Shani & Jay

About the couple…

Jay was born and raised in Brazil. At the age of 18 he decided to embark on a journey across the globe. He moved to Australia where he fell in love with surfing and with the ocean. He learnt the meaning of hard work during his many odd jobs like strawberry picking and working on fishing boats. His journey then took him to Ireland where he worked as a barista (an important skill for a happy marriage) and surfed the coast of Sligo, the Land of Hearts' Desire as Yeats put it. It was here that Jay realised that he had both a talent and a passion for software development, which led him to move to Portugal to study Computer Science.

Shani was born in South Africa and grew up in different South African cities, and even spent 2 years in Lisbon between the ages of 1 and 3. At the age of 23 she decided that it was time to move back to Europe. She moved to the Netherlands and spent 2 years exploring the Dutch countryside with her bicycle, learning new skills like rock climbing, teaching yoga, and balancing all kinds of objects on a bicycle. More importantly, she also discovered a love for programming and a yearning for warmer weather and surf. Such was this discovery that she decided to quit her job and move to Portugal to start a master’s in Computer Science.

In the sunny, salty air of the Algarve, the odds of Jay and Shani crossing paths seemed slimmer than a surfboard's edge. Jay, a Brazilian adventurer-turned-coder, and Shani, a South African yogi-turned-programmer, were like two puzzle pieces from different boxes, randomly tumbling through the sandbox of life. Yet, in a stroke of pure randomness or cosmic comedy, their orbits aligned in that sandy stretch of coastline. Maybe it was a rogue wave or a seagull's sneeze that nudged them together, but one thing's for sure… Their journey is only just beginning.