[brazil, week 7] I love brazilian coffee + reading again
I love brazilian coffee
Seriously. It is so nice.
At conservatory they provide us with free coffee. A new batch is brewed at 9, 13, and 17. It's the cheap Brazilian coffee, Café Melitta, and it's far from good for Brazilian standards. But for a Norwegian? I'm in heaven.
The cheapest, shittiest coffee I could get at Norwegian supermarkets, be it in beans or pre-ground, costs more than the one I usually buy here - três corações tradicional - and in comparison, it tastes like feet. It feels good to be 10 000 km away from the nearest Kjeldsberg Filtermalt. It's as if my soul is getting cleansed.
In one of my language classes my teacher asked me what I am the most happy about in my life. My answer was that I can wake up everyday, go to the market or the grocery store, and buy fresh fruit on a whim. No economic concerns about it and the fruit is freely available without ever needing to fear for my own or someone elses safety on the way to and from the store.
I think I'll append this with (1) being able to buy Brazilian coffee and (2) not being able to buy Norwegian coffee.
Ah right, salmonella is a thing
I've always been aware of salmonella. It is a thing in chicken in Norway, which is why I used to be careful with properly preparing it when I regulary ate meat. In a small hit of homesickness (and wanting sugar) I decided to make eggedosis. Luckily, I was on a call with my girlfriend who asked me wtf I thought I was doing only to let me know that pretty much all eggs here have salmonella and need to be heated. So much for eggedosis I guess :')
I'm getting (c)older
I arrived here in the end of febuary. Now we're halfway through april. Some mornings, I can feel that the seasons are changing - especially when I get up before the sun. Earlier this week it was ~15ºC outside. My apartment is not isolated (as is the standard here) meaning it was roughly the same inside, and holy shit was it cold coming out of the shower in the morning. Let's just say I'm happy I can afford warmer clothes for when the winter comes.
The sunrises here are the most beautiful thing in the world
Perhaps waking up at 05h30 for work 2 times a week isn't the worst thing after all...
Enjoying reading again
A few days ago I installed an ereader on my 3ds. While this was first meant to -be a semi-gimmic, done a teeny bit for shits and giggles. I have now within just a few days gone through over 75% of The Lightning Thief, one of my favorite books from childhood, and for the first time in 2026 completely lost track of time because I was reading. On a 3ds.
It's not all good of course. The screen is too bright in low-light areas and too weak in high-light areas. Reading outside with sunglasses isn't exactly easy. The battery is also laughably weak compared to ereader that last a literal weak. There's also no access to library apps such as Libby and getting a book locally on the 3ds is hard. But like- realistically, this really doesn't matter. You can just put the SD card into your PC to transfer .epub files, or even just use FTP. And it's not like Anna can't help you.
Getting back into reading was definitely helped by getting to read something a little lighter, something more enjoyable and not something heavy. If you want to read (or to fit todays narrative and seeling points more, if you want to read instead of scroll) you most likely don't want to start with The Age of Surveillance Capitalism or with War and Peace. Read something fun, something that you will enjoy.
I briefly touched upon this in this post. I might write a slightly longer post about this in the future.