didn't buy all the needles she could sell us.   

Our first meal in Brazil was at our hotel - they had a buffet.  We managed to order drinks when a waiter wandered by from time to time but the fun part really came when it was time to ask for the bill.  It took a few minutes of searching but eventually I found the right spot in the phrase book. I practiced on Val a few times before I summoned the courage to try out my first real portuguese sentence ever:

por favor, traga a conte? 

Hands down, that was the most useful phrase I learned in portuguese.  Well, that, obrigada and cerveja.  I was so proud when the waiter said, conte, sim.  (The bill. Yes.)

The conference started that evening so we decided we'd walk over to the conference center.  It might have been winter in Brazil in August, but Salvador's weather basically doesn't change. It was hot. It was humid.  By the time we got to the conference center we were basically melting.  The Centre was huge. Four levels. They were busy putting up flags for all the countries coming to the Poultry Congress, and there were huge signs on the outside of the building welcoming us in several languages.  

That was the last bit of signage that was remotely helpful.  We spent the next hour wandering the ramps and halls of that damn place.  We found the poster session area (and figured out where our groups posters were to go) but damned if they didn't have even a single damn sign pointing to the registration area.  

Hands  down, this was the worst organized meeting I've ever attended.  Highlights of the awfulness - they didn't have our registration information so I had to dig through my email (at great expense) on my blackberry to prove we'd registered (since we'd forgotten to print out our stuff, naturally).   The meeting's official language was English, which meant that the presentations were all to be in English. Invariably if a presenter was from Brazil (and a very large number of presenters were - you had to be chosen for an oral presentation by the organizers) the presentation was likely to be in Portuguese. They offered translation but you had to get the right device for the right room to get it to work. And they wanted your passport as insurance. Hells no.  The opening ceremony was full of people thanking all the more important people than them for deigning to grace us with their presence.  The presentations were never really on time - if the program says 1:30, you need to stick to that because some people move from room to room. I heard the end of a lot of talks. SO ANNOYING.  There was no map of where the scientific talks were supposed to be - but a great map of the exhibitor area - those people had paid the organizers money to be there, so apparently rated a map. 

That said, they put on a pretty good opening reception in the exhbitor area.  Tons of food and non alcholic drinks.  I ate meatballs that looked like a sugar coated timbit. I couldn't tell you what any of the stuff I ate was - it was all surprising and all good. I had my first taste of guarana (which was disappointing because I thought it was beer). Eventually I grew to really like it. We met up with the rest of our group that had spent 12 hours in the airport in Houston enroute to Salvador. At least we had the fun of shopping in Miami. Heh.

After the reception we ended up in an all you can eat pizza restaurant for beer. Brazil and its beer deserves a post all its own so I won't go into it now. It was cold and it was good.  The most memorable thing about that night was my future travel companion trying out his portuguese on our waiter/bus boy.  He was trying to ask if the waiter would get to go home soon because the restaurant was closing.  

What he really asked was if the waiter wanted to go home with him.

We're jerks, so we laughed for about 10 minutes (so did all the people in the restaurant) and we didn't let him forget that for a while.  Even better, there were so many other things to mock among our entire group in the days ahead.  Some of them were kind of epic. Some of them are stories I can actually tell. Some of them I will merely smile about and mention obliquely, in passing.  For I? Am a jerk.

Good grief, 1600 words and I've only gotten through one more day.  If anyone reads this I will be shocked.  On the bright side, I did do some writing while I was in Brazil so those days are already covered. 

So I went to Brazil a while back?

I have a longish history of travel writing.  My first real foray into keeping a journal while traveling was 7 years ago when I went to Boston in the Fall.  Why Boston? Why the Fall?  Ever hear of the Veggie Tales? One of their silly songs was about the Pirates who don't do Anything.  They'd never been to Boston in the Fall.  I decided I needed to go to Boston. In the Fall. (Sadly, now I can't sing that song and really mean it. Really didn't think that through, did I?)

So, being blessed with an excess of vacation and banked time (but certainly not a lot of money) I flew myself to Boston and then proceeded to wander around New England - to my shame, at the time I started planning the trip I thought that New England was actually a state.  I was quickly disabused of that notion, and frankly, I can't believe I just admitted to that.  I'm just a giver that way.  

Anyway, since I was travelling by myself extensively for the first time, I felt a need to remain connected to people back home. So I found myself this trip journaling website that had maps and stuff and you could document where you'd been.  I wonder if that site still exists.  Anyway, I had a bunch of people following my misadventures back then.  If you're remotely interested (I expect not, but I just reread and was amused by a bunch of the posts looking for the link just now) you can start here. 

I will not be offended if you decide to give it a miss.  Is ok.

Anyway. Brazil.  I had vague-ish notions of writing things as I went along. I'd normally have a notebook or something with me. I had no notebook.  I rarely entered stores while I was in Brazil (really, shopping - NOT my thing in Brazil. I welcomed airport gift shops and touristy fairs because then I could buy a pile of souvenirs in a one-stop shop). That said, there was a memorable night of shopping in Rio while waiting for a bar to open one night.... but that's a story for another day.  

So. Back to the point. Brazil. I want to remember things about that trip. It was awesome. It was great. Someone asked me a while back if it was life affirming or life changing.  The answer to that is yes. And so much more. But where to begin?   

To paraphrase the great Julie Andrews, we should start at the very beginning. It's a very good place to start.  

I received the official go-ahead from my surgeon (with signed letter for insurance purposes and coming off general disability leave from work) 6 days after surgery.  I was on a plane about 60 hours later with one of my favorite people that I also get to work with 5 days a week, Val.  We'd had this brilliant idea back when we were booking our flights back in March before fiscal year end - fly Westjet through Toronto and overnight in Miami before catching the direct flight to Sao Paulo from there.  I'm the hugest westjet fan in the world so I try to go with them whenever I can.  Back in March they hadn't added all the destinations of their new partners so you couldn't book with them all the way to Brazil.  Now I think you can.

Anyway.  I decided (IN MARCH) it would be a great idea to catch a freaking red eye from Edmonton to Toronto. I DID THIS NONSENSE ON PURPOSE. This was before I went to Orlando for the Sas global forum in April, for which I took redeye.  I didn't WANT to take a redeye, and in fact, I didn't actually look at the time the flight left. I just saw direct flight and snapped it up.

Sweet Lord in heaven, that was the most miserable flight I've suffered through in a long time. Crying babies, crowded plane, no sleep and then the awful Orlando airport (seriously people, don't go to Orlando. I will be happy if I never go there again).  After that experience I seriously  onsidered changing the flight to Miami to a non redeye but we had connections booked with Tam airlines and plans to shop there. So we left it alone. Also I was quite ill for a time and didn't feel like doing much of anything.  

As God is my witness, I swear I will never take a red eye again. Val and I had a row to ourselves (empty seat between us) and we were still miserable when we got to Toronto and had to wait for a few hours for the connecting flight to Miami.  There's no lounge in that departure area so... no place for a shower.  We ate gross panini sandwiches for breakfast and then I remember falling asleep on a bench for an hour or so.  

Our flight to Miami was uneventful. I think it was full.  Being the height of summer, Miami was surrounded by storms so we had to circle the airport (flew over the keys though!) and were delayed getting into the airport.  We hadn't eaten since that gross breakfast and we'd promised ourselves an indulgent meal at Cracker Barrel so when we got off the plane we were HUNGRY.  There aren't any really convenient Cracker Barrels to the airport region of Miami so we set off for what we thought would be a quick trip to one near the shops we wanted to visit.

Then we hit the traffic. Lord in His Heaven.  The traffic. Accident on the freeway. I was 9 days out from surgery at this point and tired pretty easily so I was miserable driving. We'd been too stupid to put Val on the contract when we got the car.

Yeesh.  

Anyway. We gave up on the original Cracker Barrel and eventually got ourselves to another one. I think. Then a blissful bit of time in a Container Store when I suddenly thought to check on the operating hours of the specialty  shoe store I'd sussed out on the internet the day before.

They didn't close at 9 as I'd thought. They closed at 6. And it was just after 5. And we were about an hour away.  We drove like crazy, even called the store to ask if they would stay open for us, but alas. We were brutally rebuffed.  Boo, Bida Wide Shoes.  As it happened, we'd driven past a Kmart while trying to find the specialty store and so we drove back over there. 

We then proceeded to have Val try every wide shoe in the joint.  She was in heaven.  I had fun just bringing her shoes to try.  Dang, we left a mess in that place.  After that we wandered over to a Kohls where I bought a couple pairs of jeans and a shirt that I would come to loathe with the fire of a thousand blazing suns a mere month later.

Then we wandered over to Miami Beach to our hotel for the evening. We could see the ocean from our window but since it was late, we didn't actually go look at it.

Our flight to Brazil left at 11am.  So we thought, hey. We'll get up early enough to go eat pancakes at Dennys, pick up a few things at the Walgreens down the street and then head to the airport. EXCEPT. The damn freeway was closed and we had to take surface streets. No pancakes for us. I'm still sad about that. Dennys had these wicked pancakes with pecans in them and I had a craving. I've got a craving now just thinking about them.   

(Goodness, I can go on a bit, can't I? I didn't think I had this much to say about a simple layover in Miami).

So we got to the airport and trundled our bags over to the Tam counter in the international terminal.  THAT was an experience.  The lineup was huge.  Everyone literally had massive carts of suitcases and/or boxes of STUFF. Saw a few flatscreen TV boxes that were to be loaded onto our plane.  I learned a few weeks later that things were so expensive in Brazil that people just loaded up like crazy whenever they left the country.  

We didn't have to wait in the giant line because we? Were flying business class.  Fear not, I was only reimbursed for the equivalent economy fare. The upgrade was on my dime.  We quite enjoyed business class: 

If you have the means (or the airline points) I highly recommend it.  Especially on long-ass flights between Miami and Sao Paulo. Or Vancouver and Sydney, Australia.  Val got to spend most of the flight chilling out. She was carrying a poster tube of shame (actually, I had to carry the tube of shame since she was in charge of my suitcases. I was not allowed to lift things post surgery) but I had been upgraded from a poster to an oral presentation.  I confess, I didn't start my presentation until after I got on the plane and had a glass or two of champagne. My goal was to finish the damn presentation before we landed in Sao Paulo.  I pretty much succeeded.  Val, bless her heart, woke up to give comments whenever I asked her if a slide sucked or not.  

{Please note: I do not condone writing your talk on the flight to wherever you are presenting. It stresses one out. This does not mean that I follow my own damn advice, though. I have a track record on this}.

There's something about the moment you land in a country you've never visited before. Everything is shiny, new, and different. Even if it is grungy, worn down and kinda creepy.  We landed in Sao Paulo, and to our surprise, we deplaned a bus ride away from the international terminal.  Customs was fairly straight forward, at least until we told the truth about having food in our suitcases.  This created a bit of a stir in the ranks at that part of customs but eventually they let us through.

Then we just had to find a check-in counter for our domestic flight within Brazil. We'd gotten an airpass separate from our entry flights into Brazil and weren't able to check our bags all the way to Salvador, our final destination.  This was our first foray into Brazilian portuguese. We sucked. The check in people? Were great.  Our bags checked, we headed off to find some food and find our way through security.  I was able to get my cell phone to sort of work and sent off my first transmission from Brazil. It was exciting.

Security? Not so exciting. I had this goofy tripod type thing. When you travel by yourself, you don't get a lot of self portraits unless you're really good with the camera. I? Am not good at self portraits. I always look like something smells or the camera is about to blow up.  So this tripod thing is really more of an extender arm. Set the camera on the timer setting, extend the arm, and voila. Self portrait where I don't look like a total fool.  

Never had a problem with the thing in Canadian or US security. Brazilian security? Were not fans of the extender arm. Our lack of portuguese did not help us. We had people try to help us but the long and the short of things was that I had to give up my extender arm. I'd have been more ok with this if someone had actually paid attention to the beeping when people walked through the metal detectors.  Seriously. You're worried about my camera accessory when people just kinda walk through your security line?

Please.  

It took some time for me to calm down after that.  We ate some hard to identify food from a snack shop next to our departure gate. Then we got on a plane to Salvador that was scheduled to arrive there about 1am local time. But. Since this entirely too long already, I think I'm going to stop there.  Heh. I've written 2000 words and I haven't even gotten to our first destination in Brazil. Maybe I should do some editing?

Nah. I'm tired and I'm going to bed now.  At this rate, I'll finish writing about Brazil by the time I come home from Peru next summer.  Next time? I will have more pictures.

13880 down, 730 to go...

A year or two ago I started a 40x40 list.  Today being my 38th birthday, I've determined that I've been on this earth for 13880 days - including leap days! Am nerd!  However, that also means I have only 730 days to go before I achieve 40.  

I've knocked quite a few things off  the list already.  Haha. I just hopped over to that page and it appears that the last time I edited that list I'd had a drink or 4 (or possibly 12).  If I reach back in my memory and try to decipher when that might have been exactly, yikes. I remember parts of that night in Rio. Only parts.  The parts I remember were a mix of basically awesome with a soupcon of DEAR GOD WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING???  The parts I don't remember? Are probably better that way.

That being said, any night that ends with 2 separate marriage proposals is pretty decent in my books. 

Whoops. Guess that didn't stay in Rio after all.  Lordy, have I got stories to tell.  Alas, I am still an asshole so I won't be sharing them. For there are some things the world just does not need to know. There are some things I do not want the world to know, because DAMN. I've also got a pile of stories that are not really mine to tell, and frankly, I know that the telling of them would lead to the retaliatory release of the things I don't want the world to know.  

Well. That was confusing.  If I were a nicer person I'd erase that paragraph above and cease with the teasing.  (See above about me=asshole).

Anyway. The things I'd like to add to my list (which I'll edit eventually) are below in no particular order.  

1. Hike the Inca Trail in Peru.  One of the many lovely people I met in Brazil just did it in September-ish.  I am planning for summer 2013.  
2. Learn Spanish for the trip to Peru. This will be handy when I travel to the US too. Heh.
3. Hang glide in Mexico in January.  Dive in Mexico in January. Parasail without crash landing in Mexico in January.  Drink my face mostly off in Mexico in January. Yay! Mexico in January! That trip will bring together almost half of the family I want to spend New Years in Mexico for 2014.

I had grand plans for a giant birthday party for myself this year, what with the whole cancer thing, wandering out to the other side of that partially unscathed (although there is a still a trip to a cancer specialist in my future, yay) but a variety of things conspired against me doing anything about that. For starters, I'm still exhausted most of the time. Especially when I overdo stuff.  I had a hard week of work travelling and I am not too proud to say, damn. I cannot keep that kind of pace anymore. Or at least at this exact moment.  The other reason I didn't plan a party? I mentioned it to a few people about a month ago and got such an overwhelming 'yeah yeah, whatever' that it totally killed any desire to plan a party.

And I love planning a party.  I'll celebrate the opening of an envelope with you if you gave me time to go buy some cheese, cold cuts and an assortment of boozy juices. Throw some music on the stereo, and voila, party central.  So that should illustrate the overwhelmingness of the 'yeah yeah whatever' reactions I got.  

I spent my 30th birthday in Vegas.  I need to start thinking about where to spend my 40th.  I have only 730 days, so I better get cracking.  

Finally, I posted this on facebook a week or so ago but on since it is my birthday, and this is my space anyway, I am posting it again.  There's a few spots in the song (starting at the ~4:00 minute mark, really hitting it at the 4:54 and 5:16 marks and then utterly blowing me away at 5:42) that pretty much are what it feels like to run off a cliff and fly away.  For reals.

 

 

meh

I am so tired of tired. Thank heavens for falling back tomorrow, I hope I can catch up on my sleep. Why I'd need to after sleeping til 11am this morning is a mystery. I have the familiar tingling of low calcium running through my limbs. I couldn't summon my give-a-damn if I tried. I feel better most of the time. Then I come home and it is all I can do to get myself from one part of my house to another.

It's my Sunday to play tomorrow and I haven't practiced a bit (again, good thing it is fall back. I have an extra hour to practice). I did VPN into the folder on the church server and double check what I need to play - I picked some good songs that I can play with my eyes closed if necessary.  Well done me.  

Now I'm getting dizzy and I'm sitting down. Mayhap I should crawl upstairs and dig out my vitamin D and calcium supplements.

To conlcude, I have found some cool things on the internet lately. Here is one of them to look at while go lie down since apparently sitting in a chair is just too much. (How will I hike the Inca Trail next summer at this rate? How?????)