the samaritan

today quite a lot of people i know have been receiving an email or an SMS. in some cases both. the sender calls himself mad max.

he's found (or possibly bought from someone else... he doesn't seem too sure) my mobile phone. The one that was taken when those guys used their crowbar on my head.

being a nice chap, and realising that it can be a bit annoying to lose your contact list, he is trying to contact me. Pretty desperately, it would appear from his prodigous output.

the email is the most interesting. it lists a select few contacts from my contact list, and then it goes:

I found Ericcson Sony Smartphone P800.
But i have no idea who is the Owner of this phone.
So i need you to cantact whoever the owner can be and tell him that i have hims phone. I bought this phone from the person who found this Mobile on the street. I know how hard can be losing CellPhone and loosing all contacts. if he need it feel free to contact me on same mail so we can agree.
Thanks for your help. Cya.

P.D. SmartPhone was found in Argentina. Buenos Aires.

sounds like he wants to do a deal. the problem he's going to have is that i don't trust him, and i'm not sending money to someone i don't trust. If I was still in BA I suppose it could be that a deal could be set up (even if the guy turned out to be one of the muggers...) but given I am now in Rio I can't see it.

But I'm intrigued, so I'm going to mail him from a new webmail account I just set up for this purpose. Update to follow :)

NB Guys, can anyone who knows me and gets the SMS or e-mail let me know that you got it, but do not reply to him. Thanks.

survivor

there's something about island paradises. You'd think that sipping on fresh coconut juice whilst chilling in a hammock under a palm tree watching the waves would be good. and it is.

But I always have a shit time in island paradises. Admittedly i have only been to two. But in Ko Samui I had the worst sunburn of my life and it put me in bed for 3 days. Needless to say I don't associate happy memories with the place.

And here in the brasilian resort of Morro de Sao Paulo I have succumbed to the infection that I have been trying to stave off with berocca for a couple of days. I have the worst sore throat I can remember; swallowing brings tears to the eyes.

fortunately I am off to a doctor in Salvador early tomorrow to have my stitches removed. I will be begging him for antibiotics. Until then I 'just' have to survive... :(

capitalism

just realised i could make a crapload of money if I sign up for Google AdWords and people access my previous posting. Maybe. Lots of curious readers wondering who Tera is then click thru to (dis)reputable vendor and bingo, 0.000001p for me.

Of course I would need to go to the expense of reprinting my business cards with my new title of porn baron...

the things we don't talk about

last night I dreamt of tera patrick

in case you don't know who that is, this line is the warning that you are perhaps entering an 18-rated descriptive zone.

everyone has done this. perhaps not dreamt of tera, but experienced a dream in this class. A dream that you really didn't want to have given where you were sleeping that night.

For me this means that last night I dreamt of finger f**king tera patrick whilst I was asleep in a 10-bed dormitory here in Salvador, Brasil (man I hope my parents don't read this :) ).

Generally I think I have a lot to be thankful for. My brain is wired quite well. And it didn't let me down. I think some kind of emergency system kicked in: I woke up. Right in the middle of this energetic dream. This might have been kind of frustrating except for the immediate realisation that I needed to control my real-life hand, which was doing a damn fine impression of my dream-world hand. A surreptitious glance around. Everyone seems to still be asleep. Phew.

But as always the minor worry is whether I was more ... er... vocal than I should have been during this dream. Which I will never know :)

curry withdrawal

there are things an englishman should not be deprived of for very long.

curry is one of them. it has been 8 weeks *sigh* :)

but today I had a little slice of heaven, the closest thing to curry around here. The traditional bahian dish, moqueca de camarao (prawn moqueca). The moqueca we had was a spicy mix of vegetables and sea food, drowned in a heavenly sauce. A bit like a spicy paella without the rice. Served with side dishes of rice, refried beans and vegetables. Although looking at this link I can't work out where the spiciness came from. Probably not everybody makes it quite the same.

Anyway, it was damn fine. Might do seconds tomorrow :)

barrio alto reloaded

perhaps i should not have been surprised. after all, Salvador da Bahia (Salvador for short, though many Brasilians refer to the place as Bahia) was the first capital of the then Portuguese colony. to explain: Salvador resembles Lisbon

I suppose maybe that impression will wane. I havent really seen any neighbourhoods apart from the old town - Pelourinho. But Pelourinho resembles Bairro Alto pretty closely; drawing a parallel was inevitable. Both have the narrow winding cobbled streets, and are situated on very hilly terrain. both are the focus of nightlife despite being residential neighbourhoods. Both feel incredibly bohemian and cool.

from my point of view the disadvantage of this intimate busy neighbourhood is just that. I am still a little jumpy around those guys on the street who you have to keep half an eye on. Not surprising given my experience the other day. Mind you, it was the same in Rio when I was pickpocketed so I think its just overly raised defences. I'll be fine in a few days

Anyway Pelourinho can wait; I am here for another 5 days. Today we are going to the beach and to watch the football (on TV, from england). which happen to be brasil's top 2 national pastimes. Us gringos aren't so different....

gbh

I'm beginning to feel like public enemy number one here in South America.

Today I was assaulted by 3 guys. One of then had a crowbar, and wasn't afraid to use it. I am ok but I have stitches in my head and of course they took everything I had (camera, phone, money and so on). It was broad daylight. 1pm.

I am at least partly responsible. I got lost trying to find my way back to San Telmo from touring Boca Juniors stadium in the La Boca district. I thought I was going the right way, I now know I wasn't. Instead I headed into an area alone that the police later told me that it is dangerous even for them to go. One of them I saw coming, but the other two I didn't. The first blow shook me but strangely didn't hurt. We struggled over my bag, but I was outnumbered and outmanouveured. Another two blows to the head and I'd had enough. I let go and ceded my wallet when they demanded it. They left, throwing things out of the bag they didn't want.

I was incensed at the people in the street, on the balconies, in the windows. They stood by and watched. I shouted at them, arms wide. What kind of people were they, to stand and watch, I asked them. No-one said or did anything. Once the adrenaline subsided, I put my hand to my head and found quite a lot of blood. A lady standing nearby motioned that I should come with her to treat the wound. She let me wash the blood from my head. And she called me an ambulance. I didn't think I needed one but she told me the wound was large enough to need stitches. I reconsidered: I didn't fancy walking back out there, and by now I had realised that my white shirt was splattered with blood.

I spent 4 hours this afternoon in Hospital and Police Station. Mostly waiting around in the police station. I had had no lunch, and I just wanted to get out of there and have a shower. But I had plenty of time to reflect. I need to change my ways; I am not invincible. Travelling alone it can sometimes tempting to do things by yourself, if other people don't want to do the things you want to. And sometimes you do things by yourself because you want a break from other people - time spent alone. But I have to judge this better.

In the end, I am ok. And it's hard to care about losing a few expensive things, under the circumstances. I still have everything I absolutely need (passport and so on).

But I lost something else today that I will never get back. Destroyed is the idea that it 'won't happen to me', that I would know what to do, that anyway I am a tall guy and they'll choose an easier target.

My feeling of invincibility has gone forever

guerillas in the mist

it turns out i have been operating under a delusion. I had previously believed that the Brasilian population were the world's number one consumers of plastic surgery. Not so, I have just read that it is the Argentines. On this basis I have decided to redouble my ogling in order to study this phenomenon :)

anyway the buses here in buenos aires have to be seen to be believed. it can be a nice sunny day as you walk down the high street. then a bus comes past, belching an unbelievable amount of black crap out of its exhaust. then you find you are wandering through a smokey haze, unable to see where you are going.

there aren't really any guerillas here, they're in columbia. I couldn't resist the title %)

the queen is dead. long live the queen

Longtime readers may have noted my interest in argentinian model Yamila Diaz-Rahi :)

It feels a little bit disrespectful to do this just as I arrive here in Buenos Aires for a first look at Yamila's country. But it's true. Yamila has been replaced at #1.


Ana Beatriz Barros is from Itabira, Brasil.

leap of faith

i guess that is a fairly predictable title, but hey.

this morning, barely awake and feeling much much more than a little nervous I was doing up the zip on my backpack when I heard a shout. It was the hostel staff. The driver had arrived. Inwardly I groaned, I was hoping it would be cancelled.

Carlos the driver didn't speak much english. He understood when I showed him my trembling hand but that was about it. But he knew how to drive up hills. Steep ones.
At a roadside laybay close to the top of this mountain (by now it was painfully apparent that the term hill was an understatement) I transferred cars. Meet Paulo the hang glider. Paulo seemed nice enough and at least he spoke english. pretty well actually. If I thought the roads had been steep before, now they got really steep and very narrow.

We got out of the car in a clearing and climbed some steps. Paulo had been telling me how the wind was not ideal so our running on the launch ramp would be very important. I said ok and tried not to think about it.

We reached the platform. For the first time I realised how high we were. It was like looking out of an aeroplane window, the instant before you pass through the clouds and can't see the ground anymore. High. It wasn't really possible to look over the edge though. The way the ramp was set up, it sloped down at an angle of maybe 15 degrees. The view from the platform was of treetops. An expanse of greenery. It wasn't too scarey. But the idea of jumping was. I was breathing deeper.

Dry mouth now, and needing to pee, Paulo helped me into my harness. He explained that the wind had taken a turn for the worse and was now coming from over our right shoulders. If the wind speed away from the ramp matched our running speed, we would leave the ramp with the air having no net speed passing over the wing. We would plummet. The message was clear: wind towards us was good, wind from behind us was bad. I tried to discern whether he was trying to make sure I would play ball.. by hyping it to life and death. It didn't seem that way. He seemed concerned.

We watched the windsock for 6 or 7 minutes. It barely changed. But then Paulo decided that maybe it was ok. Not good, but not terrible. He asked me if I was ready. I paused. To be honest I was thinking, is he chancing it. The windsock hasn't moved. Is the 240 reals that he will lose if we do not go the deciding factor here? Does he forever walk the line between self-preservation and avarice? I tried to forget the thoughts. He took my pause for fear (which ultimately it was) and asked again, more forcefully. Can I trust you to run? Not to let the fear make you freeze halfway down the ramp? I said yes and nodded, but I did not really know.

Then the moment had come. He picked up the frame of the hangglider and walked back 3 paces, me at his side. We put our right feet forward and stood upright. He counted: 1, 2, 3 and we ran onto the ramp and down the ramp. Of course I don't remember running down the ramp at all. I do know that I never stopped looking straight ahead at the clouds in front that we seemed to be on the level of. Never look down. Then my feet were not touching the ground any more and the body naturally moved to the hanging position. All I could see was treetops directly below us, I don't know how far. Far enough, they seemed small. During the first few moments of intensity, Paulo did not speak. I was happy: I wanted him to dedicate everything to making sure we would be ok. Maybe 20 seconds in I asked, how are we doing? the answer was fine. Relief. But by now my leg had started shaking. Adrenaline twitches. I realised I was scared, but my mind was beyond the jelly/fear state and in a must-survive state - I was very alert, in full control of myself. At 08.15 in the morning. It's a first!

Maybe 3 minutes in I started to be able to appreciate the view. Still it seemed unreal, like a giant TV screen below us, showing the most remarkable vista. But I could turn to my left and see the sugar loaf mountain in the distance beyond copacabana, and in front of us was the edge of the Tijuca national park, where the blocks of flats stretched into the sky a few blocks behind the beach. We flew straight over them, still very high above. Heading out to the ocean, we started to lose height. By now I had grinned inanely at the wing mounted camera a few times as Paulo hit the remote control to take pictures. We turned through 180 degrees above the water, an amazing sensation. We looked back at the beach and the buildings and the mountain where we set off from.

Aligned now along the beach we dipped, gaining speed. This felt ok. Paulo had said some people tense up once the glider dips, but it felt fine. I have been on worse 747s :) Then a quick pull on the bar and the glider raised its nose. We stalled, 2 feet above the sand and dropped lightly onto it. One or two steps and we were stationary. A wave of euphoria.

I was alive. For the first time today I felt relaxed and happy. Euphoric actually. Not at the experience; although it was incredible I never managed to enjoy being up there because of the fear. But at overcoming my fear of heights, at not backing out and at controlling my emotions.. and most of all at still being alive, I felt amazing.

And for those reasons, it didn't matter that for some reason we hadn't been surrounded by hugely impressed beautiful girls when we landed. Maybe they got the wrong beach :)

we are all responsible

The Kyoto Protocol takes effect Wednesday 16th February

Some first world nations have decided not to bother. They don't want to accept their share of responsibility for global warming.

Nobel Peace prize winner Wangari Maathai, ecologist and deputy environment minister for Kenya:

"One of the reasons why some of the countries don't want to support the Kyoto Protocol is exactly because they don't want to reduce their over-consumptive life pattern"

=

=

see also:
- graphic global warming at news.bbc.co.uk
- Kyoto at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

trepidation

tomorrow (wind conditions permitting) i will be tandem hang-gliding.

yep, jumping off a cliff.

i am feeling quite nervous. the payoff? flying like a bird above rio's golden coastline and landing on the beach, to be surrounded by hugely impressed beautiful girls offering themselves.

but actually i'll just settle for landing safely and being alive :)

sunday afternoon gas guzzling

weird moment earlier, whilst walking from ipanema to leblon along the high street.

i got to a junction just into leblon where there is a Shell petrol station on one corner of the junction. i've been past here before, and usually there's nothing very special about it. today, though, there were absolutely loads of people standing in groups, holding beers and chatting away. almost as though it was a bbq in someone's garden. all the while, an occasional car would pull in and attempt to cajole people out of the way so they could fill up with fuel.

it's pretty strange. why would people decide that a petrol station forecourt was a top place to socialise on sunday afternoon?

I'd been pondering this for a few minutes, when I remembered that someone told me the other day that cars in brasil are special in that the vast majority of them run not on petrol or diesel, but on pure alcohol. i've just checked this out. it's true, according to this extract from a website dedicated to telling you how to run your car on ethanol, not petroleum

In 1980, Brazil neatly solved both problems at once, along with their problem of really low prices on the world sugar market. So the military government declared that the countrys sugar cane production would go into making alcohol for fuel, and the car manufacturing companies in Brazil will have to make cars that run on alcohol.

The result? Twenty years later, alcohol fuel is much cheaper and much more available than petrol. When you rent a car at the airport, you have a choice between clean and cheap ethanol or a dirty and more expensive petrol fueled car. Ethanol will cost you about $2.50/gallon, while gasoline will cost $4.20/gallon.
Because of the successful and widespread use of alcohol fuel in Brazil, most manufacturers now make cars that are fuel injected, and this is controlled by a computer chip that can be changed out to make it into an FFV (flexible fuel vehicle).

anyway, i think with this knowledge we can solve my little mystery. if the petrol station is also an alcohol station, then sunday afternoon drinking on the forecourt starts to make a lot of sense :)

luciana-4-ever

maybe 3 or 4 days ago, i was walking along the Avenida Atlantico in Copacabana. I was heading home after drinking at another hostel with some friends I had met when I was staying there. Just after I had passed the tourist-trap 'Help!' nightclub, with all the prostitutes hanging around outside, I realised I was catching up with a 50something year old portly gentlemen and a barely-clad petite brasilian girl who looked about 15. undoubtedly she was pretty but if she wasn't jailbait, she certainly looked it.

everyone who looked at them walking hand in hand had the same thought as me. how much are you paying her, sir?

I wouldn't have written about this, but last night I was walking in the opposite direction on the Avenida N.S. Copacabana (one block inland) and I saw the same girl again. With 2 30something year old guys. On the doorstep of a cheap-looking hotel.

I found myself thinking of a scandinavian film i saw recently on dvd - lilja-4-ever. It's powerful, depressing and harrowing. And really good. Fortunately I am not one of the misguided who thinks that a film has to have a happy ending. I won't spoil it by saying any more about the film or why I thought of it. Suffice to say that the film is prefixed by a UNICEF appeal to help stamp out child exploitation and prostitution.

Was the young brasilian girl being exploited by a pimp? it didn't look like it. By the westerners who slept with her? undoubtedly. By a world that produces great chasms between the very weathly few and the very many poor? damningly.

publish or be damned

a friend recently drew my attention to the edge annual question for 2005 which is "what do you believe to be true but you cannot prove?". A range of authors posited their beliefs about many things, be it an aspect of their speciality or wider issues they believed critical at this juncture in history.

the latter is surely less self-indulgent. to be given the opportunity to publish an answer to this question is to have an opportunity to influence a great many people; a redux of the article was published in newspapers all over the planet.

a blog is a publishing medium. and so, the things i believe to be true but cannot prove are:

that global warming is already here, and will accelerate faster than anyone imagined.
that it will destroy us.
that our governance will continue to do too little too late, building barricades rather than eradicating emissions.
that we are all to blame for refusing to accept the reality that we must give up our cars and change our way of life to prevent calamity.
that our children wil ask, 'why did you forsake our future'
that many people are too ignorant to realise that they are doing so
that democracy is poisoned, it is too expensive for new views to be represented and proportional representation is rare. in short: democracy cannot be reactive enough to the problem
that our destruction will ultimately be down to our short-termism, enshrined in 4 year democratic cycles & credit addiction (spend not save) amongst other things. we are not equipped to take the longview that saving ourselves demands.

that the world is a very depressing place

that over 500 cars passed this netcafe window in the 5 or 6 minutes I have been typing this. in just one road of just one city, in just one country.

beautiful day

just in time, i reached the internet cafe it would seem.

i've just come in because i'm on my own tonight. everyone else can afford to go to the sambadrome for the carnaval parade here in rio. I cannot, on account of having a strict budget until i get a new bank card. so not a good basis to start from, but i feel like things are starting to go my way.

reason being, it's just started to rain quite a lot. again! so my timing wasn't bad.

its 11pm and I just went for a walk around ipanema. looks like there might be some good partying at the beachside bars later. its just getting started now. i thought i would leave it to warm up and then go back. now it's raining, one of two things will happen: either people won't care (and won't let the weather spoil their carnaval) and i'll go back and find a lot of wet people samba-ing :) or there won't be anyone there at all. my money is on the first one.

for the first time, the weather has been great today. sunny , hot and not at all humid. the other day it was 21 degrees but humidity was near 100%. its crazy to be constantly sweating when its not at all hot, but we were. i sat on the beach today in the late afternoon sun and read and watched the waves and then went up the Arpoador rock and watched the sunset with a thousand other people. it was a cool, almost spiritual shared experience to be looking down the famous rio beaches as the golden sun set behind the mountains in the background behind Leblon. breathtaking.

speaking of which, the wind is quite strong now and on the seafront all of the days rubbish (mostly skol cans and water bottles) is blowing and rolling west.

in rio, even the rubbish sambas for carnaval :)

crisis

feeling like a bit of a moron. storing my cash card and my credit cards all in the same place. yep, i've had my wallet nicked and have no way at all of obtaining more cash. this leaves me in deep shit. worse still, none of the banks here will open again until thursday and so i can't change the bits and bobs of GBP and HKD I have in my bag. Nor can I receive a direct money transfer, cos they're shut too.

I'm currently trying to persuade Andreas and Yjorn to lend me some money until an emergency credit card arrives maybe on Friday. If they don't go for it, I'm pretty much screwed. My only option might be to kip at the airport and try and get an early flight home :(

sticking out like a sore gringo

round 1 to me, but i'm not feeling too smug. it could easily have been different.

sitting at a beachfront bar, just having a quick rest and swift drink before heading out to meet hostel friends in copacabana. its just before 10pm. i am sending a text.

a patter of onrushing noise. a hand on my phone. it grabs. my grip is firm. the grab cannot sway me. the figure lurches away at speed. i shout abuse. everyone is looking now, i think they are surprised i am not chasing. maybe they don't realise i still have the prize. i don't show them, i am not feeling too proud. i didn't see it coming, and a hundred other times the hand would have won.

the road forks

with every choice, the most important thing is to choose

the waves flick at the shore, wet and lukewarm
like the tongue of an adder tasting the sand
snaking back to the sky, empty and blue
i sleep on the sand, untroubled and content

the animal has changed; in the deep i see shadows
shrouded and murky and full of unknown
they draw closer; i will have to face them soon
i lie awake on the sand, troubled and undecided

i am stretched; torn apart at the seams
i am lying in a rack, my tormentors stare down
deconstructed and broken, all over again
by everything and nothing

click me!

this is really cool... makes me i wish i could draw!

gender inequality

to my disgust this morning i discovered that the water in the men's shower/toilet room in the latest hostel i am staying in does not work. so i decided to pop my head around and see if anyone was in the ladies. noone was. i had a shower. no problem. sorted.

after dressing back in the dorm, i decided that i needed to shave. so i went back in to use the sink. midway through shaving, a lady appeared and vociferously objected to my presence. in portuguese. as she stomped off to find the powers that be, i quickly finished shaving.

but i still can't work out what her problem was.

a few days ago, in a samba club in lapa, me and two other guys were having a pee at the urinal in the gents. a girl came in to see if the cubicle was free. presumably there was a long queue in the ladies toilet. the path she had to take to do this exposed us in a way that the objectionable lady this morning was never even close to. we didn't even blink. it happens all the time.

but it seems this way: if a guy goes into the ladies, just to use the sink, all hell breaks lose. even though anyone who is (ahem) doing their business is in a cubicle. if a girl goes into the gents, noone cares. what gives?

nostalgic pushead

whilst i am feeling sorry for myself (it's gradually improving, tomorrow hopefully will be a day where i can actually do something) i have been reading a lot.

Right now I'm reading a book I have been intending to read for years and years. 1984 by George Orwell.

It's an amazing, visionary book. There are so many chilling parallels to the society we live in today and the direction it is going in. Fear as a tool for manipulation of the masses, that governments value an ignorant populace to preserve their power. And so on.

On page 132, a bell rang. I had heard this quote before. "I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don't want a virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone corrupted"

This almost-quotation (taken from the film version of 1984) is the introduction to the seminal Faster from the 1994 classic, The Holy Bible

I love that album. It defines my student days. It is unlistenable in some people's eyes, but they miss the point. The lyrics are the thing.

And at the risk of stealing Arcoiris' penchant for posting song lyrics, here is Faster.

I am an architect, they call me a butcher
I am a pioneer, they call me primitive
I am purity, they call me perverted
Holding you but I only miss these things when they leave

I am idiot drug hive, the virgin, the tattered and the torn
Life is for the cold made warm and they are just lizards
Self-disgust is self-obsession honey and I do as I please
A morality obedient, only to the cleansed repented

I am stronger than mensa, miller and mailer
I spat out plath and pinter
I am all the things that you regret
A truth that washes that learnt how to spell

The first time you see yourself naked you cry
Soft skin now acne, foul breath, so broken
He loves me truly this mute solitude I’m draining
I know I believe in nothing but it is my nothing

Sleep can’t hide the thoughts splitting through my mind
Shadows aren’t clean, false mirrors too many people awake
If you stand up like a nail then you will be knocked down
I’ve been too honest with myself I should have lied like everybody else

I am stronger than mensa, miller and mailer
I spat out plath and pinter
I am all the things that you regret
A truth that washes that learnt how to spell, learnt to spell

So damn easy to cave in, man kills everything
So damn easy to cave in, man kills everything
So damn easy to cave in, man kills everything
So damn easy to cave in, man kills everything