Coco and Camarao do Brazil

I am so tired.

That kind of tired that seeps into your bones and makes them heavy as rocks, that crawls in behind your stinging eyeballs, the kind of tired that you feel you'll never be able to shake off.

And I only recently came back from vacation.  Something's rotten in the state of Res, I tell you.

Speaking of vacation, I am way overdue a posting.  So here it is, a brief but exclusive glimpse into the glamorous Brazilian adventures of Res and Hottie:

Friday: Res bails early from CoolCo Sub and hops onto a small plane to a London with a big suitcase full of dresses.  Hottie has just returned from Houston (obviously).  The two of them are exhausted and skip the big Friday night out in London.

Saturday: Res and Hottie wait for pre-ordered cab.  And wait some more. Cab doesn't show up. Learn to never trust anyone but black cabs.  Make it to Heathrow in time for plane (and pancakes at Giraffe). Spend a long time in a flying metal tube. Land in Rio.  It's hot. Hottie has a couple caipirinhas. Res is a party pooper and goes to bed.

Sunday: Our fearless heroines decide to jump off a mountain.  Not before signing beautifully drafted liability waiver, specifying that it applies to all hang-gliding activities such as "take-off and landing (including, but not limited to, crashing)". Despite said waiver, both girls manage stunning, crash-free landings. Spend rest of day recovering on Ipanema with some coconut water and a couple camarao. Res takes first caipirinha.  And second.

Monday: Trusty host Daniel takes the girls on tour of city.  Gets them lost in Tijuca National Park.  Explains ups and downs of marriage over large skewers of meat. Then plonks them down on a bar terrace overlooking Santa Teresa for caipirinha o'clock.  Where we meet a yacht stewardess and a straight man with a T-shirt that says "Flower". Res takes a bit of a fancy to Brazilian beers. At dinner, Hottie attempts to identify menu options by making barnyard animal sounds at the waiter and Res orders a mint tea only to receive a small swamp in a bucket.

Tuesday: More beach time.  The girls even manage to squeeze in a run and purchase bikinis (size large, therefore covering half a butt-cheek; we learn that what we think of as "normal" bikini bottoms are referred to here as American bikinis, diapers or parachutes. Lovely).  Then Christ the Redeemer goes all mystical in the fog and Copacabana sparkles from the top of the Sugarloaf, before it's time to samba the night away at the fabulous Rio Scenarium.  More caipirinhas are had.

Wednesday: It rains. Res gets a sunburn (rainburn?) and turns into a bit of a camarao herself. For good cheer, Res and Hottie purchase Havaianas and try to sing for beer money. It doesn't work. Res orders fish for dinner and gets beef. Never mind. There's always more samba to save the day (until a senior citizen decides to demonstrate his trademarked pelvic thrust move and the girls run away... fast).

Thursday: Bye bye Rio, off to Paraty.  It rains. Paraty is nonetheless charming.  And serves wonderful caipirinhas.  Res gets a samba lesson from a waiter.

Friday: Sunshine in Paraty makes for idyllic beach time. Res misses her coconut water, though.  In the evening, the girls are entertained by the fabulous Yara and Richard Roberts and eat the best food of the whole trip. Res makes farofa and feels pretty pleased with herself. Hottie learns how to make caipirinhas and London cocktail nights are transformed forever.

Saturday: Last day in Brazil, spent in Sao Paulo with INSEAD alumns and friends. Much food, drink and dancing is had by all.  It rains.  That's because Brazil is sad the girls are leaving.

Sunday: Plane, more plane, an early Monday morning breakfast at Heathrow, another plane, and arrival in Zurich.  The vacation is over.  Time to prepare work trip to South Africa.

More on that in another post.

Samba

Only a few, cold wintry days of work left before the Hottie and I jet off to the warmer, friendlier climes of Brazil!  (A trip largely designed and organized by an INSEAD alumn's newly minted private travel company, which is a fun bonus).

But there's a "hic" as the French say (pronounced, appropriately enough, 'Eek!')  No, no, not some Appalachian redneck (apologies) but a snag.  A hitch.  A teensy weensy problemo.

In the nine-odd months since I last wore warm-weather clothes my body has, how should I put it - somewhat expanded its horizons.  The Swiss call it the Raclette-Equator.

I call it stress.

Anyways, as most women know, when you run into this kind of hic, the only clothes that still (more or less) fit are your dresses.  Especially the light, airy, flowy ones.

Which means that next week you will find me paragliding over the beaches of Rio in a dress. 

That's right, a dress.

I'm sure to be a hit with the locals.

Printemps

The temperature has finally edged above 5°C and the city's gone mad.

All over town the restaurants and bars have dragged chairs and tables out onto the sidewalk.  They've thrown some sheepskin on them and, lo and behold, made a killing.  Apparently, all you need in Switzerland is a good sheepskin and you might as well be in Jamaica.

Even more surprising, along the lake the boat and bath houses have opened.  Loungers are set up by the water, and I actually spotted a group of crazies pulling on diving gear.

People.  We're still in the single digits here.  Is this all entirely reasonable?

Then again, the heatwave mass hysteria is rather contagious.  I pulled on the sportswear this morning (sans hat, scarf, gloves, fleece or anything - just the bright pink top courtesy of HH) and ran for an hour along the lake.  Then I had a sit-down in the sunshine on my balcony with some ice tea.

Hmmm...

I think I might start liking Switzerland in springtime!

Published

That's it.  It's out there.  When you look me up on amazon, you now get a hit (both .com AND the .co.uk versions!)

I hummed and hahed about publicizing it on this blog.  You have been my biggest supporters, after all.  But, well, the title page doesn't say "Res" and, as Buddy noted, that would result in an uncomfortable mix of my personas.

So, if you're interested in checking out the baby you're going to have to be a little bit clever.  Or drop me a line and I'll whisper in your ear.

After almost 18 months, I've reached the end of my project.  It didn't all go according to plan, and there were many, many painful moments, but still, I achieved something.  I wrote a book.  An entire one.  Some people have read it.  A few more may still.  Maybe one of them will really like it.

And that's already something.

The Past Imperfect Re-Kindled

This afternoon I saw a demonstration in Switzerland.  Hundreds of people blocking up the streets and waving signs, and one man singing (badly) a rather humorous song, or at least I assume it was humorous based on the giggles of the passers-by.  Although Swiss-German always sounds quite amusing to me anyway.

Leaving the demonstrators behind, I wandered onto the main drag of the city, the one where all the fancy watches and the LV handbags go to feel casual.  And there was a woman begging for money on the sidewalk.

I was so surprised I almost tripped over her.

It was like someone had sent me a tiny chunk of the outside world right into my Swiss antibacterial bubble.

Speaking of the bubble, it's been a challenge lately.  Turns out CoolCo Sub is so very cool that everyone wants a piece of it.  And they're suing us to get it.  Which is when everyone turns around to me and says "wait a sec, you're a litigator, right?" at which point I somehow become responsible for everyone keeping their jobs.  Fantabulous.  Especially when my Nemesis sticks his nose in it and starts trashing my work like the angry little man he is.  And I've already failed in my mission to save everyone's job since we had to fire someone two weeks ago.  I'm not going to go into that any further except to say it was incredibly unpleasant.

It was right in the middle of all this medieval madness that I received the following email from the agent who had asked to see my full manuscript:

"Dear Res,
Loved the first few chapters, girl.  But then, not so much.  So I will now crush your hopes and dreams and suggest you go read One Day so you can see what real authors do.
Toodle-doo,
Cruella"

So there it is.  I could keep going.  I could re-write.  Again.  I could send out to more agents.  And I could keep waiting.

Part of me wants to do that.  Part of me wants to wait for the chance to open up a brown cardboard package with the first ever copy of my book, a book I could slide into my bookshelf and smile at my name written on the side.

But the other part won. 

And so, following my Facebook friends' advice, I am publishing my novel on Amazon's Kindle.  It will be coming out very soon, so watch this space.

In the meantime, maybe I should buy a Kindle?

Red Cross

So I went to a Swiss doctor for the first time yesterday because I was having another one of those episodes where my body falls apart as it's own special way of telling me to stop working on those slides because really, who cares if the font is all the same size and perfectly aligned.

Anyway, the nice Swiss doctor lady huffed and puffed and drew some blood and told me I had a Blut Entzündung.  I nodded and said thank you but obviously I had no idea what that meant so I went home and looked it up, and the only translation I could find was sepsis, but I figure that can't be right because otherwise I'd probably be dead by now.  My guess is she was feeling a bit dramatic when she woke up this morning and decided to spice things up.  Who can blame her, really.  It must be so boring seeing rich Swiss people with the sniffles and telling them that yes, it's just a cold, so once in a while I guess you start feeling a bit Puck-ish and you diagnose them with something ghastly and preferably fatal. 

Must be even more fun when the patient's a sniffling foreigner who's pretending to speak German but really she has no idea what you're talking about.

Ah, yes.  Swiss humour.  Gets me every time.

You say po-tay-to

Picture, if you will, a potato.

It's not a pretty potato.  Not the kind multi-starred chefs would serve up as is, whole, lightly grilled with some olive oil and rosemary.

No.  This potato is the dumpy kind.  Its color is slightly off.  It has sprouty bits in several places.  And instead of being nice and evenly oval, it's got lumps and bumps all over.  It might still be good to eat, perhaps in a mash with a nice pad of butter, but it certainly isn't a looker.

You've got it?  Good.

Now imagine we take this potato, and we run it through the spin cycle.

At this point, you're getting a pretty good sense of what I feel like after my second session of my new personal-trainer-approved fitness regime.

Apparently, it's meant to give me some muscles and make me look thinner.  A lofty goal, certainly, and one I could get really behind if only I could still walk.  Or stand.  Or tie my shoelaces.