Enviromation

If you haven't already, I'd strongly recommend watching Wasteland, the 2010 documentary about the....wasteland....here in Brasil. It's interesting and inspiring, like me.

Two things I've noticed here about recycling and the environment and all that shizzle:

1) There are loads and loads of people collecting cans from the streets to have them recycled. Every night you can see people milling from one bin to the next with their shopping trolleys in tow. They remind me of Bubbles from The Wire, making use of whatever they can find to their advantage. I like it. And also if they're Bubbles, then that obviously makes me McNulty.

2) If you thought plastic bags were a pain in the arse in the UK, then don't expect to be any less annoyed over here. Supermarkets insist on using two bags for everything. Everything. So when you go the shop to buy some milk and a peanut, you end up with 36 plastic bags when you get home. American Beauty would've been a completely different film here. And it's always impossible to remember to bring your own bags before you go to the shop. Oh well.

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Sobriety

It's been over a month since I was last drunk, or even tipsy!

And this over the Christmas holiday too.

Surely I must have made the Kaliber Book of Records by now?

Drink Coke

I didn't know this about São Paulo. Mighty interesting...

http://www.newdream.org/resources/sao-paolo-ad-ban

I would've thought Mr Burns' team of lawyers would've prevented anything like this being passed in the first place.

And a child is born for our sins

It feels really strange that Christmas has come and gone already. I think it's because it's the first time I've been in a hot country for it; it just doesn't feel like that time of year at all, despite the abundance of Christmas trees and Papai Noels all over the place. I also think it's because it fell on a weekend this year, and people don't get days off in lieu for it. So Hugo didn't get any time off work at all, which was annoying.

We stayed at Hugo's mother's apartment on Friday night (pushing single beds together after dark - I think Jesus spun on the mountain to glare at us, Sauron style), and I got to have my traditional Christmas ham. This pleased me.

On Christmas Day we went over to his Aunty's penthouse apartment by the beach. Quite a place. It had a waterfall jacuzzi on the balcony overlooking the sea, for fuck's sake. Dinner was good, and they bought me some fancy chocolates and stuff, which was cool. It became a little tiring trying to keep up with the conversations after a while though, the languages alternating between Portuguese, English and Farsi. I have a command of none. Twas a good day, though.

This week shall be mostly spent sorting out the apartment and unpacking the piles of boxes that are littering the place. Once it looks respectable enough I'll stick some photos up.

At the weekend we'll be going to Copacabana beach to see the New Years Eve fireworks show. It should be pretty spectacular, from what I've heard. One and a half million people, apparently. That's, like, loads of people. We even had to buy allotted underground tickets for it in advance. We can only travel between 8pm and 9pm, otherwise our tickets won't work. They just won't work, I tells ya.

May God have mercy on us all.

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Christmas Day

mmm....metal

Check out this website for brazilian stainless steel furniture.

http://www.alezzia.com.br/Alezzia/Home

Not stainless for long, then...

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Have a cigarra

I found one of these in the bedroom the other day:

http://www.google.com.br/search?hl=en&client=safari&tbo=d&biw=1024&bih=690&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=cigarra&oq=cigarra&aq=f&aqi=g1g-s1g2g-s6&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=23070l25743l0l26265l13l10l0l0l0l1l321l1691l2-3.3l6l0

They can get pretty noisy at night, playing all those damn instruments.

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Botafogo Beach & Sugarloaf Mountain

Sugarloaf mountain

On Sunday we went back to the mall in Botafogo to get some more bits and pieces for the flat, and we went for more coffee and brownies at the restaurant on the top floor. Check out the view. I likes it.

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Jammin' on a Sunday afternoon

Jeebas and a pistol

We woke up to a blue sky on Saturday morning, so we decided to go up to Corcovado and pay Jeebas a visit.

We took a bus from the apartment to the base of the mountain where you can then take the streetcar or a taxi up to the statue. We opted for the streetcar, the full touristy option. Not before ice creams though. I had a white chocolate Magnum. Hugo had a passion fruit lolly.

The view from the top is completely incredible. I'd seen, and I'm sure everyone has seen, countless photos just like the ones I've put on here but it really is breathtaking to see it in person.

Just to be clear I am still talking about the white chocolate Magnum here. Corcovado is ok too.

It was warm and sunny when we got there, but as has been the case every day over the past week or so, the weather changed entirely in the space of about 5 minutes. It became grey, cloudy and started to completely pish down, with a thunderstorm brooding in the distance. I felt a little sorry for the tourists passing us on the streetcar on our way down. I suspect they would have seen nothing but grey skies by the time they arrived at the summit. Hahahaha.

Later that evening we went to a little square not far from our place on the recommendation of Hugo's colleague Joao. Each weekend it hosts Samba groups and there's always plenty of music and different market stalls during the day. We missed a lot of the music that night, but I suspect we'll be back again soon enough.

On the way home we stopped at a petrol station to get some drinks. Hugo went into the shop and I stood outside waiting. A range rover pulled into the garage and a guy, built like a brick shithouse, and who could easily have been a goon in a Vin Diesel movie, stepped out into the courtyard. He reached back into his car, brought out a FUCKING GUN (a shiny silver glock) and slipped it into the front of his jeans. Then he clocked me staring at him, so I quickly looked away, obviously completely shitting it. He then walked around the courtyard, chatting to and shaking hands with all the staff, who appeared to know him. For some reason he had cling film wrapped tightly around his left upper arm. Fuck knows why. Anyway, Hugo came back out so we left. A coke zero for him, a normal one for me. 500ml.

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Corcovado & Hill-Jeebas

Traffic

I was telling Hugo a few weeks ago about how I was surprised there wasn't a traffic accident within sight every 30 seconds over here, from looking at the craziness of the roads.

Last Wednesday I heard a huge bang outside the apartment, and loads of screaming and shouting. I looked out the window and a couple of people had been hit by a bus coming around the corner just outside our place. It didn't look too pretty. Within a few minutes it was pandemonium outside, hundreds of people running around to see what was happening, lots of shouting and screaming and hands over mouths, and the inevitable honking of scores of cars desperate to get moving on. Eventually the ambulances came and took them away.

We tried to find out later that evening whether anyone had actually died but only came up with news stories describing how the road had had to be closed for 30 minutes. Hmm. So I'm optimistically taking that to mean that everyone was absolutely fine. Lollipops all round for being brave.

That night we flicked the laptop closed and went to bed.

Another BANG, but this time followed by a yelping dog.

Seriously? For fuck's sake.

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Lapa & Kings of Convenience

Scooter

Back in the UK, unemployment is at its highest level in almost 20 years.

Maybe a leaf should be taken out of Rio's book?Unemployment here has fallen this year but I have a feeling it's because businesses employ about 10 people to do a job one person could manage to do!

http://riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/rio-politics/brazils-unemployment-rate-falls/#

I've seen plenty of ridiculous examples in shops over here, of crowds of staff standing around doing absolutely nothing. In tiny tiny shops too. And the amount of people employed to make sure that you don't have to lift a finger to do anything yourself is crazy. Someone to pack your shopping bags, another to carry the shopping to the taxi. The doorman to help with the shopping from the taxi. Then the maid to use the shopping to cook dinner and clean the place afterwards. And everything can be delivered to your door by men on scooters. EVERYTHING. Need some ice? Soup? Dinosaur fossils? Give it 30 minutes and someone will bring it to you.

Don't get me wrong, I am a lazy, lazy man, but this all seems to be a bit over the top.

Now, someone fetch me another mimosa. I will pay you for it.

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4 o'clock Mass and hanging with the cool kids

I think the last time I went to mass was in 2006, and I was becoming a little concerned that hill-Jeebas was getting upset with me, so I went with Hugo to his grandmother's 7 dayaversary mass type thing.

It was pretty much how I remembered it (the same rituals, the same hypnotically plodding rhythm of the prayers, the priest singing along with the terrible organ guy), but with a underlying sense of strangeness. Weird crowd, and lots of waving of arms and spontaneous bursts of applause for no reason. Hearing portuguese being spoken here every day is great; it's a tuneful, melodic and sexy language in it's own right, but fuck me, it sounded dull in that church. "Through him, with him, in him, in the unity of the holy....." SHUT UPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!

After Hugo put me out with the fire extinguisher we left mass and had a disco nap before heading over to one of the cool parts of town, Lapa.

It's home to the Arcos de Lapa, the huge white arches that hold the track for the cable car that runs up the hill to Santa Teresa. The cable cars look pretty cool, but I've no intention of going on them because they always look like they're about to fall off the arches and kill everyone below.

The cars aren't running at the minute anyway because recently one fell off the arches and killed everybody below. Well maybe not everybody. But definitely someone. Or maybe a cat. Enough to put me off, anyhow.

Lapa seems to be full of decent bars and restuarants, arty but not overly wanky, so it looks like it's getting the thumbs up.

We saw the Kings of Covenience at the Circo Voador venue, just beside the arches. It's cool as fuck, a small stage inside a dome with an arc of seating upstairs and standing downstairs. It's kind of like a little festival area, with outdoor bars, food places, and table tennis. Nice. It also seems to be the place where touring US and UK small to mid-sized bands play most often, so methinks I'll be going here a few more times. The crowd were great too, not too noisy during the quieter ones, and they knew all of the words to pretty much all of the tunes. I suspect it would be good craic to see someone slightly more uptempo there; I foresee much dancing and sweating and tearing off of clothes in the near future.

And with that it is now time for me to eat......a mango.

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Rear window

I'm still under house arrest, waiting for more things to be delivered, but the place is starting to take shape nicely. We may have gone a tad overboard with the mini fridge and cinema projector in the bedroom, but hey, that's the third world for you.

Also, now that we have a kettle as of this afternoon, I reckon it's high time to introduce Hugo to the joy of a cup of tea. Maybe with a biscuit? Perhaps I should have done this when we lived in Manchester, and not waited until we moved to a land where Lord Fireface constantly spits his sunny rage all over our expectant faces. Nah, it'll be grand.

I thought someone got shot outside our apartment last night. It turned out not to be so dramatic. There was lots of shouting of men and screaming of women and a loud bang, followed by more shouting and screaming, so I had to get up and have a ganders from the window, proper Limavady style. 5.30am too, for fuck's sake. So anyways I see a bunch of people across the street surrounding one guy who's lying on his his back on the pavement, quite still. People are shouting and running around aimlessly and the cops have shown up, but the cops are just milling about slowly, seemingly with little interest, which makes me think it mightn't that serious after all. The guy's still lying there though and hasn't moved in ages. I go back to bed and gently wake Hugo up to tell him someone's been shot outside and he laughs and goes back to sleep. Back at the window, the guy's moving!! Hurrah!! And some of the angry shouty men are having to be held back by less angry shouty men, which makes me think it was just a drunken brawl that went a bit far. The guy's on his feet now, being supported by a few of the not so shouty men, so I go back to bed and step on something crunchy on the way. I don't want to know what it was.

Zzz

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Skewed priorities.

I traipsed around this evening looking for somewhere showing the Champions League matches, only to find EVERYONE in the bars, cafes, shops, restaurants, hairdressers, pharmacies and pet shops completely transfixed by the evening's soap operas.

This does not bode well for the Man United match tomorrow evening.

What the hell is going on?

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Zombie ants

I've spent a lot of time studying the movements of the ants in the apartment, trying to see what makes them tick, and I came across this website.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/pictures/110303-zombie-ants-fungus-new-species-fungi-bugs-science-brazil/

It's frightening. I saw this fungi mentioned on one of the David Attenborough series from a couple of years ago, and it was the thing that scared me most out of all the things I'd seen. I'm worried that the ants in the apartment might bring them, and I'll end up with a mushroom exploding out of my head, like Scanners meets Ready Steady Cook meets City of God.

Christ I really hate mushrooms.

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My First Funeral (in Brasil)

This weekend I got to meet Hugo's entire family, albeit not in the most pleasant of circumstances.His grandmother sadly passed away on Saturday afternoon, and so we all went to the cemetery on Sunday for the funeral.

Being Irish and Catholic I was a surprised at how little time Brazilians waste in getting someone into the ground. The body goes to the cemetery the following day and you can go an hour or two before the service to pay your respects. Thats it, you're not forced to go round to the dead persons house, drink all their booze, stare at the coffin, eat sandwiches presented by a bunch of helpful aunts desperate for something to do, and accidentally block their toilet. There were a lot of tears, backslapping from the men and glamourous women in ridiculously oversized sunglasses. And me of course, looking shifty on the sidelines. I think everyone thought that I was in the wrong place. A strange experience.

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Charlotte Church

On a taxi journey through one of the poorer districts I'd noticed a church, immaculately kept and freshly painted, surrounded by the faded paint and cracked concrete walls of the favela houses. I came to the conclusion that this was indicative of the country's reverence of and pride in their religion.

But then I saw a few minging churches scattered about as well over the past week, so I've revised the conclusion to one where we're all going to Hell.

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View from the bedroom...

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Juiz de Fora

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Bats, pine trees and sore balls.

Eletronica isn't a place, it was actually written on loads of road signs and I have no idea what it means. Oops. Oh well. If i do ever found a town i'll call it eletronica,and you can all come and live there and play synthesizers and eat salami sandwiches.

So we went to the farm. It's a vast pine tree plantation in an area called Juiz de Fora, and by this stage I really was becoming overwhelmed with the scenery. Hugos uncle and cousin drove us to the middle of nowhere in two tiny fiats, heads bouncing off the ceiling. Country roads sure can be a little unpredictable round them parts. We were variously chased by a bunch of dogs, a runaway cow and some hens. The buffalo were clearly too unimpressed and lazy to give two fucks about us, but i did enjoy their vacant stare.

We were left to rummage around one of the deserted farmhouses on our own, which was kinda COMPLETELY TERRIFYING. It was straight out of any cliched horror movie. After being attacked by a bunch of bats for about the 5th time we decided we probably had had enough. There was much screaming and running in and out of the house, mainly by Hugo. I played it cool.

As much of a great driver hugos uncle is, my nerves were completely shattered by the journey home. Overtaking lorries around corners at 120km an hour isn't my idea of fun. It was a one way system, granted, but it was still pretty damn hairy. And to cap the day off we were stopped by the miliary police on the way back into Rio. Christ those guys really do seem to have lost their joy. They searched both cars and body searched all of us pretty damn thoroughly. Luckily i had my passport with me. But there was no need for them to squeeze our balls, surely? SURELY?

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