Portuguese is something that anyone serious about spending time in Brazil will need to get to grips with. In The Strange Sounds of Brazil, I described some of the difficulties I have when communicating with Brazilians. But as well as the words and phrases, the strange vowel sounds, the accents and verbal expressions, there is another aspect of communication which I have so far not covered. Non-verbal communication.
Specifically, I am talking about hand gestures. I have noticed that Brazilians like to use their hands as they speak in much the same way that southern Europeans do. But they also have some specific signs which are far more than simple gesticulation. Often the sign will be used to finish a sentence without any further words which can be confusing if you don’t know the meaning of the signal. Imagine it: “So he told her he’d see her later and she was like [weird hand gesture here]!”. I have had to say to my wife “and this [copying weird hand gesture] means what?”. Read more
https://eatrio.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/eat-rio-logo.png00tomlemeshttps://eatrio.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/eat-rio-logo.pngtomlemes2011-10-12 12:43:002023-12-28 11:20:17Oh No She Didn’t and the One Hand Clap.
We had a bit of a storm last night. I woke up around 2am (I think) to what sounded like a train coming past the window. A few minutes later the lightning started – it produced an effect similar to a small child playing with the light switch. I got up and closed all the windows in the house at the same time as the torrential rain started up. Unfortunately we don’t have particularly well sealed windows so even though they were closed, rain started coming in through the cracks on one side of the house.
I decided to go back to bed and deal with it in the morning. Just as I was drifting off I heard a heavy thonk sound from the roof and wondered vaguely what it might be. Turns out it was this:
Shame about the pot…
I went up onto the roof this morning to find all kinds of debris from the storm – leaves and branches, random bit of rubbish and this, a broken pot. The pot is not such a big disaster as in truth I hated that ugly plant and had been planning to get rid of it (a job I have been meaning to get round to for weeks now). It would have been nice to reuse the pot, but hey-ho, at least this should spur me into getting the job done now.
On my way to work there were more signs of the storm (the sign is not normally hanging down like that).
When friends visit and the weather is bad I feel somehow guilty about it – it’s just not what you expect is it? Rio is meant to be sunny! About a year ago a couple of friends from England were in Rio for 10 full days and didn’t see one day of sunshine. I met them after they’d been up to see the Cristo (Christ the Redeemer Statue) and when I asked if the view had been any good they replied “We could just see his head”. Disappointing.
Last November I got really fed up as the weather seemed to be conspiring against me. All week it would be hot and sunny and then, when the weekend came around, it would be like this.
Still, all this moaning was brought into stark perspective just a few months later when the Serrana region of Rio State was hit by massive landslides which caused more than 900 deaths and huge destruction. Hard to believe it was less than a year ago.
Well, there’ll be plenty of rain for my Northern hemisphere readers in the coming months and, looking at the weather forecast, it looks like we’ll have plenty more this week in Rio. So how about some samba to lift our spirits?
Man, I just love this stuff. The lyrics are brilliant – romantic/soppy/poetic in equal measure and it would sound hideous if sung in English. But just so the non-Portuguese speakers get some idea of what she’s saying, here is my raggedy translation:
The rain is falling outside You’re going to get wet I’ve asked you already, don’t leave Wait for the weather to improve Even nature itself Is telling you to stay here
Answer the call of someone who adores you Wait a little Don’t go now
You staying here will make a heart happy That is tired of suffering disillusionment I hope that nature changes your mind…
https://eatrio.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/eat-rio-logo.png00tomlemeshttps://eatrio.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/eat-rio-logo.pngtomlemes2011-10-11 13:22:002023-12-28 11:19:40Rainy Rio
Imagine a 100% reliable hangover cure that was only available until 1pm (and you’d have to venture right out into the world to get it – it can’t be kept in your bedside drawer). That would lead to some tricky mental balancing acts on Sunday morning wouldn’t it?
“My head is in a world of pain and I would love to fix it up, BUT that would require me to get out of bed, get dressed and make my way to the market…” – tricky right?
When I am up early enough to catch the Sunday market in Gloria (it starts closing down around midday), the busiest stall by far is the one that sells Pastel (a light, crispy deep-fried pastry filled with cheese, meat, or various other fillings) and Caldo de Cana (sugarcane juice).
Those golden pastry pockets have various fillings. Most popular are cheese (pastel de queijo) and minced meat (pastel de carne). This is the first part of the cure.
Pasteis (the plural of Pastel) are one of the great Brazilian lanches (snacks), ranking up alongside Pão de queijo and Coxinha. You can buy the pastry ready-made and conveniently cut to shape in every supermarket here and I find that serving a few pasteis makes me very popular when we have guests. If you’re interested in making them for yourself and don’t live in Brazil then you should check out the excellent Flavors of Brazil blog which has a recipe for the pastry.
So, you’ve got your pastel – crispy, a little greasy with oozing melty cheese inside (the cheese ones are my favourite). This all sounds good for combating hangover symptoms. But on its own this will not be enough. You need a drink. A fresh, sweet drink.
Step 1: Get a truck full of sugar cane
Step 2: Pass sugar cane through industrial sugarcane mangle machine. Catch juice in jug.
Step 3: Take mangled sugarcane stems, twist them together, then pass them through a second time.
Step 4: Discard sugarcane pulp
Follow these steps and you will get this, a golden-green cup of magic:
Golden-Green Elixir – this will fix you up
Ice cold cups of caldo de cana are pretty much mandatory alongside your pastel. A sip of this sweet juice, followed by a bite of cheesy pastry, followed by more juice and before long you’ll be making plans for a trip to the beach, perhaps a few beers and later on maybe a churrasco!
Long (long) before I was born, back in the days when Britain had such things as colonies (nowadays they’re called British Overseas Territories), my grandparents lived in modern day Malawi (then known as Nyasaland), East Africa. Many (many) years later, after my grandparents had long since moved back to England and I had been born, my grandparents would tell me stories about their days in Africa – places like Zomba and Blantyre still have a slightly magical ring to me, even though I’ve never been to either.
One day my grandmother said something to me that has always stuck in my mind – she told me that in Nyasaland (as it would always be known to her) the earth had been so fertile that the fence posts would actually sprout leaves and branches. For me, as a wide-eyed seven year old, it was an amazing image and although I’ve since heard it used to simply signify ‘very fertile’, it will always conjure up images of a part of East Africa I’ve never seen.
Hi people. Apologies for paucity of posts recently – this week I’ve been knocked out with some kind of flu that shared many symptoms with Dengue Fever: high temperature, achy joints, swollen glands, intense headache – yeuch! Luckily it wasn’t Dengue, but all the same it was very unpleasant. I’ve been spending most of my time sleeping and complaining (…my poor wife) and so there’s been no time for blogging. But I’m feeling mostly better now, so I hope to get things back up to speed shortly.
During my delirium a memory from a while back popped into my head and made me chuckle, so I thought I’d share:
One of the strange idiosyncrasies of Brazilian pronunciation of English words is that in some contexts an “Eee” sound is added to the end of a word. For example, “i-Phone” sounds like “i-fonee”, “Bob” becomes “Bobby”.
https://eatrio.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/eat-rio-logo.png00tomlemeshttps://eatrio.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/eat-rio-logo.pngtomlemes2011-10-07 13:05:002022-08-23 09:26:04Hippy-hoppy and Hugby
