Feliz Ano Novo!

I hope you had a fantastic New Year ’s Eve and a good start of the year. Here in São Paulo things didn’t work out perfectly. I’d had to abandon plans of spending 31^st December on the beach because the prices were exorbitant and I would have been left penniless, or centiless... Plan B meant going to Avenida Paulista (the city’s main street) and rubbing shoulders with thousands of live music lovers, paying 4 times worth for a can of beer and then hunting for a taxi. As it had been pouring down with rain since afternoon, this imperfect plan also had to be abandoned in favour of a romantic evening at home, with a bottle of bubbly and a guitar. At the last minute, not literally, but very much in Brazilian style, a friend invited the two of us to join his family and so...we ended up in the middle of a marital crisis wondering whether getting soaked in the street would have been a better option. Ironically enough, we came to try that too when, on New Year’s Day, we got caught up in a heavy shower on the way to a family lunch and arrived dripping, in desperate need of a dry T-shirt and a hot meal. So, as you can see, not everything is like in a dream, but things can only get better after this, can’t they? Happy New Year to all of you.