At last the irritating hold ups of the last week of the old year holidays are over and people who are retired can get back to getting on with supervising those lucky folk who do have jobs.
I fear in my retirement I might be getting a little teeny weeny bit impatient with things like holidays and weekends when working mortals get time off the same as I get every day. Weekends are a perfect nuisance especially in Latin America where shops close on Sundays and families gather and the important business of looking after my needs are forgotten for a day and a half.
My humor doesn’t always make itself obvious to the pedants who lurk in our midst so I’m hoping my rant has by now scared them off. On a more serious note we are 15 degrees south latitude so December 21st was the longest day and we are now starting summer vacation time down here.
This is the best, nay the only time of year in my opinion to be exploring Patagonia where winters are long and bleak and cold and roads are difficult to drive. And here we are in Brasilia.
Which is not all bad as the weather is mostly mild and pleasant, warm days when it’s not raining and coolish nights when the breezes blow off Lake Paranoá.
There have been more people in the complex which is apparently an upper middle class center of second homes for Brasilia’s wealthy. For a thousand bucks a month we are nestled in luxury. Not bad eh?
Layne goes to the gym most days because she likes that and meets twice a week with an English speaking trainer who charges ten bucks an hour to supervise her program.
We were talking about life in the Lakeside apartment complex and I am forced to the conclusion people are just much nicer here. There isn’t any of the stereotypically annoying behavior of denizens in Homeowner Associations in the US; perhaps because we don’t notice friction as we are temporary and tongue tied outsiders,
Layne has remarked she never thought she could live in a compound like this until we landed here by chance. We are both looking forward to being back in the van on the road but for a long term stationary solution we are no longer ruling out the ease and convenience and neighborliness of a Latin American condo complex.
I like Chile. One day maybe.
2 comments:
Michael, I am thoroughly engulfed in grappling out of mid-life every day, to the next phase in the US, working 60 miles from Washington, DC. We used to vacation in Key West for the sailboat regatta in mid-January (much to your distaste I am sure as a dispatcher, but I was never near the police office)!! It always took me some time to 'adjust' to a new environment and we would finally settle in about day 5 of our 8 day stay in Key West, and boom, time to go back to the cold (and the real world). I know you've been there for a while now, do you ever feel like there is another place you would like to be, given the current situation? This is a curiousity question..you have a means to get out once the van is fixed, but the current condo situation is not terrible either. I am guessing you are eager to get on the road. Glad you are finding competent professionals for the panels, HVAC, etc. Thank you for sharing...some of us (not retired yet) are enjoying the adventure more than you know!!
Curious to know what market price is for buying in the area?
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