anyresemblance

Five things

1. Not everything is about poultry.  There are plenty of other things going on in the anyresemblance household including the on-again, off-again relationship with college that my older daughter has.  She realised full time office work was not terribly exciting and has re-enrolled at college.  She sold her car so is driving my other car, the one which I bought as the younger will be getting a learner's licence soon and needs to be taught to drive in a car that is not so close to my heart as the other one.  Anyway, older one seems to have co-opted it for her personal use but since she has been a very helfpul girl of late I am not complaining.
2. Spring is a tease.  The plum tree is in blossom, the spring bulbs are blooming but it is still on the chilly side, especially early in the morning.  I should like to not run my heating but the house is so cheerless when it is cold.  My expectations of spring may be three weeks premature.
3. Exercise has been suspended since I pulled a muscle in my calf while I was in China.  I am pretty sure it is healed now so really need to get back to running.  I had to pause at week 5 and I need to get back at it.
4. Hermit.  I have had my fill of the physical presence of people after three weeks of travel so am happy to have resumed a hermit like existence.  I am going to Melbourne for a weekend soon and have a jolly little excursion planned for Sunday but mostly I am happy to stay home. 
5. Garden is looking ultra-neglected.  Duck tending does have the added side effect of being able to examine in close detail how my friends have arranged their vegetable beds and think about how I better use the space in my garden which is probably 4 times the size of theirs and only 5% as productive.

T-t-t-t-telephone wire

The abundance of bird life reminds me of how lucky I am to have a garden surrounded by trees.  This morning we did the duck tending.  5 duck eggs from 6 ducks, 3 chicken eggs from 4 hens.  Someone is slacking in each coop.  The cleaning all went quicker today now we have got into a rhythm.  I'd say 30 minutes down from 45 yesterday.  Their owner can do it quicker but we are not so streamlined particularly when I dropped the keys into the coop which we had already padlocked while trying to juggle the abundance of eggs.  Fortunately, the daughter got a pointy stick and we managed to fish them close to the wire, extract the padlock key and go back in and rescue the car keys.  Note to self: the slats on top of the coop have gaps between them. 

At home there were crimson rosellas eating the chicken feed and then when I went out to distribute some bacon rinds some young kookaburras.  Though I hear them every morning I had not seen the kookaburras in the garden for months but there they were all fluffy and funny. (That giant cable? what passes for cable and broadband in this backwater of high speed access but highly convenient for birds to sit on and possums to race across).

The house is running to a strict timetable at the moment.  What with duck tending and youngest has picked up a new job at the local supermarket and has her school formal on saturday, we don't have much margin for error.  There is a bunch of other stuff but I am all "let's get the formal out of the way" before we move on to the next hurdle.

We're going to the Pilbara for Christmas to see our family.  I am looking forward to seeing the source of our mineral wealth, the reason for our strong australian dollar and that different landscape.

Duck duck hen

The sad thing that happened while I was away was that my favourite chicken met an untimely end.  The very fence that was installed for her protection was the one she wriggled her way under and then could not find her way back when a wayward dog came bounding along.  At least that is how the story was recounted by my children since I was some thousands of miles away.  Fortunately, the person who is calm in a crisis  happened along and buried the chicken under a neat little cairn and soothed the children and told me the dog owner was an idiot.   I know chickens often just keel over but this was the one with most personality so I miss her.  The others are a bit dim and don't rush to the back door in expectation of a treat like she did. 

We are currently duck-minding for some friends who are travelling.  It's a good thing that their owner has engineered the most amazing water recycling plant in her garden as ducks produce a lot of crap and require a lot of water sluicing.  They are also very overcome with spring hormones so this morning saw us separating the wrong drakes from the wrong ducks as there is a strict separation of tribes in operation.  So far I have one duck egg but I will report on the results of duck egg baking as soon as more appear.

Rubber sole

I'm home for the foreseeable future.  Three weeks, three continents, 36 hours at home.  I thought I was doing ok but I have had the uncontrollable urge to just lie down on the sofa and sleep all weekend.  But I remind myself that my children did not sign up for my work schedule so I flip the on button before it shorts again.

I may complain about the failure to lift a mat before vacuuming or the state of the towels but really what's to worry about when all are healthy, no parties have been hosted and there are no piles of liquor bottles in the dustbin?

Beijing was hard work but Brazil was a breeze.  I may not have been allowed to roam the streets of Sao Paolo but I loved it.  The extra night may have helped in not feeling I was on one of my fly in, fly out escapades.  I went to dinner every night.  I ate a lot of meat.  I snacked on fruit salad cut in tiny pieces and served from a punch bowl.  I drank excellent argentinian and chilean wine.  I ate dulce de leche in various guises. I shopped at the haviaiana flagship store and various other beautiful locale along Av Oscar Freire.  I was trying to buy a pair of navy suede heels.  Alas they were not in my size but I bought the same pair in a kind of pinky coral which I am hoping work for summer.  The heels are just the same as the ones in the ads for the new season prada shoes.  There was an intense pleasure in shopping where there was no Zara.  Not that I don't love Zara but the relentless homogenous nature of shopping is depressing.  I came home with 7 pairs of havianas and 3 pairs of shoes. 

I came home the long way. Sao Paolo to Santiago to Auckland to Sydney to Canberra.  All coach.  Actually I think the sundry stops made it more bearable.  I bought cachaca in Sao Paolo.  I had it confiscated in Chile as I had forgotten the no liquids rule even in transit.  I bought marzipan fruits in Chile.  I showered in Auckland and wondered if merino mink (merino wool spun with possum fur) was wonderful or creepy (whatever, it was expensive).  I bought cachaca in Sydney on arrival. 

I had to tick the "have you been in Africa or South America box" and found myself grilled on my yellow fever status.  I am now in self-quaratine which means if I note the symptoms of yellow fever I have to take myself to a dr.  Since apart from noting a yellow tinge to your skin, the symptoms are almost identical to all other feverish/flu symptoms (aching, cough, headaches) this seems a bit loose.  Whatever.  I am in remarkably good health from my gallivanting other than a) pulling a muscle in my calf from my too high heels in China and b) an expanding waistline due to all those caipirianhas.

I got home Sunday morning and then went to lunch for my friend's birthday then got on a plane to Sydney on Monday morning for another week of the same kind of stuff but with zero shopping.  It was fine. 

Jason Bateman was staying at the hotel and can be reported to be short with a large head.  More exciting was that I met Jacki Weaver at the security queue at the airport the week prior.  She is also tiny but beautiful.  She should have won the oscar.  I felt weird about approaching a stranger as it I knew her but I told her Animal Kingdom was the best movie I had seen last year.  She turned round and said thank you and gave me a hug.  Travel has its own rewards.

 

Cassava. Manioc. Tapioca.

I am loving this place.  Work hard, snack well, great wines from Chile and Argentina, lovely people and excellent dinners.

I am working with a team who argue in Portuguese and then calmly summarise their agreed position in English for me.  I wish all my meetings were like that.

I have eaten my body weight in Pao de Queijo which are served every afternoon in our meeting with excellent little coffees.  Hot, cheesy puffs of goodness, sort of like a gougere but with a more runny centre.  My colleagues were trying to find the english word for the flour used and decided it was cassava though the recipes say tapioca.  Then I realised they were the same thing. Duh.  Anyway, gluten free for those of who might need to know. 

The only downside is my sleep patterns.  Urgh.

They've got an awful lot of coffee

Considering my three continents in three days insanity I am in pretty good shape.  Thank heavens for an upgrade to business from Sydney to Buenos Aires made 13 hours of the journey pass quickly.  We'll draw a veil over the other 8 hours but let us just say that Buenos Aires is due for a major overhaul and I had no currency to buy a coffee and did not really want to have to take out $50 of an ATM just for that.

I confess I was a leetle intimidated at Sao Paolo airport.  What if I had got the visa thing all wrong? What if my luggage had failed to keep up with me? But it was all fine and the recommended taxi company gave you a card with the price on so no anxiety about arguing with taxi drivers over the correct fair.

The hotel is dimly lit.  This seems a feature of hotels these days as they try and reduce their carbon footprint and move to energy saver bulbs but the net result is that I have to put my glasses on to even work out which tap is which or how to use the kettle.  I am looking forward to life in lots of natural light again.

I had dinner with my work colleagues including an excellent person who I previously only knew by phone who has phenomenal language skills, lives in Santiago and went to school in Wisconsin.  The trip has been worth it just to meet her in person.  We spent much of dinner explaining to our american colleagues status in flip flops.  Havaiana flagship store here I come.

I also drank an excellent coffee on arrival.  Just what I needed to perk me up for the 13 hour time difference.  I can tick that off my list.  And nuts, as I ate that in the chocolate in the mini bar.

Dragon City

Beijing was hot. Super hot and super polluted.  I gave up a Sunday (again) to travel there but at least the plane was not crowded and my bestie work friend was accompanying me.  The most intriguing thing was how slow the hotel car was.  I thought, if this were a private taxi I would be thinking he did not know the way as he kept slowing down to peer at sign posts.  I mean, what taxi driver worldwide drives slowly? Scratch that, in Singapore they obey the limits else an annoying bell starts going off in the cab.  Anyway, thank you Hilton hotels for upgrading me to a suite with a bath and all.

Compared to the  bicycle city I remember when I first went there 10 years ago, there was a lot of sitting in traffic.

We went to our office on Monday.  It is out by the olympic park with a birds eye view of the birds nest stadium and the swimming cube.  Take my word for it as I forgot my camera.  Sparkly new offices but nowhere to get food in walking distance which is kind of irritating if you work out that all the time.  It was my birthday so we assembled a small group to dine here in the shadow of Ti'anmen Square.

The rest of it was work, work, work.  I was working with a most excellent team from Shanghai and I enjoyed myself very much.  I did fit in a trip to the silk market and bought trinkets for the kids the most appreciated being the fake Tiffany charm bracelet (behold the arm party) and memory sticks that looked like Angry Birds.

The journey home was as unspeakable as a 9 hour overnight flight in economy can be but now I am home.  It and the possibility of more Chilean volcanic ash disruption did make me reschedule the flight I should have been on today to Brazil.  I did consider if I could fly direct to Brazil from Beijing but a) I wanted to see my kids and b) 26 hours on Air China in economy held no attractions at all.  As it is, I fly Qantas and still get there on Monday due to time differences.  An unplanned day at home also has me a) having a massage b) eating delayed birthday cake c) researching the wonder that is the Havaiana flagship store and d) getting excited about Sao Paolo's Mercado Municipal e) updating my blog reading.

Did you know that in China that as well as not being able to access twitter (tiresome) and facebook (who cares except for the birthday wishes I never saw) that anything that has "blog" in the url is blocked? So all you people with blogger and blogspot type thingies, your words are suspect.  On the other hand it is has been pleasant to be free of some of the ranting going on on the internet and I think I have forgotten how to use twitter.