On the Road to Find Out

It seems I have been a little bit quiet. There are two reasons for this; gin and cachaça. After spending five days in the mountains of Petropolis and Teresopolis I headed to Rio once more, where Fabiola kindly said that I could stay with her and her sister. There seemed no better present than a bottle of gin. It was soon devoured on the Friday night.

After that we started drinking beer and this seems to have killed my memory. I remember going to a house party in a favela, but remember very little while I was there. My camera was full of pictures of the kitchen of the house. I have no idea why. The next day Glenda came round and we started drinking gin again. Things were far less reckless on this night, plus I think Fabiola got upset when I went out to buy ice and came back with a bin liner full. I tried to explain that I only wanted a small amount but they must only sell to bars because they only wanted to give me a whole sack. Plus, I thought it might be funny to come back with so much ice. Maybe this is where English humour doesn’t travel so well.

After Rio I headed to Ilha Grande, where I spent all day in the water. Perfect, clear water. Then the storm started. Everyone had to go inside. The next morning I left.

I have been in Trindade for a week now. I’m helping a hostel improve their website in exchange for accommodation. They have also been providing me with food and cachaça, plenty of it. Caipirinhas and Gabrielas are de rigeur. And my head has been spinning ever since. Today it is raining so we are having a games day. Time to refuel.

So it seems I’ve made some kind of breakthrough. A website decided to publish something that I wrote and pay me for it. The article can be seen here:

http://matadornights.com/strange-fruit-a-guide-to-eating-in-brazil/

It should be noted though that they have edited the original to smithereens. All the bits that I though were quite amusing have been taken out, leaving the whole thing seeming a bit insipid. But worse of all, for some reason they have decided to plaster a gargantuan image of some sort of beef and bacon sandwich at the top. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual food mentioned, plus it makes an article which is supposed to be about various Brazilian delights seem, well, disgusting actually. At least I’m getting financial recompense.

I was going to write some more here but I believe the person before me must have tried to make a jam sandwich out of this keyboard because this sentence alone has taken at least five minutes to write!

No more cleaning, my time at the hostel is finally up. To be fair, I did very little cleaning, but any cleaning is too much I’m afraid. I decided the best place to go after spending a month on the beach was the mountains so headed to Petropolis. I arrived yesterday to find the only hostel in town had been closed, meaning I would probably have to spend more than I wanted. I tried to find a couchsurfer here too but out of the four that live here only one replied, and he was out of town on business. I eventually managed to find a 93-year old German Brazilian who owned an Inn. We watched the US Open and I found out about skin diving (apparently doing this with an aqualung is just plain cheating) until his receptionist turned up. It turned out that the old man had told me the price was R$99, I thought he said $29. This was just too high to even begin to find a compromise so I moved on, feeling slightly gutted that I wouldn’t get to see his skin diving photos. No-one in town could recommend anywhere even close to the R$30 I wanted to pay so in the end I had to make a sacrifice. The cheapest place I could find was R$88. I managed to barter him down to R$66 which we shook hands on, though afterwards he tried to explain to me that 66 is basically the same as 70 so I might as well just pay R$70 yeah. No way! It’s twice what I wanted to pay but I figure after not having to spend a penny on accommodation for five weeks, and also having access to a swimming pool, amazing breakfast and general swankiness I can’t complain too much.

By the prices of the hotels here it seems that Petropolis is very much a place for the Cariocas of Rio to come and spend their money when they feel the need for a break from the beach. It is certainly a grandiloquent place to come, full of palaces and regal glamour. Santos Dumont, who I believe was one of the first people to fly came from here, as did some of the old Brazilian royalty. For me, it’s again just a huge reminder how big the gap is between the rich and poor in Rio, or even the gap between middle class and poor. You’re looking at middle class people earning at least 3 or 4 times as much money as those on the lowest paid jobs.

After a great deal of thought I eventually decided to give up the web design project. My client was very understanding, saying that I had to do whatever was best for myself and my health. You can’t really argue with that. It now leaves me short of pocket but at least I have my mind back. I am certain everything will now fall into place.

Just three days left at the hostel. It will actually be something of a relief to leave. In all my time working and volunteering I’ve never had such a dogmatic boss. You’d think after the third time of showing me how to correctly fold a pillow case she’d realise that maybe some people are just not interested in folding pillow cases.

If anyone tried to get on this site yesterday they may have had some problems. It seems some malware managed to get on here, cheeky beggar. It has now been well and truly scrubbed and everything is back to normal.

In a further update, it seems that being completely irresponsible works wonders as after ignoring emails from a client asking for progess on a web site they have now offered me more money to see if this will help things move faster. How great is that? Just Don’t Bother, and it gets instant rewards. It’s a marvelous strategy, I think I will use it more. Tomorrow we are going to talk about how much more money, but to be honest I still don’t think I can stand one more month working on this so may have to have peace talks instead. We shall see.

Okay, maybe the heading is a bit too dramatic, but I really feel like I have to make a big decision shortly.

I’ve been working at Casa Carioka in Copacabana for 4 weeks now, using spare time to try and get a web design complete. In theory, this design is my meal ticket. An opportunity to not have to think about money for a good few months. However, at the start of this week I got asked to do another job, which took a day to complete (these are the kind of jobs I like) and have spent the rest of the week surfing and writing. During this time I have been sent three e-mails by my main client, asking for some progress updates. They are all still sitting in my inbox awaiting a reply.

My previous drive to earn money so that I would not have to worry about money later in the journey has vanished. A realisation perhaps that designing big websites, full of ridiculous coding is a theft of the imagination. I have no natural aptitude for it, so learning and effecting at the same time can be a hard task, one that makes me wish I could buy wind-screen wipers for my eyes, and maybe one of those buttons so I could give them a spray of water every now and again. Give them a good wash.

If anyone reading this has a disposition for designing secure websites in Joomla, as well as shopping baskets and MySQL databases with one-to-many relationships, please get in touch because the one problem I face with all of this is if this is the direction my thoughts continue to head at some point there will be the disappointment of my client unless I find an adequate solution. I would say I could potentially sully my name, but I think this implies having some sort of good reputation in the first place.

It should also be noted that my resistance to do further work on this project has been catalysed by the return of hypersensitive head, a condition that had been laying dormant since my last trip to Rio. For more information on hypersensitive head listen to this:

Gold supplement, whey protein, guarana powder, natural energy booster, superfoods, green defense, monster mass, fish oil……..

Rio is a city obsessed with looking good. Supplements and stimulants are sold from every corner. After all, it just wouldn’t be possible to run along Copacabana, go to the gym and have that game of volleyball without a pure protein shake. There surely can’t be many cities where the locals spend more time on the beach than the tourists. Quite how they pull it off is a miracle. Maybe everyone is on the nightshift. Maybe they get time off when the sun comes out. Who would want to buy a mattress anyway when it’s this hot? So off we all go to the beach, to show off our toned abs, to take pictures of our new arse implants and to generally stare at everyone else. It’s not a bad life!

These guys know all about it: http://www.copacabanarunners.net/ipeak.html

Almost every newspaper I open has a one-page advert for Influenza. I think there’s better things to spend your money on.

It seems that swine flu is following me around. Every day I have seen more and more people wearing face masks. A teacher friend in Rio has been given the month off from work. She’s outraged. They want to make her work all Saturdays when she returns so that she won’t have lost any days. Apparently, there has been almost 200 deaths. Almost all of them occurring in the South of Brazil, where winter is definitely at its worst.

Of the deaths, only 16 have occurred in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Of which, most have been children or pregnant women. I think wearing a facemask on the street seems a little over-the-top. There are 15 million people living in Rio state. Surely the odds are against ever contracting it.

For the latest death toll visit here.

Lapa’s crazy on a Saturday night so we headed away from the arches, where the noise of drums, samba and drunk gringos is inescapable. First stop was The Museum of Cachaça. It’s a room about 10 foot x 10 foot. Hanging from the ceiling is a brand of cachaça from possibly every town in Brazil. Normally, there would be seats and tables surrounding its entrance but the Police are out in force. There´s a new mayor and he´s brought with him 2 initiatives. First is the ´dry law´. Random checks are happening all over the city as they look to combat drink driving. Although the drivers are fighting back. They´ve found out a new use for Twitter. There are dozens of people using their iPhones (or whatever the equivalant is in Rio) posting updates on where the ´dry law´ police are stopping cars every night. The second new initiative is to stop bars placing a ridiculous amount of tables and chairs on the pavement and quite often on the road as they look to get as many customers comfortable as is humanely possible.

We didn´t fancy standing in the street so we decided to look elsewhere. After a few blocks we came to a brothel-themed bar. I can´t remember its Portuguese name but I was told it translated as ´House of the Whore´. The waiters wore red and white vertical-striped tops and there was lingerie hanging from the ceiling. I don´t remember seeing any whores. We signalled for three people and the waiter lifted up a table, planting it right in front of us. We grabbed a beer and sat down. After drinking about half of it, 5 police cars suddenly pulled up alongside us. The waiter instantly ran over, took our table and flew off round the back. Some guy wearing glasses and a huge belly came out of the bar, heading straight for the cops. I think he was the owner. He was desperately trying to avoid what I can only assume was a massive fine. The waiter came back over saying ´I told you not to put that table there.´ Cheeky bastard. There was no way we were paying the 10% service charge after that. No way mister!

Rio de Janeiro is an amazing place. I have never been to a city of this size where people are quite so friendly. It’s almost like it’s got a small-town mentality. People speak to you in the streets and shops and generally want to say hello, if not sneak in a handshake or a kiss on either cheek. Meeting people from the favelas makes it even more convincing, they are generally some of the warmest people you can meet.

I haven’t been to many large cities where the people are so friendly. London, Buenos Aires, Barcelona and Berlin all have their moments, but none of them quite have the goodwill of the Cariocas (the name for people from Rio). I think it is because they have such a bad image, the people are constantly trying to prove that it’s a good city, that it’s not just a place of violence and beaches. This is my theory anyway. People in the other cities don’t need to prove anything. People arrive with high hopes that they will like the city and will generally be disappointed. In Rio, people arrive expecting to be robbed, and then get robbed. It’s worth taking the risk though, to get to know the people. The key is to make sure that if you are robbed you don’t lose much.

Now I just need to prove the theory, which means making Israel or Islamabad my next stop. I would be very surprised if the people there didn’t turn out to be some of the friendliest folk around.

In football news, tomorrow is Flamengo v Corinthians. Which potentially meant Ronaldo returning to his boyhood club, the club where he trained at the start of the season until suddenly Corinthians had the money and he switched sides. However, he fell over on his hand, breaking it in the process (he is still carrying a substantial amount of weight, it’s almost surprising the whole arm didn’t break in two) and will miss it. I think he did it on purpose. The Flamengo fans had been knitting Judas banners since the fixtures had been announced. It would have been a horrible experience for him. Now, they will have to wait a year. In the meantime we get to see Adriano, which is at least one great from the game. My money is on a Flamengo upset.