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The start of my life in Brazil
Entry 4 of 17 | show all | print this entry |
After we arrived we stamped our passports and waited for a bus to Campo Grande where we would get a flight the next day to Rio.
We didn't do much in Campo Grande, we just used the cable TV to watch some English TV which was nice, a bit of House them some Law & Order. Neither of which I've seen before, both of which are terrible and will never watch again. I'll admit I did appreciate just vegging out for once though.
Th next day we flew to Rio. Finally the land of the beautiful people, I was at home. The Pan American games are on so the first hostel we checked into (recommended by a yank, why did we listen?) was almost £20 a night and it was a shit hole, so we checked out and went to the hostel we'd planned on staying in. Less than £10 a night and 2 blocks from Copacobana beach.
Our second day was spent on that beach. Our third will be spent touring the city. Then we're going to look for a job and a flat. Wish us luck.
We decided it was time to move into an apartment. Rio is nice, the pay is, apparently, reasonable.
We've got a beauty, sitting about 30 yards from the beach. Some photos are at the bottom if you're really interested, I think it's unlikely that you are.
So this means the end to a lot of my woes. No more the time limit on when I can eat my stale lump of bread. No more wearing flip flops in the shower due to electricity being present with water. No more daily packing and unpacking. We can leave our food in the fridge and best of all I don't have to speak to any more fucking backpackers if I so desire. Clearly all our aims were to get a job and a flat.
On Sunday it was what we had been waiting for. The Copa America final so we trawled the streets looking for a bar. We found a delightful bar where we met Rodrigo and Leo.
The game was great 3-0 Brazil. Baptista scored a great goal. God damn Brazilian Emile Heskey pile of shit. Anyway, it was 3-0 and we were all very happy. The bar we were in Gave us 3 glasses full of liquer each and 3 bottles of drink each, one of which tori spilled so we had to get a new one. It only cost us £10. We were a little drunk now and wanted to go out and party but no one was interested. Apparently Brazil always win the Copa America. Secondly the Panamerican games are on here and Brazil are favourites to come second so people are watching with intent.
After seeing the Cuba team I decided to keep count of how many other teams we saw about. We saw the Dominican republic that day too. Since we've seen Mexico and Uruguay. We walked for miles with Rodrigo and found a shut club and Bobs Burgers.
The afore mentioned Leo rents apartments. He showed us around and we decided on one of them, it'd be 2 days until we got the one we wanted so we waited for it.
Back at the hostel I went on the internet to compare prices and so on when I banged my head so hard I almost bit my tongue off and really got a bitch of a headache. Never mind. We met some Irish girls Ros and Kat. They are funny, which makes a change from most of the stuck up wankers we've met so far. They were nice so we walked to the Fort of Copacobana. It didn't look very interesting so we decided to omit paying the fee to see the newly restored fort and go and have lunch. So we did. We decided against going up to see Christ the Redeemer now one of the 7 new wonders of the world. Until the next day. After we had gone out to a Samba Club.
We went to Lapa and ate some dinner then decided to go to a dance bar, I can't dance and wasn't ready to make a fool of myself like in Buenos Aires. We went onto a bigger club where there was a samba show we got more drunk and went back to the hostel to sleep at about 3.
We moved some signed our contracts and moved some stuff into the apartment. On the way over someone had attempted a distraction robbery, they squirted paint on my shoe and lucky for me there was a shoe shine on hand, sitting next to a beach in the sun, he had his back turned but somehow noticed and came over with his toothbrush. We clocked it and just walked off. We'd paid another night in the hostel as we didn't expect it to go through so quickly. We had a wee party that night with the Irish girls and got a little tipsy and one fell out of bed that night.
Our landlord popped some sheets round and told us stories of his English wife and his love of London. He's a lovely man.
Next day we finally bit the bullet it had been fucking overcast for 2 days so no beach and no Christ but we had to go up that day as the Irish were leaving soon.
It was sunny for about the whole time we were up viewing Christ. Now lets give a few lil stats about this one of the New 7 Wonders of the world. It's 39 meters tall. Ohh, its made from Concrete and it was built in 1926. The Eifle tower is more impressive than that. It's not even in anyway pushing any boundaries.
After viewing Christ we went back to the flat and started setting everything up. It's great and I'm excited about finding a job here, which I have been trying all week. I'll hopefully be working by next week.
Now I'm not sure how interesting life going to be without anything to moan about so for now the horrible life has hopefully come to an end I feel my updates will become less frequent. I will still update you on any news and say hello until I move my merry way again Im settling down for a while.
Also I've got a flat now any of you wanna come over feel free.
Flat photos on the way tomorrow.
Oh I'm getting a hair cut tomorrow, nice and short so I look posh for job interviews. Pictures of that will be available pretty soon too.
Hxx
Crazy man.
People in the supermarket
I know I promised you I'd stop bugging you so frequently but I saw I had sent 14 updates and realised 15 would look much better so I thought I'd tell you about my traumatic week so far.
The day had finally arrived, after travelling around I realised it was time to settle down and get a job. First things first get a smart hair cut ready for any interviews. An Iron next to Iron my 3 month old creases. So I decided to have one last day at the beach looking a bit like a surfer, aside from the fact I'm pasty white and horrendously ill looking, in comparison to everyone else on the beach. So we went to Ipanema a beach for surfers. After some time in the water I decided it was time so I went home and showered and went to get my first hair cut since January. Now I need to say I was nervous, I can't speak much Portuguese what I do know has nothing to do with getting a hair cut. I'd also grown quite attached to my hair.
My first fatal error was to go on a Saturday. My second error, and I didn't really think anything of it at the time; the hairdressers I went to was empty apart from me. The other two were really busy and only 2 minutes away, I couldn't be bothered to go there and wait for an hour for a trim.
I sat in the chair and the owner selected one of 3 women who were apparently hair dressers. I sat down, now even more nervous than before. He asked how I wanted it cut. I flicked through a magazine and chose a hair cut from an advert for Tigi shampoos and shit. The woman paid great attention to this picture for the fist hour where by she took of almost 1cm off and ask if it was ok. It wasn't I pointed again at the picture and take off a little more. She then spent the next 40 minutes hacking at my hair in what appeared to be completely unrelated places. She got it really wet and messed it up a bit and took my money off me.
I was not yet unhappy but I was far from being satisfied. I got back to the flat and my hair began to dry, by this time it appeared I must have done something very evil in a previous life or perhaps I violated her in some disgusting way somehow. What was on my head was a terrible excuse for a haircut. It was as if she'd gone to do an undercut but messed it up and I ended up with a Bowl Cut. reminiscent of all those little 9 year old dicks who get seriously bullied due to such hair cuts. I was left with 2 options... get some NHS glasses and go all out geeky and try and style it out but sadly I'm in a very cool place where no one knows me so I decided on the second option, to get it cut the next day.
Tori also decided she wanted to go out on the piss that night. Great I thought not only was I seriously depressed about the state of my hair now I'd have to go out in public and show it off to everyone.
We went to Lapa as we had earlier that week. I didn't enjoy and of the night due to the fact I looked
like a complete and utter toss piece. No amount of wax and gel can fix a monstrosity such as the one I had going on. It just ended up look ing like a greasy haircut.
Lapa was more interesting that night. We didn't go into many bars, we mostly bought drinks from street vendors and partied with the thousands of people outside bars and clubs. Weird.
The next morning I woke up at my normal 07:00 and decided that through shame I couldn't take a run down the beach. I sat in and waited until the hairdresser across the road opened. When it did I seized the moment. I strolled in as the doors opened and asked him to fix my hair. The hairdresser on this occasion spoke perfect English so I thought I was pretty safe. I announced I would like it to be short-enough-to-style-myself. The extremely camp guy, Ricardo, proceeded to spend around an hour, trimming and shaping my hair. Then just at the moment I though he was doing the finishing touches with his clippers he just slid them right down the middle of my head. I was scared at first he was going to style me with one of those chavtastic, 3 hair-dos in 1, contemporary sport mullet monstrosities but I was spared that and just given a number 4 all over. He then followed it with, "there, new look." I left the place seething, If I hadn't had such a shocking haircut before hand then I'd have been really upset. I decided to just look on the bright side for once, I was reasonably happy with the result. If not a little miffed at the ignorance of Brazilian hairdressers.
I returned home and ventured down to the beach after emailing my CV out to as many language schools as I could find in Rio
Good morning one and all. I trust you all had a pleasant weekend. Mine was spent lounging on the beach and swimming in the sea.
We've had some interesting weather here over the past couple of weeks. At one point we hit the 50 year low of 16 degrees C. Such treacherous conditions almost led me to put a jumper and shoes on. Luckily I was spared such a fate and the rain eased before the laces were tied and my stylish flip flops returned. Which I now have 2 pairs of. Oh I'm a victim of fashion for the first time in my life.
I decided due to the conditions I would sit in and watch some Pan American games which were being held, as I've said before, here in Rio.
Now I know some silly events have recently been put into the Olympic games but I had never seen international quality skipping. But here I was, enjoying, the gymnasts making a school girls past time into what almost resembled a sport. Tossing the rope up doing a few flips and catching it. Pretty pointless as far as sports go but fun to look at. Next up was the hula competition. This event was similar to the skipping, whereby you had a very nubile young girl rolling and jumping around displaying her ring to everyone and making it do amazing things. I found this event less impressive than the skipping girls to be honest, they should have just stuck to proper gymnastics and at least had a modicum of credibility or even taken up a real sport like Trampolining.
I think it was all capped off though in the final team event where 5 girls pranced around using BOTH skipping ropes and hoops. This was good to watch I'd appreciate it if someone could tell me the names of these pretend sports so I can put them in my list with Golf, Baseball, Gay Show Jumping and Fox Cunting as P.E..D.A.S, Pointless Events Described as Sports. Honestly these girls got medals for what they did.
The weather didn't improve the next day so I popped to the supermarket and bought us some Quails eggs to have for breakfast. I bought 60 for about 45p not bad really. We boiled them and ate them like crisps. Mmmm I honestly think that is one of the best snacks you can have. About 20 eggs.
Our landlord came round soon after and had our lights fixed, which was a relief as we had been in darkness from around 18:00 for 3 days prior to that.
It was that day Leo, our landlord, told us of the finest place to eat after a night out or in fact when you needed something truly delicious inside you, seeing as I'm not very good at auto-falacio I would have to go to the lengths to get the afore mentioned deliciousness inside. A place called Chervantes. Oh my days you have never seen a sandwich outlet like it. This compared to Subway or Pumpernickles is the same as the difference between Claridge's and MacDonalds.
For your £4 you receive a very small roll about 2.5x5 Inches which is toasted, you then have a choice between any roast meat that takes your fancy or a steak filling. They bang in a massive slice of cheese and pineapple if you want it. The amount of meat is obscene though. They put in 7 or 8 thick slices. Now I've got a massive gob, I can fit 3 wagon wheels in at once, and even I struggled to fit all that meat in in one go.
Along with this amazing new establishment I discovered I also discovered a Churros. I decided as soon as I'd had one that this would have to be my new addiction. They are like the South American version of a doughnut. I'm feeling particularly lazy today so I have taken the description of one from Wikipedia to paint my picture for me:
"A churro is a fried-dough pastry -based snack which originated in Spain , [1] and is popular in Latin America , France , Portugal , the USA , and Spanish-speaking Caribbean islands. It is sometimes referred to as a Spanish doughnut or Mexican doughnut. The snack gets it name from its shape, which resembles the horns of the Churro breed of sheep reared in the Spanish grasslands. Filled straight churros are found in Brazil with chocolate, doce de leite
So there you have it. Since 2 weeks ago when I had my first one my skin has suffered massively as I've gone only one night without one.
The good weather returned and parity was restored in the temperature department and a crispy 31 degrees C greeted me as I woke up on the day of my first interview, which was in Gavea and area of Rio about as far away as possible, the bus journey took an hour and I was told after my interview that there was in fact no job and I'd just missed out on 2 and a half hours in the sun.
I went home looking forward to the weekend where I could forget about applying for jobs because nowhere was open. It was the last weekend of the Pan Am games as well so I watched quite a lot of sport.
After the games there was obviously a massive void in what all the establishments, from bars to super markets, across Rio could show on TV. I discovered on Monday that it was Soap Operas nearly every public building has the soaps on. Crowds of all sorts of people, from Builders to Business men with a bunch of grannies in the middle, gather round close to the screen to see what is going to happen to Carlos in hospital and whether Leonardo will marry Rosalia or not. It's insane.
We went to the Botanic gardens where we were treated to an orchid house, a Japanese garden and a Cactus garden amongst others. I was a little miffed that I had to pay to get in but in the end I guess it was worth it in the end. There are a few good pictures on facebook.
My second interview arrived on Tuesday and I had to make a tube trip to the Centre, also know a Centro. Sadly my second interview ended in the same fashion as the first with a big thank you but there is no job. I'm not sure what the point in calling someone in if they don't have a job for you. Idiots. The next morning however while I was in the shower I got a call. Tori answerd it and it's lucky she did because it was a guy from an English institute. He called me in had a quick chat then said I was to be back for 13:00 because I started work then. It's great because I'll get a discount on a Portuguese course now as well.
When I arrived at the address I had been given I almost shat my pants. There was a 4 story pink monstrosity behind about 150 yards of front garden/drive and a massive gate with a guard, with a gun. I asked the guard if I could speak to Miss Lily Mourhino, no relation I hope, he replied he would go and find out. He called his buddy on the walkie talkie. In the end there were 4 armed guards at the door to tell me she was away and not returning until the next week.
Excellent I was paid for 2 hours work and I was only out of the house for 45 minutes. As I left I realised her house was overlooked by Christo. Perfect.
The big man Josh arrived. We'd met him in Arequipa and done the Colca canyon trek with him.
We dossed for a bit then Josh fell asleep after a long day travelling. The next day we burned ourselves on the beach. With renewed colour in our cheeks we went to Lapa again but not on an empty stomach. We demolished the best part of a bottle of vodka mixed with Passion fruit and sugar. The called them Maracuja CipriVodka. It's great. We had a good time in the streets again in Lapa drinking various versions of the CipriVodka.
It was massively overcast in the morning and we decided to go body boarding this turned out to be a terrible mistake as there was no one else in the water and Josh managed to get himself told off by the Life guards for being silly. It was great. Work tomorrow so I'm off to bed.
Hxx
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=40592&l=9402e&id=774575150
Bye Bye Joshy
I'm going to start this weeks blog with a new feature. I call it News and birthdays. It will comprise surprisingly enough of the big news and birthdays of the month.
The reason I felt compelled to do so was entirely down to Facebook and Myspace. I caught myself doing the terrible thing of just sending someone a birthday message from the past with whom I have not spoken for around 7 years. Why would I do this? I don't mean it. I don't care. So basically saying Happy Birthday over Myspace or Facebook alone has become a new pet hate. For me it doesn't count a birthday greeting for me needs to be at the very least an email. A phone call would be best but you don't always have someone's number. Sending a message over one of the aforementioned medium of communications just proves a laziness instilled in us all. We see the name pop up on screen and bang. There's your greeting not even a new tab opened and a nice personal email. For crying out loud people don't even use the private message function they just bang it on the wall or comments board. Now the rant is over I must apologise to those of you who I have previously only messaged personally in future if I care about you enough I'll have the decency to send you a personal email and tell everyone at home that it's your birthday.
So here's a list of those who's birthdays have passed this month.
Raff (2nd) I hope you had a goodn you legend, don't turn out like every other chef.
Dad (3rd) I hope you made a good dent on the cellar. Judging on out conversation over skype I'm guessing you did.
Big Andy Massey (8th) Good luck when you go back to uni. I'm sure leaving Northampton after such an amazing year there will be a terrible strain. Maybe not.
Josh Muncke (9th) I actually saw Josh on his birthday which was nice. Good luck at uni. Remember Lemon Drizzle cake is the key to happiness.
Grandpa (17th) A big happy birthday to my Grandpa Bill. He's 86 today, notching up an innings longer than English Cricketer this summer. What an absolute legend one of the genuine hero's I not only know but am related to.
Josh (Joo) Parsons pHD (18th) Josh is having a party for his birthday. No change there then big man. I hope it is a good one. No chance of topping your 21st but I hope it comes close. Big love.
Sarah (24th) The person who is going to be the lucky individual who gets to see my beautiful face next. She's coming over at Christmas, so any presents you are desperate o send me can go in her nice big rucksack. I'll write you my Christmas list in November. Happy Birthday.
Now I'm sure there are defiantly more and I've missed one or 2, if I have just email me and remind me when you birthday is.
Now for the one bit of News I have. I am soon going to be welcoming a new member into my family. No don't worry there are no Brazilian babies on the way. I can assure you. No this is the massive News of my sister Ellie is getting married. Now this might be a very sissy way to act but I am really happy for her and another Genuine hero Dan who I will soon be proud enough to call my brother. He couldn't be more different to me. He's a vegisexual for a start and short, with curly hair. We do however have a common feature however. We are both dashingly good looking.
If you don't know any of these people mentioned I'm sorry for boring you, I will say this. If you meet just one of them you will automatically become a little bit cooler.
So back to Rio.
I enjoyed having Josh stay over it was fun. Not least for the fact I had another boy around but it also pushed Tori to new top standards in the kitchen. We ate out on only 2 occasions in Josh's stay. One of which was at a little place across the street called 'O Crack Do Galetos' this isn't a seedy crack den from the gettos like it sounds it's a lovely chicken. Where the grill hundreds of tiny battery farmed chickens and sell them to you cut up ready for R$7 a go. That's £1.75 for a whole chicken how good is that? I think I might be going back there.
Back to the other food. As I was saying Tori reached a new high in her already exceptional cooking standards. She's a fantastic cook. I would call her a chef but there is one thing lacking. All chefs I know or know of are weird, weird and twisted. Take that bloke who was caught fucking a goat by the side of the rail way. Weird. A gay chef chopped up his lover before as well. Pretty fucking weird. Jamie Oliver, fucks kids............. probably. Then the chefs I already know offer me no escape from these horrific stereotypes. My brother offers me an insight into this crazy world of sleep deprived ego maniacs. He's told me of a restaurant he likes to go to. A Chinese one where people sit around at 02:00 eating pigs veins, duck tongue and chickens feet. I think you'd agree this is weird. So it would come as no surprise to you then that nearly every weirdo in there is a fucking chef just finishing work. Raff welcome to a life of (continued) sleepless nights and self abuse.
Anyway enough about chefs. Tori is none of the above but does still cook fantastically. So well in fact, and this will shock at least those in my close family. She's got me eating Cabbage. Now I can deal with most veg. Growing stuff on the allotment made me like a lot of veg but cabbage erghh but even that has entered my veg diet. Along with Courgette, which was only really outed in the first place because we grew so many of them on the allotment that everyday for about a month we'd be on delivery to anyone who could save use from courgette soup. I must admit Dad did manage to do a fair few thing with them but there's a limit and in the end I straight out refused them. Selina once made Courgette cake, it wasn't even that bad. I'm sure you'll all be delighted to know I'm keeping healthy. I can tell you this for one Grandpa you certainly wouldn't get anything like this in 15 mess.
I've mentioned before about the crazy bus drivers in South America. It reached an absolute climax of insanity recently. One morning we went body boarding on the way down, at some traffic lights, the driver Jumped out ran and bought some fags and casually strolled back. What a champion.
Another incident was when we were going out to Lapa. Imagine for me if you will. A crazy Brazilian bus driver, stuck in traffic then at night the roads are much more open. It seems as if they're trying to up their average speed throughout the day, throwing passengers all around the bus. On this occasion the driver was just hitting his top speed when a small bump appeared in the road and the bus almost took off, it threw me up in the air and back down with a smash, I was unlucky on this occasion as my delicates had moved and I landed right on top of them. It had me winded for a while. I think that's why god created speed limits.
Joshs birthday arrived and we decided to go to the beach, for a change. We got destroyed by the waves for a few hours and then decided to return. On our journey home we witnessed perhaps the least skilled removal company in the world. I'll try and paint a picture of it but it's never a good.
People in Rio live in apartments that's how they fit so many of the fuckers in. On the 5th floor there were 9 men on the ground there were 2. They were attempting to get a long heavy box containing what I guessed to be a grandfather clock into the apartment. It had become apparent that they couldn't carry it through the building due to its irregular size. This led to the leader of the pack to decide upon the large windows as being the best option for the cago. Josh and I laughed to each other as they bound the box with ropes and started tugging it up the wall. This wasn't a smooth operation by any means. It reached the top with one end a bit higher than the other. The goons then realised they couldn't get it over the rain of the balcony. Idiots. No matter how much the 9 of the people upstairs tried to lift it, they couldn't do it. The obvious plan was to go from the next level up so after an hour of trying to lift it in I think they finally decided to move it that way. Josh and I left.
On out walk home along Copacobana we were approached by a street performer, after trying to ignore him he insisted he would give us a free show because we were English. We said ok. He then did kick ups with an egg a ball from a whistle and a coconut. It was fun. Josh and I had no money however which disappointed him somewhat after his show when he thrust his hat at us. We said thanks for the free show and left. So we could start getting drunk for J's birthday.
We were drinking Maracuja CiptiVodka again, which I managed to spill on myself. Passion fruit isn't easy to get out. We went to go out but were too pissed and only got half way down the street at which point we were hassled by a crazy man trying to make us go to his strip club we managed to get rid of him by saying yes we'd be there in 5 minutes then running away. On our way back in I noticed a lot more hookers in our area, but it is the red light district so you've gotta expect it.
I started a new class on the Saturday 2 lads both love football. One of whom offered to take Tori, Josh and I to the Fluminense match the next day. I accepted.
Later that day we decided to go up Pao de Acucar (Sugar Loaf) the view was fantastic and the sunset mildly spectacular. One this that detracted from it a little is that we decided to go on what was possibly the windiest day of our trip so far. This made it slightly unnerving when we got inside a cable car (used in the James Bond movie XXXXXXXXXXXXXX) filled with 70 people swinging its way up a mountain. Although out of the 70 people I'd say 65 were complete idiots so it might not have been bad if it had gone down on a different occasion to me being in it. Alas it was safe.
Sunday was my big day. I was so excited. All my life there have been very few things I really want to see or do. I've loved football all my life and since I was about 6 there were 4 stadiums I really desperately wanted to visit Highbury was one of them. That was easily achieved. The San Siro in Milan was once high on my list but I've never got there sadly. Next on my list was Camp Nou in Barcelona which I visited and at the time (around age 14) I stated it was the best day of my life. It was amazing. The final stadium was the Maracaná.
I'm going to apologise now for those of you who don't care about football I know its boring so if you don't want to know the score look away now I'll mark the end of the football how with many dots like this........................................................................................................................................................
So the Maracná the home of the samba kings. Holding the record for not only the highest recorded Attendance (183000 ish) against Paraguay in 1954, It also hold the record for the largest unrecorded attendance (210000 ish) Against Ur a gay in the 1950 world cup final. All this before it was even completed a job which took 17 years in total. The capacity has been greatly reduced since then due the shoddy workman ship at the time. I was warned by guidebooks that it was a sorry looking stadium. The guidebooks couldn't have been further from the truth. The stadium had been renovated for the Opening of the Pan American games and was in fantastic shape a 95,000 all seater stadium. It was amazing only 2 tiers but they were huge circles. The match we were went to see was Fluminense (my new team) playing at home against Santos, home of the great Pele, who scored his 1000th goal in the Maracaná.
The atmosphere was a little quiet for this game as there were only 8,000 people in the stadium amazing a total 0f R$80,000 (£20,000 ish) for the club. Despite the small attendance I was no less enthused.
My predictions were of the cup winners and third most popular team in Rio (Fluminense). I was right. After going one nil up on 45 minutes, they completed they second half 2 goals better off. 3-0 final score. The best play by a long way was Thiago Neves he scored both goals in the second half finishing each superbly after great close control. It was a great match, the passing was swift the skills were fantastic and the way the teams play themselves out of danger is fantastic a great all round game. It was a fantastic start to my career as a Young Flu.
I woke up and went straight to the Fluminense club shop to purchase my tickets for the next game. Fluminense Vs Flamengo otherwise known as Flu Fla the fiercest rivalry in Brazil. A massive local derby. I asked my friend some of the history of the clubs Flu are apparently from the higher society based in Flamengo. Fla on the other hand are from Gavea and the supporters are somewhat more deprived. They also happen to have the largest fan base in Brazil. I bought my ticket and my shirt and I was ready for the big game. That's it for football for now I shall return in a short
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