Chief of Police of Malibu

So here we are in Leblon.  We’ve got our apartment squared away, our high-speed internet connected yesterday, and here’s a picture (more on my friendster site):
I guess the picture’s going to  be at the bottom of this post.  Like I said, you should be able to link to my photo album through the site.  We’ve been to the beach here in this part of Rio only once, although we may go again today.  I really do have to get down to some research, though!  A lot of what I have to do now, though, is on-line, so it’s most convenient to work here from apartment.  I’m also trying to plan my travels around the country–it looks like a lot of long bus-rides.  But hey–living in the lap of luxury here, I can put up with some arduousness.  Marcy & I are also trying to plan our visit to the Amazon–the one pleasure trip that I really want to get in down here.  There are no roads, so we have to fly, which is expensive (if ever you’re coming to Brazil and want to see the country, you’ve got to get a Brazil Airpass from one of the local carriers, but you can only buy it in the US once you’ve got your internation ticket to come to Brazil–it’s a steal compared to domestic air travel!).  Oddly, it looks like it’s cheaper to buy the necessary tickets from Travelocity for the Brazilian carrier, Tam, than it is to buy the same tix directly from Tam.  Anyways, enough travel administratia. 

The other thing that it’s convenient to do from here is to call people in the US!  We got this great service, Skype (you can download it for free) that lets you use your high-speed internet to call any phone in the world and the cost is defined by the destination country (2.1 cents/min to the US, for example).  We can also call other people who have Skype on their computer for free.  Or anyone in the US can call us at the number we’re basically renting: (617) 379-0378.  It’s just like calling a US number, except it goes to my computer here (there’s voicemail, too).  So that’s exciting stuff.  Not much else new here, really.  We’ve been trying to master the art of shopping and discovered that most things are the same price whether you buy one or a whole pack (like beer, or eggs), which is odd, although I guess more sensible in some ways that having to buy a dozen of something in order to get a decent price.  Also oddly wine is quite expensive.  We got a $7 bottle on sale last night (all the others in the store were more expensive) from Chile, and it turned out to be of quite poor quality.  You’d think with Argentina next door and Chile not for away (and both in Mercosur), you could get decent wine at a decent price.  But perhaps not–Brazil is much more a beer country, or liquor-ish (cachaça).  This is another interesting similarity to Russia.  In fact, I should keep a list of these meaningless similarities.  If you could see our kitchen (I omitted the photo I took of it), you’d see that it, too, is reminiscent of Russia.

So what else is news.  Well, the fall of the Finance Minister the other day is the Brazilian news.  He’s another in a long line of associates of Lula, the first president from the leftist Workers’ Party, to go down in a scandal.  It seems to have affected the exchange rate slightly (from R$2.15/$1 it’s gone to R$2.20/$1), which could benefit Marcy & I if it continues!  The dollar really plummeted against the real (one real, two reais) in the three years since I was first here (it used to be three to one), which means our American dollars don’t go as far.

Well, I guess that’s all the blog-reporting I have for today–except that our phone we tried to unblock couldn’t be unblocked (did I explain before, how for whatever reason to do with globalization or competitiveness or something, most cell phones sold in the US have an extra program added that renders them unusable in other countries, unless you pay for an unblocking service?  Yet another example of corporate anti-capitalism: success by reducing competition and consumer choice). We still have one more cell phone we can try, so Marcy can have her own cell phone–we’ll see if that one can be unblocked. 

Well, that’s the news from Rio–look forward to hearing from you all.  You can call on Skype or the phone (617) 379-0378 or send us snail-mail, too.  The address is in the last post–although the street is Av. Ataulfo de Paiva (not Baiva).  Take care!