I only became aware of the subject of today’s post recently, when I passed that piece of street art (above) during carnival. It’s a nice piece of work and the guy has a nice looking face – then I saw the lyrics and decided it was time to find out more (starting with what […]
In contrast to scaremongering right-wing politicians, I believe that immigrant communities make big cities better. Imagine London without its rich pockets of immigrants from the Caribbean, China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Turkey, and so on. It might still be a good city, but would it be a great one? I doubt it. As an immigrant […]
For people learning Brazilian Portuguese, one of the first unintuitive pronunciation lessons you need to learn is that in certain contexts, Rs sound like Hs. “Rio”, “Barra” and “Rato” sound respectively like “Hee-o”, “Ba-hah” and “Hatt-o”. This can lead Brazilians to utter rather amusing mispronunciations of English words such as ‘Hock and Holl’ (popular […]
It’s been a strange time in Rio since the protests of July 2013. After so much unrest, a lot of the outrage seemed to evaporate (at least from the front pages). However, none of the issues that provoked the protests have been resolved, and so I think many of us have been feeling that […]
Carnival 2014 is over! Phew! So how did it go? Well, I had a great time – it didn’t rain and we went to some really nice blocos on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. I’m afraid that 3 days solid partying is about all I can manage nowadays. When Tuesday came around I found myself longing […]