The Blog

Ten things I love about Rio...

I kinda feel like I've been very down on the place, when actually I'm having a great time. So here's a list of things I love about Rio, in no particular order:

• the beaches. They're full of vendors selling stuff, but they are also sandy and wet with pretty waves that curl over wonderfully. In the sun you don't notice the humidity, and in the shade you don't feel the heat.
• the games they play on the beaches. People play all sorts of sports, mostly volleyball and soccer. Sometimes they play both at once in a hybrid called futevôlei, which is no-hands volleyball. It's so much fun to watch.
• the metro. It's fast and clean and not necessarily cheap, and it gets you were you want to be. It runs every five minutes, so you don't have to wait.
• the kilo restaurants. These are buffets where you fill your plate and pay by weight. If you like salad it's cheap, and if you live only on meats it's a bit pricey. The big chains are around $35-45/kg, but smaller local places are around $25/kg. The food is good at the cheaper ones, there's just often less choice.
• Bob's burgers.
• the surf rescue helicopter. They were doing exercises on Tuesday, and it was the most fun thing ever. The guys on board kept jumping into the water from a height, and then the helicopter would catch them in a net, or a harness, or just by hovering over the water until they grab on. Traffic stopped to watch.
• Capirinhas. Crushed lime, sugar, and a local liquor made from sugar cane (it tastes a little like rum). Most people use cheap cachaça ($5/L), but it's drinkable. (For the record, a stella artois costs about $1.79 and the cheap local beer is $0.89/can in the supermarkets.)
• Christos. I've still not been to see him yet, as with only one exception all my free days have been cloudy. But you often spot him over your shoulder, just hanging out up there.
• the temperature. Aside from the humidity (hello boofy hair), I could get used to 27^oC days in winter. I didn't bring enough summer clothes though.
• the markets. They're silly tourist traps, but they're good fun and a perfect source of tacky souveniers for the people back home.

Labels: holiday, rio de janeiro, trip09, yay vodka

   Jedi Tim-Tam's Sekrit Hot Lemon Drink Recipe...

Actually, it was my great grandmother's (the more I hear about her, the more I regret that I never really had a chance to know her: she was apparently something of a monty python fan among other awesomenesses). Anyway:

Put the juice of one lemon (or as much as you can manage to get in the mug), less than a teaspoon of honey and a slurp of rum in a mug. Then add about 150mL of warm water (not hot, you don't want to cause evaporation of the good stuff).

Then drink.

PS. You don't have to be sick to enjoy this.

Labels: family, recipes, sickly-Cat, yay vodka

   *big big sighs* ...

Well, that went a lot worse than I was expecting. Not the conference, it seems to be going swimmingly; no, the problem is that when you take one Catherine, deprive her of sleep for most of a week, keep her too busy to eat for a day and then ply her with alcohol, she ends up spending large chunks of the night curled up with a toilet vomitting the little bit of food she ate before drinking anything. When she wasn't asleep on the floor, of course.

*is ded from embarrassment*

A random student (her name was Sarah, and for most of our relationship I was convinced she was hotel staff, which makes me even more embarrassed) found me and held my hand for a good half hour or more, and then Korinne and Anna helped me back to the room I'm sharing with Anna.

And of course, I suffered from surprisingly-lucid-but-terribly-honest-drunk syndrome, which I really need to get over. Telling people that you think they have the potential to be great isn't the best way to win friends, although I think she took it in stride. I'm always worried by how I seem to think more about what I'm saying when drink, but I still say all the wrong things.

It's time for the next session of the conference to start, so I'm going to take some rocky road and apologise to Sarah, because she seems like the nicest person I've met in weeks.

Labels: conferences, losing sleep, yay vodka

   It is amazing, isn't it?...

An Eyre Peninsula man is the talk of the town after catching a bronze whaler shark in his hands and wrestling it up onto a jetty.
Phillip Kerkhof from Louth Bay was at the local jetty when the 1.3-metre shark began chasing squid lures.
He says he climbed down a ladder and began to follow the shark in shallow water.
"I just snuck up behind him and eventually I went for the big grab and I fluked it and got him," he said.
"He's just thrashing around in the water but then he was starting to turn around and try to bite me and I thought 'well, it's amazing what vodka does'."
The only damage from the dangerous species was a bite mark to his jeans.
"It's not something I'd recommend to do. When I sobered up I thought about it and I said, 'I'm a bit of an idiot doing it'," Mr Kerkhof said.
- ABC news

There are no words.

Labels: jumping the shark, stupid people, yay vodka

   Dragonflies...

2 shots Midori
2 shots Vodka
1/2 shot Lime Juice
Fill shaker with Apple Juice and ice, and shake.
Enjoy with apple slices!

Labels: cocktails, feeling better (with application of alcohol), Irodim Illusion, recipes, this was before tags, yay vodka