What happened to our visas??????????????

Well that’s what we keep wondering!

We were supposed to go back to the UK on the 26^th of October to pick up our visas but… someone along the line f**cked up seriously and for what we understand the visas application had to be cancelled and redone.  With friends like these….  Well colleagues really, people who should be able to do  their jobs but seem incapable of such a thing, once again!

So we delayed, and re-delayed our flights booking. We were supposed to leave on the 15^th of Nov. but then again we had to cancel that. We did a provisional booking for 1^st of Dec. although there is no guarantee that the visas will be ready by then. But in another hand, flights between Rio and Europe are so full that you have to book well in advance!

It will be a year by the time we get our container! I don’t expect it to arrive before March /April.. so yes a year for Alistair as he arrived here on the 5^th of April.

Talking of container, our friend Adriano who is Brazilian and, after 10 years in the US relocated to Rio, finally got his released by Custom, after a looong time!

Now here is the funny thing about importing appliances from overseas.

If you import from Europe the 1^st hurdle will be that in Europe it’s 220V/ 50Htz while in Brazil it is 110V/60Htz.

Don’t gloat if you are North American. You may get the voltage right but there is still another issue that just happened to Adriano.

Well you see, unless you have a big fat expat deal that pay zillions for your accommodation, the chances are, (even like that!) that you end up in a small flat. Kitchens here are tiny. Adriano finally got his appliances but could not get them in his kitchen. He had to demolish a wall to get them in….

Of course the alternative is to buy Brazilian electronics…hmm…

Then you have to find furniture, and hey! Flat packed furniture is cheaper…  Well I can confidently assure you: It ain’t Ikea!!!!!

We bought a flat packed Wardrobe from Ponto Frio. It came with 66 bits of woods of various sizes and HUNDREDS of nails, screws, bits and pieces including glue…. It took a full Sunday and a bank holiday afternoon for Alistair to do it! And we were still left with unidentified bits of wood! ????

The pleasure of that is, you must love jigsaws! You see, the pieces of woods had numbers in the instructions, but none was printed in the individual pieces. Nice game of guessing what is what.  J