Brazzil
November 1999
Impressions
Postcards from Rio de Janeiro
The Manager from "Hell"
Marta and I are very happy with our new apartment. It is very large, has excellent views, and is just wonderful for wine tastings and promotions. It is quite an old apartment as is most of Copacabana, but in very good condition overall, albeit the windows and outer awnings need a coat of paint, and a bit of maintenance. We have balconies on two sides, part of them covered, part of them open to the sun.
The lounge room has part of the balcony extending from it. This is one part of the building that needs a little attention, not much, but some, as it leaks a little. As the apartment is also on the top level, this part of the building is in actual fact part of the building construction, but this is in dispute with the Corporate Body that claims it is the owner of the apartment's problem. The owner of the apartment is a dear old lady of about 85, but sharp as a tack, and really kind after some bad experiences with a previous tenant (drug dealer). Marta and she get on like a house on fire. So this dispute for repairs on the balcony is in deadlock.
In addition to this, we have garage space. Garage spaces in Copacabana are like gold. We have no car, so we are happy for someone else to use this for a nominal monthly fee (say $100 per month). When we moved into the apartment, Marta noticed that someone was using the garage space. We tracked this down to the owner of Apartment 701, who is also head of the Corporate Body. Marta let it be known through the porter that we would like to discuss this issue a bit further with the owner of Apartment 701. He did not reply and just ignored us, and continued to use the garage space.
So eventually Marta thinks I should send a letter, polite like, and I slip this under the door. As I get back in the apartment, the phone rings and a woman says, "We know what you want, come down straight away!".
So, I rock on down and I am greeted by the empregada (maid), and shown into the lounge, offered coffee, and wait about five minutes. Eventually a lady comes to see me, and we start to chat; how's life? What do you do? What do you like? How long have you been here? How long are you planning to stay in Brazil? Do you use AMWAY products? (curious question), etc.
She is the wife of the Corporate Body Manager. One of the first things she says to me is, "You know of course that our apartment is bigger than yours!" Like as if I care a shit. They own four cars, and two are garaged in the apartment complex, one of them in our car space. The other two cars are garaged in another apartment complex which he pays rent for.
So anyway, to cut to the cold cow, we chat and she understands the situation, and I say, talk to Marta as I know nothing (good cop, bad cop type thing). I suggest $125 is a nice place to open the batting, but you need to talk more with Marta as she wears the pants on these things. So we wind things up nice and sweet when the husband enters the house.
You can almost feel the gloom and doom enter the room with him. Oh boy. He wrestles my hand into some form of a handshake without breaking too many of my knuckles. His wife sort of takes about three backward steps to introduce me, and is already half apologizing to hubby for even letting me in the apartment ( I am now sort of feeling sorry for her as I can imagine the misery this guy exerts over everyone he contacts).
He starts asking a heap of personal questions, what I do, where I am from, what I plan to do. I say I am Santa Claus and I am here to sweep his chimney. Anyway, the guy just starts to lay down the law as he sees it. "You are responsible for the balcony maintenance, it is your problem, not the corporate body, and as for the garage, the corporate body laws prohibit the subletting of the garage". Ja Volte, Herr Commandante. So I say, "Look, I am sure we can work something out, but you know it seems like you should at least ask first before you use someone else's property".
At this stage you can see the smoke coming from his ears and nostrils, and me thinks it is time to ease on out.
"Tchau Senhor, nice talking to you, don't suppose this is a good time to ask if you want to buy some Australian wine?"
A couple of days go by, and I am starting to meet a couple of the other tenants in the building. We have a chat in the elevator and word is out and about. One dear old lady says, "Be careful, he is louco". Another says, "You are dealing with fire" and starts to laugh and point to his apartment with one hand and a finger twirling by the head, so you know, I am prepared.
Just as an aside, his two cars parked in the garage have these stickers on the rear window that reveal quite about him. One of the stickers reads, "Why am I the only driver on the planet who knows how to drive?" and the other, "I drive this car just the way you do". I think this guy must have had a bad childhood.
The streets of Francisco Sá
You know how I mentioned the streets of Ipanema were a mess when I arrived (laying fiber optic cables). Well now it is all hunky dory that part of town in Ipanema. It looks sensational. The streets have all been repaved (albeit partly in a very inappropriate red brick and not the Portuguese stone), it is very clean and tidy.
Guess where they have started now. Right outside our apartment. It reminds me of that scene in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now: "I love the sound of jackhammers in the morning".
Actually they are getting a lot better at this now, a bit more organized. They should finish my street in about 3-4 weeks. Just wish these jackhammer operators would wear earmuffs for their own health. Boy, they sure love loud samba music these guys after work. How much does a jackhammer operator make in Brazil? Not enough, that's for sure.
I think these guys were also responsible for knocking out the phones one day as well. A city this old does not have the best maps of where all the things are underground. So it is natural that when they get a bit enthusiastic with the jackhammer, they sometimes hit main electric cables, phone lines, sewerage lines, fresh water, all sort of utility things underground. One day I saw a sewer line split open under pressure with someone working nearby, I had to laugh, but shit (literally), it gives new meaning to the phrase "Up to your armpits…". Dante's Inferno or what.
Vending Machines
There seem to be very few vending machines in Brazil. You want to buy a soft drink, candy, cigarettes, Coca Cola, beer, ice cream, crisps, chocolate, Chokitos, etc. go to a human being to buy these things, not a machine. Soaks up a lot of labor that's for sure. It is a stark contrast from Japan where you can buy almost a Boeing 747 from a vending machine.
Overall, I would say prices are cheaper from a human being than from a vending machine, better service, more reliable, and that's what life is about, transacting between humans, not machines. Where money is concerned, give me a human to buy/sell from any day. You never ever have a human take your money for a can of Coca-Cola, and then no Coca-Cola can pops out. Or not give you change. Vending machines, who needs them? Vending machine salesmen maybe.
Actually, the reason I am told they do not work in Brazil is the coins are not very suitable (some are pretty similar in size) and there are too many machines broken into and the contents taken. Figures, all those people selling in the streets are feeling threatened, you could not blame them if they broke the machines. I would do the same.
The Czech republic
Brazil has been a democratic republic since 1985 I think. But it has been a cheque (check) republic for a lot longer. Ninety percent of all transactions are conducted with a check. Now this spooked me a bit initially, but now that I know how this works it is no problem. A check here is as good as gold, actually better, let me explain.
Historically, Brazil lived with very high inflation for a long, long time. Triple digit stuff. This required extra ordinary amounts of financial management skills to understand how to keep a fist on your dollars. Combined with the fact that it is never wise to carry a lot of cash in your pocket (i.e. money in pocket erodes rapidly), and indexed bank accounts to inflation, the result, everyone uses checks.
So let's say you pass a dud check, accident or otherwise. As soon as your bank determines your check is not covered, you get a phone call saying rectify this immediately. You do this again and things start to get a little difficult in your life. Your bank account is frozen, your credit cards are locked up and will not work, your name is plastered over every financial institution network as a bad boy, and you are frozen out of the financial network, and the check is passed back to the person who presented it. Things start to get pretty grim. And it is your responsibility to fix this. You get two chances on this, but you have to recover the dud check, this is your responsibility.
Now supposing you are the recipient of a dud check, you are pissed off initially, but you know the guy who passed it to you is also in deep shit. He comes to collect the dud check as he needs to unlock his credit, and you say, "Sorry pal, that is going to cost you for all the inconvenience you have caused me." So a dud check can actually make you more money than a good check if you are that way inclined.
People use checks here for insanely low amounts. With the new toll on the highway between Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, people have been paying by check for amounts as low as 93 cents.
Blending in.
Have not touched this topic for a while, but we have had a few visitors from overseas lately, and it has reminded me of a few things. As much as I have changed my appearance, dress code, suntan, etc., I do not look "classically" Brazilian. A Brazilian can look at me and say with a high degree of confidence and observe that I am a foreigner, not of Brazilian birth. As soon as I speak Portuguese, then it is give away. Usually I am mistaken for a North American. This is very evident on the buses, and even more so on the Metro (underground train service, just brilliant, clean, fast, cheap).
One thing I have yet to master is the Carioca male walk. They have a walking style that is so languid. It is all from the hips. They walk slightly splayed feet, almost bow legged. The feet point outwards when they walk. The walk is all from hip, and the action is just so cruising.
The other thing to note is eye contact. When you visit Brazil for the first time, you will encounter an enormous amount of eye contact. Both sexes make eye contact, but it obviously more prevalent between members of the opposite sex (except at the kiosk in front of the Copacabana Palace where you will encounter a lot more male to male eye contact for those interested). Many men interpret this eye contact as an invitation, and sometimes it is, but mostly it is just a Brazilian thing, look, see, observe, converse with the eyes.
It can be a little intimidating sometimes this eye contact, especially if the eye contact is from someone you do not want to make contact with. For example, there is a "Rato de Praia" who always wears a Michael Jordan T-shirt who works the beach in Ipanema. I do not even like to say bad things about him, because he has to make a living somehow, and most of the time he just tries to help on the beach selling beer, chairs, etc. But I have also seen him steal from a tourist who went in the water for a swim. He is very intelligent, speaks English very well, and listens to everyone talking on the beach.
He has watched me intensely from the moment I have arrived. He keeps thinking, "When is this gringo going home? I thought he was a tourist? But now he has been here too long, what does he do? How much money does he have?". He tries frequently to start the eye contact game, even deliberately standing in front of me when I am on the beach, he has tried to make conversation, but I have a sense of foreboding about him. So I have to go to considerable lengths not to make eye contact. It is a game, and as long as you play the game, and do not respond, nothing happens. Nothing really, but adds to the adventure in a macabre sort of way.
Watching someone die
We have a couple of botecos just near our apartment. These are very popular with the locals especially on a Friday night. Now Friday night in Rio is like Friday night in Australia, every one heads for a bar to have a drink, mix with friends, talk about work, politics, sport, women, men, love, life, friends, etc. Consumption of alcohol is pretty ferocious, and many people overindulge.
One Friday night in early October, I was coming home and noticed one guy was really hitting the booze very hard. It was 8:30 PM, he was already beyond the make sense stage, and just barely standing up. At 10:30 PM, I wander downstairs to get some milk, and he was still there, but now he had a bottle of cachaça in his hand, he was on the ground propped up against the wall of the Newsagent. He is just paralytic, and it is very sad.
The next day I came downstairs at about 6:00 AM to ride my bike, he was flat out on the sidewalk not moving, but breathing, so I figure sleep it off. Twelve hours later at 6:00 PM he has moved about 10 meters to a pile of sand being used to repair the sidewalk. He is sleeping still, but just hopeless, and still a ¼ bottle of cachaça in his hand.
At 7:00 PM in the apartment, I hear a thud, then a screech of brakes. I look out over the balcony and a crowd is beginning to form around the man lying on the road, he has got up and walked in front of a car. The driver is just looking and explaining in animated fashion to the crowd that the guy just walked out in front of his car. An ambulance arrives after ten minutes. The man is put on a trolley, a sheet thrown over his body, wheeled inside the ambulance. No police attend. The ambulance drives off. The driver gets in his car and leaves. So ends this section.
"Man, man, one cannot live without pity" - Dostoyevsky, Crime & Punishment.
John Miller is an Australian, living in Rio de Janeiro, selling Australian wine. `Postcards from Rio' is a journal of his journey in the land of the Cariocas.
For contact:
John and Marta Miller
Rua Joaquim Nabuco, 106 / Apt 1001
Copacabana CEP 22080-030
Rio de Janeiro
Brazil
Tel: +55 (021) 521 8568
E-mail: millerj@gbl.com.br