Injecting debate

Contraception in Brazil, like elsewhere, centres around the pill, implants and injections. If you don't have health insurance and wish to get any of these via a doctor, you will either have to pay for an expensive appointment or take your chances with the dreadful public health system. Unsurprisingly, a popular third alternative is to go to your local chemist and, in classic Brazilian fashion, get the pill or an injection under the counter. Some sort of technical loophole means they can provide these services if you ask for the brand name specifically rather than for what the drug is meant to do.

Double figures

Today Sam turns 10 ... months. And I just turned nine months in Brazil. It's been quite a trip. We're still waiting for our "balloon".

Comfort food

What do you see there on the breakfast table? I see a coffee sitting next to a lightly toasted white roll, spread with butter. The roll tastes as you would expect something so unexciting to taste. And I'll have it if there's nothing better on offer. All too often there isn't. Brazilian bakeries tend to produce incredibly stodgy food, lacking in subtlety, texture and taste. Croissants are generally dreadful. But my point in asking about this particular toasted roll is that for some Brazilians - perhaps many, maybe all - it is much, much more than a bit of bland, nutritionless carbohydrate. It is ... drum roll please ... the legendary "Pao Na Chapa" or, more prosaically, grilled bread. For P it is a scrumptious, tastebud-titillating treat. If my tone sounds sarcastic, I apologise, it's not meant to. Whatever floats your boat, and if it's an inexpensive treat then so much the better. It just got me thinking about comfort food in general and what a peculiar thing it is, reconnecting us with our own peculiar childhood memories and emotions ... and often making absolutely no sense to anyone else. Fish fingers, anyone ?

Jam tomorrow ?

Many people have commented on Brazil's need to add value, to take its God-given natural bounty and transform it into products worthy of a fast-developing country. Instead, it lets European, US and Chinese companies buy low and sell high. Jam, for example, costs a fortune here, and only a bit less if you're prepared to settle for the synthetic, over-sugared goo produced by domestic manufacturers. Yet you often see street vendors hawking fresh strawberries, such as these pictured. I bought them just now for 10 reais, which is about £4, or one pound a pack. Granted, that is cheaper than usual, which might be three for a tenner on the street or five reais each in the shops. I'm thinking of trying to turn them into jam myself, guessing that, if I can make a decent go of it, the economics of fresh home-made jam will be very attractive. I imagine that would not be the case in the UK.

Ashes to ashes

I was surprised to discover, some years ago, that many Jews in the UK are cremated, as was the case today with the late Amy Winehouse. (Always weird using that additional appellation so soon after someone has died. Just a few days ago she may have been "late" for an appointment; now she is forever "Late", by virtue of dying early) She had a Jewish funeral service in a Jewish part of town and her body was despatched by a loyal band of (mainly) Jewish North Londoners. But instead of going into the ground, according to the strictures of traditional Judaism, her corpse made its way into a furnace. There isn't a nicer word for that - and "oven" has all sorts of ugly, historical connotations.

No comment

A perfect example of what I'm talking about in the last-but-one post are the ongoing problems I've been having with people's comments not showing up on this blog. There is no-one at Google prepared to help so you must somehow find your way through the online maze of Googe discussion groups and pray that a kind soul will suggest a solution. And lo and behold someone has just responded to say that I should try clicking a different box, allowing another format for comments. I have now done that ... so, once again, here's hoping.

iMad !

I love my iPad and since using it as my sole computer post-robbery have come to think of it as the main event rather than a supporting act. Except for one thing: this HORRIBLE autocorrect ! Its endless errors (often embarrassing) and interruptions, forcing insane over-use of the delete button can only really be described one way: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggghhhhhhh !!!!!!!!

PS: Yes, I have tried turning it off but that seemed to make it worse. This device needs a reworked keypad and a more intelligent autocorrect feature that actually learns how you write rather than making the same mistakes again and again.

Update: Seems I'm in good company. And there's an entire website devoted to Apple's evil autocorrect.

Beware geeks bearing gifts

I once saw an illustration of how Englishmen viewed the future. A bewigged character from the eighteenth century imagined seeing his spitting image staring serenely back at him; a nineteenth century fat-cat industrialist saw a perfect reflection of himself, only many times bigger. But the twentieth-century Englishman's perplexed inquiry into what was around the corner found only a giant-sized question mark.

Giving with one hand ...

... and taking away with the other. This seems to sum up so much of what passes for philanthropy. You become rich by squeezing people's pockets and then you "give back to society" by handing over a small fraction of what you took. I was thinking of this when reading that the recent cottage cheese boycott in Israel was quietly sparked by a UK venture capital firm, Apax Partners, whose desire to make its Israeli asset "sweat", as they say in the business, was also making the poor Israeli consumer sweat.

With "friends" like that ...

Is having a madman on your side "good for the Jews" and Israel ? Never. If true, this is a deeply depressing revelation that will just increase antisemitic paranoia in Europe.

Life (before and) after death

Some people never live, while others never die.

Who is strong ?

The evil Norwegian mass-murderer quoted John Stuart Mill in claiming that one man with a belief is more powerful than 100,000 men who have only "interests". Poor JSM must be turning in his grave. In fact, the latest slaughterer - a neo-Nazi "Christian" who no doubt looked for other father figures having not seen his own since 1995 - has more in common with Islamic fascist jihadists. No question that many such killers have possessed similar "belief". But as much damage as they do in the short and medium term, which obviously feels like an eternity of grief, in the long run their destructive, monomaniacal obsession always reveals itself to be a weakness, not a strength.

Tel-Aviv

After the Arab spring, the Israeli summer. Granted, a milder social revolution by a factor of about one million. But a revolution nonetheless. Israelis are falling out of love with the particular brand of winner-takes-all capitalism that has swept over the country during the past quarter-century. High-tech Israel has boomed but where once there was an Israeli-flavored socialism holding things together, now it is every man for himself. And too many Israelis, especially the young, are finding themselves priced out of the market. Tel-Aviv in particular has become impossibly expensive, with rents going through the roof. Hence the sudden appearance of Tent City on one of the poshest streets, as protesters stage an open-ended lie-in.

More magic

Yesterday was another minor milestone for Sam. He climbed onto a coffee table and, separately, put his dummy in his mouth (several times). Magic. Although requiring evermore eagle eyes, and fast reactions, from his parents ! Yes I know, I've become a cooing cliche but at least I'm under no illusion that these baby updates are for anyone's benefit but our own - and perhaps one day for Sam himself.

Holy big brother

Walking along Paulista, we were stopped by a camera crew who got P to say some fun but silly soundbites as publicity for a new series of The Farm. It's a Big Brother copycat on Brazil's second most popular TV channel, Rede Record. Although it is even crasser than Globo in its opium-for-the-masses programming, Rede Record is actually owned by "Bishop" Edir Macedo, founder of the evangelical mega-church, The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God.

Wedding blues

As I said, it's the worst possible time to be applying for a UK visa. This catastrophic cock-up by the UKBA must be the wedding equivalent of what those disgraceful Met officers did to poor Jean Charles de Menezes. (Although I don't want to seem facetious, since nothing can compare to the horror of what happened to him. It's a massive blot on British justice for which no-one in the Met has ever been properly held accountable or, better yet, imprisoned. Ian Blair, in charge at the time, only resigned after further, lesser scandals, enjoying a million pound pay-off and a vast pension. Sickening.)

Revolution in the air

... Seemingly everywhere except Brazil.

"We must put together a different social order here, one that will combine economic prosperity with mutual responsibility. But to do this, the strong and the assertive must wake up from the moral coma into which they sank a generation ago." To find out which country, click here.

A law unto themselves

P was just offered a job at a law firm for which she had previously interviewed. A 12-hour shift as PA from 11 to 11 for a monthly salary of 3000 reais (£1185). Pre-tax. Leaving aside childcare headaches, this is a top law firm in the centre of Sao Paulo - specialising in international mergers and acquisitions - whose partners and directors will be on megabucks comparable with London or New York (certainly with this over-strong Real). What kind of bad joke is that ? The equivalent PA role in the UK comes at a much higher price (see ad below), especially for after-hours work. But in old-school hierarchical Brazil, a mere "secretary", like all the other little people, is supposed to be grateful for any scraps thrown from the table. This is the same "fun" and "sexy" Brazil of which tourists are so enamoured.

Divorced from reality

My son's mother was previously married to a fellow Brazilian. They married in the UK and lived there for some years. He returned to Brazil without waiting for the divorce to come through, making the process even harder. P met me while still in the UK, 1.5 years after her previous relationship had ended, and it was in the UK that she became pregnant. But the birth happened in Brazil. And here we sit in paralysis and perplexity: one Brit and two Brazilians. According to the UK Border Agency (UKBA), my son is not my son. He is the son of P and the man to whom she was still legally married when she gave birth.

Gulp !

Just retrieved a small piece of P's computer keyboard from the back of Sam's mouth, moments before it would have been too late. And not before some terrifying choking sounds. Thank God I happened to be close enough to him to see the unfolding horror because most of it happened silently. These days there are head and face bangs at which to grimace and shudder, and now throat action too ? Perhaps it's Sam's form of protest at the gross injustice of his visa situation.

My son the "foreigner"

I always felt like a semi-detached Brit. But that means I was also semi-attached. Now I am struggling to come to terms with the fact that I have produced a completely unattached non-Brit. And until now the only thing I had worried about was the fact that, according to my religion's ancient laws, he was a non-Jew. This religious headache has paled into insignificance compared to the more pressing problem of Sam's being denied entry to a country that I still, just about, call home.

Sao Pollution

Mark, I'm panicking about pollution. Are we being poisoned on days like today ?

Colour me unimpressed

Troubling pollution in recent days has made me think of the relatively Alpine air back in Bom Retiro (btw, it's pronounced Bon, as with all Brazilian m's). Instead of going there we went to an exhibition of Bom Retiro photos in the Jewish Centre.

"Brazilians are a little bit ..."

Comment from the Swiss-French-Indian director of IMD, respected business school in Lausanne, Switzerland. Quoted in current issue of "Voce s/a" ("You Ltd"), as part of an article titled "Globalize yourself now !" Dominique Turpin says:

Finally, a (legal) Brazilian bargain !

Tweezers. Yes, that's right, tiny little tweezers. They're not so cheap in the UK and I assumed they'd cost something like £10 here, maybe more. But we went into a pharmacy and they brought out a cup holding loads of them, going for the minuscule price of 0.7 reais a throw. That's under 30 pence. And decent quality too. So what's the story here: how does Brazil manage to produce this one decent quality product at a great, low price ? Someone please explain to me the peculiar economics of tweezer manufacturing and retailing in Brazil and how it apparently exists in splendid isolation from every other (poor quality, expensive) product here.

Facing the music *

A late-night downloading of Steve Winwood's greatest hits album, "Revolutions". Done in a few minutes. Thank you iTunes for being such a valuable lifeline - for movie rentals too, such as the brave and bleak documentary, "Mugabe and the White African", which we watched the other day. Puts our frustrations into perspective.

Horse play

Went to a fun gathering on a horse farm outside Sao Paulo last night. Thankfully given lifts both ways. Am still struggling to get my head round the long journies people here make as part and parcel of daily life. Our first stop was in Alphaville, where our lovely friends Andrea and Daniela have a family home.

Exile on main street

Having paid a £1200 application fee (not to mention a great deal more in UK legal fees); having suffered through unending bureaucracy; and having pleaded with the British embassy to expedite our efforts to get my son a visa allowing permanent entry into the UK ... today we received a package with all our documents returned. Finally, our luck is turning, I thought, finally my half-British son is officially welcome in the land of his father's birth.

"Refusal of entry clearance," said the cover letter.

Update: Non-contact centres

Having given up, I found myself ringing a "complaint" number for AXA Assistance and stumbling across someone who, shock-horror, actually tried to help ! With the encouraging name of Robert, this chap has been trying to get his company superiors to understand my unusual position, writing memos to this effect and contacting me by email and phone to provide updates. Although I will have to wait more days to hear if AXA / Lloyds will be able to make an exception and extend my policy, I was so impressed by Hobert's attempt to think outside the tick-box that I told him so today. Whereupon he, also surprised to hear positive feedback from a call centre customer, asked me to repeat my praise to his boss. Which I did, when she came on the line. So maybe there's a small flame of hope still flickering for contact centre staff being able to interact as human beings, rather than as cretinous "computers" that like to say no.

Why I love e-books

The other day I read a news article about a British journalist just released from a Singapore jail. He had published a book about that country's judicial and political corruption in regard to the death penalty. Impressed and intrigued, I was able within a few clicks to download a free sample chapter of his e-book. I read it immediately and then decided to buy, which I did with one further click. A final click saw the e-book downloaded into my iPad's ever-expanding Amazon Kindle library. (I also use Apple's own iBooks app).

Brazilian bargains

A lovely engineer called Sergio just came round and fixed our wifi problem so we now have the luxury of two devices connected at the same time. As with almost everyone we come across these days, it wasn't long before the subject of the robbery came up and his opinion was sought. He suspected the nanny had been too free with her gossip. But the thing that gave us a real laugh was when he said that the iPhone would probably have been sold for a piddling 100 reais (£40) and I said I would have given them 200 reais for it, prompting this anecdote: a friend of his had, while being robbed of a Rolex watch, asked the robbers how much they were going to sell it for? They told him 200 reais and he wrote them a cheque for that amount with his phone number on the back. They let him keep the watch. A week later he got a call from them asking if he wanted to buy another Rolex !

Aerial view

Perfect timing

So heart-warming to see yet another survey showing how Sao Paulo has continued climbing up the rankings of the world's most expensive cities (now at number 10). I couldn't have picked a worse time to live here and raise a child, relying on savings in a depreciating foreign currency. London dropped down from 17 to 18. But price doesn't tell the whole story by any means, as this blog has hopefully shown. The quality gap between expensive Sao Paulo and much cheaper cities elsewhere remains almost unbridgeably large - in favour of elsewhere. The quality and price of world cities may once have been somewhat correlated but in the current era of commodities-led globalisation, a worldwide gold-rush, that quaint connection is now completely broken. Number one on the list is Luanda in Angola !

PS: This article in Time magazine adds another note of caution to "booming" Brazil's financial imbalances.

The currency of trust

It always comes back to trust. Can Brazil trust China not to buy up all its land and turn its inhabitants into neo-colonial serfs ? More importantly, can Brazilians ever learn to trust each other ? How many people said to us after the robbery, "You can never trust a nanny here, even if you got her through an agency. The only way is to get someone from personal recommendation, preferably from a family member or a close friend."

Climate change

At the risk of becoming a climate bore, the contrast between our apartment's temperature and that outside, especially where the sun is shining, is just bizarre. We have the electric heater running much of the time yet go outside and you start shedding layers until you might as well be in summer rather than winter. I thought this was a phenomenon of our old, dreary apartment but evidently not. In general, the weather in Sao Paulo has been weird: all that rain, lightning and thunder, humidity in summer and all those mosquitoes which continued well into winter. For some people this is a blessed climate but definitely not for me.

Less is less

Another walk along Paulista took us to Centro Cultural Itau, a "cultural" centre owned by one of the big Brazilian banks. The good news: it's free. The bad news: it's another waste of space. Virtually nothing in it, save for a bit of paint-your-own canvas (if you can be bothered to wait in line long enough) and the usual wannabe multimedia art "installations", ie a couple of monitors and a projector, dull as ditchwater. The same absurdly large number of assistants standing around, talking to each other. Another amateur attempt at "culture" by curators who don't seem to know or care about it. The exhibit that P wanted to see was some kind of robot which apparently quotes Shakespeare. But it was out of action. When will it be back ? "We don't know."

Update: just found some real culture in Sao Paulo: a triple-bill of The Cleveland Show, American Dad and Family Guy on cable TV !

Day the music died

RIP Facundo Cabral, much-loved Argentine singer, shot dead yesterday in Guatemala as his car traveled to the airport following a concert performance on Thursday. Seems a concert promoter traveling with him was the target of an assassination. Guatemala's level of lawlessness makes Brazil look safe.

Cabral had lost his wife and daughter in a plane crash many years ago. In 2008 he said: "I love life so much because it cost me so much to enjoy it. From the cradle to the grave is a school, so if what we call problems are lessons, we see life differently."

Ba-ba-blog update

In the beginning was the Ba. Today the Ba got tantalisingly close to becoming a Ba-Loon. Looks like balloon will be Sam's first word. But what Herculean effort required. Breaking out of a non-verbal world is even harder than breaking into the UK.

The rich pay less

Last night, here in Jardins, we bought this delightful Chicco cot-cum-playpen. Also two Avent dummies and a pair of light shoes to protect Sam's feet from the cold floors in our unheated flat. Of course it all cost a fair bit, maybe £200, but actually less than in other places, including "poorer" areas. You get the feeling that the richer areas often have better prices, perhaps not for coffee and cake, but for quality items like this which savvy shoppers could find elsewhere if necessary. We have bought too many crap quality baby items in this town, which still cost a lot but invariably turn out to be unfit for purpose. I wrote a blog post some time ago called something like "Being poor is expensive in Brazil" and our latest shopping trip seems to confirm that what's really going on here is as much to do with access to information and choice as with the simple rich-poor divide. And since we all now live in an information society, it is this poverty of choice which leaves the lower income households in even greater disadvantage. Snobbery has no place in a modern society, but quality and price are central to a functioning, free market.

Cutting corners

No more lethal right-angles, thanks to a Korean baby shop in Bom Retiro.

Non-contact centres

Once upon a time, in a far-off land called The Past, there were no "contact centres". There was no outsourcing. There were only companies with direct employees. When you needed to get in touch with them you could call a normal landline number and speak to a normal person, by which I mean someone possessing a certain amount of common sense, responsibility, accountability and autonomy. And if they couldn't help personally, they would find a way to escalate your inquiry to higher levels.

Dummies

The other problem with unlit streets is that, try as you might, you just can't find your baby's discarded dummy (pacifier). This happened just now and necessitated a sizable detour as we retraced our steps, but alas no joy. We have had large numbers of these Avent dummies brought over from the UK but they all eventually disappear into the ether. Once, in Bom Retiro, we did manage to find the needle in the haystack, after forensically scrutinising every inch of sidewalk in a two-block radius. But today our luck ran out. Which was doubly problematic since Sam is going through a nightmare patch of teething as, I assume, his incipient upper front teeth begin to emerge and join the two lower ones.

We're on a road to ...

Walked along Avenida Paulista this evening, stopping by a busker who serenaded Sam, and ending up at Casa das Rosas, one of the last remaining original mansions on this street and now a venue for various events. Tonight was one in a series of talks about cycling in the city. We got talking to a young enthusiast who says the trend for two wheels is beginning to get some traction here. I asked if there was a hardcore of urban cycling fans, into fixed-gear and single-gear bikes as as been seen for some years now in London and other big cities. He said there was and noted also the Sunday morning cycle groups, who enjoy specially reserved routes linking Sao Paulo's parks. In terms of workday commuting, the enthusiasts are trying to encourage the use of secondary roads so that cyclists don't feel so threatened by traffic. My concern would be the lack of street lighting. Apparently there are also some limited trials of the kind of bike rental schemes to be found nowadays in London, Paris, Barcelona etc. It was good to see this most civilized, efficient, fun, healthy and economic form of transport becoming more popular in such a traffic-choked city. Adjusting from my two-wheeled life in London to one of taxis and tubes here has been a challenge. Next Wednesday David Byrne of Talking Heads fame will be speaking about his passion for push-bikes. It's got a long way to go but perhaps cycling in Sao Paulo is not on a road to nowhere.

The next stage of globalisation

First, the rich world sought to get richer by milking the emerging markets. Then the emerging markets had their revenge by continuing to boom while the first world failed. But now it seems the pendulum is swinging back yet again. This news story reports that a UK telecom firm has decided to locate it's call centre in the north of England rather than India.

God is a Brazilian bureaucrat

When you fear for your life, as I did recently during the robbery, you emerge with a new philosophy: don't sweat the small stuff, where "small" means anything other than your life and the life of those closest to you. Sadly, being a mere mortal, it didn't take long before I returned to my default modus operandi, namely "God is in the details" so, please, please do sweat the small stuff. That attitude, in Brazil, is asking for trouble. Take today, for example. We went out to do some chores, using the metro, which meant carrying Sam in his push chair up and down several flights of steps at Trianon-MASP tube station, our local. Is there a lift ? We've looked before but can't find one nor anybody to help direct us. Don't sweat the small stuff, even when your back is hurting.

It's in the stars

"What are the chances ?!", you always ask yourself when bumping into someone you have met only once or twice before. It has happened a few times here in Sao Paulo, including today when we ran into a young Orthodox Jewish student, as he emerged from Shabbat services with his parents. (Religious Jews are fond of saying, "There are no coincidences!" although I suspect only if their interlocutor is also Jewish) It was outside a synagogue within walking distance from where we now live. He had, on our first meeting, given us a guided tour around the (quite famous) yeshiva where he studies in Bom Retiro, which happens to be close to our old home. One thing I have always appreciated in Sao Paulo is the ubiquity of Jewish life, at least in neighborhoods such as Bom Retiro, Higienopolis and, now, Jardins. My old home turf in London's SE1 is pretty much judenrein.

Go ahead, Punk

The best of Brazil was on display again today, this time in our local hairdresser, Soho Trianon, whose employees swooped on Sam like a crowd of groupies. One of them, Duran, couldn't resist giving him his first ever styling, on the house of course.

The FT's parallel universe

If I didn't already have personal experience of supermarket chain Pao de Acucar and its shocking prices, I would have read this profile piece in the FT and not winced each time it referred to the company's founder as some kind of consumer champion. Brazil is a country with no consumer champions* ! Why do these articles on Brazil keep glossing over that fact ? Is it because when it comes to juicy emerging markets, FT readers make little distinction between profits and profiteering ?

Through a street, darkly

Went for a walk at 6pm, the streets were dark even though just one block away was the main, well-lit artery avenue of Paulista. Homeward bound workers were streaming out of offices and walking to nearby tube stations. There's plenty of research to show that street lighting goes a long way to reducing street crime, and these days you can get very environmental and energy-efficient alternatives to traditional lamp posts.

But let's face it: it's never going to happen in Brazil or indeed Latin America, is it ? People in this part of the world just don't seem to value this kind of public investment. Much easier to sit in your car with its own headlights and its blacked-out windows and pretend you have no connection to the no-man's land linking bubble to bubble.