First Impressions, Rio de Janeiro

I'll begin by noting that these aren't properly my first impressions of Rio. I've been to this city twice before. The first time, I felt very afraid of the city. (For interested readers, I was sufficiently narcissistic to post my first impressions, long ago, here.) The second time, Bethany and I stayed in this same apartment and I attended a congress of regulators down in São Conrado.

So instead, a distillation of the first four days in Rio:

Centro has less activity on the weekends than I remember. The Middle Eastern restaurant now closes on Saturday and Sunday. However, the crowds at the beach have grown larger; for the last two days, running down Praia do Flamengo, I had to weave to avoid people multiple times.

Barring a trip to São Paulo, this is the most cosmopolitan city I'll visit, for the entire trip. Therefore, it would behoove me to eat Japanese cuisine and visit art galleries while I can. Beyond these borders, it's rice-beans-meat for a long, long while.

The exchange rate hurts. However, I cannot recommend the Capital One credit card enough. Whereas my HSBC card charges me 3% for ATM withdrawals, and the B--- o- A------ (too disgusted to say it; it's the bank that helped rebuild San Francisco after 1906) card would charge me 5%, the Capital One card converts the currency and charges no additional fees. (Thanks go to my lovely and helpful girlfriend for securing the card for me.) The only drawback so far has been a rejection at the Sendas supermarket, and the fact that the Lojas Americanas clerk wouldn't swipe it because I didn't have ID. It's odd that I'm rarely asked for ID in the States.

My roommate is great; he's been in Brazil for more time than I have, but we have complimentary knowledge about the country. He knows the city's history and all about football, and I have stupid anecdotes about recent politics.

Research starts in earnest this week. I plan to go to Eletrobras's headquarters and leaf through the proprietary studies on restructuring the Brazilian energy industry that they have.

I think Faustão is trying to lose weight. I saw the show tonight, and he looked thinner, or slender enough to be wearing jeans.

Finally, because every good post needs pictures, here are some shots of the running route (of Praia do Flamengo in general) that I stole from someone named Fabio Barros. Apologies Fabio!

And it was going so well!

Twas the night before customs...

Two additional thoughts on packing:

1. In the future, pack your suitcase before you pack up the apartment. Otherwise, you leave many of the items you think you'll need out and available. When it comes time to pack the suitcase, exasperation sets in: "Agh! I don't need ALL these pairs of khakis!"

2. In the back of my mind, I know that all of the technological gadgets that I'm taking down there are going to fry in the heat and become useless. I give them all until Halloween. Any gadgets that survive Halloween will be finished off by the summer heat of Salvador.

Homage to Home

The countdown is two days until the flight to Brazil. I’m simultaneously packing the apartment for B’s eventual move to Palo Alto, and packing suitcases for my year-long trip abroad.

In a sense, this move is more than another change in addresses. B will be on the job market this fall (good vibes!), and when I return, we may no longer live in the Bay Area. Her top choice positions are all at schools outside of California. (This is by necessity; there’s at least a year-long hiring freeze across the UC system, and Stanford won’t hire their own. No word from other universities in southern California so far.) We may be returning in August to pack our items on the Peninsula into a U-Haul and drive wherever work takes us. (The current options range from Chicago to College Station to Princeton to Williamsburg.)

I have become, thus, a little nostalgic about my brief four years back in California. We have a list of activities to do in San Francisco that will remain incomplete. We might not miss the high rents and the high cost of living, but we’ll certainly miss the cheap, local, and fresh produce. I have memories of winters in Washington, DC, in which the only fruit options at the grocery store were hormone-addled apples, oranges, and bananas from October to March. We won’t miss crazy people babbling to themselves or trying to get your attention on the bus, on the street, and in the stores. I will miss the curiosity of seeing people of all stripes and thinking, ‘well, I never considered that alternative.’

I’ll miss the running routes through the hills, and the views that are your reward for summiting, for descending, for coming around the corner. I felt a little bit of pride, that I was passing the torch, when I took Neal running today and showed him all the various route combinations of the Upper, Lower, and Back Jordan Fire Trails above campus. Now it’ll be someone else’s turn to discover and huff and puff.

Most of all, I’ll miss the people. Some friends will still be in the Bay Area when I return; some won’t. A colleague moving to Hanover, NH, for a job remarked, “We’re out of here. See you at conferences, I guess.” Just as in college, the coming end of graduate school means that people will spread across the country, to be reunited for conferences every so often.

In short, I feel melancholy. B’s currently in Oslo for two weeks. I do have the good fortune in that it’s easy to cheer myself up. I just remember that someone else is paying me to spend a year in Brazil, and how fantastic that is. Brazil is a remedy for many of the above maladies: the fruit is delicious and exotic, the people are friendly, and until January I’ll live near the northern tip of Parque do Flamengo and its running path.

On the Friday night red-eye

In honor of this blog potentially adding a second reader, I should add a personal note.

Bethany left for Oslo for two weeks tonight. When she comes back, I'll no longer be in California. We both hope she can make it to Rio, or to Curitiba/Florianopolis over Thanksgiving. We've always discussed retiring to Floripa one day, somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Why? Take a look.

I could write a long digression about my feelings, but putting those thoughts on a blog is narcissistic. Instead, I'll note that Gilberto Gil does a great version of Bob Marley's No Woman, No Cry. I miss her already.

A bit cannibalistic? I'm not one to judge. (This last statement is most likely false.)

Thanks to Saneatins, the [state of] Tocantins Sanitation Company, for use of the image.

Post-election thoughts

Last night reminded me that this country, above all, is the culmination of an awesome idea. The idea, not sewn into its founding documents, but emergent through the years, is that people from all all different parts of the globe, the outcasts who have no place or no dignity or no hope elsewhere, can come to this country to live peacefully if not-so-harmoniously together. They may argue and disagree over everything, but people of diverse backgrounds can live together.

As the president-elect said in 2004:

That is the true genius of America, a faith -- a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door; that we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe; that we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will be counted -- at least most of the time.

Certainly there are tarnishes on this idea. About fourteen percent of the population didn't come here voluntarily, and weren't necessarily welcome. They didn't enjoy freedom from fear, from retribution, from poverty and marginality.

As Charles Blow wrote in the Times last night:

"History will record this as the night the souls of black folk, living and dead, wept – and laughed, screamed and danced – releasing 400 years of pent up emotion.

They were the souls of those whose bodies littered the bottom of the Atlantic, whose families were torn asunder, whose names were erased.

They were those who knew the terror of being set upon by men with clubs, of being trapped in a torched house, of dangling at the end of a rough rope.

They were the souls of those who knew the humiliation of another person’s spit trailing down their faces, of being treated like children well into their twilight years, of being derided and despised for the beauty God gave them."

So we go about fighting to perfect the idea, to overturn barriers and prejudices. This election was a step, a very big step, toward perfecting this idea. The idea, as stated by the candidate in 2004, is that only in America can a skinny kid with a funny name go to the best schools and achieve his potential. In America, it doesn't matter what your name is or how rich you are, because in America anyone can achieve if they work hard enough.

This possibility, this belief in equality and peaceful co-existence, for people from all over this planet, makes America to date the pinnacle of human civilization.

This election showed why.

To the marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, to the members of SNCC and SCLC, to all who work to make the American idea better, more whole, and more concrete, thank you.