You know when

You know when something has become a habit, only when circumstances change that draws attention to what you are doing. For example, this week we drove from Heathrow to the West Country in a car that was so ladened down with luggage that I couldn’t see out of the rear window when looking in the rear view mirror. I can’t tell you how many times I tilted my head to look, only to see the same grey mass of luggage. Every time I looked, I reminded myself that there was no point in doing it, only to do it again a minute or two later. Here is a perfect example. Something that is so automatic, that only when I can’t see what I am expecting to see, do I remind myself that I have done something “out of habit”.

I find it amazing how quickly we pick up habits without realising that they are habits, and slot back into them as soon as the opportunity arises.

I have now been out of Brazil for all of a week. Some things are as automatic as breathing. I amazed myself that after 6 months of not driving, I slid behind the wheel of my rental car at Newark airport and drove to Princeton as if I had driven the day before. It was absolutely automatic – where to go, which lane to drive in, how to get onto the New Jersey Turnpike and, most of all how to drive. The human brain is amazing.

So I arrived at a friend’s house for a shower and change and I was sitting on the loo. Automatically, I was looking for a sign that would tell me whether I should put my loo roll down the loo or in the bin. I couldn’t see a sign so I automatically looked around for a small, covered bin, with a plastic bag to take the said loo roll. It was a split second before I remembered “ahh, I’m not in Brazil”. So down the loo it was flushed. It has taken me the best part of a week not to automatically check for signs or a bin and to realize that in this part of the world, it is okay to flush the loo roll down the loo.

Another example. I was in a public loo, and after washing my hands, reached for the paper towels. I hesitated for a moment before pulling a couple of sheets. The reason for the hesitation? Well, in Brazil there is usually a sign posted to the front of the paper towel dispenser telling you how many sheets of paper is should take to dry your hands. Not that the number bears any resemblance to the actual number needed. I automatically add at least one sheet for good measure. No, it is usually only a general guide. Two is the most common number but I have seen one. At the Jockey Club, the paper towels are so luxurious and thick; one towel could easily be passed between several people if it weren’t unhygienic. But back to my dilemma, how many paper towels to pull. Two to start with and three to be on the safe side.

Not long afterwards, we went to a restaurant. I automatically put my handbag on the chair next to me, until I realized that someone needed the chair to sit on. There is a superstition in Brazil, that you never put your handbag on the floor in case the “money runs away”. (Steve also assures me that in the Men’s room, there are shelves above the urinals for a briefcase so that they don’t have to be put on the floor.) So having picked up my bag, I looked around for a waiter to bring me a chair for my handbag. Obviously, that wasn’t going to happen and the penny dropped again that I was no longer in Brazil. There, a waiter would rush over with a chair, take my bag and either tie it with special handbag ties, or cover it with a serviette. Damn, the floor it will have to be – sorry bag.

After the meal, the bill came. Six of us around the table and only one total. Where was the additional total I needed, with 10 percent tip added and the total number divided by the number of people present so that we each know how much to pay. Mental arithmetic needed – ugh.

I remember when we lived in Sweden I read “10 everyday facts that meant that you have lived here too long”. It is far too long ago now to recall them, but there is one that absolutely sticks in my memory. “You know that you have lived in Sweden too long when you buy candles at the grocery store every week, even when you haven’t put them on your shopping list”. I read this when I first arrived and thought, “no, not me”. Sure enough, by the middle of the first white winter (there are only two seasons in Sweden, the white winter and the green winter) I was buying candles every week.

In the Philippines, the bathroom was called the Comfort Room. I remember coming home to the UK after having lived there only a few months and asking the way to the “Comfort Room” Stares all around - I was clearly mad.

So for everyone that has moved from one place to another I am sure you will be able to relate to something along the lines of the comments above. The good news is that habits can be dropped very quickly once you are removed from a particular situation. On the flip side. I guess they can be picked up again just as quickly.

Now off to the shops – again. Which side of the car to get into and which side of the road to drive on? Hmmmm.

Clean Air

I’m sitting in the airport lounge waiting for a flight to the States – New Jersey to be precise. It has been six and a half months since I have been there, and I know that when I reach Princeton it will be as if I have never been away. I should land at around six in the morning, pick up a rental car and drive to a friend’s house. Then a shower and change of clothes and a lovely morning playing bridge with friends. I am then off to pick up Emma and we have three days of all sorts of appointments planned before heading off to the UK mid week.

But the title of this blog is “Clean Air”. It is winter in Brazil, so that means that there is very little rain. The air quality is pretty dismal at the best of times, and for me personally, the pollution gives me all the symptoms of seasonal allergies. I take anti-histamine every morning and drops in my eyes to help with the itching. When I get in the car with Marcelo, I have to reassure him that it is only allergies, and not the dreaded “gripe”.

I recently read that the air quality in Sao Paulo is so bad that by living here, one’s life expectancy is reduced by anything up to three years. I guess there are ways of measuring such a claim, but I work on the principle that if we are only here for a few years, it probably won’t make much difference.

Sao Paulo is a city of around 10 million people. You can double that number if you include the metropolitan area. It is the 7th largest city in the world by population, but that said, every time there is a census somewhere in the world, those numbers change. There are 6 and a half million cars, or 9 million cars in the metropolitan area. Those numbers increase every day. Sao Paulo is a concrete jungle with construction going on absolutely everywhere. I recently read that the Government is actually holding back construction, because they are waiting for a new hydro-electric power station to come on stream. Until that happens, there is concern that the electricity supply system won’t be able to cope with all the new offices, apartments and shopping centers that are springing up everywhere.

There is a street of Favelas (slums), in one part of the city that I drive past very often. Marcelo pointed to them the other day and told me that each of the occupiers were being offered R$ 100,000 (about US$ 60,000) to move out. Imagine, living on under US$ 10 per day and being offered US$ 60,000 to move – a king’s ransom. But the profit to the developer is many multiples of that sum. A low rise Favela is cleared, an office block or apartment building rises.

More worrying to me than the quality of the air is the information that I also recently read, about the quality of the water. We have a reservoir to the south of the city which I assume is fed from the Pinheiros River that runs through the centre of the city. This river is really a large canal which, I have no doubt, takes all the runoff water that is discharged through the drainage system. Sadly it seems it also takes all the raw sewage from the Favelas.


With a city of 10 million people, the water treatment plants are under enormous strain, so the advice is not to drink the water. We have a filter jug that I use for making tea and coffee, etc, but for cooking I usually just run the tap. Now it seems that I shouldn’t be using straight tap water for cooking but instead, should be using the filtered stuff. I suppose the same rules apply to brushing teeth, and making sure that any water we take to drink during the night is also filtered. I dread to think what the tap water is doing to our insides. We have always made ice using filtered water but now I have to really think about all the other uses of water in our daily lives.

Last Tuesday there was a rain storm. It was unusual in its ferocity and that fact that we are in the middle of the dry and cold season. It has been really cold here, and for the first time I have been wearing winter clothes and layers of them.

But back to the storm. It lasted several hours and the consequence was that many areas of the city lost power. My friend was without power for 20 hours. It was a cold shower for her husband that morning. Marcelo told me that he had arrived at my house at 6 in the morning because he had no power at his house and wanted to use the shower in his bathroom in my basement.

With no power, there are no traffic lights and as Brazilians are bad drivers at the best of times the added complications of rain and no traffic lights is just a recipe for disaster and delays. Steve took about forty minutes to get home – it is a journey that normally takes 10 – 15 minutes.

But, notwithstanding all of the problems, I am still enjoying living in Brazil That said, I am very happy to be travelling to New Jersey to experience clean air in my lungs, water that I don’t have to filter and drivers that know the right side of the road on which to drive.