Week 2: ESPN, Burlesque and Bull Testicles

My first week of internship at Sulistas has come and gone and in all honesty all went pretty well. They entrusted the office to me a few times, handing me the keys and leaving me there alone while they handle important business or sleep in late. The most eventful thing to have happened at the office this week must have been the camera crew that passed by to interview some of my colleagues about games. The funny thing was the fact that they were an ESPN camera crew. Now normally ESPN covers all kinds of sports but in Brazil apparently video games are considered sports as well. The big light they brought with them made the entire office hot as hell though and we weren't allowed to open windows or put on the AC at the time because it would make too much noise.

ESPN camera crew at the office

On my way to and from work I come across this very busy street where it takes forever to be able to cross. Iko showed me a 'secret' passage that goes underneath the street and for some reason I find this passage to be really cool. The walls are filled with art and in the middle there is a guy selling all kinds of secondhand books. The staircases up and down are covered in newspaper clippings and old images and the book guy always has funky music on his audio system. I really dig walking past here every work day! The passage leads me to a very busy street with lots of tall buildings housing banks and what not. Amongst these tall buildings stands a single little house which apparently is the oldest building on the street. It doesn't fit the aesthetic of the street at all as it looks like a little haunted Adams Family house and nothing like an expensive business building. I find it to be quite eerie. 

The 'secret' passage

The creepy house

Friday is the day I work with MiniBoss (the other indie studio where I'm interning) at their office not too far from my home. Truth be told it is not much of an office as it is more their house. For me this poses somewhat of a problem as they have 3 cats in their home and I am extremely allergic to cats. However this problem is easily fixed by taking in some allergy pills and working from either the hammock on the balcony or down by the pool. As you can imagine either is fine by me.

My office at MiniBoss

The view from my office at MiniBoss

That night I went out with the MiniBoss folks and some of Amora's old time animation friends to eat at a good but cheap Chinese restaurant in Liberdade, a part of São Paulo where most of the Asian/Brazilians live. As a desert we ordered a portion of 'fried milk'. None of us knew what to expect. It turned out to be a type of fried porridge with condensed milk on top. It was quite good but way too sweet. Afterward me and Rafa headed out to a bar/club called Sonique where I met a bunch of his friends. The music was good (indie/alternative) but not really danceable so we just hung around on the couches talking and drinking. At some point a friend of a friend of Rafa's started a little strip show on the dance floor, referred to as a burlesque show here. We didn't stick around for too long after the show and on our way home we took a last little beer at a little neighborhood gathering at a gas station shop. It all looked to be very 'gezellig' but we were too tired and they were too far gone so after the one beer we opted to go to bed.

Folks I was sitting with whose names I have completely forgotten

Rafa showing the burlesque lady what's what

The burlesque lady doing her thing

The next day we woke up late and Rafa took me to eat lunch for free at his Mom's biological restaurant a few minutes walk away. The weather was extremely hot (34 celcius at some point) and I was dying in my jeans which I was still wearing from last night (I slept at Rafa's so didn't have the chance to change). Afterward I headed home, took a shower, changed and baked myself a bit in the sun, chilling in the hammock on the patio. That night my landlord and her neighbors headed out to a 'boteco' which is a kind of Brazilian bar but different? Anyway I went with and there we met all kinds of family members of our neighbors. It was all good fun and I got my ass handed to me in parlor tricks by a little kid with a abundance of toothpick image guessing games. There, for the first time ever, I ate frog legs. And bull testicles. Both were quite nice and the bull testicles especially if you ate it with some peppers and lime juice.

My neighbor and the toothpick champion kid

Chopped and fried bull testicles and some kind of salty seeds

I didn't stay long at the boteco as I was meeting Rafa to go to a club called Vegas located in one of the nightlife streets of São Paulo. First we hung out at another boteco while we waited for Rafa's friends to show up. A couple of liter bottles of beer later they finally came and we were ready to hit the club. Except we didn't. Nobody really felt like going so we just hung out on the busy club street and talked and drank and I actually had a great time. Rafa's friends were all super nice and it was all once again extremely 'gezellig'. I found it funny to see how beer was sold by individuals from the backs of their cars and how this was extremely normal here. At some point I met these 3 folks who shared an interest in music with me and were planning on going to a concert to which I was also planning on going and one of them apparently had a dream to go to Amsterdam because she loved bicycles. When the sun came up we went back home and ate some breakfast at a 'padaria' which is a kind of mix between a bakery and a mini supermarket.

Nightlife on the streets of São Paulo

Too much nightlife for her

Rafa and one of his friends (I'm rubbish with names, it's terrible I know)

Breakfast that morning

The next morning we woke up late (I once again spent the night at Rafa's) and went down a few blocks to get a killer sandwich when it started pouring. This ruined our plans to catch Nahor's open air performance in the park so we opted to stay in and Rafa forced me to play Zelda on the N64 as I had never played any Zelda game before. When I got back to my own home that night I watched The American with the landlords which I found to be quite a beautiful movie.

Waiting for the rain to clear

On a less fun note, my grandfather was admitted to the hospital this week. After a few days they found out it was Dengue, a type of tropical disease transmitted by mosquitoes. Thankfully he has been released already and he is regaining his strength, but it was quite a shocker nonetheless.

That's it for this week. For more check back next week (I've decided to make this blog thing a weekly thing).

Peace and love

Week 1: Getting my Bearings

It has been about a week since I arrived and I figured I'm due for a little blog update. Let me start off by showing you some more how awesome the house is I'm staying at.

The house

The road my house is on

On my first real day in Sao Paulo I decided it wouldn't be a bad idea to figure out the transit system of this city, seeing as how I would be using it a lot to get to work and back. I quickly came to the conclusion that it is a complete mess. Bus numbers are unnecessarily long and often look alike, bus stops often don't have the name of the stop on it or an indication as to which buses stop there. Inside the buses it's not much better either as there is zero indication as to what bus stop is coming up. The only way I got around was by asking the driver to warn me whenever we got to a certain stop. And the only reason I knew I had to be at certain stops was thanks to Google Maps. So in short, it was all kinds of fumbling about.

While on one of these stops I did spot my first (and till now only) shemale. Achievement unlocked!

So all that fumbling about with the buses and eventually I found my way to the Sulistas office where I'd start working in a few days. We talked about their game a bit and what I could bring to the table and all that. On my way to the subway station I sat down with my boss at a little bar place thing and had a beer and a cheeseburger and quickly learned never to eat cheese in Brazil again.

The Sulistas office with Iko, Chips and the Japanese

On my way home

 
The next day I got up early and Nahor (my landlord) brought me to the police station so I could report the theft of my laptop, mainly for insurance purposes. Later I went down in my area a bit and found a cute little shopping street where I bought a TIM (Brazilian phone provider) SIM card (referred to here simply as a chip) so I could call and be called.

Cute shopping street down the road of where I live

Later on I had a super chill time in the sun with a beer in my hand, the sun on my face, the dog on my lap and Nahor's jazz in my ears. This quickly turned to whiskey in my hand, rain on my face but still Nahor's jazz in my ears.

That night I had dinner at my boss' place (which was tiny) with some colleagues. He whipped up an awesome curry and I got introduced to Brazilian memes.

Fun in Iko's mini apartment

 Saturday Nahor took me with him to do groceries at a huge supermarket downtown which could be described as a mix between Aldi and Macro (for all you Dutchies). Everything was cheap and in big quantities and generally quite awesome. When we got home Paula's (my other landlord) sister was visiting and brought two puppies which were to be sold. They were of the same breed as Amelie and Dalilah and were absolutely adorable. Later that day one puppy got sold.

Puppies!

That night Nahor and Paula had lots of guests over, including a Mexican couple who used to own a Mexican restaurant in the city. He brought his own guacamole and other yummy dishes. We ate and we drank, we enjoyed ourselves immensely and I discovered not to fuck with real Mexican peppers.

Eating, drinking, enjoying

The yummy food

Chillin on the patio

On sunday I whipped up some self explanatory slides about GDC and the Academy of Art University in San Francisco for HKU. It was all quite simple and obvious and I think they used it as an intro to other GDC stories which will be told by people actually at HKU. After that I went to Rafa's (Miniboss' sound designer) place and met up with Pedro, Amora and Vivi (Rafa's neighbor and all round sweety) to go out for some food and coffee.

Too sweet special coffee at a fancy coffee place

Monday was my first day of work and I got there by subway. Subways are extremely relaxed compared to buses. Everything is clean, safe, fast and well communicated. When arriving at the office I encountered Chips on his way down to get lunch with others from the building and invited me to come along. So instead of working my first hour I had lunch and afterwards we went out for some coffee (they really love coffee here). After a few hours of work we went out for another coffee during which I discussed some of my ideas with Chips. Later that night we went out for some food and beer and I got a chance to discuss my ideas with Iko. All in all it was a good first day.

That night I left work a bit earlier to catch a live performance by a jazz band in which Nahor was playing trumpet. It was at this amazing place called The Orleans which had 3 floors overlooking the stage. The band itself was amazing and we all enjoyed ourselves loads. I even met two girls who are planning to study in Holland!

Vivi doing the drunk dance at The Orleans

The band with Nahor on trumpet

New friends who might be studying in Holland soon

Rafa dancing with Vivi

Rafa dancing with Amora

That's it for this week. Peace.

Arrival

I was thinking about starting a blog to scribble down my 'adventures' in Sao Paulo for friends and family back home but along the way figured nobody would bother reading it so why should I bother writing it. The many people that urged me to set up a blog anyway proved me otherwise and so here it is. My Sao Paulo blog called Bosa in Sampa. To clarify: apparently Sampa is a nickname the people here have given the city.

I'll start with my trip here. It was utterly horrible. It all started when I was still at Schiphol on the bus that would take me to my aircraft. The driver announced that Frankfurt Airport was on strike and thus we could not fly there. They rebooked me on a flight to Cologne that left 10 minutes later, making me rush down to another gate.

When arriving in Cologne I wasn't shocked to find out that my bags hadn't arrived. There was no way they would have had enough time to take my luggage out of the original flight and dump it on the new one within 10 minutes. They assured me the bags would get to me eventually though. So then they put me on a bus to Frankfurt anyway because apparently the strike only lasted 4 hours.

Once in Frankfurt the last flight to Sao Paulo had gone so I had to stay the night. Thankfully the kind KLM folks gave me a hotel voucher with dinner/lunch/breakfast and rebooked me on a TAM flight for the next day. So the next day I head down to the TAM desk to find out they had for some reason canceled my reservation on that flight. Not only that, but the first available flight would be in 2 days and there was nothing they could do about the cancellation of my reservation, telling me I should go back to KLM at the other terminal and talk to them.

Down to the terminal I go, grumpy as fuck. I throw down my passport on the table and am about to yell at the lady when she goes: 'There you are! We called the hotel to tell you TAM inexplicably canceled your reservation and that you should come to me first thing! The hotel staff should have given you that message.' Well they didn't but I admired to which lengths the KLM folks went through to take care of me. The kind lady booked me on another flight for later that same day and even let me go in the back to let me check where my luggage was at. Apparently it was on a KLM flight straight from Amsterdam to Sao Paulo and it would be waiting for me there. As a last kind act KLM gave me a voucher for a dinner at the airport which I used up on a pretty good California Burger.

This KLM service lifted my spirits and eventually I got on my new flight (Lufthansa) which was fine. There were no little TVs in the seats and the guy next to me smelled sourly of sweat but I couldn't be bothered anymore and pretty much slept through the entire flight.

When arriving I immediately went to the baggage folks and asked them about my bags. Only problem was that these baggage folks were from Lufthansa and there were no KLM people around this early in the morning but if I left my contact information and a description of things that were in the bag they assured me they would let KLM know and I would get my luggage back either later the same day or tomorrow.

To my pleasure my bags arrived that same night. To my horror my laptop was no longer in it.

This place I'm staying at though...it is amazing! The house is quite big and has its own back patio where they often do jazz rehearsals (one of the landlords is a jazz trumpet player and has many jazz musician friends). There are two border collies here who are amazingly adorable. One of them is blind but somehow always finds the ball when I throw it. My room is quite spacious and has all the basic things I need. Close by there is a very cool area with lots of bars, cafes and restaurants. My landlords tell me it is amazing there at night with lots of artistic minded folks hanging there making music and what not. I'll probably be heading there lots on Monday as my landlord plays there on Mondays with a jazz band. Raquel and Pedro, folks from one of my internship offices came by in the evening and we had an amazing dinner together (they cook so nice here!) Afterwards we shot some shit about the internship and such and I made them light up when I showed them the stroopwavels I brought for them. Nahor, the jazz trumpet player, also seemed to very much appreciate the gift I brought for him, which was a cd from an underground dutch jazz guy.

Thats it for my first post. Let me finish it off with some pictures.

My Room

Living Room

Living Room

Kitchen

Kitching/Dining Table

Patio

The Landlords, Paula & Nahor

Enjoying fresh fish and beer on the patio with Todd

Amelie