Back from Rio, back to...

Dear guys,

Rio de Janeiro takes your senses for a long ride and after Sao Paulo, feels like being in another country. Now I understand why people fall in love with Ipanema, Barra and Rio as a whole. The shanty towns are all over the hills surrounding the city and every road hides a potential danger. This doesn’t lower my appreciation for the beauty of the place. I was there on what was meant to be a business/leisure trip but the only business I saw were a couple of business cards I received from some of the participants. It was a fairly intense weekend during which I have done much more than in a month in Sao Paulo. Long walks by the seaside, visiting landmarks, seen a beautiful church, been at the Maracana football Stadium for a match, attended a fashion show, popped into a night club, eaten at a few spectacular restaurants. Most of this thanks to a colleague from Rio that has been chauffeuring us around and taken good care of us. I will go back to Rio, for sure and, this time, I will try to see more by myself and at my own pace. You will think I am mad but the most beautiful thing I saw was the Monastery of Saint Benedict (search on Google mosterio Sao Bento). Nothing special from the outside but inside… amazing beauty! Add to this that the monks sing Gregorian Chants and your heart gets kidnapped.

Strolling on the pathway in Copacabana and Ipanema gives you a feeling of joy and joye de vivre that I had nearly lost over here and it does recharge the batteries!

The atmosphere at the Maracana for the match between locals Flamengo and Botafogo was incredible. The Torcideros (fans) of Flamengo had put up a show that was absolutely unique. Despite the fact that the Stadium was two thirds empty, the feeling they give and the noise they make is overwhelming. Never seen so many women and kids at the Stadium. A big big family party! All very hot blooded from 5 to 100 years old!

The airport in Sao Paulo, the city one, is in the middle of the city and, as you can see from the pictures on this Blog, you get some views of this huge city that can somehow be considered spooky. A true jungle populated by 16 million people. A Country in a State. This airport, Congonhas, is the one where the plane skidded out of the runaway and ended up in a building. When I was arriving to the airport by taxi, the impression I had about the runaway was the one you get seeing a ski jumping trampoline.

As soon as you land in Rio de Janeiro, you see the change of scenery. Palm trees all over loaded with coconuts. The drive starts from the local airport, Santos Dumont, passing through the “City” and going into Botafogo, Copacabana, Ipanema. A lovely 25 minutes journey to appreciate the seaside and the locals running, jogging, skating, biking. All sizes and shapes. Not like the usual images you get from the TV of all perfect bodies but much nicer to look at for those, like me, that are nothing special to and feel ashamed even of showing the legs!

Any drawbacks? Oh yes… they say that Rio is far more dangerous than Sao Paulo. Well, I cannot vouch for that but I think I trust those who say it because you get warned by hoteliers and taxi drivers and locals about the hidden dangers. We went by car on a side road leading to Copacabana seaside and, I can tell you, it was really spooky with some very rundown buildings and people that were certainly involved in some sort of illegal activities down this 100 meters street. Another thing I noticed about Cariocas is that they are not as friendly as Paulistanos. They even avoid eye contact, thing that is very typical here in Sao Paulo. It is not a defiant or a lusty exchange of glances I am talking about, just pure acknowledgement that someone has crossed your way, a sort of implicit hello. Nothing. I find this very odd considering that I am used to warmer location with warmer people. We have been for dinner in a restaurant bar music club to which we had access only thanks to one of our colleagues that is well known in Rio. Face selection is still practiced and I ended up in this place being amongst the ugliest people in there! Seemed like it was a restaurant populated by people coming straight out of cosmopolitan! I was not the worst dressed chap, but for sure if I were around looking for a wife, I would have been the last one to be selected by any of the ladies there. We were commenting with my other gringo colleagues that it was not possible not to comment about the people there, both males and females, were very good looking and, we discovered, all commoners.

I read around that Sao Paulo can be rather classist and the etiquette to access restaurants or clubs is pretty strict. Well, I have been out all the times with my training shoes and never had problems. On the contrary, in Rio, I have experienced the opposite. What was meant to be a more down to earth location has given us some problems with the dress code.

Add to this that our host was rather annoyed by the fact that we didn’t know much about Carioca etiquette in restaurants and, I tell you, I felt rather uncomfortable feeling under observation… Things like: take the spoon out of the plate, when you finished and put it on the side of the plate the other one is on; leave some food in the plate, do not eat it all; do not even think of asking for toothpicks (and I tell you that after eating a T-bone steak can be quite difficult to do without); do not order beer and wine at the same time, it is not something you normally do in Rio… and so on. Our host was fantastic, don’t take me wrong but it can be rather embarrassing to abide by some unwritten rules that apply in some restaurants rather than others, especially when the only thing that makes you realise you are in a posh place is the price of the items on the menu and the fact that your host tells you that “the guys going out are the richest people in Rio and in Brazil”.

One thing that I found rather annoying was the smell of hash impregnating the air. Unbearable!

But overall, it was a fantastic weekend and I came back to Sao Paulo with much more energies and with something to look forward to that is a new visit to Ipanema and, hopefully, to other locations in Brazil, amongst which Salvador da Bahia and Florianopolis in Santa Catarina.

Back to Sao Paulo… mosquitoes are just killing me, seems like they come through everything. They are just in any place you can possibly think of! On Monday the tap water was yellow. This was happening in more locations and I am starting thinking that the reason of my constant malaise over here could be due to the water used to wash the salad.

When I told people that I was coming to work in Sao Paulo, many of them made me notice that I would have had two Summers in a row… Well, I have to admit that it is true but seems like Summer in Sao Paulo is no different than Summer in Beijing… I am in a steamer! Feeling like a BaoZi! The weather is simply disgusting and the fog covers the whole city. Thick clouds and sudden heavy rain is very common. But it is hot!

I am thinking at the words of someone I cannot name, to avoid him to be in trouble with his wife: “If you are looking for culture, quality of life, quality of food, relaxing time, great performing arts, Sao Paulo is the city you will never want to leave”.

I must admit that I love everything that is culture, food, relax, arts but, funny enough, I think that Sao Paulo is good only for those who like nightlife, especially getting drunk in a club or a disco. I do not know if this person was on drugs when he was describing Sao Paulo or it is me that landed in a parallel universe in a place called Sao Paulo in a country called Brazil…

The more I look at the building and the settings and the more I realise that this city is one of the ugliest places I have ever been. Seems like it was built without any planning, just house on top of house, a high-rise in the favelas backyard and an airport in the garden.

As I said, it doesn’t reflect the people nicety. They are really lovely and friendly but, believe me, getting up in the morning is becoming harder and harder…

Even here my colleagues have been talking about my Prime Minister and about his comments about the tanned President. I told them that if they think he is an idiot they are treating him far too well. He is just someone that has not realise yet that doing spitting competition with friends at 10 is not the same as telling President Clinton to be careful and not impregnate his wife during the G8 in Naples. For him inviting Foreign Direct investment in Italy because of the secretaries being good looking is equivalent to crack a joke with his family. He just doesn’t have any sense of measure. However, to be perfectly honest, I am happy that this man is Prime Minister of my country and not of the US, Russia or any other country that can change the destiny of the world. He would have been very dangerous. I am afraid of walking around Sao Paulo in the night because those who carry the guns are kids. If they were adults I would not have been scared. Well, the dwarf is dangerous because he doesn’t realise what he says and how dangerous he can be so, better he is the PM of this country rather than a super power. Even if, I am more than sure, if he were in another country he would be in jail by now, rather than being elected by his fellow citizens. Sorry Mr. Obama, I am sure you are laughing at it but I cannot help in feeling ashamed of carrying his same passport and the one of some people I know that have in their DNA the certainty that they are smarter than the others and they pass over this to their children that can happily say, publicly, that “Obama is not even Christian, he is Muslim so he should not have been voted”. Congratulations! These people are generally ashamed of being Italian when the centre-left governments were there and proud when the dwarf rules, as if they were anthropologically different… sod off!

The church has already invited President Obama not to review the stam cell research block imposed by Bush and while in the UK a 13 years old terminal child, supported by his parents, gains the right to die, in Italy the Church still interferes on the case of Eluana, the girl that has been in coma for more than 16 years and the father has been fighting to let her die.

I am done with Italy, I am done with democracy and the Western world. Let me close this Blog with a beautiful extract from a song by Leonard Cohen:

Give me back the berlin wall

Give me stalin and st. paul

Give me christ

Or give me hiroshima

Destroy another fetus now

We don't like children anyhow

I've seen the future, baby

It is murder



Have a nice week guys!