Trip to Porto Alegre

I'm heading to Porto Alegre, the state capital of Rio Grande do Sul, tomorrow, for a two-week stay. My hope is to interview about twelve people down there, and I already have five lined up. I'm collecting information on the development of the agency with the acronym in this URL.

Rio Grande do Sul has a culture and cuisine akin to neighboring Argentina and Uruguay: cowboys, meat, pampas, and wine. They also have harder "r" sounds in their speech. Discussion of regional sotaques, or accents, is reliable small talk here. Brazilians understand me when I note that I learned Portuguese from a professor from Lisboa - they "eat" their words - and in Bahia, where the language is even, smooth, and slow. An acquaintance commented yesterday that Brazilians think American English sounds robotic; it doesn't have the same melodic song to it that Portuguese has.

Some unordered thoughts on the last week in Rio:

1. I'm in the market for a good book on Leonel Brizola, and would appreciate suggestions. All state politicians in Rio de Janeiro tend to fall into three camps: those who are brizolistas, those who were brizolistas but split with the old man at some point, and those who made their career out of opposing Brizola. For example, former state governors Anthony Garotinho and Marcelo Alencar fall into the second group, and present governor Sergio Cabral is from the third. From what I've heard and read, Globo hated the man. (The twice-governor of Rio de Janeiro and once-governor of Rio Grande do Sul passed away in 2004.)

2. I attended a very enjoyable house-warming party at Jim's new place in Gloria/Santa Teresa last night. On my brief walk there, I passed by the usual collection of ladies of the night that prowl the streets of Gloria. One spoke to another in a voice that could be described as "deep Kristie Alley." I passed, and chuckled when I thought of the title of Garcia Marquez's last novel, Memory of My Sad Whores. I thought that I might address them as such on my walk back.

On my eventual walk back, instead of passing the harlots, I walked past a twenty-something blond girl comforting a second twenty-something blond girl as the latter threw up on the curb outside a club. I asked if they needed help, which they declined. Of course they were Americans; Brazilians just don't get that drunk.

3. I think all Rio bus drivers have an ongoing bet with their fare-takers: "How fast do you think I can drive this bus?" Similarly, all taxi drivers see pedestrians crossing the street as a signal that they should aim and speed up.

4. I may have to go down to Copacabana and Ipanema more often if I'm going to train for the Travessia Mar Grande-Salvador. Gustavo put the idea in my head; we'll see.

With luck, I'll take some photos in Porto Alegre. Here, every time I thought to take a picture out the window of Christ, it was too cloudy to see him. Forgive me.

Instead, a view of Potrero Hill, taken when we first moved to San Francisco.

Eurocentrism

From the New York Times, the official newspaper of upper-class white people:

Why We Travel: Submit Your Photos

Share your best travel photos from Europe, then tell us the backstory. Where did you go and why? What's happening in your photo? What does it mean to you? We'll publish a selection of the top images this fall.

Why restrict entries to Europe? Who wants to go there? (As a disclaimer, the example photos they publish are not all restricted to Europe.)

On girls' education in the interior

Went to a showing of short films down in Botafogo with Chris tonight.

This film was both beautiful and depressing.


Hopefully, someone out there will soon study the education and human capital outcomes of Bolsa Familia. It's very important that it works.

Oferta e demanda (supply and demand)

Short story:

I went running today, with the aim of reaching Praia Vermelha at the foot of Sugarloaf in the Urca neighborhood. That's about eight or nine miles round-trip.

In addition to my filled water bottle, I carried a one real coin and a 50 cents coin. I hoped that I could stop to get some chilled coconut water, as I had previously returned to the apartment very thirsty after a run to Urca.

At nine this morning, the weather was 24 degrees with 94% humidity. The forecast called for a 20% chance of rain. The news on Friday night had predicted a gloomy weekend, and stated that anyone who wanted to go to the beach should head for the North or Northeast. By the time I reached the end of Botafogo, it was 33 degrees and cloudless. It was hot, and the beaches were full. Weather forecasts here are useless.

Today was also Independence Day, the day that Dom Pedro I refused to return to Lisbon and declared Brazil independent, "from the banks of the Ipiranga...." Save the crowds at the beach and the military cadets marching, the city was closed.

I did reach Praia Vermelha, which looks like this from above.

On the return from Botafogo, south of Flamengo, I stopped to ask for coco water in um copozinho (a little cup). The vendor apologized that the only bottles he had were bem gelado (well-chilled), and I assured him that this was just fine by giving him the American "a-okay" hand gesture. In Brazil, this hand gesture translates to "you a--hole." My mistake.

Then he named the price: 2,50. I declined.

As I walked down Praia do Flamengo, very dehydrated, I kept seeing "Coco 2,00" signs. I questioned my memory that there are multiple R$1,50 stands in Flamengo. I don't think I was wrong; I was just wrong to ignore the laws of supply and demand.

Another piece of the puzzle

I've long known that I work best in the evening. Before I met Bethany, I was convinced that I was most productive between the hours of 10 PM and 2 AM. I hope an explanation appears in the New York Times soon as to why some people are more productive at night. (They specialize in medical articles on topics like that - the series What Ails the Upper Class generates many pageviews. It's true - this article is historically the most emailed.)

However, I have no explanation for why my most productive work hours have come on the weekend (particularly Friday and Saturday) while in Brazil.

Tonight, another (big) piece of the puzzle fell into place. It turns out that the World Bank conditioned state fiscal reform loans on the creation of a regulatory system in place to deal with privatization. The original documents are all here. One day I'll explain why this is so important to my dissertation. Non-academic readers might find it dull. Academics might also find it dull.

Unfortunately - depending on your point of view - I'm energized for another five hours of work this Saturday night.

Instead, for my own sake, I should instead go find a bar for the Argentina-Brazil World Cup qualifying match.

Some other brief highlights from the past week:

1. I sent off interview requests, and heard one response. Interviews start next week.

2. I tried to swat and kill a mosquito, and put my palm through the glass window. Shards of glass fell nine stories. No injuries, but the window won't be fixed until Tuesday. (Nothing is open on the weekends. Monday is Independence Day, the day Dom Pedro I declared that he wouldn't go back to Portugal on the orders of his father, and that Brazil would be independent. He declared this in between Sao Paulo and Santos, from the banks of the Ipiranga River. This act is mentioned in the national anthem, and every city has an Avenida Sete de Setembro.)

3. I have a cellular phone and, more importantly, it works. Unless the situation is dire, please don't call it - receiving and sending calls here is terribly expensive.


And to add one thousand words, the view out the living room window on a cloudy day. The day was sufficiently cloudy to block out the view of Jesus, which you can normally see by sticking your head out the window and looking right. This is my normal office view. It looks over the Modern Art Museum and Gloria Marina in the foreground, and the Morro da Urca and Sugarloaf in the background.




UPDATE: Brazil qualify for the 2010 World Cup with a 3-1 win over Argentina. My roommate was cheering for Argentina; as the game came to a close, even the waiters (at Amarelinho, a mildly famous bar in Cinelandia) started razzing him. And boy, do Brazilians dislike Diego Maradona. Do they ever. They also know several ugly epithets in Spanish for him.

Friday night sleuthing

Dissertation research - call it "fieldwork" - is a lot like detective work. That is, I feel like a one-man detective agency, save that a) no one has died, or has asked me to investigate a case, b) other people might not find the cases interesting, c) my life is in little danger, and no television producers are calling or d) I don't smoke, and I don't currently have an office. In all other respects, it's like playing Dick Tracy.

I certainly didn't expect the following sequence:

I need to talk to Mr. Smith. He worked at the agency back in the late 1990s. Mr. Smith, by all accounts, lives in Rio de Janeiro. But he is now retired, and the last two times he appeared on the Google, he was 1) first in line for tickets to a Roberto Carlos (the Neil Diamond of Brazil) concert last year, and 2) asking a members-only car aficionado site how to fix his power windows, in 2005. Yet I really need to talk to Mr. Smith.

So tonight, Friday night, I joined the members-only car aficionado site, so that I could send a private message to Mr. Smith about the possibility of meeting to talk. Maybe we could meet at the beach on a Wednesday morning; that seems to be what retired people do here. We'll see if he responds. Hopefully his email address hasn't changed.

At least I have live music while I work; there's another concert on the balcony of the Modern Art Museum across the street. The last concert lasted until midnight last night, with no regard for noise ordinances. It was quite loud. Thankfully, they covered some songs I like, such as Minha Menina by the Mutants.

Finally, a photo taken from today's evening run in Flamengo, the famous crying coconut:



The caption encourages people to, at the end of a beach day, put their garbage in the trash can. Each hour, half a ton of garbage is abandoned on the beach. And you don't want to be responsible for making sad garbage, now do you?

Still Life with Paper Towels

The pineapple ("abacaxi" - ab-uh-ka-SHEE) sells for US$1.25. Fresh, cheap, sweet fruit is one of the highlights of this country.