Supercharged

This month is flying by. Where to start? I feel like it's been an express train ride through some very different landscapes. If I don't get some of this down, the next bout of adventure will just sweep it all away.

OK, so the blur goes something like this:

- First of all a chopper ride over São Paulo. Followed by some pistol shooting (I'm better than I thought; nicely grouped in the carboard target -- a good performance, though there was a lingering distaste that the whole experience was an imagined blasting away at a human being). Then I got to see a car shot up by a much more expert gunmen, the type that swagger around. Luckily not a criminal experience, at least not directly: it was a controlled display by an armoured car company, of which I hope to post some video sometime. The bullets smacked into the windshield but didn't go through.

- Then came a dawn flight out to some country town that is home to all these farmer millionaires. The local airport was basically a garage for shiny new little choppers that these agri-rich dudes use to get around. All I got to see was a factory where biofuel is made from sugarcane. I never realised how big that is in Brazil. Almost all the cars on the road can take sugar alcohol, petrol, or both. Hmmm. I remember when the down-and-outs used to sniff petrol from cars. Now I guess they just dunk donuts in them in Brazil.....

- On to the Amazon after that. Not the way I wanted to do it (ie. backpack, weeks to get around, sidle up to the locals). This was a tourist ride up a river, a quick look at a sort of jungle area, back to the five-star hotel





then back to Sao Paulo on a Brazilian air force flight. As I said, a blur.

- Quick trip to a nearby beach -- my first in Brazil. Crooooowded. But kind of fun. People as friendly as I'd been led to believe, apart from the rip-off taxi driver. Got sunburnt, of course. Still can't believe my once-Aussie tan has whitened to European chalk over all these years.



- Back in Sampa and it's been a lot of paperwork and hassle, but also exciting. This week saw Black Consciousness Day... a celebration of Brazil's black roots laid down during its days of African slavery. Gotta love the black Osama bin Laden.



- Finally I moved into an apartment last night. It's clean, spacious and pretty well situated. Best of all, it had a monkey scampering around in the street out front. But apparently that's an illegal act for simians, so the police came today to arrest him. At least it looked like that's what they planned to do. Despite the fleet of motorbikes, the long ladder and the studied air of reflection on the faces of the armed and flak-jacketed officers standing around under the palm trees, I kind of suspect the critter will be around my place for a while.

- Today was my umpteenth trip back to the Federal Police for a bunch of paperwork even Brazilians didn't know existed. A last attack on bureaucracy before I catch a flight to Venezuela, where I'll be back in a hotel for the next two weeks. Actually, make that three weeks -- I just found out I'll be ducking down to Peru straight afterwards.

Time management takes on a new interpretation down here. I'd been expecting a bit of a slower pace. Instead I barely have time to log on and update this thing. Here's hoping I get a bit more leeway soon.

Globo

Brazil’s biggest television network is TV Globo. I used to think that the name came from some serious reference to it covering the planet, like the newspapers Le Monde or El Mundo in Europe. Now, having watched it intently for days, I think I can safely pronounce it to be more concerned with the spherical attractions exhibited by the scantily clad women models and dancers who strut in front of the camera in ways pretty effective in driving ratings up. In its own way, I guess it is a universal claim on attention.

Those sorts of globes are very much on display here off-set, too. A foray into one of the trendy bars around town left my eyes watering as exotic creatures who looked like they stepped out of Canderel ads wandered around. Following the Portuguese conversation at my table became increasingly difficult and I was reduced to sucking desperately on my caipirinha in sage assent as woman after woman glided by, their globes stuck before them as proud examples of plastic surgery or impossibly gifted genes.

A walk in the park the next day did little to return my brain to its usual mode of ice-clear thought. It seemed the entire city was out jogging along a path in a pretty good rendition of a samba line whose rhythm was dictated by the unheard tunes of hundreds of MP3 players wired up to ears that were also serving as pegs for designer shades. The jogging globes resisted gravity and jiggling and pushed firmly up against the Nike tops being worn only as to mock modesty. Thousands of pairs of them rushing at me. I felt like Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner, when the mysterious white beach balloon of his island prison come to get him. I felt like Austin Powers let loose in Brazil. I felt like I’m going to be taking up jogging pretty soon.

Backfire

The detonations in the tunnel were three sharp claps, whose echoes were distinct.

I looked quickly across at my taxi driver, thinking, Do I ask him or not? I mean, I've heard gunshots before, though the last time was a few years ago. Was I imagining things? In another city I would have dismissed them automatically, but here I keep thinking about all the crime stories I was fed before arriving.

My driver looked unconcerned. I asked.

"São disparos, não?"

"Não," he replied, explaining that they were in fact from a motorbike backfiring.

Funny, when one of my motorbikes backfired it didn't seem to give off such clean, separated bangs. But I guessed the driver knew what he was talking about.

"You know the difference?" I asked.

He nodded in an off-hand way. "Sure. Gunshots are much more focused, not as broad-sounding," he said. It sounded expert. It sounded like he knew from experience.

It sounded like I will probably be given the opportunity some time to be able to distinguish the two types of detonations just as quickly.

Sampa heaven

Oh. My. Deus. This is great.

OK, so the day didn't go so well for the most part. Back to the police station to register -- only to have them tell me to go the foreign affairs ministry to get a special number on my visa. Which apparently will take three days. Without the special number, no police registration. No police registration means no social security number. No social security number means no bank account. It's a merry-go-round that highlights the anecdote about how Terry Gilliam thought up his "Brazil" script about bureaucracy gone made while on a trip to Sao Paulo.

But let's not dwell on the little men in grey suits, shall we?

The big news if that I believe my life is coming together. And it's looking princely. I do believe I've found a place. Sure, there's no swimming pool. And it's not a penthouse. But I think the fact that it's roughly three times bigger than my Paris pad (and comes with three bedrooms, two bathrooms and security enough to scare Freddy Kruger) it's a find. In any case it fits the bill and looks pretty damn near what I was looking for. This is a pad made in heaven, or at least in Brazil. Video soon, maybe.

And tonight was the first real night out on the town... and damn but this city resembles Beirut. Headed off into the nether regions down a street near my (new) place, to a fantastic hotel with an amazing view where all of Sao Paulo's skyline twinkles in the night above a linear pool with trendy white sofas thrown around. The girls are glam and sexy, and the drinks probably cost what a labourer here earns in a week. But it is cool, cool, cool in a way that only Beirut ever managed. God, this place is going to be a blast. I see a lot of blurry, over-the-top nights looming.

Watch out Sampa, I'm settling in.....