Conference Trips, Diamond Carnival, Wed, 07 Feb 2018 | written by Simon
Simon at a City in Brazil, South America

Before you begin reading, play this, and keep it playing as you read. This is the soundtrack of my life here now.
Not much happened today. I had some online course catching up to do in the morning, then I went to the uni and to visit Veduca, a small homegrown Sao Paulo MOOC platform. Spoke with the director, saw their studio, fun stuff. After that I went back to the campus to hang around the park where all the samba groups were practicing again. Hence the sounds!

I got back home, read my book, basking in the joy of just hanging around naked with windows open. I think this is what I need from life – to live in a place where this is possible. Anyway, since not much happened, I’ll fill this post with some general observations about this place, in no particular order.

Sao Paulo has a pretty good system of cycling paths and a lot of cyclists.

The recycling system seems pretty good as well – most bins in the street have recycling and organics options.

Everything is huge. The trees, the buildings, the streets, the distances. You can really feel this is a 12 million city. It’s all quite overwhelming, really.

People are beautiful, nature is beautiful, but my gods they really can’t build! The architecture is all really ugly here. This is however mitigated by all the amazing graffiti everywhere. Interestingly, while the buildings are really run down, the grass is cut perfectly everywhere!
People sing. Just some random guy working in a shop singing while standing the shelf, some other guy cleaning the streets… And all really good voices!

Shop have no walls. That is, they mostly open to the street, I assume because there is no need to keep the cold out.

Gay people are quite open in public – I saw a few couples holding hands while walking down the street the way I don’t in Edinburgh, especially for men.

Life happens in the street, just like in the south of Europe. In the UK you never see people arguing in the street, hanging out on the sidewalk, or anything like that. Even if it’s warm, people go home, or to a cafe, or to a park. Here if you have beef with someone, you sort it there and then not hold it in until you get home. It’s a really interesting difference – are streets just a way to connect places where life happens, or are they one of the places where life happens?

Enough for now. Tomorrow I have a day off from the uni as the person I was meant to meet cancelled. I think I’ll go on a day trip!