Rio de Jarf

So, with carnaval due to start next Friday, the Rio policecops and fire-peoples have decided to strike from midnight tonight. Great.

I'm not sure how much of a difference it will make to the festival if the strike goes ahead as planned. They'll draft in the army instead, so it'll just be a different set of uniforms and bigger guns I presume. But if the place goes crazy early next week and people start getting murdered to death all over the shop then it'll definitely put a nervous slant on things.

Oh well, we've got supplies to make enough frozen cocktails for a week, so we'll survive. And if it's necessary then I can always train the monkeys downstairs to become my unholy army of the night, and they can protect us from the evil brigands.

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And so the Special Guests for Carnaval have now officially been announced...the Thompson Twins! Hooray!

It's all very exciting, especially because of the dramatic last minute booking, and the fact that the other guys will already be here too. It's certainly a brilliant way to spend my first Carnaval here.

We're going to go and check out a couple of the blocos (street parties) this weekend to get a taster of what's to come. There's about 450 of them over the course of the festival, so I don't think we'll be too stuck for any street party action. Crazy nights and laaaaaaaazy days to come.

We're taking a trip to Buzios with the guys a couple of days before the festival too. I'm looking forward to it muchly. It's a fancy island resort with stacks of beaches, nice restaurants and bars. Obviously there's not enough of those here in Rio. I mean, Ipanema and Copacabana are like so last week. Hugo's friend is letting us stay at her apartment, and the place is only about 2 and a half hours away on the bus, so no scary flying metal tubes of death are necessary.

We'll come back on the Thursday, in time to welcome the Belfast Broads, and then it's play time. I think I'll need my festival hat brought over from Manchester, otherwise there's no real point to any of this.

So, this week's been typically excellent; I've been using the bike system a lot since signing up for it. I'd forgotten how much I really loved cycling until we hired some in Amsterdam a couple of years ago. I hadn't been on one in well over 10 years, and I was concerned that my cycling proficiency certificate from 1991 had expired. Seems I still have the same wobbling problem that cost me marks back then, so I need to learn how to straighten up. I think I'm a confidence cyclist. When I was a kid I had a purple bike with discs covering both sets of spokes. It was cool as fuck, if a little dangerous on particularly windy days. Cycling nowadays bring back memories of that old purple bike, and this makes me happy.

We've been sorting out more documents and stuff this week too, to extend my visa and to let me work. It's a slow process, but we knew there would be beaucracy abound before I got here, so it's not overly surprising nor troublesome so far.

And finally, it wouldn't be a comprehensive blog post without a football match report now, would it?

Well, I wasn't as terrible as I was last week, although I believe it would have been impossible to surpass that performance. It was much better this time and I played reasonably well, without doing anything spectacular. I still can't get over how fecking hot it is though. Even some of the others were complaining about the heat, and that makes me feel a little better. A few more months should bring about a big difference I think, especially in terms of stamina, and with the cycling too hopefully I can get pretty fit soon and grow up to be big and strong.

Boa tarde.
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