Homecoming

Rio de Janeiro, April 2019

Sunday

I'm back, and I hope you noticed how organised I was to arrange for two blog posts to appear while I was away for two weeks? Obviously I'm planning to write about the trip but that will take some time, so here's a quick note just to say that it was a great holiday that went some way to rekindling my enthusiasm for slightly adventurous independent travel.

It was awfully hard work some of the time though, being on my own and having to do everything and remain on my toes keeping an eye out for trouble, and not knowing any Portuguese at all. And the heat, humidity and insects of Brazil do not suit my feeble pasty white skin - despite all my efforts I am a mass of insect bites and I reached the limits of my endurance of humid heat. Everything I have just unpacked from my rucksack is still slightly clammy.

I haven't slept for the best part of 36 hours but I want to keep going until an early bedtime otherwise I'll be awake far too early before work tomorrow. It's a long day with a busy doctor's clinic morning and afternoon so I may not actually survive.

Tuesday

I survived at work yesterday despite the temperature being at the other end of the scale - the heating in our building had broken down on Friday and wasn't yet fixed, and it had been rather a cold weekend. But it was fine, and I even had a mug of tea with caffeine and went to badminton on Monday evening, but really couldn't manage the full two hours. Now I think I've caught up on sleep, although not on all the jobs that are waiting for me after two weeks (two weeks!) away. And I have 24 podcasts to enjoy.

Today (my day off) I started on some of the jobs and managed the most important ones. House insurance. Haircut. Letters and emails. Electrician (not an emergency, just more LTRP). Cooking for the week's meals. Tidying up and cleaning for the Buddhists - I have volunteered to host the meeting for the next few weeks while another introductory course is taking place. Last time there were five of us; I wonder how many this time?

Thursday

There were three, including me. A little disappointing, and I am also ashamed to say that I couldn't remember the name of one of the two visitors and missed to the opportunity to confess at the beginning so had to hope I wouldn't be found out for the rest of the evening. My plan for community activities looks as though it might have to wait until we have actually built a community big enough to be active.

Still trying to catch up with all the admin and emails at work and at home, but I think I'm nearly there. People at work were gratifyingly interested in my adventures, and there had been a few notable events while I was away, one of them concerning the Flash Glucose Monitoring that I wrote about last time. While I was away the CCG relaxed the prescribing criteria and the manufacturer changed its pricing policy, which means that it is just possible that some patients may get their hands on it before too long. Maybe June.

It's also taking an age to sort through all the photos, because modern day travellers share their photos through the miracle of the Internet so I've got more than 350 pictures rather than the paltry few that I took. Then there will be words to write. The four-day Easter weekend may give me the time I need. Until then, I've put just a couple of random shots in this post.