Chief of Police of Malibu

Well, it’s Tuesday night, and tomorrow morning, Marcy & I depart on our first adventure into Brazil’s hinterlands: São Luis.  It should be exciting.  They have some great political intrigues going on up there in Maranhão (the current governor & ex-governor, who’s also the daughter of an ex-president, had a big fight that seems to have involved the current governor’s wife, somehow, and the current governor bolted the party, while the ex-president’s grandson (and nephew of the ex-governor), is in a different party altogether (as is the ex-president himself, who is now a senador from another state, even though he was governor of Maranhão).  Anyways, there’s also a phenomenal national park that I visited almost three years ago with Charles Varner, which we’re excited about seeing.

Speaking of seeing, Marcy just made a great album of pictures on Shutterfly:
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AcuWrlk4atWEC
I guess you have to be a member to view it, but I think it’s free.  It’s got a lot of great photos of the past couple of weeks–especially our time here with Aisha and Rebecca and our trip to Paraty.  Hope you like, and we’ll bring back more pics from São Luis!

- Dan

So this blog was supposed to be more than once every week or two, but I’ve been remiss.  Nonetheless, let’s try for a re-cap.

When last we left our heroes, they were preparing for the visit of friends Rebecca and Aisha.  Part of that involved a cleaning lady, which a luxury to which I’m unaccustomed.  Her cleaning the place was part of the deal of the apt, though, so I don’t feel too indulgent, albeit I do recognize I’m rather living the life of Riley right now.

Rebecca and Aisha arrived Wednesday morning, and Marcy & I took the bus to the airport to meet them, then we all took a cab back.  It’s been grand having them visit.  Last weekend, we all went to Paraty, a really beautiful little old town in the southwestern part of Rio state, and stayed in a little pousada (B&B–not to be confused with the "posadas" described in HSB-64, if you know what I’m talking about–otherwise (though I’m sure they come from the same root), no worries), where we erred on the side of staying too cool the first night, by not fortifying ourselves against mosquitoes.  Rebecca, Marcy, and I slept horribly trying to protect ourselves from the little b*st*rds the whole night, while Aisha slept calmly and was eaten alive (her arms only, fortunately, though it looked like chicken pocks).

The next day we had a really lovely cruise all around Paraty bay on an "escuna" (schooner, with rigging and everything, though curiously no signs of the actual use of wind power) called the Estrela de Manhã III.  It’s really amazing to be on the sea.  We dropped anchor in three of four little coves and went snorkeling and swimming.  It was definitely the highlight of Paraty.

We came back Monday afternoon from Paraty and I finally was able to line up some interviews that week (ie, this past week), both on Thursday (after a lot of calling and e-mailing.  I’ve got a couple of more scheduled for this Monday and Tuesday, which will hopefully be quite interesting (the last two, with a guy from ex-Pres FHC’s party, the PSDB, and a woman from current Pres Lula’s party, the PT, were pretty good, though they did get a bit rambling).  Unfortunately, I think I’m coming around to find that one of the main arguments I’d been hoping to argue against in my dissertation really probably does explain a lot of what I’m interested in (basically, electing a lot of people from your party is irrelevant to gaining overall power, the only thing important to politicians is getting themselves elected, because of the benefits that accrue to elected officials–the added benefit of electing co-partisans in a team effort is negligible, so parties are irrelevent).

Anyways, that’s the bulk of what’s new for new.  Rebecca left yesterday, and Aisha is departing tomorrow.  We’ve had such fun with them, it will be sad to see them go.  However, this Wednesday Marcy & I will be departing for the site of my first extra-fluminense research of this trip: São Luis, far to the north.  It’s also the site of the breathtaking Parque Nactional Lençois Maranhenses (gosh, I hope all of these diacriticals are coming through correctly!).  I’ll have to download the pics from Marcy’s camera and put them up so you can see Paraty and what we’ve been up to Rio.

I hope you’re all well–and to hear from people what they’re up to!  We’ve been here a month already–it’s unbelievable!  We’ve got only 3-1/2 more!  Take care

Dan

Well ok, so here we are on April 9th, which is Palm Sunday, and also my grandfather’s 90th birthday!  This is quite a year for birthdays, in fact.  My granfather, Percival Bugbee Woods, turns 90, my grandmother on my other side, Dorothy Epstein, turns 95, my father, Alan, turns 60, and I myself will turn 30 this year (though after all of them are done).

Anyways, so her we are in Brazil and it’s been a week since my last update, and I must apologize for being remiss.  It does seem like very little happened this week, although there have been some meaningful occurrences.

Early in the week, Marcy was a bit under the weather with a cold, and I stayed home to work on some data stuff (using a sum-of-squares formula to calculate party system volatility across Brazil’s states with some new data I’d found) and help take care of her.  I, then, got a bit down in the mouth later in the week.  Just a little touch of cold–nothing to worry about.  Probably and effect of the changing climate &c.

Anyways, so we didn’t get out a huge amount this week, although on Wednesday we had our major coup.  After Marcy’s ‘rents got their tickets to come visit us (yay!), we sallied forth to nail down travel plans of our own.  After a circuitous route to the bus station that took us through and under a couple of favelas, we hunted up the counter to buy tickets to Paraty, where we’re headed with our soon-to-be guests Aisha & Rebecca next weekend.  Then we came back to Leblon and descended upon the American Airlines office in Ipanema in an attempt to translate AAdvantage Frequent Flyer Miles into tickets on AA’s Brazilian partner, TAM, to take us around Brazil on three separate trips.  After a long time standing at the counter talking on the phone with some ticketing agent who was probably behand a screen in the same office, and then even longer waiting for the tickets to be authorized in a queue apparently backed up in Lima for all of South America, for 120,000 miles and $196 in fees, Marcy & I got tickets for the following trips:
Rio to São Luis Apr 26 - May 6
Rio to Salvador June 16 - June 21 (Marcy’s return)/ June 29 (my return)
Rio to Manaus July 7 - July 15
So people wishing to come visit should be apprised that we will be gone on these dates (as well as sometime in the latter half of May, but on a bus-intensive trip to the south).  Getting these tickets was a huge relief, because of the fact that we were able to use miles for them.  Had we had to purchase them all outright, they would have run us well over $2,000 (air travel in Brazil is not cheap).  We had heard that indeed, such tickets could be got with AA frequent flyer miles, although some AA agent we called on the phone a week ago told us that we could only get such tickets if we were Brazilian citizens.  We thought & hoped that that guy was full of misinformation (as so many bureaucrats tend to be), but we were a little nervous that we’d have to combine/curtail/insert-more-bus-legs into our planned travel, so not having to do those things is a huge boon to us, and makes our budget breathe easier as to our rather luxurious apartment.

Little else very exciting happened this week as far as our own activities in Brazil are concerned.  We went to a movie last night (Inside Man–which we missed seeing at a special screening in LA, unfortunately, but were quite excited to see in any case–and we thank Linda for her attempt to get us to the screening and her generosity in making up for the fact that we’d missed it!  Perhaps it might redound to her benefit somehow if readers of this blog all go see the movie–it’s quite good) at Rio’s giant mall, Shopping Rio Sul.  It’s a 6-story mall where each level, instead of being one long avenue with a long airshaft in the middle, is a serpentine labyrinth curving in corner after corner with intersections and escalators placed so that you can’t find your way back to where you came from and often can’t find your way down a level after you come up on the escalator–unless you’re paying very close attenion. 

We did find the theater, and find our way out.  We also experienced a "bib’sfiha" from an odd sort of chain restaurant Habib’s that does to Middle Eastern Food as much or more of a disservice as Taco Bell does to Mexican food.  I’ll say this much: it’s not quite so bad if you get the queijo bib’sfiha–the carne resembles upchuck.  Far better to get a bolinho on the street, if you can.

After the mall, we went out do dinner at a comida por kilo churrascaria nearby (as opposed to an all-you-can eat) and had some quite succulent bife and a chopp (draft beer), which was quite heartily satisfying.  The different modes of purchasing cooked meat for consumption here are interesting: you can get an order churrasco at a low/medium class outdoor plastic-table restaurant and get basically two steaks (per person!) of medium quality (some of the meat is quite good, but there will be sections of fat and gristle) accompanied by huge portions of fries, beans, rice, and this vinegary mixture of cubed tomatoes, peppers, and onions.  This will cost you about $7-9 a person,unless you get it at beachfront plastic-table place, in which case it will cost more like $14-15 a person.  It’s not a bad way to eat a lot of food.  You can also go to an all-you-can-eat churrascaria (Porcão is a quite nice one), and eat a ton of wonderful meat, along with other delights (much like the Midwest Grille in East Cambridge) for about $25 or so.  Or you can go to a place like Kilogramma that we went, and pay only for what you eat (by the kg), and get a fair share of succulent meat for abot $10.  Kilogramma, the way we went last night, was pretty good!

Anyways, so that’s the news from Leblon today.  Here are a couple of pictures of Marcy and me, respectively, by the ocean at the end of Leblon.

I’ll put some others up on the photo blog. 

Hope you’re all well and to hear from you soon!

- Dan

So today is the second Sunday we’re here in Brazil–we’ll be here for 21 (not quite A Month of Sundays, but three weeks).  Friday night we went out with a friend (Anna) of a friend (Ed) to see a movie that’s part of a documentary film festival here.  It was a really fascinating look at the history of Neo-Conservatism and Islamic Fundamentalism called "The Power of Nightmares".  It was a 3-part series on the BBC and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the history of Osama Bin Laden & political Islam as well the changes in the conservative movement in the United States in the last 30 years.  Although I should warn people that it does not portray the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and Richar Perle very favorably (it doesn’t have that much to say about President Bush himself), so it could be hard to watch for some people.

Anyways, that was our big action for this weekend.  I was out all day Friday at the Instituto, trying to catch up on the events of Brazilian politics.  Yesterday we went to the beach, and also finally got Marcy’s cell phone hooked up, at last (after several attempts to get it unblocked), which is good.  We’ve been experimenting some with Skype recently, too, which is exciting.  The beach here is quite amazing, with really huge waves at times.  Yesterday I didn’t even really go in the water because they were so big!

Well, so that’s all that’s new here, really.  Tomorrow it’s back to the Instituto, and beginning to set up my interviews.  Also, we’ve got to get our trips around Brazil hammered down pretty soon–that’s the next big logistic to deal with, and hopefully we’ll have everything fixed by mid-week, as long as we can get Tam to accept our AAdvantage miles.  Hope to hear from you all soon!

- Dan

This should link to other pictures: http://danevt.blogs.friendster.com/photos/brazil/

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!

Well, I forgot which day we’re on because I didn’t update over the weekend, but things are going very well.  We ended up with this incredible apartment, the likes of which we are never likely to inhabit again, at just shy of $700/mo, depending on the exchange rate (about what I’d budgeted, hoping that I was perhaps highballing it–can that be used as a verb that way, Nina?).  It’s in Leblon, one of the swankier parts of Rio, a bit out of the way from the center of town, but still pretty accessible on public transportation (the buses here are dangerously efficient–dangerous to any poor water-delivery guy who might be trundling his trike across the road against the light!).  It’s two blocks from an extraordinarily beautiful beach, which we can see from our window (12th story).  It’s got a washing machine, and a fold-out couch (visitors!), and our landlady, Maria Klauser (you wouldn’t think her of German descent by looking at her, but she did take care to put every one of the 50 banknotes I gave her for the deposit & first month’s rent all in the same orientation after I’d counted them out) is used to renting to grad students and will take care of hooking us up to the internet & cable.  As a result, our Skype connection (617-379-0378) should be up later this week and you can talk to us on-line for free, or at that telephone number for the cost of a call to Cambridge, MA.

Anyways, so we’re very happy.  This neighborhood is kind of like the Santa Monica (Rockport? I can’t think of a great East Coast equivalent) of Rio, as opposed to Copacabana, which is more like Venice Beach (not nearly as yucky as Hampton Beach–perhaps more like Point Pleasant, or actually beneath Point Pleasant, when I think of it).  This afternoon we’re going to try and get our cell-phones going, which should be fun.  We’ll have to pay like $40 to have Marcy’s old Cingular phone unblocked (when they sell them in the US, they program them so they won’t work elsewhere–huzzah for American openness & globalization), but I’ll be able to use Marcy’s _very_ old cell phone from Russia w/o paying for the removal of insipid protectionist programming.  Then we’ll go to the supermarket, and perhaps take in a bit of the beach this afternoon when the sun is not so bright (Marcy is nearly fascistically vigilant about her sunscreen, so I think she can handle it–I’m the opposite, trusting to my stakhanovite melanin, and may suffer for it).  Tomorrow I’ll hopefully go into IUPERJ at last and begin getting down to work, which means getting someone to try and help me get electoral data from the Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (it may be in their library) and planning my interview questions for carioquense politicians).

Well, I hope you’re all well.  We’re really happy to be settled, at last, and soon will be able to communicate over high-speed internet from our apto, hopefully.  In the meantime, our address is:

Av. Ataulfo de Baiva 50, apto 1206

Rio de Janeiro, RJ 22440-030

Brasil

Tchau!

Well, it’s about 5pm, and after a valiant effort to overcome a 5-hour time change and 24 hours of little sleep in transit (getting up around 7:30am), Marcy and I sort of lolled around for a few hours trying to figure out how to make the stove work (we didn’t have any matches), then cooking breakfast and showering, etc, and finally hit the streets mid-morning, newspaper & phone card in hand (we can’t call out from the phone in our room).  We saw several places today, but are sort in a pickle.  The nice places near the beach are pretty expensive, and the inexpensive places are pretty crappy (not much middle ground).  The cheapest decent place we found is over $600/mo for a semi-studio.  We may go for it, as it’s pretty nice, but we’ll see.  We don’t really need to be near the beach, because the institute where I’ll be is a little closer to the center, but so far, we haven’t found any places in that part of town that will take you for less than a year.  So we may end up spending more than we thought, but that often happens, I guess (we sort of tried to account for that in budgeting, anyways).  One interesting aspect of most of these places is that they have no telephone installed–I guess most landlords are worried that vacationers from abroad would run up a big phone bill and then skip out on it.

Anyways, so we’re really tired now, after traipsing around all day in semi-dressy clothes to look like we’re a decent couple (long pants in Brazil = hot!).  Not much more to report–we’ve yet to figure out how to avoid buggy bread.  Yecch.  We’ll get it together, though.  Take care, all!

- Dan

Little to report.  Long flights.  Alcohol costs $5 on international flights now (I don’t think I’ve sought alcohol on an international flight for years), so we forewent it.  Brazil is hot as ever and Brazilian customs & immigration people are still 100 times nicer than US (and 1000 times nicer than Russian!).  We’re staying in a hostel in Copacabana until we find an apartment, although we made little progress on that today after we arrive around 2pm after 24 hrs of transit, we took a nap and are now roused, showered, and looking for food.  Hopefully more to report tomorrow.  One funny thing–we met a Harvard Gov Dept colleague of mine randomly in the LAX security line.  He was returning to Cambridge from research in Japan and connecting through.  Another blow to the laws of probability is that days before, he had e-mailed Marcy (he used to live in the apt above her in Somerville) to say he was coming back to Boston and wanted to get people together for a beer.  It was the first either of us had heard from him in over a year.  Hope you’re all well.

- Dan

Quick little post–we’re leaving soon.  Flights LAX -> JFK -> GRU -> GIG.  Little else to report.  Next time from Brazil!