What sort of business is that?

Things have turned a bit surreal with the neighbour upstairs.

Few weeks ago he did lots of “home improvement” or work by the sound of it! Since then we have not heard the “printing press noise”. What we hear now is from  the bathroom: constant water running down a big fat toilet pipe coming from the upstairs’ flat, and running through our en-suite bathroom (Brazilian plumbing!!!!) . Sometimes it stops but most of the time the water is running pretty much all the time.

So there it is, the guy upstairs is not printing false money anymore (or whatever his dodgy business was!) he has changed his business model!

I mentioned it to my friend Nayla (one of my neighbour) and she reported back to me after the “condominio” meeting.

Apparently there is a massive increase in the water bill. It went up from 5,000 reais monthly to over 9,000 and climbing! Nayla mentioned at the meeting about the water running nonstop. Now we do not have individual water metres so the bill is shared by all.

I could have predicted what would happen next.

First the lady in charge of the “condominio” put a notice about this but no one reported a leak. Then they decided to inspect the 2 flats above mine. Obviously dodgy neighbour refused to let anyone in. After putting pressure from the owner of the building he agreed. By then the water running stopped. After checking his flat the building’s taff said the noise I heard was from a washing machine. Yeah right! 24h, 7 day a week nonstop full blast water running!

And predictably as well, soon after the flat inspection, the water running noise started again.

Now I ask the question: what sort of business uses so much water?  I am wondering if it could be related to drugs. After all, now that the local favela Rocinha has been cleaned and local super villain Nem recently put in jail (he got caught fleeing Rocinha hiding in the boot of an Angolan diplomatic car – you could not make it up!!) there must be a gap in the market for supply of drugs!?

I vaguely remember a documentary  about the Amazon forest and the cocaine production. Did it use lots of water? Anyone specialised in Cocaine production please kindly let me know. We could be onto something here J.

I am afraid I am rather ignorant of that stuff! I am old school, my only drug is booze!

On another totally unrelated subject I am pleased to report that Alistair bought a V-Strom! (That’s a bike for those not on the know!).

 

For me, we went to BMW dealer in Barra yesterday , and stuffed our face with free cakes, sandwiches and coffee (hehehhe!!) , but came out empty handed. I had my eyes on the G650GS because they offer a very low seat for vertically challenged people like me! Bad news is that despite what it says in the Brazil website, BMW do not offer that choice in Brazil and when I sat on the bike it was too high for me. Can’t be bothered to lower it. So BMW is out!

I will make my way to the local Honda dealer and I think I will get the much cheaper and smaller CB300 with a full tank of 18.4l! Cool baby!

 

Now I just need to get my container (still detained by custom) and get my riding gear so we can actually pick up our bikes!

Soon we will start our road adventures!  The Franglais-riders are back J! Well almost, depend on Custom! L