Needing a routine

Wonder what was going through her mind...







Today, oh what a day it was! I was blue and needed a serious shake. I think today I reached rock bottom with this China and Angola story and as a consequence, I realized I so need a routine. My old one is no longer operable, so I need to impose myself a new one. Things need to happen or else I'll drawn.

This is funny... when we are in a routine we very often say "oh my routine is so boring, I need to break it, I need a change." Now, here I am, begging for one... funny life! LOL!

So, I remembered something I used to do with my daughter Alice. She inherited a certain gene from her father, my 1st husband who has already passed away. He had many great attributes, but one thing I don't miss is his bad mood in the morning. To my despair, when I least expected, I saw Alice acting the same, e.i. being in a bad mood in the morning. I then thought to myself: "ok, your father I met as a grown up man, but you my darling Baby, you came out of me and bad mood in the morning is not going to happen." As a way to help her to get rid of this DNA detail, I used to take her to the bathroom, opened the toilet, made sure she "scrubbed off" all the bad mood into the toilet and saw it being flushed away.

So, in an analogy to what I used to do 2 decades ago, I took a long shower, rubbed my entire body with body scrub, washed my hair with a head massage, dried myself, got dressed and went out. As a scrapbooker that I am, I went out to do what I like most: take photographs! Joel is not in town, so decided to take Carlota with me to Stanley, this lovely area by the sea in HK . The afternoon was beautiful, people were happily enjoying life in Stanley and so were the two of us.

Hope you enjoy the pictures of Stanley.

Back at home with Carlota

Back home safe and sound. Amen! Got into cold HK this morning to find Alpha, our helper, and Carlota doing well. This time I did not fuss around with Carlota the minute I walked into the flat to avoid the scare Joel and I had when we arrived back from Rio last time.

In case you are not really aware who Carlota is, I'll tell you. Although you may think from photographs that she is a boxer dog, in reality, for my eyes only, she is my third child. It's like she is a "human dog", LOL, and I salute her for that.

She is a 11 year old puppy and has been with us since she was 6 weeks old. We got her in Jo'burg and she has been a fantastic, full on, very participative member of our lives. When we were to move from Jo'burg to HK, Joel got 4 quotes for our move. Three were on moving companies and one was on "travel-pet" type of service. P., Joel's boss at the time, tried to raise his eyes from his desk as he was looking into the quotes and ask Joel if the dogs (at the time, we had Siggy too), should really come to HK. Joel, in his traditional calm "trader" mode's voice, saw what was coming and interrupted his boss right at the beginning of his sentence and said: "P. I did try to talk the 3 girls into not taking them and I was instantly fried" to what his boss replied "ok then, we'll take the dogs to HK". Amen to P.'s understanding.

But anyway, when Joel and I arrived back from Rio, Carlota really scared us to death (I think I lost about 5 kg on her account and gained some good half dozen gray hairs in that instant). This is what happened: we called our helper from the airport train to let her know we were about to get home. This is understood between Alpha and I as: "please take Carlota out now for a pee, so that she doesn't pee on us nor on the floor as she demonstrates her happiness with our arrival.

We got to HK station and got a taxi up the hill, got into our lobby, into the elevator, pressed 14, got to our door and on purpose, I rang the door bell rather than using our own key. Carlota, as expected, started barking, I barked back at her, called her name, she barked a bit more and all was very festive. She barking from inside, me barking from outside and Joel, kindly unloading the lift, "so happy" with all the noise!! Then, the helper opened the door and the real festive reception started. She jumped at Joel and I, we played back at her, we called her name, saying how much we had missed her, she didn't pee, we started rolling in the luggage and as I turned towards Carlota for some more cuddling... she looked at me and totally collapsed!

There she was, completely collapsed on the floor, still breathing, with her eyes half opened and half closed... we both caressing and calling her and absolutely no response. I started saying, with my stupid baby's voice, that I was going to get her toys... no response... then I said I was going to get her biscuits (which is her total passion) and no response.... how awful! You know how thoughts go fast, so all I could think was; "I am glad she waited for us to arrive back and then die and I am glad she is dieing like she really was, a happy puppy, but please Carlota, not now, I am not prepared yet.... " then I said "Joel, she is dieing"... and Joel replies.... "call the vet and at the same time, let's keep on calling for her."

So, to make this huge story shorter; this dog is, thanks be to our good God, still here with us, still a happy senior lady and what she had was diagnosed as a faint due to lack of oxygen given so much happiness to seeing us. Can you believe it??

This time, I did not ring the bell, did not call for her, but she jumped and did her usual thing. She almost collapsed again, but this time she just froze on her 4 legs for 1 or 1.5 minutes and then back to her usual self. Oh honestly, how I love this dog!

Going back home

So, here I am back in Jo'burg on my way to HK. The one daily flight from Luanda to Jo'burg gets in later then flight to HK leaves, so I had to stay over a night here, which was great, because I could meet 2 families from our days here for dinner. Great chat and life up dates.

Joel stayed behind in Angola for some more business.

Ok, so what to say about all this trip? Don't know yet! Yesterday, Sunday, we had lunch with a Brazilian couple, friends of friends and it was very good, because not only they are fun to be with, as they were able to give us trillion tips about living in Luanda.

Visiting Luanda brought to my head an endless sequence of thoughts, reactions and sensations, which will be slowly digested by me. Funny, although I love photographs and did take a camera to this trip, I was so overwhelmed that am going back home with very few pictures taken. I ended up only shooting pics of the nice parts of Luanda and thought better not to register the not so nice scenes. Angola is on the right path, it will be a great and organized place to live in a decade or a bit more. They want the change and it will happen, they are all exhausted of this war thing. They are slowly but surely getting there.... God bless them and help the business men involved in bringing Angola back to life.

Flashes of us in Luanda

So, it’s now been quite a few days in Luanda and I think I am now able to, may be, perhaps, who knows have overcome the initial shock. Not so sure if the shock was a result of us living in a bubble in HK or if I have been spoiled by life, or if because I had never visited a recent post war Country or if all the above.
The Angolans are very very kind and smiley, the food is great, the products offered at supermarkets are wonderful and of course, they honour women. Housing is almost nonexistent, therefore a huge problem. Traffic is chaotic. Poverty and wealth (serious money going around here) live totally side by side, you rarely distinguish who is who, which is good, I think. It’s interesting to think that in Angola, personal credit is basically non-existent, i.e., everything you see was paid in cash, I mean everything, from a toothpick to a car or a property. Can you imagine buying a car in cash? Everybody walks up and down with loads of money in their pockets and safety doesn’t seem to be a problem. During the night, the city is pretty, specially looking from “Ilha do Cabo” onto Luanda. Some buildings, from the colonial days, survived the war and add quite a touch to the city center.
Today, Joel and I were quite adventurous. He borrowed one of the Company’s car and off we went, from the North part of town where we are staying, “Cacuaco”, all the way to downtown (20 km, +/- 16 mi each way). Had lunch, drove around some neighborhoods and came back to the hotel. Phew, what a fun adventure that was…, not so sure what the Luanda population thought of it though, LOL!

arriving in Luanda

So, here we are in Luanda... after a good and quick flight, the pilot announces our landing in Luanda. Needless to say that my heart was beating as fast as it had ever done. After all I was landing in a city that could become my home sweet home for a while. I was prepared for serious roughness, I was aware the Country was just out of a 30 year civil war, so I knew not to expect much at all, which has been of enourmous help, I must add!

Anyway, going back to our landing.... the plane landed on the tarmac, where there are no fingers. It's all done my smiling bus drivers, who take you to the main building of the airport. As you enter this building, you find quite a few people gathered around a counter and some queues. I then understood what was going on. We needed to fill in a form to show the immigration officer. In order to receive this form, you need to show your yellow fever vaccine certificate. So, after we got our 2 forms, we queued up for immigration. Actually, quite stupid of us, not to know that as Brazilians, we belong to a special class of travelers in these formers Portuguese colonies, the native Portuguese speaking people have a special line but instead, we lined up with many more people and therefore took much longer.

Anyway, as we both approached the immigration officer, we handed him both our passports and the 2 forms. He then looks at Joel and asks: "is she your wife?" Joel quickly replies "yes". He then looks at me and says: "you may go". I, of course din't quite understand why I could go, if he hadn't even checked anything in my passport, so I asked: "do you mean I can go through and enter the Country?" And he says, "yes, sure, you may go".

Well, one of the things my mother taught me was never to discuss or get into a serious argument with an immigration officer, because they hold all the power of our happiness in that Country, so, I quickly passed... looked back and blinked at Joel and kind of tried to wait for him, to make sure it was all ok, but didn't quite succeed because it was a no waiting zone. A few minutes later, Joel comes in, all smiley, as if nothing had happened. Glad to see him again.

However, what most made feel so comfy, were Joel's words, as he told me what the officer had told him as soon as I left the counter: "we have to honour the women, they are like our mothers, after all, we are in this world because they gave birth to us, right?" Really cool this Country is, I am already liking it!!

So, we then head to the 1 carousel they have, but much to our concern, there were no trolleys available. The very few ones had already been taken. I asked for more and the lady tells me there were no more... but honestly, why should I care whether or not they have trolleys available... after all, women are so highly honoured here, hey?

At home in Jo'burg

Right now as I write to you (posting will be much later) I am at the International Airport in Johannesburg, waiting for our connecting flight to Luanda, capital of Angola. What a pleasant surprise this was. As some of you may know, we lived right here, I mean not at the airport, but in Johannesburg, AKA as Jo’burg, almost 9 years ago and for different reasons, I only came back a few months after the family had left and never again. I was a bit apprehensive as I wondered what this moment would be like, becaue revivals can be quite awkward and I have a bucket full of stories from this place, starting with the arrival of my very dearest Carlota and Siggy. They are both from Jo’burg. In case you don’t know, Siggy was our delicious golden retriever, who came to us with the very specific mission of calming Carlota down. Obviously, he could be named nothing but, “Sigmund Freud”, thus “Siggy”. He very sadly died a few years ago from a liver disfunction.
Anyway, going back to being back in Jo’burg’s… I am loving it! “News Café” is here and so are “Cape Union Mart” and “CNA”. Yes, yes, absolutely yes, “Out of Africa” too and it has grown much bigger and their products are amazingly tempting… gee, why are we only allowed a certain amount of kilos in the plane… how I would like to take home a dinner set made by Limpopo Ceramics!! So out of Africa, roughness with style. I am loving being here! I think what most made me feel at home was the accent… wow, this accent is now just as familiar to my ears as it was in the past.
You know, in this gypsy style of life, arriving somewhere that is not your home and feeling so at home is a blessing. It makes life so much easier! This thing of comfortably slipping into the "feeling at home" mode in different places, reminded me of Alice, my older daughter, who went to Kenya this past December with her husband, David. I was on the phone with her, asking how things were going and she said ”well mom, in the first couple of days it was a bit different, it wasn’t feeling like I belonged here, so I decided to go to my old hairdresser here in Nairobi and after that, life was good!" I loved it!!

Hello everyone and welcome to the

Bragas's Snapshots & Flashes

My good friend Josie, started seeding the idea of me having a blog late last year. In December, Joel, my Darling husband and I went to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, (my home town), to spend Christmas and New Year with family and friends. As the trip from Hong Kong (where we live) to Rio takes forever, something like 34 hours when nothing goes wrong, I had loads of time to think about it. When we got back, Josie asked my thoughts about it and voila, thanks be to her, who set up this gorgeous blog for me, you can now, whenever you wish and time allows, be up dated on our whereabouts.
I hope you enjoy reading it, because I am having fun writing it!