18 Tuesday Dec 2012
Posted in DAILY LIFE, PEOPLE:
What I know about Brazilians…3. Brazilians can add a –inha or –zinha to pretty much every word. Just take caipirinha.
4. Brazilians have awesome names. People I have met are called: ‘Letsgo’, ‘Madeinusa’, ‘Waltdisney’, ‘Isaac Newton’, ‘Mona Lisa’ and ‘John Lennon’. Terrific!
08 Saturday Sep 2012
Posted in DAILY LIFE
Tags
Brazil, culture, daily life, middle class, novellas, soap operas
30 Thursday Aug 2012
Posted in DAILY LIFE
22 Sunday May 2011
Posted in DAILY LIFE
Tags
banks, Brazil, daily life, filas, lines, living in Brazil, queues
 Folha.com:Photo taken at a São Paulo bus station, which requires elderly to fill a form to use the bathroom. |
| People over 60 and disabled must face a queue, show identification and fill out form to have the right to use the restrooms free.Three terminals of the city – all managed by the company Socicam – were visited by this reporter and different procedures were found to cross the entrance of the elderly and handicapped bathrooms. Other users pay $ 1.50 – children under six years enter for free and do not need to fill out the form.Socicam, the company responsible for bus stations in São Paulo, said that the requirement of filling out the form for the elderly is only an “internal control” and do not intend to modify it.Go to article (pt)Note:
Many malls, shopping centers and supermarkets charge for parking, which has added yet another line to life in Brazil. OBS: When I returned to Brazil in 1986, the majority of the banks did not have organized lines, which led to the inevitable arguments and shouting matches because of line jumpers. In addition, there were always a couple of people saving a place in line for someone else, which would cause frowns and dirty looks, but for the most part was allowed. Because going to the bank was such a chore, families and small businesses would have a “designated bank person”. This person would do the banking for others. Thus when you got in a line of 10 people, it actually could be 15 or even 20 people line. The bank tellers paid no attention. What took place on the other side of the divider was not part of their world. During the inflation years, beginning in the late 80s and early 90s, it only got worse. Any money you earned had to be deposited daily so the banks were always full. Banks are still crowded and busy today, but much less so. Banks now have online banking and expanded ATM facilities and the lines are now organized. There is even a law that you should not have to wait more than 20 minutes, which on occasion is enforced. |
12 Thursday May 2011
Posted in DAILY LIFE
10 Tuesday May 2011
Posted in DAILY LIFE
This video was made in Spain, but it is appropriate for people who face bureaucrats around the World.
11 Tuesday Jan 2011
Posted in DAILY LIFE
Info on cost of living and prices
26 Friday Nov 2010
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| Buying imported books at bookstores here are expensive.Buying online abroad and having them shipped by snail mail is also expensive.
Now, we can buy via downloads off the Internet. For me, the only way to go. I used to buy books on Amazon.com. The books always arrived (took two months) and free of import tax. However, the shipping cost of around US$25 for four to seven books was too expensive. I stopped buying books from Amazon.com. Today, I installed “Kindle on my PC” from Amazon.com; I assume it is the same software used on their Kindle Tablet. I went to Amazon.com, bought a Kindle ebook, paid with my BR credit card and downloaded (super fast!!) to my computer: easy, efficient, super fast and less expensive! I don’t have a Kindle, IPad, Galaxy or other tablet, but to be able to buy, download on the spot and read any of the thousands of ebooks available via online stores is magic. 46 years ago in Brazil, I couldn’t even make a phone call to the next town and the nearest bookstore with English reading material was so far away that it it wasn’t part of our life. (Peace Corps Brazil gave us a book locker. It had maybe 200 paperbacks. Those books plus the BBC kept us connected to the outside world.) |
31 Sunday Oct 2010
Posted in DAILY LIFE
| Building and maintaining sidewalks in Brazil (at least in my region) is the responsibility of the owner of the land (lot). Thus when you walk a couple of blocks here, you will have many different sidewalks (see below). Makes walking difficult; especially for women in heels. As a result, it is not unusual to see people walking in the streets and not on the sidewalks.
In downtown areas, the sidewalks are usually normal; however, not always well maintained. |
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One of the attractive, but impractical sidewalks, is called “Portuguese or Mosaic sidewalks”. Attractive because of the designs, but impractical because of the time and cost to build and maintain them. |
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| LINKS: |
| UPDATE: 30 Nov 10 Here is what happens when the person responsible doesn’t maintain the sidewalk. This sidewalk has been in this condition for over 15 years! I walked on or by this sidewalk every day while going to and from my office.
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10 Saturday Jul 2010
Posted in DAILY LIFE
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Called to cancel a service. It took four tries and about an hour. Should only take 10 minutes if they used the Internet instead of these horrible Call Centers. On top of this the phone line was bad. |
08 Thursday Jul 2010
Posted in DAILY LIFE
13 Wednesday Jan 2010
Posted in DAILY LIFE, INTERNET & PHONE SERVICES:
Tags
 Very detailed posting over at The Brazil Business site about the Brazilian telephone system.
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12 Thursday Nov 2009
Posted in CITIES: Belo Horizonte, DAILY LIFE
Tags
Beer, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, culture, Drinking, drinking laws, Minas Gerais, teenagers, underage
The young man on the far right, who evidently is studying at the University of Kansas, wrote an informative article on drinking as a teenager in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Gives you some insight into Brazilian culture.
You seldom see drunks here and when you do, they are usually knocking back shots of cachaça at their local Boteco (cheap bar).
21 Friday Aug 2009
Posted in BEACHES:, DAILY LIFE
Rio Araguaia Goiás, Brazil – Campamento
Kids sitting on jacare
Fishing on the Araguaia
Fred (first left) and the Gang on the Rio Araguaia
The interior of Brazil has many large rivers, which during the dry season expose kms and kms of river beaches. Many Brazilians, who live far from the coast, take off a few days during the vacation month of July to go to Brazil’s Interior Beaches for a little R&R.
The Rio Araguaia is about 5hrs NW of Goiânia by car.
This is the “other” Brazil. Natives of Rio and São Paulo cities are much like New Yorkers…have no idea what the rest of the country represents. This is why Gringo Investors run into trouble.
LINKS:
17 Monday Aug 2009
Posted in CITIES: São Paulo, DAILY LIFE
Traffic in Brazil. Photo: Fernando Meyer (flickr)
Written by John Fitzpatrick
Monday, 17 August 2009 19:41
Norman Normal, a middle-aged expatriate journalist, was awakened as happened every day in São Paulo by a pack of dogs barking. They howled and bayed crazily as they did at several points during the day and, as usual, their owners made no attempt to shut them up. Norman wished the Higienópolis Poisoner who had terrorized dog owners in that district in the mid-90s by feeding poisoned meat to their hounds was still around.
Once up, Normal looked down from his bedroom on the 13th floor at the crossroads where three avenues met and wondered why he had not noticed the location when he moved into the apartment years earlier. Although it was only seven o’clock, the traffic was already building up.
