Posts

Lupi catches bullet

/4 Comments/in

I won’t resign and I won’t be sacked. I have the President’s full support. I guarantee it won’t happen…It will take a bullet to get me out of the ministry. And it will have to be a big bullet, because I’m a big guy. – Carlos Lupi, 8th November 2011.

Politics and corruption in Brazil appear to be intimately linked.

 

Brazil’s Labour minister, Carlos Lupi, announced his resignation yesterday. This makes him the 6th minister to resign because of corruption allegations since President Dilma Rousseff came to power (at the start of 2011). Lupi’s resignation comes after more than a month of allegations and revelations. As the quote above illustrates, this guy is quite a character. In response to the outcry to that followed the above quote, he made another statement apologising to the president:

 

Read more

"To live in Brazil is shit…

/4 Comments/in

…but it’s great.”

Who said that? None other than Antônio Carlos Jobim, also known as Tom Jobim, the godfather of bossa nova, composer of The Girl from Ipanema and one of the great Brazilians of the 20th Century. The full quote is:

“To live in other countries is great, but it’s shit. To live in Brazil is shit but it’s great.”

Tom Jobim – legend.

Are you happy with your country?

/11 Comments/in

Last week I saw this article on the Guardian website – for those of you who don’t do links, the title is Want to be happy? Don’t live in the UK. It goes on to list various statistics which demonstrate that people in the UK and Ireland pay more tax, enjoy fewer holidays, shorter life expectancy and fewer hours sunshine than France, Spain and various other countries in Europe. 


The title of the article made me smirk and feel a little smug (I certainly see more sunshine and enjoy more holidays than I did in London), but as a couple of friends pointed out, the UK is a great place to live! Amongst other things, we (or should I say they?) have a free health service for all, great education, low crime rates, low poverty and politicians who are publicly accountable. And yet people in the UK have been subjected to a steady stream of doom and gloom for years:

Broken Britain – this imagery and tone seems to come up again and again in the British press. Of course you need to acknowledge a problem before can solve it, but are the people who continually push this message doing it for political gain and/or to sell newspapers?

 

This contrasts starkly with Brazil, recently dubbed the ‘Country of Optimism’.


Read more

How to beat the Kilo

/6 Comments/in

Although I think of myself as being fairly adventurous when it comes to food, I am also a creature of habit, particularly when it comes to my everyday working life. 

 

Me proving my food-adventurousness with the help of a guinea pig (and several glasses of wine).

Read more

Three Yummy Foreigners I Met in Rio

/14 Comments/in

I sometimes think that the title of this blog is a little misleading. Originally I had planned to concentrate on all the delicious and (to me) previously unknown food I discovered in Rio, but as time passed I found there were all kinds of other interesting things that I wanted to write about. Now my selection criteria have broadened to include anything that I would show/tell a curious friend who hadn’t been to Brazil. 

 

Sure there’s some food in there, but there’s quite a lot of other stuff as well (this is a sneak-peak of the new-look Eat Rio coming soon).

 

 

But I’m still into the food! I have plans to tell anyone interested about a whole bunch of great Brazilian dishes, ingredients and perhaps even a few of what I deem to be Rio’s best places to eat. 


So today I’m going to tell you about a Peruvian, a Mexican and a Southeast Asian I met in Rio. They have quite different personalities but all three are totally yummy. 

Read more