Monthly Archives: September 2010

Almost Every Brazilian Has a Cell Phone

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“Brazil registered 2.4 million new cell phones in August, reaching 189.4 million habitants, according to data divulged this Monday by Anatel (National Agency of Telecommunications).

According to statistics from the Agency, for each 100 Brazilians, 97.96% have a cell phone. In the first eight months of this year, 15.5 million people signed cell phone contracts, a little below the same period in 2009, when 17.4 million new cell phones hit the market.

From the total number, 82.2% are prepaid. Vivo continues as the leader of the market with 30.2%. Claro comes in second with 25.4%. Time represents 24.3% of the sector and Oi, 19.7%.  The predominant technology in Brazilian cell phones is GSM, present in 88.3% of the cell phones.” – Source (in PT)

São Paulo Street Art Taking Over SP Museum

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“The first time graffiti artist Mister Dheo went out “bombing” was in the dead of night, splashing cheap supermarket paint on the walls of an abandoned factory.  ‘I didn’t even have a name yet. I just wanted to paint, and to feel that adrenaline. I was young, and it was totally different from how it is now.’

Times have changed indeed. A decade later, Dheo doesn’t have to creep around when he wants to leave his mark. This month, his work will feature alongside 65 other street artists at São Paulo’s innaugural Graffiti Fine Art Biennale, held at the city’s prestigious museum of sculpture, MuBE.” – Source (more here)

More Info

Short Documentary (w/ English subs)

Brazil on the Rise – Larry Rohter

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“When Larry Rohter stepped down as The New York Times’ Brazil bureau chief in 2008, he was easily the most reviled foreign correspondent in the country. Despite years of balanced, in-depth reporting about Latin America’s largest country, an oddly sourced article he wrote maintaining that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had a drinking problem exploded into a national scandal.

Rohter’s turbulent foreign correspondency, however, does little to color his perceptions, and his new book is a fair and fairly boosterish introduction to a nation long reputed to be the “country of the future.” The book takes the viewpoint that “maybe, just maybe, the future has finally arrived.”

Rohter does a good job of summing up Brazil’s history and idiosyncrasies before embarking on a powerful and well-informed argument about the state of Brazil’s economy and why the country with its vast array of natural resources now seems poised to achieve world power status. Having vanquished the staggering inflation that long plagued the country in the mid-1990s, Brazil now boasts having “one of the most balanced and diversified economies in the world.”

Exports are booming, the country’s foreign reserves exceed $250 billion and Sao Paulo’s stock exchange stock rose by 87 percent in 2009.

The country is also brimming with energy: Hydroelectric dams are being built across the Amazon basin, vast quantities of sugarcane-based ethanol power much of Brazil’s automobile fleet and massive oil reserves were recently discovered off the coast. That Brazil will host the 2014 World Cup and Rio de Janeiro will host the 2016 Olympics only seems to confirm that the long-awaited future has arrived.

But later chapters present a more complicated picture, with Rohter painting a fairly damning portrait of Brazil’s stewardship of the Amazon rain forest and the country’s highly dysfunctional political system. Bureaucracy, corruption and a tremendous social debt still have the potential to squander Brazil’s substantial gains — returning the country to the boom-and-bust cycles it has suffered for centuries.” – Source

Vamos Passear de Bicicleta – Hyldon

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Vamos passear de bicicleta (Let’s ride around on our bicycles) is from Hyldon’s famous 1975 disc ‘Na Rua, Na Chuva, Na Fazenda’ (In the street, in the rain, on the farm), which is also the title track to a song just about everyone knows.

As a bonus, I’ll leave you with a nice desktop picture for your computer (click, drag and drop)

Lounging About – The Next Brazilian Export?

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An article from The Huffington Post says more Americans should learn to be more Brazilian…by lounging.

“Is there no way to reconcile progress and productivity with balanced, healthy living? What if there was a product that promised to slow your heart rate, lower your blood pressure, increase blood flow to major muscles, reduce muscle tension and chronic pain, improve concentration and reduce anger? What if this product could balance and even catalyze our productivity and entrepreneurship? What if this product was free?

An inspired answer shines from the land of samba, Paulo Coelho, Carnival, açaí and Pelé. The Brazilian culture has achieved true mastery of the art of doing nothing, or as they phrase it “vadiar.”

vadiar: to lounge about (não trabalhar), to idle about (não estudar), to skive (perambular), to wander

Rather than spending their lives striving to be able to one day relax, the Brazilians build mechanisms for relaxation into their everyday lives. As a local Brazilian tale illustrates:

There was once a businessman who was sitting by the beach in a small Brazilian village. As he sat, he saw a Brazilian fisherman rowing a small boat towards the shore having caught quite few big fish. The businessman was impressed and asked the fisherman, “How long does it take you to catch so many fish?” The fisherman replied, “Oh, just a short while.” “Then why don’t you stay longer at sea and catch even more?” The businessman was astonished. This is enough to feed my whole family,” the fisherman said. The businessman then asked, “So, what do you do for the rest of the day?” The fisherman replied, “Well, I usually wake up early in the morning, go out to sea and catch a few fish, then go back and play with my kids. In the afternoon, I take a nap with my wife, and evening comes, I join my buddies in the village for a drink — we play guitar, sing and dance throughout the night.”

The businessman offered a suggestion to the fisherman. “I am a PhD in business management. I could help you to become a more successful person. From now on, you should spend more time at sea and try to catch as many fish as possible. When you have saved enough money, you could buy a bigger boat and catch even more fish. Soon you will be able to afford to buy more boats, recruit more fishermen and lead a team of your own. You can set up your own company, your own production plant for canned food and distribution network. By then, you will have moved out of this village and to Sao Paulo, and finally to New York City, where you can set up HQ to manage your other branches.”

The fisherman continues, “And after that?” The businessman laughs heartily, “After that, you can live like a king in your own house, and when the time is right, you can go public and float your shares in the Stock Exchange, and you will be rich.” The fisherman asks, “And after that?” The businessman says, “After that, you can finally retire, you can move to a house by the fishing village, wake up early in the morning, catch a few fish, then return home to play with kids, have a nice afternoon nap with your wife, and when evening comes, you can join your buddies for a drink, play the guitar, sing and dance throughout the night!” The fisherman was puzzled, “Isn’t that what I am doing now?” – Source

Study Says Brazilians Have Sweet Tooth

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“Fruits, jello, sweets or chocolate? Which is the favorite dessert of Brazilians? The first-ever study about the Brazilian consumer’s favorite desserts shows what prevails in each region and how it occurs in relation to consumption and the will to lose weight. The study, which was released this Wednesday by the Brazilian Association of Nutrition (Abran), shows that Brazilians love sweets. More than 60% of the population chose some dessert with a base of sugar to round out their meal – generally lunch. But fruits such as apples, bananas, melons, papayas, grapes and oranges also appeared on the list.

The study was done with 2,500 people from 18 to 80 yrs old between April and July of this year. Of those interviewed, 56% were women and 44% were men. Of the total, 26% chose fruits; 13%, chocolates; 10%, jello; 9%, sweets made from fruit; 8%, milk-based caramel; 7%, ice cream; 6%, cake (when added up, sweets totaled 69%). The study showed that the higher the frequency of desserts after a meal, the less satisfied the consumer was with their weight. Those who are accustomed to eating smaller portions and avoiding desserts are generally happier with their weight. Another data point that was revealed by the research is that those who wait to eat more at night are usually more unhappy with their weight. ” – Source (in PT)

‘Renewable Home’ Report

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“Brazilian couple Luiz and Edna Toledo have a home made from rubbish, literally. Not content with building themselves a recycled mansion, the couple now plan to construct an entire community from waste.

With walls made of bottles and a roof of bamboo, Luiz and Edna’s house cost a fraction of a normal building. And now an ecologically sustainable village is on the drawing board. “It’s definitely ecologically and economically sound, I think it’s fantastic. This house is life”, says local Government architect Laura. Could this be an alternative to Brazil’s disease-ridden favelas?”

My Take

Soon, people will stop saying ‘ecologically correct’ and just say ‘correct’ which will lead to ‘legally correct’. While ‘green’ is nice and all, it shouldn’t lead to legal pressure to take away our choices, but the current direction of things says it will.

The Elderly – Vocabulary

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There’s a few terms in Portuguese for the elderly and one is not as nice as the others. First, there’s what most Portuguese learners would use, which is ‘velho‘ which can be used both as an adjective and a noun. This is considered the least nicest term. Next, there’s ‘idoso‘ which is translated as ‘elder’ or ‘elderly’.

The third term is more about the time in their life when they reach a certain age (usually 60), where in English one might rudely say someone is ‘over the hill’, in Portuguese one could say ‘terceira idade‘, which translates to ‘third age’. The idea is that the first age is one’s infancy and adolescence while the second age is adulthood.

One term in English that isn’t portrayed in Portuguese is ‘senior’ or ‘senior citizen’, which we use yet I’m not sure how ‘acceptable’ it is to those who are. One term in Portuguese that is rarely, if ever used is ‘ancião‘, or ancient.

Here’s a random question, are there ‘golden birthdays’ in Brazil? For example, I was born on the first of the month so my golden birthday is my first birthday, so it’s when your birthday matches your age. It doesn’t really hold much significance but for those who are curious, it was developed in 1955 by Joan Bramsch who one day just had the idea and it spread from there.

More Info

Article about 3rd Age (in PT)