Great Day with My Grandma and My Godmother

On Thursday morning I left São Paulo to visit my grandma, who lives in Santos. The trip is incredible: it is a winding road with alternating views of mountains and the city in the island, at the seashore (photo at the top).

This is the view from the road when you reach the sea level.

My grandma took me to lunch in a restaurant that was inaugurated in 1960s, and it is called Independence. And guess what: the restaurant is located at the Independence Square.

Ironically we went to eat a traditional Portuguese dish, called dobradinha. The dish is made of cow's intestines. I do not remember eating it before. My grandma is Portuguese and she often prepares the dish because it is my mom's favorite, but I think I never had the guts to try it. This is how it looks like (it is the stuff at the top of the plate).

In the afternoon, my godmother (who happens to be my aunt as well) took me out for a delicious coffee. Santos has a lot of charming coffee houses, where you can sit down and have a delicious expresso served at the table while you enjoy the air-conditioning in the usually unbearable heat.




But now in winter the temperature is mild: around 20 celsius.

Note: please be patient with me as I do not know how to turn the pictures yet...

I am staying here during the weekend, for my cousin's baby shower. More pictures coming soon...

The Universal Wisdom of Taxi Drivers

I cannot remember how many times I read people recounting interesting and illuminating conversations with taxi drivers. Normally, I find these reports in books. Famous experts on theirs topics often find something that is worth recounting in these conversations. Inspired by that, I decided to ask all the taxi drivers that I met in the past week or so what they thought of the new law imposing stricter sanctions for drinking and driving in Brazil.

A little bit of background information, for my non-brazilians readers. This law (nicknamed Lei Seca) was enacted in July, imposing severe sanctions (fines and imprisonment) to DUI. It also reduced the level of alcohol permitted in your blood, if your are driving. The law was strictly enforced thus far.

I got three set of interesting comments in my rides in São Paulo.

I asked one driver if he was in favor or against the new law. His response was:

- Just look at the numbers. In two months the government saved R$ 48 million (roughly US$ 24 million).

He was referring to recently released data on the costs of accidents for the Federal government.

And he concluded:

- I prefer to see my taxes going to something more useful than paying medical expenses of irresponsible people.

The second guy was less concerned with proper allocation of fiscal resources. Instead, he had a distributive concern with the new law. He thought that poor people were more severely constrained from drinking than richer people. Basically, his argument relied on the fact that many commercial establishments started offering mini-vans or drivers to take their customers home.** They decided to offer these services after a significant drop in alcohol consumption (and consequently in their profits) as soon as the new law was enacted. The problem, he argued, is that only wealthy establishments could afford such services. People who cannot go to these places depend on public transportation, which is neither safe nor reliable. And the biggest problem, according to him, is that public transportation most of the time is not available in the evenings (the subway stops at midnight and the bus lines are drastically reduced). Thus, his conclusion was that less wealthy people were much more affected by the new law than rich people. I do not have numbers to confirm his claims.

The third guy was concerned with enforcement. He said that the law was working because the police got out and arrested people DUI. However, he believed that soon the police will "be more relaxed" about the new law and all drunks will be driving again. If you see the general statement of law enforcement in Brazil, this is a rather persuasive claim. He is basically saying that once the initial excitement with the new law is over, we are back to were we have always been: beautiful laws and an awful reality. Unless there is something different in this case that changes the dynamics of policy making and law enforcement in Brazil. If there is indeed something different, there could be a more optimistic prediction about the future of the new law. And to see if there is something different, just ask what are the incentives for each of the interest groups affected to keep the enforcement of these strict measures against DUI. I will report back in January and you can check the blog to see if your predictions were right or wrong...

If you are really interested in the topic, this seems to be a serious analysis of it.

** The drivers scheme works as follows: a guy employed by the restaurant drives the customer home in the customer's car. The car is followed by a motorcycle, with another employee of the restaurant (probably a guy who uses his motorcycle to deliver documents during the day -- see my previous blog on motoboys in SP). When they reach the destination, the motoboy takes the driver back to the restaurant for the next drive.

Coffee, cake and cool people

Some nice things about Brazil that impressed me as soon as I arrived.

First, coffee is delicious and it is freshly brewed. And people prepare coffee for you every time they have an opportunity. And nobody takes the coffee and runs away. Instead, they sit down and chat a little bit. The day goes by in a much nicer way because of these freshly brewed coffee breaks, or coffee rituals, if you prefer.

Freshly brewed coffee is so important that they sell all the apparel that you need to freshly brew one single cup. All you need is paper filter and a plastic support for it. The ones for a single cup are called "medida certa". They are available at the supermarket for less than two dollars. And I guess I do not need to tell you that I got one set for me...




Second, there are delicious home made cakes to accompany coffeek. On the day of my arrival, a friend stop by the house to see me and brought a delicious and super healthy apple cake, that was quickly eaten (as you can see from what was left of it on Monday). On the second day, the cleaning lady prepared a wonderful chocolate cake, which also went very nicely with coffee or without it.



I should confess that in addition to the yummy experience, there is a positive psychological impact in having coffee and cake prepared for you many times along the day. You feel pampered every couple of hours. My conclusion is that the Gross National Happiness Index should definitely include coffee and cake in their variables.

Last, but not least, I had two cool hosts in São Paulo, my sister and her boyfriend (first picture). Cool people is the icing of the cake (pun intended). It certainly makes the entire Brazilian experience really nice. And to give you an idea of how cool they are, I have only one thing to say: they are the kind of people who wear All Stars.


This is as high as someone can get in my scales of coolness (you only get higher if you have more than one pair...).

Going downtown: the old and the new

In my second day in Brazil, I went downtown (or to the city center, as we say in Portuguese) to renew my driver's license. Of course, there is a long list of documents and complicated procedures to get the license renewed. So, I walked out of the governmental building empty handed but with time to take some pictures of what we call "O Centro".

This is the Metropolitan Cathedral, located at the Sé Square (according to the Britannica Encyclopedia) or the Sé Cathedral (according to Wikipedia). It is a beautiful building where important masses are celebrated. If you are interested in its history, check out this wikipedia entry.



The Sé square is famous for pickpocketing, so I was lucky to take the picture and walk away with my camera... And my excitement allowed me to also take a picture of this, 200 meters away from the Cathedral:


I truly hope you can see how far this goes. It is an incredible amount of motorcycles. And what is more interesting: they are not here because people are cool and like bikes in São Paulo. Instead, they are used by courier services.There is this incredible amount of what we call "motoboys" available to deliver or pick documents anytime, anywhere. I found a 2001 estimate counting 150,000 motoboys in the city. More recent estimates indicate that there are now 500,000 of them.

The beggining of this video gives you a sense of how they drive: they skip slow moving trafic by driving between the cars. It is estimated that two motoboys die every day in São Paulo. I do not have estimates of how many get hurt in accidents. They are literally risking their lives to make a living. The video is an interview with the director of a documentary called Motoboys - Vida Louca. I watched the documentary a while ago, and I remember thinking it is quite a complex policy issue with very sad histories in the middle.

After being reminded of this sad reality, I walked more 200 meters and had a chance to visit my law school, which has an impressive building



But instead of boring you with details of my (first) alma mater (which can probably be easily found in the internet), let me tell you something more interesting. At the entrance of the school there is a sculpture called "The Eternal Kiss", which had a turbulent history. The sculpture was produced in 1920 and installed in two different neighborhoods just to be removed shortly thereafter under complaints of the local communities. Many thought the sculpture was immoral. It was then abandoned in a storage room until 1965, when the mayor's office decided to install it in another neighborhood. Same complaints. Yet another neighborhood. Again, same complaints. Then, the rebellious (or poetic, depending on your point of view) law students of USP asked the mayor to install it in front of the law school, where it remains until today.

This is the poem that inspired the sculpture:

Não me basta saber que sou amado,
Nem só desejo o teu amor: desejo
Ter nos braços teu corpo delicado,
Ter na boca a doçura de teu beijo”.

Olavo Bilac

My first hours in Brazil: a little bit of everything

As soon as I arrived in São Paulo, my dear little sister took me to the Japanese neighborhood for lunch. The place is called Liberdade (Liberty). I heard it has the biggest Japanese community outside Japan, but I do not know if this is true (I did not check the information).



The place is quite an experience: all stores are run by Japanese descendents, you hear japanese in the streets and the signs are in Japanese. Not sure if it is like being in Japan, but certainly it is not like being in São Paulo.

Sunday is a special day because they have a street market, called "feirinha da liberdade". You can buy food and all types of articrafts.




















But the most interesting part of the visit was the unexpected things I found there. The picture below is a guy selling bonsais on top of an old Brazilian car called Variant. This car was released in Brazil in 1969, and this one in the picture might be from the 1970s.



I also found a lady preaching an African-Brazilian religion in the street market. She was giving away prayers for two Catholic saints - Cosme e Damião. She told me she was of one particular sect, Oxum-oxóssi, but I could not find anything in English explaining in detail what this means (and I would be clearly unable to do it myself). After giving me some popcorn, with very specific instructions on how to make a wish and throw the popcorn in a garden, she kindly agreed to the photographed. So, here we are: