By chance – Por acaso
I found your site by chance.
Eu achei o seu site por acaso.
Over at WR, they explain that ‘por acaso‘ has a few other meanings, such as ‘in fact’ and ‘as a matter of fact’. Learn more here.
By the way – A propósito
- You are leaving, right?
- Yeah, I am.
- Oh ok. Are you going to the city, by the way?
- Você está saindo, não está?
- Sim, estou.
- Ah tá. A propósito, você está indo à cidade?
Use ‘a propósito‘ when you wish to say “in addition, but of less importance”.
Earlier this month, I wrote about a fad in Brazil (that originated in England) among teens where the girls wear little bracelets of different colors which correspond to varying sexual acts. There’s a story in O Globo today about a 13-year old in Londrina who was sexually violated by 4 boys on account of ‘having to pay up’ for losing one of the bracelets in the sex bracelet game.
I’m not that old but I remember playing a famous kissing game called ‘spin the bottle’ and so when I see kids acting like a kiss is just so juvenile and thus they feel like they have to up the ante, it’s crazy and sad.
A reader of my blog recommended I write a post on things one shouldn’t forget when moving to Brazil. It’s a good idea and I’ll do my best to make a list of 5 things. Let’s see…
1. A way to get out of a rough spot in case one thing leads to another and you find your bank account emptier than you had planned it to be. It’s always good to have access to an extra US$500 back home, something that can be put into your account if need be. That amount can go a long way towards saving your behind and giving you an extra month or two (depending on how frugal you are) to sort something out. Both times I lived in Brazil, I would have really found such a thing to be a lifesaver (not literally of course but it would have let me breathe for a second).
2. A good book in your own language and not something you can read in a day. When you are away from all that you know and don’t have much access to your own language, it’s nice to have something to keep the wheels in your mind turning. If you do forget to bring one, try going to the local hostel because they might have a shelf in the main room with books in various languages, sort of a ‘take one/leave one’ type of deal.
3. Take an open mind with you because you will certainly run into situations where it will be useful. There will be things that are neither good nor bad but different and there will be things that really are good or bad…but you must accept them as they are. Don’t let yourself get frustrated by how it’s not like it is in your own country because it will certainly color your experiencing self, which in turn will color your remembering self (see this talk on the subject). Remember that memories are also effected by your point of view.
4. If you can get away with it (I’m not sure if it’s legal or not), but take a small supply of your favorite food and only eat it on special occasions. I remember wanting peanut butter in Rio and finding out it was US$10 at the store for a mini jar of a famous American brand while the Brazilian version (called ‘pasta de amendoim‘, or peanut paste…sounds great, right? lol) was less than US$2, although not as great-tasting. Even if your thing is chocolate or perhaps alcohol, take some from home. On the last night before coming back from Colombia late last year, I bought a 12-pack of Colombian beer and it was nice to have (and drink) while back in the States. Of course, check the laws first to see what you can and can’t bring.
5. Last but not least, what you decide to bring doesn’t have to be specific to what you merely enjoy because some things you feel like you ‘need’, so pack those things too. I use a specific kind of toothpaste so I bought two tubes before going to Brazil and never once regretted it. Deodorant is another thing. I brought two kinds of Old Spice and one, I later found out, had the opposite effect when mixed in with the heat of Brazil.
I hope these five things can be helpful but I think what matters most is that you apply the general idea to what puts a smile on your own face. None of these things will make or break your experience (except maybe number 3) but it’s quite comforting to leave home without thinking “shucks, I could’ve brought such and such…but I didn’t!”
Today I heard two great Brazilian CDs straight through and I want to share them with you. When I think of Brazilian music, the type of songs that fill these two discs are what comes to mind. The first is by Leci Brandão, which I wrote a little about last month and the CD is titled Essa Tal Criatura (1980).
As a result of adding an Amazon.com mini store to my blogs, you can find the second album in the store and listen to snippets of each track. I’ll help you out though, here is the direct link to O Bem do Amor. As for Leci’s CD (because it’s not available on Amazon for buying or listening), you can hear the album in its entirety here at Samba de Raiz. On a side note, I do have another one of Leci’s albums in my mini store.
If you’ve visited Brazil or even gone to any Brazilian market in your country, you’ve probably noticed concert DVDs (‘shows‘ in Anglicized Portuguese) for sale in the stores. Sometimes there will be more shows than films for sale and this has always made me wonder why this is so.
Is it a way to feel like you didn’t miss a concert that you actually did miss?
Are some of the recordings of the same singer/band known to be better than others?
Do you actually watch it or is it treated like a CD just with the added bonus of visuals?
I suppose that since Brazil is a visual culture and since such recordings can be bought on the street there for the price of a normal CD then it makes sense that these shows would become popular. In the States, it’s different. Personally, I’ve never heard of anyone I know wanting to buy a concert DVD and thus why a lot of stores don’t offer them. If a Brazil-lover wandered into a Brazilian market to buy one, they would be confronted with a $30 price tag per show, which is a bit of a deterrent for a practice that might not be understood nor for an experience that might be underappreciated. In Brazil, it’s another story.
At Submarino, they have over 5,000 of them for sale.
Two years in and close to 800 posts on Brazil, with roughly 700 on Brazilian culture and about 100 on Portuguese…not bad!
Eyes On Brazil has been moved to Blogger instead of where it has always been (WordPress, here). Blogger offers more options in terms of customization, etc so that’s why I’m switching.
What this means to you is that the WordPress URL is now a Blogger URL (http://eyesonbrazil.blogspot.com), the former will continue to function but won’t be updated and the latter being presently active and updated as usual. I apologize for the inconvenience.
Here are the vanity URLs that you can also use to access my site
or
- Adam
I was skimming headlines on O Globo today when I saw a photograph of a pile of rubbish that a reader sent in which angered her but sadly didn’t shock me.
I’m not sure where these piles of trash come from or why someone or some company thinks any ol’ spot will do when looking for a place to dump their waste but when living in Brazil, I got quite used to seeing them. They weren’t all the size of the pile in the photo (most were smaller) but still, I was baffled at an assortment of things…
1. Why is someone doing this?
2. Why do they think it’s okay to do this?
3. Where do responsible people dump things?
4. If there aren’t better options, why not?
5. Are the local governments doing anything about this?
6. Is this considered illegal (dumping)?
7. What do onlookers do when they see this happening?
8. Does it somehow stem from the practice of littering?*
* – I’ve witnessed people throwing their trash on the ground many times in Brazil…and I’m sure you have too.
Pride shouldn’t just pertain to football, right? Brazil banned smoking in many public spaces, which might as well be seen as air-littering, so why not ban ground-littering too? In São Paulo there was the Clean City law but that only banned billboards. I could talk about this until the cows come home but I’d rather come up with some ways of stamping out this problem.
How about imposing heavy fines for littering? This seems to work well in other countries. What kind of measures are in place to prevent this from happening? Is this a “everyone else does it so why shouldn’t I?” issue that probably won’t change or is it just that no one has spearheaded a large enough campaign against it?
Please see ‘Brazilian Films List‘ on the lefthand column of the site as it improves upon and replaces this post.
The other day, I did a post on training your ears through news websites (specifically, their multimedia sections) and today on Eyes On Brazil, I did a post featuring the titles of the close to 100 Brazilian films that I’ve seen over the years. It’s not only a great way to train your ears but there’s a lot to gain culturally by watching them.
Feel free to check out my list (most of which I recommend) here.
