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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