Looking for Time (And Ending Up at the Beach)

It’s always the same story. I don’t have anything planned, everything is under control, then suddenly I’m rushing around trying to get everything done and somehow it’s late, I should be sleeping by now the day is over, a new one is about to start, cue in Nordeste’s early sunrise and sunsets.

I swear I don’t have time management issues—or if I do, it’s not due to procrastination, lack of motivation, failure to delegate or whatever slide 22 of the “Suggestions for time management challenges” suggests.

My problem is that a day is only 24-hour long and apparently, a few of these hours should be spent sleeping, just my luck.

At this stage, you may be wondering what the hell I’m doing all day long considering I’m not supervising a kid and I don’t seem to be working.

Well, actually… I’m still a mum, even if I’m not working upstairs while Mark is playing downstairs, and I am working, same workload as at home with the usual ebbs and flows cycles.

Plus, I’m trying to “survive” in Brazil while finding meaning in life, brainstorming projects, and all this stuff I should have figured out long ago, or do we ever…

Trust me, days are way too short. I’m this close to making a formal complaint.

Rule number one, everything takes time, occasionally forever. I’m not saying Brazilians are slow or inefficient–in fact, everything runs fairly smoothly, this is not Central America (sorry, guys!) where it’s dinner time when the breakfast you ordered shows up and where a 50-kilometre bus trip takes a good ten hours if you’re lucky and the bus doesn’t break down in the middle of the jungle.

But getting from point A to point B in unfamiliar cities takes time, so does going grocery shopping in foreign supermarket full of foreign brands and foods. Every state has different supermarket chains, different foods and—God forbids—different names for food. Trust me, I never get the chance to go straight to the dairy or pasta aisle.

Travelling takes time to–deciding where to go, when to go, looking for accommodation, transportation, etc. I can spend hours analyzing maps and possible options. Don’t even get me started on plane tickets… so many options, so many prices, so many weird 2 a.m. flights arriving 17 hours later and going through three different cities for absolutely not reason! On the plus side, buying bus tickets online is quick and easy. Phew. I’ll take the bus, then.

Booking through Airbnb is convenient and so is staying in condos because you get access to a kitchen and many essentials, but it does require additional steps compared to booking a hotel room, like contacting the host to figure out the check-in process.

Brazilians love WhatsApp. Need to schedule something? Whatsapp. Need more info? Whatsapp. Need to save the world? Whatsapp. I finally switched my keyboard to Portuguese because damn autocorrect was turning my (possibly broken) Portuguese into Spanish. Still, typing in Portuguese isn’t instinctive to me—sorry, I can’t keep up with so many text and voice messages, I can’t use my phone while crossing the street, I’m not Brazilian enough for that.

My daily chat with Feng and Mark take time too. I’m still a mum and partner, I care about what’s going on at home. I help with homework, I celebrate Chinese New Year, I ask for advice and give some, and then I can’t exactly stop Mark when he’s reading Harry Potter to me (a few chapters every night).

Cooking takes time. Cleaning—two showers a day, plus laundry… mix of pandemic times and hot weather—takes time.

My work is unpredictable by nature but it comes with tight deadlines so some days I’m swamped because of last-minute assignments.

I always reply quickly to messages from a handful of people—Feng, my mum, siblings, a few close friends—to make sure they don’t worry about me.

Some days, everything takes more time than usual. You stop by the gas station to grab a drink and the customer in front of you is trying to pay with Pix, Brazil’s instant payment platform that doesn’t always work, apparently. Or supermarket cashiers don’t have change and it takes twenty minutes to locate the person who has all the five-reais banknotes. Buses are late, traffic is slow, the bakery ran out of bread and other small issues eating away minutes of the day.

And sometimes you get sidetracked, like right now–I should be sleeping but I’m typing this because… I don’t know, probably because I felt rushed all day. I get sidetracked a lot. I call my mum and end up proofing her resume, I end up in places I didn’t suspect existed, I chat with friendly strangers instead of getting things done, and I explore a world that never ceases to amaze me instead of investing in real estate and working more to make more money and all.

And this is why I haven’t replied to you yet. I will. I just need… time.

The only place where time is irrelevant is at the beach.

I’m “losing” time there, but it’s worth it.

These are the last beaches I explored along João Pessoa’s southern coast.