We Bought The Farm

Sabbatical Reading

I've had a bit of difficulty this week shifting gears. The first week of my "sabbatical" is still consumed with its novelty value. That is, I'm still more on vacation than really off of work. Which is okay - this is the week of paid vacation, after all. Starting next week, it's a different reality. Maybe.

Still, if I'm not really unwinding, I am at least spending more time reading than I'm accustomed to. And as a result, I've put a few more notches on the nightstand. Well, so to speak.

I finished reading Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. This took me longer to read than I expected - it was slow going, but valuable. At times it was like biology class all over again, and then she would just drop in profundities of creation and the great miracle of life. The spendthrift creator. Seeing things when you slow down to look for them.

After that I read CS Lewis's Mere Christianity. I found it dated. Interesting at times, but not the "timeless classic" I was expecting. I enjoyed his wordcraft, but still didn't find his exposition really talking to me. Early on, I was wondering how this would have gone down on the radio. Where were the natural breaks?

And then Ray Brooks's Blowing Zen. A successful young man loses his way...life becomes shallow and meaningless. After a long search, he finds a focal point in the shakuhachi "zen flute" while living and working in Japan. It's an enjoyable read for his portrait of ex-pat life in Japan - he captures what it's like without tripping over into rampant stereotype. For the most part, he steers clear of the outwardly zen side of things, but gives a good account of what's involved in grabbing hold of something passionately and giving it your all.

Now I'm reading David Whyte's Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity. I think of this as my first real sabbatical read, since one of my goals is to take a look at what I've done and where I'm going with my career at its "midpoint". I'm more than halfway through the book and, well, I'm not sure I'm getting much out of it. I'll report back.

What did we expect?

Three short articles in the Guardian this morning dealing with the fallout of Britain's spectacular house price inflation.

First, the impact that this is having on farm prices. Not surprisingly, people who have made a packet on their city properties are downshifting into the country, where you can still get relatively good value. Good value for the urbanites, but not necessarily for the farmers.

According to the article, farm land has now risen to an average price of £8,630 per hectare (I make that $6342 per acre). That's a lot, compared with US values (this slightly out-of-date table shows US lower-48 land at an average of $1130 per acre).

What's troubling there is the difficulty in making a living when you pay that much money for land.

What's positive there, from my perspective, is that the £8630 figure does not apply uniformly - a lot of that is skewed by speculators closer in to the cities who reckon on developing farmland.

Still, a steep slope to climb if you, like me, contemplate making a shift to the countryside in the near future.

Second, an article about how home prices are forcing rentals to rise as a percentage of total households. Again, how could this be a surprise, with the average home price rising well beyond the reach of a first-time buyer.

This works in the UK because purchase prices and rental prices seemingly bear little relation to one another. The rules of thumb I brought with me from the US don't apply here - the 1% rule (rent = 1/100 of purchase price) or the 8-9% rule (rent should be set to give the landlord a gross return of 8-9% on the asset value of his home). In the UK, these gross returns are maybe closer to 5%, and the 1% rule is more like a 0.5% rule. So, it's still affordable to rent relative to purchase.

While this makes little sense to me, some point to the increase in renters as a sign that more and more people are steering clear of the housing market for fear of a coming collapse in prices. Better to sit on the sidelines and forego the possibility of further price increases than to risk everything buying at the top of the market.

Which brings us to our third article, a call by economists for interest rates to rise another 0.5%. Not again! This is getting ridiculous. The argument goes something like this: the UK economy is on track for its inflation targets, if you neutralise the impact of housing price rises. UK wages aren't rising strongly. The economy is robust. It's just that UK homeowners are paying too much for housing.

But doesn't this slow down the entire economy just to put a brake on house prices? And aren't home prices driven by supply and demand, as well as cheap money? And isn't this really hitting the voter where it counts? Admittedly, the Bank of England is now independent from the government, so impact on the voter shouldn't really matter. But this rise would put my mortgage up by nearly £200 per month in the past year, straight out of the cash economy and into interest payments. Eventually, rents are going to rise as well. More and more money into the housing sector; into interest payments. Less flowing into the consumer economy.

Together, these articles raise my hackles a bit. Like the bolts are sliding on the exits and we're all getting ready for a burst-bubble rollercoaster ride.

Brazil in London

We've been back in England for three weeks now, and I finally made my first trip up to "central" London. Yesterday's journey was in search of things Brazilian in London.

I had a good starting point in Leros magazine, dedicated to all things Brazilian in England. I knew about Leros from before our move, as it was how I found our first Portuguese teacher. A quick look at the Leros classifieds pointed me to a number of shops and restaurants that offer at least a taste of Brazil.

I first visited the Mercearia Brasil at Kensal Green. A small shop kitted out exclusively in Brazilian goods - not your typical ethnic grocery with lots of mainstream stuff. I bought some palmito, some pão de queijo and some guaraná - all favourites of my daughter. Needless to say, the prices here are higher - much higher - than they are in Brazil.

After that, I went down to Tottenham Court Road to Brazil by Kilo restaurant. They have a small selection of Brazilian products for sale, a cafe on the ground floor and upstairs a "kilo" restaurant.

And then over to Cafe Brazil, a Brazilian pizzeria in Fulham Broadway. We had some drinks and snacks. Lesley had her first caipirinha since Rio.

Leros gave me a pretty good start on things. Since then, I've found a few other points of call:

• São Paulo Imports

• BrasiLONDON

• Brazil.net magazine.
  

Looks like we won't be wanting for those Brazilian delicacies.

100-day weekend

Today marks my last day at work until November. Well, technically, I could be called up in the interim, but barring that, I’ve just started a 3-month sabbatical, and am leading into it with a week’s vacation.

Foregoing three months’ pay was a bit of a tough decision. But we’ve just spent two years in Brazil, so the reserves are solid, and being between assignments, it struck me as a good opportunity to spend the summer at home, working on the garden and the house, visiting with family and also having a bit of vacances en famille.

This should make me a better blogger. I've really struggled, between work and family commitments, to keep up my blog presence. I can date this back almost precisely to the arrival of my daughter, our moving to our new home and my starting my new job in late 2001. Moving to Brazil didn't help either. I've got copies of my old journal going back to late 1999 (with some gaps due to lost material) but one of these days I'll have the full archive up and on-line.

What's this?

Why, this...

Nightcap

In keeping with the frugality programme, I made a resolution to work my way through our collection of exotic liquors and liqueurs with the aim of reducing cash output on alcohol and reducing the storage space required from those “typical products of the region” that have wound up cluttering our dining room shelves.

Here’s an idea of what’s to come: Krupnik (Poland), Ouzo (Greece), Metaxa brandy (Greece), Sambuca (Italy), Strega (Italy), Vin Santo (Italy), Limoncello (Italy), Genever (Belgium), Gammel Dansk (Denmark), Supercassis (France)…

And there’s more. Lots more. Whiskies, rums, brandies, cachaças, some stuff you’ve heard of (Drambuie, Frangelico) and some you probably haven’t.

Like last night’s trauktine, from Lithuania. Lesley brought home a sampler of Lithuanian drinks during her brief visit in 2001. Last night I had 50ml of Malunininku trauktine. It’s a bitter, and at 50% alcohol it was an effective nightcap. Taste? Bitter. Herby. You don’t gulp this one down.

The other 18%?

Now that we’re back in the UK, land of choice and overstocked supermarkets), I’ve been leaning on my wife to be a bit more aware of what she’s buying. We had our first “awakening” the other day.

In the fridge:

Lunch meat. Sounds innocent enough. Ingredients?

Hold on. This is ham. 82% pork? First red flag. That should have left it on the supermarket shelf.

But wait. It gets worse. What else could there be in there? You really don’t want to go here.

Water (9%). Salt. Honey (1%).

Oops. Forgot to tell you just how much salt, but it's more than a percent, right?

But now, with pork, water and honey we’re only up to 92%, and we know at least 1% is salt, probably more.

The package says that each 100g of this product contains 0.8g sodium ("High"). There are other sources of sodium in this product beyond salt, but if you read here, you find:

1g of salt contains about 0.4g of sodium.

and

The average sodium intake by adults is 3.5 g per day (equivalent to 9 g of salt). The RNI (recommended nutrient intake) for sodium is 1.6 g per day.

So, it could be up to 2% salt.

This is my question: if it's more than 1% salt, how much more? And if it's not much more, how much of all of that other stuff is in there? Between salt and all those other nasties, that's 8% of the total product.

We binned this, BTW. Ick.

Update: I almost forgot, this product proudly boasts a seal of approval!

Presumably that only refers to the fact that it contains British pork (it also boasts Mexican honey!).

Toward Simplicity

One pledge I am making on our return to England is to start to downshift and downsize my life. I want to start making do with less, and doing more with what we already have.

The 50% pay cut is one motivator. Another is the enormous collection of stuff that we’ve accumulated over our lives. We were astonished at the amount of junk that was brought back to our house from storage. And on top of that, there’s something like 75 more boxes to come from Brazil and maybe another ten that my father wants to send over from the US.

Some ideas are to consolidate on books and CDs – to enjoy more of what we already have. If you’ve read me for a while, you know that I buy more than I read. I should start trying to even that balance. And spend more time getting to know the albums we already own.

Beyond reading, I hate getting rid of books – especially ones I’ve paid for - but there are plenty about which I can honestly say, “There, I’ve read it, there’s no point in that taking up shelf space indefinitely.”

There will be other ideas coming into play, too. I’ll write about them under the “Another Way” topic.

What can you say when a love affair is over?

After two years, nearly to the day, it’s time to say goodbye to Brazil. We’re leaving tonight, just ahead of the expiration of our visas tomorrow.

I have complicated emotions about this departure. We’re leaving behind a country I’ve loved and hated with equal measure; a country rich in natural beauty and wonderfully warm people, yet overflowing with poverty, corruption and bureaucracy. A place we’ve lived, but a place we’ve never truly felt was home.

We had the benefit of living in two separate situations: a suburban house in quiet Curitiba (a city of 1.6 million that I’d never heard of before), and right in the thick of things in a penthouse in Rio (beach to one side, Corcovado out the other). We’ve travelled throughout Brazil (although there’s still plenty more to see) and through South America (ditto!).

We’ve stood in lines that make you wonder if it’s a national pastime. We’ve learned to deal stoically with the bureaucracy (I had to notarise 62 separate documents to arrange our departure shipments). We’ve had the press put on us to pay a propina. I’ve come to appreciate the expression “Brazil grows at night,” because it does somehow grow in spite of it all.

We’ve learned the language (pretty well, I might add). We’ve loved the culture – the sport, carnaval and especially the music. We’ve got the best Brazilian souvenir on offer – our little boy, carioca da gema, citizen of Brazil and native of the wonderful city.

We’re returning home to a house as small as our cramped apartment, a city where the cost of living is probably five times as great as it is here, to a pay cut of about 50% by the time you take out all of the bonuses and allowances, not to mention a tenant paying our mortgage.

We had the option of extending another year, and yet we’ve chosen to go.

If that sounds a bit mad, well, you’re not alone in thinking that. I can’t help but thinking I might kick myself for saying this, but at base, the decision came down to opportunity.

Going to Brazil was a great opportunity. I’ve always dreamed of it, and it’s rare to get the kind of opportunity we had – not just to visit, but to live, and not just for one year in the sticks, but to follow on with a year in the heart of it all. It was good financially. It was good for me professionally, too – new to my company, it was a chance to really learn the ropes and make a valuable contribution. On the family front, it allowed Lesley to be a stay-at-home mother and raise our daughter, who was born just before we moved, and then to have our second child and not be worried about making career decisions. It allowed us to immerse our daughter in a culture and language very different to the one she will grow up with in England.

But as time passed, I also started to realise that in taking this kind of opportunity, I was denying myself (and my family) other ones. The chance to be close to our parents (my father has still not met either of our kids), the chance to live in our own home, and then to sell it and move on (we need to live in it for two years before we sell), and the chance, or perhaps better, the freedom, to look at job opportunities (life opportunities?) holistically. I’ve had to look away even from internal positions, knowing that geography and my contract would prohibit me from putting myself forward. And honestly, I found the work frustrating enough at times that I thought it really distasteful to be locked into it for another full year.

So, in the end, we opted not to stay on. We’ll have saudades for Brazil, and maybe someday we’ll return (as parents of a Brazilian child, we have that right). A bittersweet mixture of regret and optimism.

Adeus, Brasil…it really is like the end of a love affair.