Nada, in Portuguese (and Spanish) means nothing.

Conversation after I had eaten a hamburger and had a beer at the boteqim sitting in the sun:

Me: “I’ve been doing nothing all morning.”

Raimundo Looking up from his crossword): “And this afternoon?”

Me: “I’m going to do nothing again.”

Raimundo: “Need any help?”

Calvin & Hobbes on the issue

Yes, well that has been the highlight of the day. My student rang and canceled my only class for the day. So my weekend started at 11:30am, Thursday.

So, I went to the supermarket. Shopping is such good therapy. Got home and made two hamburgers (I had to use the meat), the second I ate at the bar.

The other exciting aspect of the day was to fit a new rubber on my walking stick. So now I don’t go:step, toc, step toc…

The “toc” has become a muted “thud” again. Much more dignified.

As you get older, it’s the small things that make you happy. You begin to wonder why you’ve wasted a greater part of your life worrying about this and that, when you could have been worrying about nothing.

I have actually been blogging, not quite as industrially as I could have, but I got a few bits and pieces done.

I had a niggle about Gisele Bundchen, Brazil’s supermodel, being NOT sexy and far too scrawny for my liking. I like my women to have a bit of meat on them, you know, built for comfort not speed. But you can read about that on Shit Happens. And I had a grizzle before that on the Saudi king canceling the lashes of the woman convicted on driving. I have been threatening all day to write a post on Fizz, but so far have only got the post tab open and googled an image or two.

I wrote a bit of personal yesterday for the post on Eco-Crap, but it really belongs here as it is a bit historic, so:

“My first bike – 1951 Matchless G3LS

I got my license to drive at 15 (Yes, it was legal when I was a boy) and I rolled Dad’s car beyond recognition at 16. So yes, I support better driver training.

Until I was 41 I drove everywhere. I always had a car. My cars, after motorcycles, ranged from moderate types in the early years, a thumping great noisy gas guzzling V8 before I got married to sedate family saloon types as a responsible father. I have always driven, I did it for jobs, I did it for pleasure. I drove cars, trucks, taxis, fire engines (that was fun), army tanks, bulldozers, buses, Land Rovers (off road, more fun; boys just love mud). I could pull a reconditioned V8 motor out and have it fully reconditioned and back on the road within a week, that’s better than some mechanics can do (you’d know if you ever had to have it done).

So for 26 years a greater part my life revolved around vehicles of one sort or another.

Then my life changed. The week that I turned 41 I found myself in Rio de Janeiro en route to Europe. My first destination was Madrid… I never got there. The reasons are for another story on another blog another time. (This blog actually)

For the first time in my life, I didn’t have a car. I was initially a tourist. From then on it was buses and taxis. In New Zealand I would never have considered a bus, the city services had deteriorated in frequency to way beyond pathetic. But, I found myself in a city where buses ruled, they may have been driven by retired Japanese kamikaze pilots (you have to do it to understand), but they went everywhere. If I wanted to go to Copacabana from Catete (where I stayed initially) there was a choice of buses and routes every few minutes. They were cheap, no parking, no gas to buy, etc. I discovered another world – public transport.”

There, cut and paste, that saved a lot of writing, even makes it look as though I have been busy.

One of the intentions of this blog is to have (rewrite) snippets from my life, past and present, not that there’s a lot of future left, going downhill.

Beer o’clock.

Later.