Jungle Jim

Well that was quickly put to rest. No Antarctica for me. A bureaucratic problem that had nothing to do with me.

It turns out that instead of hobnobbing it with the penguins and icebergs, I'll just have to settle for a trip to the Amazon.

Heading up there in just over a week, for a lightning visit to the jungle.

Which hopefully will give me just enough time to find a temporary shelter here in Sao Paulo. I've spent only effectively three days in this town, but already I'm stressing at not having found a place. Not that I'm getting any help from work. It's all up to me -- which means, to hell with it, no choice but to tell the bosses I'm taking the rest of the week off to go flat-hunting. I mean, what else do they expect me to do?

Happy feet

This is becoming a roller coaster. After learning Spanish, then getting my Portuguese underway, I now find I'll have to speak.... penguin.

I made it Buenos Aires, where all was sunny and nice (compared to the drumming rain of Sao Paulo as I left), and started about my work when I got a call from the regional boss.

Was I interested in going to Antarctica?

What a question! I mean, not only do I get to put foot on the world's only continent without a McDonald's, but I'll also get to plant a flag on my Facebook "Places I've been" window on a place that was a little off my normal path. The best thing, is that, if it happens (all yet to be confirmed), I'll be flying in just long enough to get my teeth chattering at minus 20 centigrade, then I'll be back on a plane to my 35-degree new home.

Fingers crossed. Going from tango to the south pole, I'm as excited as Mumble.

O primeira dia

First day at work, and my head is reeling. This language stuff is a bit of a struggle. I'm trying not to be too hard on myself, but it's frustrating as all hell not being able to dive right on in, getting bogged down in focusing hard on sentence construction as well as trying to pick up the content of a conversation and react to it. The day pretty much started with a welcome phone call from one of my regional bosses in Rio. In Spanish. A few mins later it was a conference call in Portuguese in which I did my best to imitate a KGB-era bug, just sitting on the phone and emitting the occasional click so they knew I was still there. When I did talk I think it was some confusing mix of Spanish and Portuguese, which luckily for me is fairly common for foreigners and is called Portuñol or similar.

After that it was a lot of adapting and ordering up equipment I'll need and doing some simple stuff on the basis of Spanish or French text in front of me. I thought some baby steps for the next couple of weeks would be the best way to ease my way into this new life and language. Maybe reward small progress with a drink or a good restaurant.

That was the idea, anyway.

Instead, I'm being sent off to Buenos Aires on Wednesday, and will be there for the weekend, working hard. Any rewards will be of the Argentinian variety.

At least I speak the lingo there.

Second impression

A caipirinha by the pool later.... and I was thinking I might have to revise my evaluation of the local talent. Lying across from me, wearing those g-string bikinis that the Brazilians delightfully call "dental floss" are two garotas with bumps in all the right places. Things were looking up, I thought.

As the shade stole across their deck chairs, they decided to come over to the vacant ones next to me. A small conversation ensued with the brunette, who looked all of 21 and who presented herself as Erica (I think). Tips on where to go out, their explanation that they lived in the one of the serviced apartments in the hotel. OK, so what do you do, I asked, having exhausted other queries and landed on the one question I never really like to answer myself.

"Garota de programa," she said.

Hmmm.... My Portuguese is slowly coming along, but there are a few key phrases I manage to retain. This is one of them. It's the etiquette slapped on lasses who exercise the oldest profession. She seemed fairly open about it though, even explaining that the two of them had the afternoon off because all the prospective clients were off at the Formula One race taking place elsewhere in the city. I asked a few questions, as you would of anyone when asking about their job. But I was also thinking, damn -- so cute and yet so far....

So no, I didn't.

I did get slightly sunburnt though. And sipping a cai by the poolside is almost as good as.... ah, OK, so it's a far-off second. But still, the view was nice. I'm appreciating dental floss.

First impressions

A first glance only, but as my brain tries to click Brazil into some pre-existing category I can't help but think that this metropolis feels somewhere between NYC and Beirut. I mean, the sprawl is more LA, but the canyons formed by high-rise buildings and the mix of ethnicities on the street and the sort of organic development that has obviously occurred prompt an easy comparison with Manhattan. The skyline isn't as concentrated with skyscrapers, sure, but given that the skyscrapers are so numerous as to shrink away into the pollution haze filtering the sunlight, the comparison still seems to stand. The summer temperature and slow, laid-back strolling juxtaposed with the aggressive driving and that disdain for rules owes more to Beirut, however. It is a real city.

Trying to get a feel for the place (akin to closing my eyes and letting the Force do the describing) I sense the sort of human element that is present in places like Lebanon. There's eye contact, smiles, the time to address someone properly. It's not village-like, as in Paris. But it's interconnected, with the emphasis on people rather than objects, unlike the US. A 'feeling' anyway. I may yet be proven wrong.

Wandering around for a couple of hours, here are some snapshot impressions, in no particular order:

- I'm pleasantly surprised to see quality literature in the news kiosks dotted along the main roads. Sartre, Fitzgerald, Kafka.... even the "Sin City" series by Frank Miller. Not even Paris had this. I know that Brazil's constitution bars the government taxing books, so maybe this is a pleasant result. I can see I unnecessarily shipped all my books. I also see where a significant chunk of change will be going in the future.

- The traffic is not nearly as bad as every one said. It is Sunday, however, so I'm still girding my self for gridlock tomorrow. If that doesn't measure up to the dire predictions, I reckon it's going to be full steam ahead on the purchase of a motorbike to get around.

- So far, no major sense of the place being unsafe. I'm still the paranoid gringo (even hid some of my cash in my underwear last night as I strolled up unfamiliar streets). But the forecasts may have been exaggerated there too. Let's see what it feels like farther afield, outside of this chic little district I've landed in (the hotel has a full gym and an outdoor pool that I fully intend to dive into later today).

- Dropped by a metro station, which looks as clean and modern as those in Madrid. Tickets are sold for single trip only (none of NYC's metrocard or Paris's Navigo), and priced at R2.30 (around one euro or 1.4 dollars).

- The Trianon park near my office is delightful. The heat of this place means the trees are all tropical or semi-tropical varieties. It's a bit like the Botanic Gardens in Sydney, though smaller, with no grass and no harbour.

- The fresh fruit is all they say. And that was just from my hotel buffet breakfast. Wow. Summer-intense taste to them all.

- The girls just wandering around on the streets and in the shops aren't as pretty as I was led to believe. OK, a few glimpses of flesh over tight jeans and some tight bodies, but a lot of average sorts running around. EXCEPT at an upmarket restaurant which I walked by, where glamorous doll-like creatures were spilling on the sidewalk. I think I may have found my canteen.

- The occasional helicopter flies overhead. Civilian choppers. It seems Sampa has the second-biggest fleet of commuter helicopters in the world after Manhattan. The rich use them as we'd use taxis. I am so going to get a ride in one of those babies, and soon!

- Some stalls selling antique trinkets was set up under the museum at Trianon. The prices weren't that sweet, but some decorating ideas in there, especially the old maritime oil lamps....

- Finally, the people seem friendly enough, though it's not over the top. The sort of laid-back coolness that comes from living in a sun-drenched country.

I took a walk looking for my office that I'll be heading into tomorrow. No luck. I did find an address that matched up, but that certainly wasn't the place, as the lobby guard (on a Sunday!) let me know. More hiking tomorrow, I think, and probably a few frantic mobile calls.

I'm feeling slightly out of it after the trip. Wanted to do a witty sort of rundown of the new country I've landed in. But that'll have to wait till later, when the caipirinhas take effect (actually had my first in-situ one last night -- how is that the barmen in Paris can get them so wrong? They are pretty damn good here.)

In-flight meditation

What is it that pushes out of home to live somewhere else? Why do some of us give up a lot of what we’ve built up over years, decades to start over?

The flight to Sao Paulo is full. That artificial darkness has taken over the cabin, but people are milling around the mid and rear, chatting, stretching legs, drinking water. For a change there are no kids screaming or heard at all. Cramped, but not stressful. An average economy trip to my new life.

The first time I left somewhere, I got bumped up to business. I still appreciate it when it happens, but it’s rare and I’m not going to obsess over the differences. A confined journey in an aluminium can is all this is. We’re all breathing the same air. The people up front get a better wine, free champagne, and leg room. I only drink water anyway on long-haul. The leg room would be nice though.

The first time I left somewhere, I left Australia for the US and Canada. It seemed like a rite of passage. I was young, graduated from university just a couple of years earlier and using the savings from my first real job to launch myself across the Pacific into North America. The first of many, many solo voyages. It seemed exciting, but in a safe, modern way. Going to America is more like revisiting the sets of TV series and movies that we’ve all grown up on than actually discovering a new land. America back then was like walking around on the other side of the screen. A strange but familiar experience.

Canada, where I ended up, was hardly exciting. The snow up to my knees was a bit of a novelty. Well, to see it in a city anyway. I’d been skiing in Australia many times. But I saw through a few months before moving on with my backpacking and making it to Europe. There was where I found home, Paris, though it was to be four years before I was finally going to claim that city.

I moved to London out of financial necessity the second time I made the Big Leap. It dealt me some great experiences, opened my eyes to some directions I wanted to go in, though it was clear from the very start that that city and I were destined to be only on nodding terms, like two acquaintances who don’t share a lot in common and probably don’t approve of the other’s lifestyle.

Moving to Paris, it felt like a personal arc had reached its natural destination. All the moves were done for personal reasons, without the safety net of a job to go to or an apartment or family. They were deliberate, thought-out choices made possible because my upbringing had shorn me of many of the attachments that make it difficult for others to uproot themselves and recreate themselves.

This time feels different. For the first time I’m leaving a place that I loved for an unknown land of promise. And I have a safety net. I’ll have a fascinating job, a lot of travel, and I’ll be living in one of the great leisure spots on the planet. Paris was part of the mythology of culture and sophistication and urban leisure. Brazil is the mythology of wild nature, gorgeous inhabitants and sun.

But the real reason I made the jump this time was to forget a part of me, to leave the last two years back in Paris and to start again. To mend insides that had been torn up by a private tragedy as devastating as it is banal.

Maybe this time, maybe this move, I’ll rediscover that vital, spontaneous part of me that had been knocked silly. It sure looks like a great place to try.

Le dernier jour

Last day in Paris. And boy is this weird. I can barely believe I'm leaving my city, the one place on this planet I call home. The welling up of emotions damn near paralyses me, and it feels like a dam holding back the memories of the last 12 years spent here is cracking, spraying bits and pieces of recollected life all over me as I walk along cobbled streets or look at buildings that I know I won't be looking at again with an insider's eye for a long time, if at all.

One face keeps coming back at me. And no matter how much I try to push her away, she's there, damn it. What does it take to kill chagrin? In the interests of pushing memories of her away again, I shan't dwell on it here. I'll leave that for another time when I feel strengthened from my South American sojourn, when I can prose on her from a distance. Not there yet.

Another big change. This makes the third or fifth in my life, the way I count them. This is walking through a door and knowing that you're being redefined -- again -- by doing so. The thrill is heady, scary and sort of mystical.

My flight leaves tomorrow. Early. A long swoop across the Atlantic, and there I'll be, in Sampa as the natives apparently call it. Saturday night in Sampa.....

Brazil bound

It may have been my lucky jacket, or possibly Armani Code is more seductive than I ever imagined. Whatever it was, a day that looked to be fraught with bureaucratic obstacles went ridiculously easy. It was like the administrations of France and Brazil gave me a free pass.

First up, the lady at the Paris tax office smiled and immediately gave me the little voucher thing that usually takes three days to deliver. Then the woman at the welcome desk at police HQ went looking for the person I had an interview with (rather than calling a perpetually busy number and giving up). And I had a cursory meeting with the official who just ticked a few boxes and said my French citizenship papers should be in my hands sometime late next year if all goes well.

Then off to another police station to get my international driving licence. OK, there they'd lost my application. But instead of telling me to come back in another four days, one of the women just did it on the spot.

After that, it was the Brazilian consulate's turn. I went in, took a number and prepared to wait it out. But the lady behind the counter called me and just handed me my passport over the heads of the two people she had in front of her. A peek inside confirmed a four-year visa for the land of caïpirinhas, samba and homicide. I was on my way.

How is it that luck shines so brightly some days?

I'm thinking the run is continuing. Today, the removalists turned up an hour early, meaning they were gone at 10am, after expeditiously throwing my years of accumulated junk in boxes. That on the biggest day of strikes Paris has seen in years.

Now if I can only find some technique to ensure this run of good fortune for years to come....