Brazil. What to say about Brazil. i’ve been here since Jan­u­ary 31st (it’s the 10th of Feb­ru­ary today.) Let’s start with facts — I love facts. Brazil is big. It’s about the size of the US, if you don’t men­tion Alaska. For some rea­son Simone hasn’t taught me how to say “you have a very nice lit­tle coun­try.“

Coun­tries by size — note the fall off from Australia(number 6) to India (num­ber 7.)
Rus­sia 17,075,400
Canada 9,976,140
United States 9,629,091
China 9,596,960
Brazil 8,511,965
Aus­tralia 7,686,850
India 3,287,590

Coun­tries by GNP — note that the US kicks ass. Some sta­tis­tics I have seen have Mex­ico higher than Brazil, but these are the lat­est. Mex­ico is about half the size of Brazil — see next stat.)
United States 8,708,870.00
Japan 4,395,083.00
Ger­many 2,081,202.00
France 1,410,262.00
United King­dom 1,373,612.00
Italy 1,149,958.00
China 1,149,814.00
Brazil 760,345.00
Canada 612,049.00
Spain 562,245.00
Mex­ico 474,951.00
India 459,765.00

Most pop­u­lous coun­tries. Brazil is fifth. Bet you didn’t know that.
China — 1,294,629,555
India — 1,065,070,607
United States — 293,027,571
Indone­sia — 238,452,952
Brazil — 184,101,109
Pak­istan — 153,705,278
Rus­sia — 144,112,353
Bangladesh — 141,340,476
Nige­ria — 137,253,133
Japan — 127,333,002
Mex­ico — 104,959,594
Philip­pines — 86,241,697

What does all of this mean? Brazil is eco­nom­i­cally head and shoul­ders over the rest the coun­tries in South and Cen­tral Amer­ica I’ve seen. It’s civ­i­lized, and it’s pretty sim­i­lar to the United States. Of course, there are dif­fer­ences. Here are a few of them. Let’s start with the negative.

Crime. Lot’s and lot’s of crime. I’m not really talk­ing about jay­walk­ing or bad dri­ving (which I don’t think is a crime here.) I mean don’t stop at red lights at night because you might get mugged kind of crime. Simone, who is (I’m guess­ing) upper mid­dle class here (father, brother and sis­ter are all lawyers, but her sis­ter is an actress, pri­vate catholic school grow­ing up, etc.) had her purse stolen at gun­point at a red light. Her brother, dri­ving her fathers HiLux (AKA — 4 Run­ner) was kid­napped at gun­point and help for a cou­ple of hours before they let him go, keep­ing the truck. Dur­ing the kid­nap­ping, they told him they were going to kill him, etc. He had trou­ble sleep­ing for a while.

I was try­ing to fig­ure out ini­tially if she was over react­ing about crime when I first met her, but I’ve been look­ing into sta­tis­tics on the web, and found out about the above sto­ries, and well, it’s a prob­lem. The last year I can get sta­tis­tics for (2003) Sao Paulo — a city of 18 mil­lion peo­ple, had 4000 + mur­ders (one arti­cle listed over 11,000, but I couldn’t find any­thing to ver­ify that.) The entire US, with 293 mil­lion peo­ple (from the above sta­tis­tics) had a lit­tle over 14,000 mur­ders. Seat­tle, with 3 mil­lion peo­ple (greater seat­tle area) had, by com­par­i­son, 23.

To deal with the crime, most mid­dle class fam­i­lies live very shel­tered lives. The houses have high walls, and you park your car in a locked garage. The chil­dren go to pri­vate schools, and when shop­ping, you enter a locked park­ing garage. Peo­ple don’t walk any­where, espe­cially at night. Secu­rity guards are a huge busi­ness here. We went to Wal­Mart (ugh — but her uncle wanted to buy some stuff before he went back to the US, and he works at one in the US.) There were two booths you had to pass through to get a card and to get into the park­ing lot, which was sur­rounded by a high fence. Once in the park­ing lot, you saw a secu­rity guard in a tower look­ing around, and another dri­ving around on a motor­cy­cle. This was com­mon. Simone’s bank is not a nor­mal branch — she’s some sort of five star bank cus­tomer, what­ever that means. When enter­ing her (five star cus­tomers only) branch, you’ve got to get buzzed in by a hid­den secu­rity guard, one at a time. The first entrance is open to every­one. The sec­ond is con­trolled by the guard and only one per­son is allowed in at a time. You step inside the sec­ond small room, the door behind you closes, then the other door in front of you opens, and you are in the bank. While we were there once, I noticed that they didn’t allow a deliv­ery guy to enter the bank — he had to leave the stuff for some­one else to pick up. This wasn’t an uncom­mon experience.

Pol­lu­tion. This is only about Sao Paulo, but it’s got a huge amount of pol­lu­tion. It might just be that I’ve been here long enough for it to affect me, but I some of the same symp­toms that you get with aller­gies but anti­his­t­a­mines don’t help. I even get a bit of a cough on bad days.

Dri­ving. I’ve dri­ven in Mex­ico City, New York City and now, Sao Paulo. It’s a big, hairy mess. What is odd to me though, is that peo­ple are polite. You hardly ever hear any­one honk­ing a horn. Some­times you’ll hear it, but it’s much dif­fer­ent than any­where else. Maybe peo­ple are scared of hav­ing to stop at a stop­light. Peo­ple let other peo­ple in, and if you do a U turn in the street, peo­ple just stop for you. It’s quite nice, but traf­fic is still a mess. The lines on the road — I don’t think peo­ple know what they are for. After going to din­ner with Simones Uncle and new Aunt, I drove. Her uncle said I drove like an amer­i­can, which I took as a com­pli­ment. Her new Aunt said I was a good drive, which wasn’t that big of a deal until I real­ized that she used to be a truck dri­ver in San­tos — a city south of Sao Paulo (I think.) All over Sao Paulo, they have peo­ple on these lit­tle motor­cy­cles (today, I finally saw a man sized motor­cy­cle — it was a BMW 1100 RT.) every­thing else has been 150cc or maybe, 250cc. Lane split­ting is a national pas­time for these guys, and it does help them get around a lot faster than cars, but at a pretty big price. Today I saw the after­math of my sec­ond acci­dent, where one of these guys got hit. It always makes me sad, and glad I’m not on a motor­cy­cle around here.

Por­tuguese. Speak­ing span­ish doesn’t help — espe­cially my butchered Span­ish. And no one speaks eng­lish — maybe a word or two, but that’s about it. It would be pretty dif­fi­cult with Simone around, tak­ing care of me. Some of the prob­lems are pretty mean. I found out, after get­ting a lot of odd looks, that the word for year (anos), in Span­ish, sounds like the word for anus in Por­tuguese. Frankly, I think that’s just mean.

Get­ting stuff done. Well, it’s a pain. In my expen­sive hotel, I was try­ing to get the hotel to allow Simone to get buzzed from the ele­va­tor to the park­ing garage. Her other option is to walk out­side the hotel into the park­ing garage. Frankly, I can’t think of any rea­son she should have to walk the extra dis­tance, and out­side the hotel (see above about crime), espe­cially when all that is required is for some­one to push a but­ton. I went back and forth with the front desk guy, and all he could say is “it’s the rule.” Which makes absolutely no sense. Simone was trans­lat­ing for me, so I couldn’t really yell, since I would just be yelling at her, not at the front desk guy.

Later, we had to get an air­line ticket so I could fly to Buenos Aires. We bought the ticket online, but had to go to the office of the com­pany to pay. We gave some­one my credit card, and they dis­ap­peared for almost an hour. Even­tu­ally I said (or rather Simone said for me) it’s been almost an hour — I want my credit card back. I’ll go some­where else. By some mir­a­cle, they were done at almost exactly the same time. Obvi­ously it doesn’t take an hour to process a credit card — they just didn’t think it was a high pri­or­ity. Appar­ently much of Brazil is like that — it runs on it’s own sched­ule. And a lot of it is a struggle.

Size. Sao Paulo is HUGE. I’m stay­ing on the 24th floor of a 27 story build­ing. As I look out my win­dow I see hun­dreds, if not thou­sands of huge apart­ment build­ings. In any direc­tion I can look I see large build­ing after large build­ing, for as far as the eye can see. I’m going to see if I can find any pic­tures to post, but from up here, it looks like a city of 18 mil­lion people.

On a related, and some­what puz­zling note, is there aren’t a lot of huge build­ings, just lots of tall (20ish story) build­ings. The largest build­ing in Sao Paulo, and South Amer­ica is sup­posed to be 51 sto­ries, which would put it about 9th in Seat­tle (going by feet, not by sto­ries.) The largest in Latin Amer­ica is 55 sto­ries, in Mex­ico City, and it’s new. I guess it’s more expen­sive to build the last, higher stories.

Lest you think that it’s all bad, there is a lot of good in the country.

Peo­ple are polite every­where I’ve been. Men and women will step aside to let some­one pass. That didn’t hap­pen in any of the other S.A. coun­tries I’ve been in. In La Paz, peo­ple would just try and squeeze by lit­tle old ladies to get some­where quicker. Every­one is, as far as I can tell by observ­ing, very friendly. When we go to the store, or out to eat, often Simone will get into a con­ver­sa­tion with the clerk, or waiter, or who­ever. She’s friendly, but I’ve seen other peo­ple do that too. I think that is the rea­son there isn’t the honk­ing of car horns like you see other places.

This place is cheap, sort of. The prices are a LOT higher than La Paz, but then again, it’s almost like liv­ing in the US. My very nice hotel, on the 24th floor, with a huge hot tub in the room, a pool, inter­net, and a fridge, cost me $36 a night — eas­ily the most expen­sive hotel I’ve meant to stay in. But it’s a good neigh­bor­hood, and it’s got secure park­ing. And the inter­net. Did I ever men­tion I really like the inter­net? Food can be some­what cheap if you buy care­fully. Simone has a house­keeper. I don’t know how much she charges, but it’s pretty cheap, as in close to pocket change, and she’s there about five or six hours a day. Cars are cheap, but then again they are cheap lit­tle cars. They do sell my all time favorite small car — the Ford KA.

OK — that is all good, but what is _fantastic?_ Well, I hope my mother and other sen­si­tive types have stopped read­ing by now.

I’m reminded of the con­ver­sa­tion I had with god a long time ago.

Hey God — It’s me Greg.
Hey Greg, how’s it going.
Good. Say, god, I’m pretty fed up with these women in Seat­tle — pasty white, wear­ing too many clothes, and even a lit­tle out of shape. You know what I really want?
What’s that, Greg.
God, I want to live in a coun­try where the women all have nice, full, round, back­sides. I’m not much of a breast man, as you know, but I do love a nice round butt. Breast are nice, but any­thing over a C cup is just too showy — you know, too L.A. I appre­ci­ate ‘em, but they are just sooo flashy — too much “Look at me, look at me.“
Have you been think­ing a lot about this Greg?
God, yes. I mean, yes, God. Oh — and one more thing — just let me know if I’m get­ting greedy, OK. All the nice back­sides are won­der­ful, but, like art, they need to be dis­played. Tight Jeans should be required, like a com­mand­ment or some­thing. And Cleav­age. Just because I don’t like ‘em showy doesn’t mean I don’t want to see some nice cleav­age. Women are beau­ti­ful, I want to see ‘em. Oh — and don’t for­get a nice flat stom­ach, just peek­ing out from between the jeans and the belly bar­ing shirt. Women tend to gain weight in their hips (again, thanks) — no rea­son not to see a beau­ti­ful flat stom­ach. Any­way, God, thanks for lis­ten­ing.
Greg — you know I’m a woman, right.
I bet you’re beautiful.

Any­way, god and I talked about just such a place one night (or was it the LSD?) And I land here in Brazil, and it’s like God finally lis­tened. It’s full of the most beau­ti­ful women I’ve ever seen. I don’t mean “I’ve just leav­ing La Paz, so some­one over 5’2″ with a waist is sexy.” I mean that I’ll be walk­ing down the street and, invol­un­tar­ily, a gasp of sur­prise will come from my lips. Occa­sion­ally I’ll just let out a small, quiet “thank you jesus” or “praise be”, or just a small chuckle and shake my head. Once in a while I drop to my knees and reach upward to the heav­ens, and start cry­ing at the most beau­ti­ful back­side I’ve ever seen. Peo­ple stare, but that’s only fair — I’ve done my share of star­ing too. Frankly, I want to leave before I get used to such beauty. When the tears are gone, what rea­son do I have to go on?

Of course, after a full day of try­ing not to ogle these gor­geous women, I’m fam­ished. That’s where the other really, real­lly good thing about Brazil comes in. The word, my friend, is chur­ras­caria. A chur­ras­caria is a brazil­ian steak house. Inci­den­tally, it reminds me of _another_ con­ver­sa­tion with God ( I think I need to cut back on the LSD. ) It is the magic meat land that I thought could never exist. A place where men (OK — in my dreams it was bikini clad women, but that’s OK — they have big knives. Best to keep ‘em out of the hands of women, given my past his­tory) wan­der by bring­ing you end­less amounts of meat. All types of meat — some pork, some chicken, even fish. Ribs, loin cuts, fil­lets and more. All juicy, and all just for me. I found myself devel­op­ing a crush on the var­i­ous wait­ers, depend­ing on what they were car­ry­ing. It’s like I was a teenage girl, and they were a meaty n’sync. The chicken guy — well, he’s not much of a man is he. Don’t even get me started on the guy with fish — let’s just say he’s swim­ming against the cur­rent. The rib guy was the bad boy of the whole thing. Me — I only had eyes for the nice rib roast. The guy bring­ing it by was tall, with steel blue eyes, and a carv­ing arm made of gran­ite, wield­ing a knife that could cut the roast just thin enough that you didn’t need any­thing other than a fork. Oh — and he knew what he had. He was just aloof enough to keep me inter­ested, but not so much that I had to find another. Oth­ers tried to inter­est me. The guy with the pork was cer­tainly tempt­ing — it was very, very good. But this was a damned STEAK house, not a pork house. He was bark­ing up the wrong tree. Of course, there is a very nice salad bar, but I’m no fool. I’ll eat healthy later — as far as I was con­cerned it’s just there for the ladies. Oh — and how much for this meaty good­ness? It’s just R$62, or about $24, and that included dessert.

Brazil — it’s a pol­luted, crime rid­den, heaven on earth.