Week 3: We are Tourists

Work has been going pretty good so far. At Sulistas I am currently testing one of my builds on mobile and fleshing out a fresh project. This new project will be a 3 week project which we will be doing in about a month, after our current project finishes. The cool thing about this project is that they are letting me come up with it.

At MiniBoss I've been spending most of my day in the hammock avoiding the cats and discussing their current project. We've set up a paper prototype of our current ideas and have come to the conclusion we must take a few steps back and flesh out the core of the game.

Paper prototyping while eating home made lunch

Friday after work I headed out to a shopping center downtown, looking for a optician to buy a festival ticket. And yes I found it to be rather weird that an optician would sell festival tickets. Anyway I bought a ticket to Chemical Music Festival for the early bird price of 75 Real which is about 30 Euros. Another weird thing was that the ticket was nothing more then a flimsy receipt with a bar code on it. When I got home that night I watched a great old Brazilian movie with my landlords and learned a bit about great Brazilian actors.

Flimsy receipt ticket

The next day I met up with Henry, Joice (folks I had met last week) and a friend of theirs to head down to another optician to buy tickets to a CSS concert on april 7th. These were priced at 60 Real but for students (which I am) it's half price, bringing it down to a price I would probably pay for it in Amsterdam. Afterwards we went for a slice of pizza at a famous pizza place where everyone usually goes to after hitting the clubs. At night I met up with my dad who arrived in São Paulo that day to spend the weekend with me before heading back Rio and eventually Amsterdam. We headed out to Villa Madalena (a side of town where lots of musicians hang out and play live music) together and got a bit lost before finding a place with a nice Picanha (very high quality meat). After dropping my dad off at the metro station when we were done I met up with Rafa, Raquel, Pedro and a bunch of other Brazilian game developers to have a drink. We ended up playing that game which they play in Inglorious Bastards where you have a note attached to your forehead with a name on it and you have to guess who it is by asking questions. As we were all game developers we were only allowed to use game characters. Good times were had and eventually we headed home. Once again I spend the night at Rafa's seeing as how my house would be quite a bit harder and more expensive to get to that late at night. I have to mention Rafa has been a great help to me during my time here and I'm happy to have met such a swell guy right off the bat.

My dad walking home after a good meal

Game developers roaming the streets

Playing the Inglorious Bastards game

nerds having fun

The next day I met my dad early at the center of town (where I had never been before) and we did a day of tourist sight seeing, following a walking tour we took out of the Lonely Planet Brazil. We came by lots of old style Brazilian buildings and churches and stumbled upon a little cute open market. We topped it off with a lunch at a random place where I had my first rodisio (waiters come by your table with all kinds of freshly grilled meats on a pike and cut off thin delicious slices for you) since I arrived. When we filled ourselves to the limit we both went back home only to meet up again later for dinner at an area called Jardim. On our way back it started to rain very heavily, insuring we got soaking wet. When I got to my room I noticed my ceiling was leaking. This rain also prevented me from going to a jazz/funk concert of Nahor that night which in the end didn't really matter as the hall he was going to be playing at didn't have electricity for the night due to a car crashing into a power post or something.

Some important building

Some important cathedral

Some cool street art

Cool little shop with very old records, books and comics

Some nice square

Rodisio style Picanha

Sunday my dad came over to my house to have lunch with me and my landlords. He got to see the house, meet the people, pet the dogs, eat the good food and listen to some amazing jazz. We brought him back to his hotel by car with a little touristic detour through town. Later that day I met up with him again for dinner which was supposed to be at a famous Arabic restaurant which turned out to be closed. The nearest thing we encountered was a burger joint which surprisingly had amazing burgers. After saying our goodbyes I met up with Joice, Henry and a bunch of new friends with whom I walked around town a bit.

Us hanging out in the rain on the street

Peace