Rasheed's World

American romantic film is more S&M than Japanese film

2009-11-09T21:39:00.011-02:00

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel in a scene from 500 Days with Summer.

Warning contains spoilers!

I WATCHED two films over the weekend that could not have been so different in both content and quality. Ironically the American romantic comedy/drama 500 Days with Summer was a torturous experience to watch because of the real sadomasochistic relationship it portrayed between Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel.

In contrast, the Japanese light comedy/drama I watched, entitled I Am an S&M Writer, was much more real and less perverted in essence than 500 Days ever could be.

How could that be, one might ask, especially with the squeaky clean Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel in the lead roles? Well 500 Days seems like a great, quirky movie if you just watch the trailer. But we all know that trailers are often extremely misleading. "This is not a love story," the trailer intones seriously. But hey guys, guess what? It is. One in which Gordon-Levitt, playing greeting card writer Tom Hansen, falls totally and sickeningly in love with his co-worker Summer Finn (Deschanel). That would be fine if only Deschanel did not spend the whole movie with one stupid expression on her face the whole time, grinning stupidly at first, then sneering at Gordon-Levitt for being so hopelessly smitten with her.

The first feature film of music video director Marc Webb, and written nonsensically by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, 500 Days, as my friend Ana Claudia told me, tries to cast Summer as the mature one and Tom as the immature sop. They are shown dating, eating out, browsing at a record store (Summer loves Ringo Starr), and even playing house in an Ikea showroom. "Oh how sweet," we're all supposed to coo. But then Summer starts going cold on Tom, pulling her hand away from his and skipping dinners together. She finally tells him that she just wants to be friends and resigns from her job. Tom is left crushed and heartbroken, utterly dumbfounded at what has happened. Weeks later he runs into her and she casually invites him to a party in her building, which turns out to be her engagement party to another hunky dude! What a bitch! Why she never tells him that she's found a new guy is never explained, and she never apologizes for her nasty behavior. Her constant justification is that she told him from the beginning that she did not want a serious relationship. Come on! What bullshit, as Tom says in the movie.

A much more honest movie is Ryuichi Hiroki's 2000 I Am an S&M Writer, which is being shown at the ongoing 11th Brasilia International Film Festival at the Academia de Tênis, along with his more recent Vibrator, and follows a long Japanese tradition of pornographic and sadomasochistic literature. Ren Osugi stars as older male writer Kurosaki, who has a beautiful and much younger wife Shizuko played by Yoko Hoshi. The writer churns out cheap pornographic novels that involve much light S&M which usually involves tying up a naked young woman with rope. To make his scenes as realistic as possible he hires a young woman to be tied up in his office by his assistant Kawada (Jun Murakami) and poked by him too if needed. Of course, as I noted to Ana Claudia, only the women in this movie are tortured, fully naked and act as if they love what's being done to them. The men are invariably sleazy, fully clothed and in control.

The director Hiroki was flown in from Japan to attend the film festival here in Brasilia, and he was on hand to answer the questions of the 10 people who actually showed up to watch the first screening of the film. He looked like a DOM to me, or Dirty Old Man, who got smutty pleasure from making such films. But I must note that I Am an S&M Writer does not have very explicit scenes, much more is implied than actually shown. And its lighhearted approach to the story gives it a feel of the pornochanchadas, or sexual comedy films, that were very popular in Brazil in the 1970s.

After watching both movies I concluded that Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel's dysfunctional relationship was far more sadomasochistic than anything depicted in I Am an S&M Writer. How ironic.

A scene from I Am an S&M Writer:

Iranian tale of lies and tragic consequences at Brasilia Intl’ Film Festival

2009-11-07T14:37:00.004-02:00

Golshifteh Farahani, left, in a scene from About Elly.

LAST night I went to see the 2009 Iranian film About Elly at the 11^th International Film Festival of Brasilia at the Academia de Tênis. Directed by Asghar Farhadi and starring the extremely talented and beautiful actress Golshifteh Farahani, the film is about a group of young, middle class Iranians who spend the weekend at a Caspian Sea resort with tragic consequences.

About Elly won the Silver Bear for Direction at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival and was also shown at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. It had its Middle East debut at Abu Dhabi’s Middle East International Film Festival in October. It is Iran’s official entry for the 2010 Best Foreign Film category at the Oscar awards.

You may remember Farahani as the alluring nurse in the 2008 Leonardo DiCaprio thriller Body of Lies. She got into trouble with the Iranian regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinijad for appearing in that Hollywood film without prior government permission. For a while there were rumours that she had been banned from leaving Iran, but Iranian authorities must of thought better and she appeared at the film’s US premiere last year. She has since, understandably, because of the restrictions in Iran, moved to Paris, France.

Her latest film has won praise from Western critics, with Screen International critic Lee Marshal calling it “one of the most remarkable Iranian films to surface in the last few years.” I have to disagree. I found About Elly trying my patience at times, the actors and screenplay unable to make me really bother about what was happening on the screen. What is good about the film though is that it gives Western audiences a much-needed look at the lives of ordinary young Iranians, and hopefully make them realize the many similarities with their foreign counterparts.

You can still catch About Elly. It’s being shown today at 7:20 pm, and on Nov. 11 and 12 at 8 pm in Persian with Portuguese subtitles.

Other interesting films being shown at the Brasilia International Film Festival include: Lars von Trier’s Antichrist; Apology of an Economic Hitman; Blind Pig from Indonesia; A Fuga da Mulher Gorila, a Brazilian road movie/musical about two women driving a van across the country, and Outrage, a documentary that outs closeted gay politicians in the US.

For a complete guide to the movies and show times visit the festival’s website by clicking here. It has both Portuguese and English versions. The festival opened on Nov. 4 and runs until Nov. 15.

Verger book of Philippine photos launched

2009-11-05T10:29:00.008-02:00

THE much awaited book of Philippine photographs taken by the French photographer Pierre Verger in the 1930s was finally launched last night here in Brasilia at the residence of the Philippine Ambassador to Brazil Teresita Barsana.

The 187-page book showcases the black and white photographs taken by Verger on two trips to the Philippines in 1934 and then 1937-38, during which he traveled from the northernmost tip to the Muslim south. Many of the photos included have never been published before. Verger was a prolific picture-taker, a true photojournalist who wanted to document day-to-day life wherever he went. This explains the mountains of negatives that he left behind at the foundation named after himself in Salvador, Bahia. Barsana told me that after she had the idea of producing a book just of his Philippine pictures, she spent days at the foundation pouring over his photographs to choose the best ones out of nearly 2,000 alone on the Philippines.

"Many of the negatives were in very bad condition, ravaged by heat and humidity," said Brazilian photographer Alexandre Magno, who was in charge of designing the book. "We had to use Photoshop to improve the quality of many of them."

Ambassador Barsana told me that the Pierre Verger Foundation was initially hesitant in producing the book. "'How many people will be interested in photos of the Philippines?', they asked me, and I said I would make people interested!" she told me as she happily autographed copies of the book for guests at the launch.

This career diplomat is very happy that she was able to produce this book before she leaves soon to set up the first ever Philippine embassy in Lisbon, Portugal.

The book was being sold for R$65 ($37.70 or P1,795) at the reception, and was printed in a limited-edition run of around 1,000 copies. Hopefully, the book will give Brazilians an intriguing look into what the Philippines and Filipinos looked like in the 1930s, just before World War II and their subsequent independence from the United States.

The book launch that didn’t quite happen

2009-10-29T10:14:00.010-02:00

Philippine Ambassador to Brazil Teresita Barsana speaking at the swearing-in of the Brazil-Philippines Parliamentary Committee on Wednesday in Brasilia.

YESTERDAY afternoon my friend Ana Claudia and I eagerly arrived at the Brazilian Congress to attend the supposed launch of a book of photographs of the Philippines taken by Pierre Verger, a French photographer who ended up living and dying in Brazil, entitled Pierre Verger-1934-1937-1938: Filipinas.

Making our way to the Salão Nobre of the House of Deputies, I marveled at how easy it was to enter Congress, especially if one were dressed up the way we were. We went through one metal detector and that was it. We were in.

Since all of Brasilia was built in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the inside of the Congress building is modern in that 1950s sort of way. Just next door they have completely gutted the Palacio do Planalto, the presidential palace, in a much-needed reforma that is being overseen by the original architect of Brasilia Oscar Niemeyer, who at 101 years of age is still working despite recent health problems. This visionary capital is celebrating its 50^th anniversary next April, and everyone is hoping that Niemeyer will make it.

But back to the supposed book launch. When we were finally seated in the rather smallish Salão Nobre, which is like the lobby of a slightly faded luxury hotel, Philippine Ambassador to Brazil Teresita Barsana announced that the actual launching of the Verger book would be on Nov. 4 at her official residence. Instead, we all witnessed the swearing in of the new members of the Brazil-Philippines Parliamentary Group. Deputy Nelson Marquezelli (PTB-Sao Paulo) is the head of this group, and he said that a group of Brazilian deputies are scheduled to visit the Philippines early next year.

From the huge floor-to-ceiling glass wall we had a lovely view of the grassy slopes in front of the Congress, where a large group of protesters had gathered and whom we heard screaming during our event.

After the swearing-in, Ana Claudia decided to take me on a walking tour of both houses of Congress. We saw a huge tiled wall in the lobby of the Senate made by the famous Athos Bulcão. There we saw a rather tall man in sunglasses wearing a jacket with a huge plastic sunflower stuck on it, smiling and posing for photographs with the public. He was obviously some celebrity, but I didn’t recognize him.

“Oh my God! That’s the singer Falcão,” blurted Ana Claudia. “He’s a singer from the Northeast of Brazil who always sings about cuckold men.”

We watched him for a few minutes. “Do you want your picture taken with him?” she asked me.

“No, that’s okay,” I replied.

The Brazilian Congress is famous for its various underground tunnels that link various parts of this large complex. Ana Claudia and I were looking for the especially futuristic looking one that has recessed lighting, that gives the completely carpeted tunnel an outer space sort of vibe.

When we finally found it in the House of Deputies, Ana Claudia told me it had always reminded her of something out of an episode of the TV series “Time Tunnel”. To mark our visit to Congress and the famous tunnel we took pictures of each other in the spooky glow of the underground passage that has moving sidewalks just like in airports. It was a suitably modernist end to our frustrating expedition in search of that book of photographs.

My friend Ana Claudia posing in the futuristic tunnel under

the House of Deputies.

A strange but spiritual birthday

2009-10-23T11:54:00.002-02:00

I KNEW I was going to be the first person at my friend Camille’s birthday party on Wednesday night, as I’m always early while she is always late.

I rang the doorbell of the apartment of her friend S and was surprised when a slightly overweight, middle-aged woman opened the door. I knew S was around the same age as Camille and I, but she just looked so much older than us.

“Good evening, I’m Rasheed, Camille’s friend,” I said as I extended my hand to her. She invited me in, and after saying hello to her 12-year-old daughter we sat down in the living room and chatted about Camille, my life as a journalist and Saudi Arabia.

S and Camille had studied together, just as Camille and I had too. She was now a housewife with three children and a husband who traveled a lot. Later Camille told me that she spends all of her free time doing charity work. It also transpired that she is an Espiritualista, or Spiritualist. This religious movement has many members in Brazil, its mixture of Christianity and a belief in reincarnation a magnet for many people here.

Camille and her husband are also interested in Spiritualism, so we spent the evening discussing various aspects of it, in between having a debate on whether drugs should be legalized in Brazil, in the context of the ongoing drug turf wars in Rio de Janeiro which saw the dramatic and fiery shooting down of a police helicopter by criminals last week.

I felt a bit strange discussing the merits of legalizing some drugs, to take the business out of the hands of organized crime, in front of S’s young children. But it was she who had brought up the subject as we ate pizza and birthday cake.

Spiritualists believe that everyone is reincarnated many times in a quest to become better beings and to learn from past mistakes. They also believe that people can be reincarnated on other planets, not just here on Earth. But reincarnation for them is an educational process and not a vengeful one. At their prayer meetings, mediums communicate with the spirits of people who have passed on, relying messages from both the living and dead in two-way traffic.

“Spiritualism is the quest for love in everything we do, following the example of Jesus Christ,” explained S when I asked her about her religion.

As we left, I could not help feeling how S was on a completely different planet than Camille and I. Not a better or a worse one, just a very different one.

I seized the day with much salt!

2009-10-18T13:24:00.004-02:00

I MUST have swallowed a whole day's worth of a human's recommended daily consumption of salt in the single meal I ate last night at the Carpe Diem restaurant at Pier 21 in Brasilia.

The dish in question was chicken breasts in a creamy sauce with various types of mushrooms, accompanied by white rice. On the menu it sounded good: A sauce made with shitake mushrooms, champignons, and fresh mushrooms (that's what it said in Portuguese, which sounded to me like they were just using various languages to describe several varieties of mushrooms). Two grilled chicken breasts were placed on top of the sauce and presented to me. From the first bite, my taste buds were overpowered by the saltiness of the sauce and chicken. I was hungry so I ate one of the breasts with sauce and rice. Then the waiter came by and asked if everything was okay.

"No," I said. "The chicken is much too salty!"

The waiter took my plate and said he would tell the chef and change my chicken. After around 10 minutes I got a new plate of chicken and sauce, but it was still salty. I think the chef must have had the taste buds that detect savory flavors missing from his tongue, as the dish was still briny. Then the chef suddenly appeared at my table and asked me if the dish was better now.

"No, not really," I said as I continued to eat it. After all I was hungry and this was the one day of the week when I allowed myself to go off my diet. I drank two ice-cold Mexican Sol beers to wash down all of that saltiness.

Lucikly, I had Haruki Murakami's novel Sputnik Sweetheart to read while I ate and waited for my friend Ana Claudia to show up to watch Matt Damon's new film The Informant with.

Brazil’s former guerrillas want money and visas to the US

2009-10-15T10:15:00.005-03:00

BRAZILIAN media this past week reported interesting stories about two former leftist guerillas, one asking for restitution from the state for lost wages, and another finally getting a tourist visa to the United States after years of rejection.

The irony in all of this is that the former fighter asking for restitution, Ana de Cerqueira Cesar Corbisier, to the tune of R$70 million ($40.9 million), joined the Açao Libertadora Nacional (National Liberation Movement) group voluntarily, according to a report in Veja magazine, after abandoning her job with the Fundação Padre Anchieta, was never imprisoned or tortured, and now wants her former employer to pay her all of her back wages from income she would have made had she not joined the guerillas!

At the same time, the Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper, reported last Saturday that a former guerilla who participated in the 1969 kidnapping of the US ambassador to Brazil Charles Elbrick, Paulo de Tarso Venceslau, was finally granted a tourist visa by the US Consulate in Sao Paulo after years of rejection.

Venceslau, who is now a businessman in the field of communications, admitted to the Estado that he has no love lost for the US, but that he just wants to be able to visit New York, Chicago and New Orleans to listen to jazz and soak in the cultural life of those cities.

The newspaper speculated that the change of heart in giving Venceslau a US visa was due to the more liberal stance of the Obama administration. The US Consulate in Sao Paulo denied this on Tuesday, saying that American visa regulations had not changed.

Even though the group of guerillas who kidnapped the US ambassador were granted amnesty in 1979 by the Brazilian government, along with other leftist fighters, and the fact that the US supported the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 until the early 1980s, I am not surprised that the US government was not rushing forward to grant these individuals visas to visit America.

As for Corbisier, she took part in two bank robberies, one of which resulted in the shooting and death of a policeman. She was indicted for the crime, but fled the country to Cuba before she could be arrested. There she studied guerilla warfare and then moved to France. She returned to Brazil a free woman following the general amnesty of 1979, and approached the Amnesty Commission of the Ministry of Justice in 2001 asking for a government pension. She was granted one in 2007, amounting to R$2,744 a month, or around $1,600 at today’s exchange rate. Now she wants all of her back pay, which could amount to R$70 million, which is ridiculous to say the least!

As the famous Brazilian cartoonist Millôr Fernandes told Veja: “The armed struggle didn’t work out, so now they want compensation?”

Pet Shop Boys rock Brasilia

2009-10-12T15:38:00.010-03:00

Neil Tennant performs on Sunday night in Brasilia.

I WENT to the see the Pet Shop Boys in concert last night at Marina Hall in Brasilia. It was absolutely packed with Brazilian fans of all ages and gender, though I must admit that I must have seen the most gay men ever per square meter in Brasilia.

Although the concert was supposed to start at 9 pm, it didn't kick off until 10 pm, which didn't stop many people from dancing in the aisles to recorded music while drinking beer and talking to friends as they waited for the show to start.

Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe played mostly songs from their new album "Yes", including my favorite Did You See Me Coming? Unfortunately, many in the audience were not familiar with the lyrics of the songs from this album which was released in April of this year. That did not stop me from dancing and singing:

Did you see me coming?
Was I that obvious?
For all of a sudden
there were just two of us

You don't have to be
in "Who's Who"
to know what's what
You don't have to be
a high-flyer
to catch your slot
The night we met
was cold and wet
I needed a drink or two
I saw you standing there
and I knew
I'd love
to be loved by you...

The stage was filled with white cubes that were constantly being moved or thrown around, and onto which various images were projected. The English duo were accompanied by four back-up vocalists cum singers, whose energetic dance moves added energy to the show.

The audience perked up when the Pet Shop Boys played some of their more popular songs such as Go West, It's a Sin and West End Girls.

Tickets to shows in Brazil are quite expensive compared to the US. I paid R$180 ($103) for my seat, but it was in a cordoned-off area and I was just 30 meters away from the stage. I also bought a gray PSB Pandemonium on tour t-shirt for R$60 ($34), which I am wearing as I write this. This was cheaper than my ticket for Cirque du Soleil's Quidam show, R$250 ($143), that I watched the night before.

While I would like to be able to pay less for my entertainment, I am grateful that there is now so much going on in Brasilia that one is often spoilt for choice. I remember growing up here in the 1970s when the only options were the Teatro Nacional with an occasional performance of the Bolshoi Ballet and American film festivals at the Casa Thomas Jefferson. Brasilia, you've come a long way baby!

Bank strike ends in Brazil, money tight and Zelaya still in Brazilian embassy

2009-10-10T17:48:00.001-03:00

THE UGLY red and white posters that screamed: “We are on Strike!” in Portuguese, have finally been taken down from the glass entrances to most banks in Brazil, after unions representing bank workers agreed to a 6 percent salary increase on Friday.

That sounds like a good increase but with inflation this year at 4.5 percent that means bankers will only be getting a “real” increase of 1.5 percent, according to my banker friend Alisson.

All the private banks as well as the state-owned Banco do Brasil and Banco Regional de Brasilia have accepted the negotiated settlement, with the government-owned Caixa Economica Federal employees holding out not on the salary issue but on additional benefits they are asking for.

As the Correio Braziliense newspaper pointed this morning, bankers have walked out of their jobs every year now since 2004. Would it not just be easier to have a guaranteed increase each year that covers inflation and a bit more? With the record profits that Brazilian banks have been making, despite the world economic crisis, it seems certain that they can afford it!

Banks were closed to the public for three weeks or 15 working days. In this electronic age, that meant that all banking had to be done through ATM machines or via the Internet. But can you imagine what havoc it would have wreaked if ATMs and the Internet did not exist? One can only imagine the hardships it would cause. I wanted to send money to a friend abroad via Western Union and could not because of the strike. Since the strike is now over, I was able to this morning.

*****

IN THE sometimes strange world of Brazilian tax laws, businesses can opt to pay their anticipated income tax to the government in advance and then be reimbursed a year later if it turns out they overpaid.

The bad news is that the Brazilian government announced this week that it was delaying the income tax refunds this year because its income tax collection this year has fallen dramatically due to the economic crisis, and because it does not want to cut back on its huge spending on social welfare and economic stimulus.

That means that anyone who overpaid in income tax and was expecting it back, with interest of course, before Christmas is out of luck. Some analysts are expecting the government to be sued over this, but that could take years in the courts, so most Brazilians will just swallow hard and wait for their refunds, later rather than sooner.

With upcoming elections next year for president, Congress and local officials, some cynics are saying this is a move to help President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva’s handpicked successor Dilma Rousseff in her campaign for the presidency.

****

IN HONDURAS, deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya is still holed up in the Brazilian Embassy, and despite negotiating attempts by the Costa Rican president and a high-level delegation from the Organization of the American States, it doesn’t seem like he will be leaving it soon.

The interim president, Roberto Micheletti, is managing to hold on to power until the promised elections in November because he is fully backed by the Congress and the judiciary. Zelaya and his Brazilian backers have been demanding that Micheletti reinstate him as president until the elections. Micheletti has resolutely refused, saying that if Zelaya leaves the Brazilian embassy he will be tried for treason for not upholding the constitution. The OAS diplomats, worried about the cramped quarters of the embassy with so many Zelaya supporters there along with the deposed leader, asked the Honduran government if Zelaya could remain in his own residence under house arrest (with diplomatic immunity), but they refused.

With November just around the corner, we will have to wait to see who wins the election, and if that person will be accepted by all sides to be the new president of Honduras.

Seen in Brasilia...

2009-09-30T21:04:00.003-03:00

THESE wonderfully camp hot pink shoes with white bow ties are currently on display outside my gym in Brasilia. I couldn't resist snapping them with my mobile phone after passing by them several times.

They are part of a display of high-end women's shoes on show in a series of elevated display cubes at the entrance of my academia, as they say in Portuguese, put there by a local shoe store. I just wonder who would buy such shoes and actually wear them in public? Perhaps a Brazilian Barbie?

Brazilian environment minister victim of homophobic attack

2009-09-25T17:48:00.008-03:00

CARLOS MINC, the activist Brazilian minister of the environment (seen at right), was this week the victim of a homophobic verbal attack by the governor of Mato Grosso do Sul, after Minc told President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva that more land in that state should not be given over to the planting of sugar cane.

It seems that Gov. Andre Puccinelli has many rich farmer friends who were pressuring him to allow them to expand their sugar cane farms. The problem is that Mato Grosso is home to the vast pantanal, or wetlands, which are home to thousands of species of birds, fish, insects and other wildlife. Turning over more of the pantanal to such farming would undoubtedly have a negative effect on the wildlife.

The foul-mouthed governor was so angry that he said that"Minc is a weed-smoking faggot and I will run after him and rape him in public if he comes to this state." Soon after his homophobic remarks were reported online by Epoca magazine his aides issued a written apology saying that he was only joking and that he was sorry if his words caused offense. Joking about raping a minister?! That does not sound like a joke to me!

The 58-year-old minister is a co-founder of the Brazilian Green Party and is a professor of geography. A leftist political activist from a young age, Minc was exiled by the Brazilian military dictatorship after being arrested in 1969 for his anti-government activism at the age of 18. He returned to Brazil in 1979 following an amnesty. He's married and has two children. Click here to read his website (in Portuguese).

A strong supporter of women's and gay rights, it is no secret that he is in favor of decriminalizing the personal use of marijuana in Brazil. A close confidante of President Lula, it is obvious whom Lula listened to when the petition for more sugar cane farming landed on his desk.

Minc reacted to Puccinelli's scurillous comments on Wednesday by saying that "many times, people who do not admit their homosexuality try to attack gays, because it's something they cannot accept in themselves. I am a defender of homosexual rights. The governor can relax and come out of the closet."

The minister of science and technology, Sergio Rezende, came to Minc's defense, stating that Puccinelli is "a right-wing troglodyte." A human rights group is also planning a protest in Mato Grosso do Sul on Oct. 11, saying that the governor's ill-chosen words added to the homophobia in that state.

Brazil plays dangerous game in Honduras

2009-09-23T10:57:00.008-03:00

BRAZILIAN President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva is playing a dangerous game by giving refuge to deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya (seen right), his wife, son and various supporters at the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa.

The interim leader of Honduras Roberto Micheletti has assured Brazilian President Lula that his government will respect the sovereignty of the Brazilian Embassy grounds, but noted that he would give the Brazilians five to ten days to either hand over Zelaya to Honduran authorities, who would immediately jail him for the charges of corruption filed against him, or give him political exile in Brazil.

For Lula and the Obama administration, neither of these options are solutions that they favor. Both the US and Brazil want Micheletti to allow Zelaya to be reinstated as president, at least until presidential elections in November.

Micheletti said on Tuesday night that he was willing to talk to Zelaya, but the deposed president rejected the offer saying that Micheletti was not being sincere.

Several Brazilian analysts have said that Brazil will only lose in this game of cat and mouse between Zelaya and Micheletti. The former Brazilian ambassador to the UK and the US, Rubens Antonio Barbosa, told the Brazilian website G1 that Brazil had lost the possibility of being a non-biased interlocutor in talks between the two sides as soon as it took Zelaya's side by giving him refuge in the Brazilian Embassy.

Barbosa added that the Brazilian government was giving itself a huge headache by helping Zelaya and that Brazilian authorities had not evaluated the seriousness of the tense political situation Honduras when it gave refuge to him in their embassy. "It's interference in the internal politics of a country," he said.

But President Lula has been resolute in his support of fellow leftist Zelaya, noting in New York on Tuesday that Latin American countries would no longer tolerate coups.

But Lula is playing a dangerous game. On Tuesday thousands of Zelaya supporters were violently dispersed from in front of the Brazilian Embassy by military troops using tear gas, truncheons and rubber bullets. Power and water were cut off to the embassy on Monday to try and force Zelaya out, but were restored on Tuesday. Instead, land telephone lines to the embassy were cut on Tuesday. A curfew was put into effect on Monday, which expires tonight.

The potential for violence and mayhem at the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa is great. Brazilian officials keep insisting that their embassy would never be breached by Honduran troops or officials. I say, never say never.

Book of 1930s photos of the Philippines to be launched in Brasilia

2009-09-17T10:43:00.014-03:00

A street scene in Manila. (Photo courtesy of the Pierre Verger Foundation)

A BOOK containing 150 photographs taken by French photographer Pierre Edouard Leopold Verger in the Philippines in 1937-38, is being launched by the Philippine Ambassador to Brazil Teresita Barsana in Brasilia on October 28.

A contemporary of fellow photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, Verger was born in Paris in 1902 and traveled the world in the 1930s at the age of 30 with his camera taking photographs of local peoples and their towns and villages throughout Africa and Asia. He eventually settled in Bahia, Salvador, after he became fascinated with the African religion of Candomble. He became a self-taught ethnographer on the influence of Yorouba culture on Brazil, which slaves had brought here in the 1800s, writing many articles on this subject. He eventually became a professor at the Federal University of Bahia in 1973, and also set up a foundation in his name to take care of his more than 63,000 photos and negatives.

He died at the age of 93 in 1996 in Salvador.

1,000 copies of the book are being printed, which has been designed by Brasilia-based photographer Alexandre Magno. During his travels in the Philippines, Verger photographed from Baguio in the north to Zamboanga and Mindanao in the south.

Below: A nipa house on stilts in Zamboanga. (Photo courtesy of Pierre Verger Foundation)

Brasilia agog at brutal murder of top lawyer and wife

2009-09-13T12:07:00.012-03:00

THE BRUTAL murder of a former judge of the Superior Election Court, Jose Guilherme Villela (seen at right), 73, his wife, Maria Carvalho Villela Mendes, 69, and their maid of 30 years, Francisca Nascimento da Silva, 58, on August 28 has left Brasilia residents atwitter.

The boyfriend of their granddaughter found their bodies on Monday, August 31, in their top floor apartment in 113 Sul. They had been savagely stabbed multiple times, a total of 72 stab wounds among the three victims according to investigators. The police said there were no signs of a break-in, and that all doors leading into the apartment were found locked on that day. This led investigators to believe that the murderer (or murderers) was known to the couple and maid. Following a forensic examination of the apartment and the bodies, police said they believed the couple and their maid had been killed on the evening of Friday, August 28.

113 Sul is considered a posh address in Brasilia. The superquadra is home to three current ministers in the government of Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, including one who lives in the Villelas’ building.

Investigators first cast suspicion on the son of one of the many domestic employees of the Villelas, who had run into trouble with the law a few years ago and had been defended in court by Mr. Villela himself. Mrs. Villela reportedly had a large jewelry collection that she kept at home, and police said all of it was missing following the murders. The press initially reported eyewitnesses allegedly having seen a man trying to sell pieces of the jewelry in a satellite city of Brasilia, but no arrests were made. Crucially, dollars kept by the couple in the apartment were not taken.

Globo TV reported that although the Villela’s building had security cameras installed in strategic points, they were not hooked up to any recording device, thus denying police crucial evidence of who had been in and out of the building on that fatal day. Investigators did find surveillance footage from a neighboring building showing two men with backpacks running away from the Villela’s building on Friday evening, but the video quality was not good enough to identify any of the men. After residents and security guards told police they had not noticed any strange people in the area on the day of the crime, investigators put out a public appeal for anyone with information or video footage of the area to come forward. No one has done so yet.

The Correio Braziliense newspaper early on reported that the police made a crucial mistake of leaving the Villela’s apartment unguarded for two days following the discovery of the bodies, and that several relatives went into the apartment to recover various documents. Now, police investigators are saying that close family members are the main suspects in what may have been a murder-for-hire scheme.

The murdered couple’s son, daughter, and granddaughter have been called in several times for questioning, with the daughter being subjected to one round of exceptionally long questioning on Friday that lasted at least 6 to 8 hours.

Reporters have been mobbing chief police inspector Martha Vargas, who is in charge of the investigation. TV crews have been daily filming her arriving at the 1^st Delegacia de Policia every morning, as well as every time she and forensic investigators have returned to the Villela’s apartment to look for more clues. According to the Correio she has been to the apartment ten times already. She has (rightly so) resolutely refused to discuss the ongoing investigation with the press, but leaks from within the police department have been giving crucial clues to the press.

A 15-cm knife found at the scene of the crime was initially thought to have been the weapon used to kill them, but police sources now say that the knife may have been planted at the crime scene to throw investigators off. They also claim the only fingerprints found at the apartment belonged to the Villelas, their maid and close relatives. Investigators were also puzzled by the lack of large amounts of blood at the crime scene, which they would normally expect to find after such a brutal triple murder.

Stumped investigators have looked at the financial records of the Villela couple to try and see if they could have been murdered for their wealth. Crucially, investigators allegedly found that Mr. Villela had recently taken out a large life insurance policy in his name. Police did not say who the beneficiaries were. O Globo newspaper also reported that Mr. Villela had recently won an important case in the Supreme Court here and was being paid 12 installments of R$7 million ($3.88 million) each. Two installments had already been deposited into his bank account.

With no eyewitnesses and no video surveillance footage to help them, police investigators are waiting for forensic laboratory test results which are due to be ready on Monday, September 14, to help them find out who killed the Villelas and their maid and why.

UPDATE: Globo TV this week reported that the autopsy report of all three victims in this gruesome murder said that none of them had defense wounds on their hands or arms, suggesting that they had been drugged before being stabbed to death. Toxicology tests done on their blood found no signs of drugging, so investigators believe that they could have been knocked out by ether, which would have evaporated in the more than two days it took to discover their bodies in the apartment, meaning no trace of the knock-out chemical substance would have been found at the scene of the crime.

The taxing regime of Brazil

2009-09-06T16:35:00.003-03:00

RESIDENTS of Brazil are some of the most taxed people in the world. Between the federal government and state authorities, everything that is industrialized is heavily taxed. That’s why gasoline costs R$2.95 a liter, that’s around US$1.43 per liter! There even used to be a so-called “check tax” that generated revenue for the federal government every time a Brazilian wrote a check.

If you want to import anything into this country, be it books and DVDs from Amazon, to furniture or clothes, the federal Brazilian government and state authorities levy a hefty 60 percent tax on the declared value of the goods being imported! Therefore, it’s no wonder that luxury retailers such as the fashionable clothes store Daslu and the upscale home furnisher Tania Bulhoes, both based in Sao Paulo, have recently been targeted by tax authorities for undervaluing the goods they import in a bid to escape from paying the exorbitant tax rates.

Most Brazilians seem to passively accept these ridiculous tax rates as all prices on consumer goods already include the tax, so the consumer cannot tell how much the same goods would cost with a reduced tax or no tax at all.

To give you an example, I recently searched online for the new Nokia N97 mobile phone and found it for sale in the US for $597. It is being sold here in Brazil online for R$1,987.19 or $1,068. That’s $400 more than the US price! Why? Because of the 60 percent import tax.

But the Brazilian government, burdened with an ever-expanding budget for education, health and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s poverty reduction program called Bolsa Familia, is always looking for new ways to raise more funds by taxing Brazilians even more. The Correio Braziliense newspaper recently reported that the Ministry of Education and Culture was thinking of levying an additional 0.1 percent tax on all sales at book and stationary shops in order to finance a fund that would encourage reading among Brazilians. Book retailers reacted negatively saying they would have to pass on the tax (which they said would actually cost them 0.2 percent) to book buyers, which would therefore make books more expensive and therefore actually discourage more reading!

Now President Lula wants to re-introduce a tax on all checks written in the country to finance a health fund that would improve public hospitals. The opposition Democratas party called it a terrible idea, pointing out that Brazilians are already one of the most taxed people in the world. Globo TV’s Jornal Nacional pointed out that a similar tax on all gasoline sold in the country, supposedly to fund road improvements throughout the country, had never been used for such purposes. Luckily for us, there is not much support for the new tax in the Brazilian Congress, which would need to approve it.

Already the government is under fire by the opposition for releasing a much bigger projected budget for next year, despite revenues having been flat or even fallen in some areas because of a drop in tax collection.

Next year is an election year, so its no wonder Lula and his allies are looking for ways to spend, spend, spend so that they can boast to the electorate of how much they’ve done for the country. But pity the opposition, who have a good chance at winning a majority next year, if they get stuck with the burgeoning debt and have a hard time paying it down.

Brazil says 'pee in your bath' to save water!

2009-09-01T15:37:00.008-03:00

I WAS in Saudi Arabia last May when a NGO called SOS Mata Atlantica launched a TV ad campaign in Brazil encouraging people to pee while they take a shower to save water. Yes, you read that right, pee in the shower!

So it was only recently when I saw the above TV ad and thought that maybe I was hallucinating or that it was someone's idea of a joke. But no, this NGO is trying to save the Mata Atlantica, which is a belt of wildlife and greenery along the Brazil's Atlantic coast that has been steadily disappearing over the last few decades due to pollution and cities using the water resources from this area.

The ad is voiced by children positively encouraging everyone, men, women, children, Brazilians, foreigners, lovers, good people (Mahatma Gandhi), bad people (Psycho killers), King Kong and even aliens from outer space to pee while showering. The ad points out that an average toilet flush uses 12 liters of potable water, which equals 4,380 liters of water in a year.

I've secretly loved the idea of peeing in the shower. Who has time to dry off and run to the toilet to pee when in the middle of taking a bath? Just pee away in the shower and it all gets washed down the drain by the water from you shower. An infectologist on Globo's Jornal Nacional last May said that health-wise there was no danger from peeing in the shower.

So, pee away in the shower. You'll not only be saving a precious thing, water, but you'll be making your life easier too!

48 hours in Rio: A diary

2009-08-26T12:36:00.015-03:00

A view of the patio of Santos Dumont Airport
in Rio de Janeiro. (All photos by Rasheed Abou-Alsamh)

Friday, July 10

I check-in at 7:54 am at Brasilia International Airport for my 9:45 am flight to Rio de Janeiro on Webjet. I don’t check in any luggage as I only have hand-carry, and the check-in attendant is kind enough to give me an exit row seat that has more legroom.

There are no crowds at the Webjet counters, unlike at TAM and Gol, the two much bigger rivals of Webjet, so checking-in is a breeze and actually enjoyable.

I buy some magazines and the O Globo newspaper at the airport bookstore and then am tempted to buy myself a nice black leather bag to put my camera and notebook in. It costs R$620 (approximately $310) and is well worth every penny as the leather is soft and beautiful.

I go through security without setting off any bells or whistles and walk down to my gate. Sitting there trying to read my newspaper, I am interrupted several times by various airline officials making extremely loud announcements on the PA system. All Brazilian airports are like this, but the incessant blaring of information is annoying. I don’t think they’ve ever heard of the silent airport concept, where announcements are only made silently, in writing, on screens.

On board I find I do have more legroom (seat 12J) on this Boeing 737-400. They serve us a bread roll sandwich of smoked turkey and cheese accompanied by a chocolate-covered cream puff. The flight to Rio takes only an hour and a half, and the descent into Santos Dumont Airport is breathtaking.

We descend through thin clouds covering the mountains surrounding the Cidade Maravilhosa, and turbulence shakes us a little as we fly over high rises and swerve over the bay to land on one of the shortest runways in Brazil. The pilot slams on the brakes in order to stop before we can overshoot the 1,050-meter long runway and end up in the water.

We walk to the original terminal building of Santos Dumont that was finished in 1947. Work on the airport itself started in 1934 and it received its first flight from Sao Paulo in 1936. The lobby of the arrival terminal has beautiful murals depicting the history of flight and the legacy of Santos Dumont who was the first Brazilian to ever fly. He is also credited with inventing the first wristwatch.

At the exit of the terminal I buy a roundtrip taxi ticket to Copacabana and back (R$36 each way). If you fly into Rio’s International Airport, which is much further away, the fare will be R$80 one way into the city.

Twenty minutes later and I am at my oceanfront hotel, the Classic California Othon Hotel (Av. Atlantica, 2616, Copacabana, tel. +55-21-2132-1900, www.hoteis-othon.com.br). Built in the 1940s, the 12-storey hotel has surely seen better days. The sign outside claims it has been classified a four-star hotel, but inside it looks like a three-star hotel fallen on bad times. A piece of plastic sheeting has most of the lobby cordoned-off because it is being renovated, and only one of the hotel’s two elevators is working.

Check-in is relatively quick though a bit chaotic as the reception desk is swamped by guests arriving, leaving or complaining about something. I’m upgraded to an ocean-view room for free, but find when I reach my third-floor room that my view is completely blocked by a large leafy tree. My room cost R$300 ($150) a night.

The room has two single beds, what looks like original wood flooring, a small balcony and a white marble bathroom. The bathtub looks really old and dirty. There are rust marks on it and the marble sink top has little craters in which puddles of water accumulate when you use the sink. The remote control for the television is missing and I have to call the front desk several times before an employee brings me one half an hour later.

Instead of this hotel, I would recommend staying at its sister hotel, the Lancaster Othon Travel Hotel, which is at the beginning of Copacabana (Av. Atlantica, 1470, tel. +55-21-2169-8300). I stayed there in January with my partner and we had a separate living room and a large balcony. And the view from our 10^th floor room was stunning: We could see the entire stretch of Copacabana beach.

It was now lunch time and since my friend Ricky was busy getting ready for his show later that night, I decide to take a cab to the Rio Sul shopping center in Botafago, a short ride away through a tunnel. There I grab a quick lunch at McDonald’s (my Big Mac combo meal cost R$15, or around $7.50) before going to see the latest Sandra Bullock movie. My ticket costs R$17 ($8.50).

After the movie I stop at Figaro Café and have a yummy pear and strawberry tart with a cappuccino (R$18). I then browse guidebooks on Rio at the large Saraiva bookstore and buy three: A Time Out guide, a Wallpaper City Guide and Gay Guide to Rio. The Time Out one, not surprisingly I guess, is the most informative and useful.

After a short rest back at my hotel, I hail a cab on the street and head to the Cacilda Becker Theater in downtown Rio. The good thing about this city, unlike Brasilia, is that taxis are everywhere and easily flagged down. But I must warn foreigners that taxi drivers in Rio like to take advantage of tourists by acting ignorant and taking longer routes than necessary to arrive to your destination.

This happened to me twice over the weekend. The taxi drivers did not do it in a mean or scary way, but in typical friendly Brazilian fashion, which made it bearable but no less annoying. Going to the theater, my driver talks incessantly to his wife on the phone informing her he is coming straight home to take a bath and then go out with her after he has dropped me off.

“I’m in Copacabana!” he keeps yelling into his cell phone even when we are making our way through the evening rush hour traffic in Botafogo and then the Centro towards our destination.

He claims he doesn’t know where the theater is located and we actually drive by it. I order him to backtrack, which he does reluctantly. He still can’t find the theater, so, exasperated, I tell him to drop me off and I walk quickly to try and find it. A few phone calls to the theater to get directions and I finally arrive and buy my ticket (R$10) to see Ricky’s show “Empire: Love to Love You, Baby”.

My evening ends with me having beef stroganoff and rice at a restaurant across the street from the theater with Ricky and his friends after the show.

Saturday, July 11

After breakfast at my hotel I take a taxi and pick up Ricky near his apartment in Copacabana. We’re going to the Rio Fashion Mall in Sao Conrado, a neighborhood separated from the rest of Rio by a huge moro or small mountain. To get there we take the coastal road, which has beautiful scenery, reminding me of the coastal road in California between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

There is huge favela, or slum, that overlooks Sao Conrado. This neighborhood has a small beach and today we see many surfers out on their boards taking advantage of the choppy waters. The Fashion Mall is upscale and rather empty so early in the morning. Ricky hasn’t had breakfast yet so we stop at a café. Afterwards, I buy a nice silver ring from my favorite Brazilian jeweler Guerreiro and some nice plates from Image Presentes.

Ricky gets a message from people he’s supposed to meet for a working lunch. They are going to produce a show he’s organizing for Brasilia’s 50^th anniversary next year. I drop him off in swanky Ipanema for his lunch meeting and I meet up with our friend Ana Claudia and her mom at the Shopping Leblon. We have a very leisurely lunch at Dom Delicia (tel. +55-21-930-18310), where I have a juicy steak with potatoes gratiné. The meal, including dessert, soft drinks, a bottle of wine and service comes to R$75 ($37.50) a person.

The mall is nothing special except for the large Travessa bookstore (www.travessa.com.br) that has a huge selection of books, music, videos and magazines. I buy a book by a French academic (translated into Portuguese) about the clash of civilizations and the latest issue of Vanity Fair magazine to read about the last days of actor Heath Ledger. There is a huge Starbucks coffee shop in the mall, and the line of patrons waiting to order their drinks is long. The American coffee chain has relatively few branches so far in Brazil, with none yet in Brasilia.

At five-thirty I say goodbye to Ana Claudia and her mother to take a cab to the apartment of my childhood friend Fares El-Dahdah. He’s now a professor of architecture at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and a devotee of Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, the planner and architect respectively of Brasilia. I haven’t seen him for 25 years, the last time having been at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1984 when he was studying at RISD and I at Swarthmore College.

He’s in Rio for the summer, organizing a huge retrospective on Lucio Costa’s life and work that will be shown in Brasilia next year. I’m dropped off in front of his building that faces the Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas, a large lake in the middle of Rio. I’m not sure this is the right building until I notice a striking display of flowers through the open window of a first floor apartment. Fares suddenly appears at the window and calls down to me. After buzzing me in, we have drinks and reminisce about our years together at the American School of Brasilia.

We take the Metro to the center of Rio. I’m going with Fares to watch Ricky’s show for the second time. There are more people here tonight at the Cacilda Becker Theater, a small experimental theater that opened in 1975 and is named after a famous stage actress who died years ago after suffering a stroke while onstage. There are huge black and white photos of her in various poses at the entrance of the theater, which lend a campy but glamorous tone to the venue.

After the show, Fares takes Ricky and I out to dinner at a restaurant in Ipanema. We all have caipirinhas, the Brazilian drink made from sugar cane alcohol. I choose a tangerine flavored one, which is so sour that I have to add some artificial sweetener to it.

I take a cab back to my hotel and my driver acts dumb, claiming he doesn’t know Copacabana well or my the location of my hotel.

“You are a Carioca, aren’t you?” I say in irritation. “You should know where my hotel is.”

Sunday, July 12

After a leisurely breakfast in the dining room of my hotel I head off to meet Ana Claudia and her mother at the end of Copacabana near Ipanema.

We walk from Copacabana to Ipanema beach but the wind is so strong there that we only stay a few minutes and head back to Copacabana. Since it is nearly midday by now we hail a taxi to take us to the Aprazivel restaurant (Rua Aprazivel 62, Santa Teresa, tel. +55-21-2507-7334, www.aprazivel.com.br) that is in the hills of Santa Teresa in a residential area. The fare going there is around R$39, but that is because we get lost in the winding roads of the area and actually drive past it before backtracking and finally finding it.

Ana Claudia tells me she had to make our reservation a week in advance as this restaurant is quite popular with both Brazilian and foreign tourists. Hidden behind a stonewall with only a small sign, one has to descend very steep stone steps to get to the level where the restaurant is. This place is definitely not wheelchair accessible!

We sit outside in a charming courtyard under a tree. The service is friendly but a bit lackadaisical. The menu has traditional Brazilian dishes with a slight exotic touch. I have a deliciously tender steak with a puree of potatoes as my main course. Be warned though, this place is not cheap. Expect to pay around R$142 per person ($71) for a meal that includes starters, a main course, wine, dessert and coffee.

Our lazy lunch lasts around three hours, after which I remind my dining companions that I need to catch my flight back to Brasilia that evening. Our waitress gracefully offers to call us a cab and tells us when it is there. This time the fare is a bit less as we are not lost.

The charming courtyard of Aprazivel restaurant in Santa Teresa:

Miss Kosovo should have won the Miss Universe title

2009-08-25T16:15:00.007-03:00

I WATCHED the Miss Universe 2009 beauty pageant on Sunday night, televised live from the Bahamas, and was disappointed that Miss Kosovo Gona Dragusha didn't win the title. She is very pretty in a smart sort of way and had the best evening gown. She wore a tight purple-blue sheath dress, off one shoulder and cinched at the waist by a wide glittery sash. Her hair was piled high in a vertical chignon atop her head, making her look very glamourous a la Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Unfortunately the judges went for the more conventional beauty of Miss Venezuela Stefania Fernandez, whose screechy voice and china-doll looks irritated me. Her answer to the question of what can women do to overcome the barriers still existent in many corporations was flippant and cliched. "We've already reached the level of men," she said without hesitation. It sounded as if she had learned certain rote answers by heart and was just spewing back what she thought judges wanted to hear.

Miss Australia Rachael Finch was just as glib when she answered that women should be proud to show off their bodies to the question of what she thought of some cultures that made women cover their bodies in public.

As usual the pageant had the usual corny hosts, Billy Bush and Claudia Jordan, who seem to have been chosen for their ability to spew idiotic comments, especially Bush.

I found this year's contest extremely rushed, with many of the segments pre-recorded and edited down to snappy snippets of information about the selected candidates in each elimination round.

I also found the ceilings very low in the Atlantis Paradise Island resort where the pageant was held. This is the original sister hotel of the Atlantis The Palm hotel in Dubai and looks just as gaudy. Both are owned by South African hotel magnate Sol Kerzner, so it was no surprise that his daughter Heather was one of the judges. Actor Dean Cain, of Smallville fame, Tamara Tunie and Andre Leon Talley, the campy Vogue editor, were some of the other judges.

Neither Miss Brazil or Miss Philippines made it to the top 15, in the first elimination round of the pageant, which was disappointing. But it was interesting to see that of the top 15 chosen, nine were Europeans, or more than 50% of the total. That is unusual, as Latin Americans and Asians usually dominate beauty pageants.

Even the crowns this year seemed diminished from the usual Mikimoto pearl crown. This year there were three different designs to choose from, but all were made with "man-made jewels", which seemed tacky to me. Give me pearls any day, or diamonds, over man-made pearls.

Overheard at a screening of Bruno

2009-08-15T20:48:00.006-03:00

I WENT to see Sacha Baron Cohen’s hilarious new movie Bruno on Friday night and overheard some interesting snippets of conversations while I was waiting for the movie to start.

My usual companions for watching movies, my childhood friend Camille and her family, were not there because her son Nick was sick with a throat infection. I was anxious to see Bruno because of the preview I had seen so I decided to go alone. Thankfully I didn’t cringe at all while watching it, and chuckled several times during it. I did find it strange that I was watching a gay movie with so many straight couples in the audience, but hey in this day and age, and with Cohen’s popularity from his previous hit Borat, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear straight people laughing at his very queer jokes.

In any event, I was also pleasantly surprised to notice how many interesting snippets of conversations around me I was able to hear since I was alone and not in a group.

A black American couple sat in the row behind me with Cokes and buttered popcorn. I know because they were in line next to me as I bought myself a Coke Zero.

“Do you want extra butter,” the American man had asked his female companion.

“Yeah,” she replied.

“Ask them to put more on,” he said.

I wanted to butt in and say that would be a mistake since the butter they use in that theater has an artificial taste and smell that I find quite yucky. But I kept quiet.

When we were seated in the theater I heard the woman say:

“What do you think Barak Obama would say about that?”

She was talking fast, but I understood her the first time.

“Come again, can you repeat that?” her slow companion asked.

“What do you think Barack Obama would say about ….,” she repeated, her voice tapering off so I couldn’t hear the end of her sentence.

A few minutes later I heard the guy telling her:

“Don’t you think this popcorn is greasy from the butter?

“Yeah I agree. It is greasy!” she replied.

Finally they had realized their folly of asking for extra butter on their popcorn, I thought to myself.

Two young good looking guys and a young woman made their way up the aisle looking for seats. One of the guys fake sneezed and then laughed.

“I sneezed on this old woman the other day and she was so upset that she started crying!” he told his companions.

The old woman was so upset because of the swine flu epidemic that is sweeping Brazil and the rest of the world. There have been many deaths here, of both young and old, so joking around and fake sneezing on strangers is not a very nice thing to do right now. But hey, they’re teenagers and they thought they were very clever and funny.

Hahaha, NOT, I thought to myself.

Just before the house lights went down for the previews and then the movie, I heard the voice of a young Brazilian guy saying:

“Oh don’t worry she’s going to be thin soon. I used to be a whale and then I lost a ton of weight,” the voice said.

And with that I sat back and enjoyed the antics of Sacha Baron Cohen as the gay fashion journalist Bruno, who desperately tries to become famous in America.

Arroyo's lavish NYC dinner is obscene

2009-08-09T22:32:00.007-03:00

THE $20,000 dinner that Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, her husband and entourage reportedly recently had at New York City's celebrated Le Cirque restaurant is truly obscene.

It does not matter that no taxpayers money was used to pay for it. According to the Philippine Daily Inquirer the dinner was hosted by Leyte Rep. Martin Romualdez as a blowout for the wedding anniversary of the presidential couple. But even so, nearly P1 million for one dinner for only 50 people?! They allegedly drank 11 bottles of Krug champagne at $550 a pop (!), and had several servings of caviar ($1,400).

The tabloid paper New York Post broke the story in its gossip column on Friday. Arroyo's press secretary Cerge Remonde tried to belittle the progressive group Bayan, for its statements of outrage over such a costly dinner when so many Filipinos are hungry, by attacking the group and claiming it was a front for communist forces bent on overthrowing the Philippine government.

According to one estimate the $20,000 spent on the lavish dinner could have fed three-square meals to 3,000 poor families.

Quezon Rep. Danilo Suarez, who took part in the dinner, downplayed the costs by saying that a $20,000 tab was high for Manila but not for New York City, where everything is more expensive. "I don't know why they're making such a big deal," he told the Inquirer in an interview. "It's New York where everything is more expensive than Manila. We were more than 50 in our group, the president's security and the Secret Service joined us."

Still, that comes out to $400 a head, which seems steep to me, even for New York.

Even staunch Arroyo ally Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, who was with the president on this trip but did not attend the dinner because she was tired, lambasted the event for being so lavish during a worldwide economic recession. "I can sympathize with critics because it sounds so outrageous and outlandish that people from a developing country should rack up a bill of P1 million," she told the Inquirer.

We came to expect such lavish spending from the Marcoses, but not from a president and her allies who were originally swept into office after Edsa II on a popular wave of repugnance at former President Joseph Estrada's corruption. How times have changed!

The wonderful ipes of Brasilia

2009-08-07T11:10:00.003-03:00

THE IPE trees of Brasilia are in full bloom despite the severe dryness. A native tree of the cerrado region of Brazil, these trees lose all of their leaves as winter approaches and then have flowers that explode in bursts of bright yellow. It's actually quite amazing and wonderful to behold.

I recently took a picture with my cell phone (hence the low quality) of a small ipe tree in bloom near my house when I was out walking. I will try to take more pictures of the much bigger trees and post them here soon.

ABS-CBN tries to eat its cake with Cory funeral

2009-08-05T23:29:00.006-03:00

WILLIE Revillame, the host of the wildly popular noontime variety show Wowowee on ABS-CBN Television, is no stranger to controversy. His latest venture into hot water occurred on Monday when he objected on the air to having the "live" windows on television screens showing the procession of the body of the late President Corazon Aquino from La Salle Green Hills Gym to Manila Cathedral.

"It's not right that we're having fun here on Wowowee and then viewers also watching the funeral procession of Cory Aquino. Please take away the small windows," said Willie in Tagalog, apologizing to his bosses at the network.

The technicians in the control room followed his instructions and took away the two live boxes that had been showing Cory Aquino's funeral procession.

According to the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper, bloggers and viewers were outraged at Willie's remarks, saying they were insensitive and should not have been said on the air.

I must admit to agreeing with Willie this time, even though I have criticized him harshly in the past for other sexist and sleazy remarks he has made on the show in the past. He says that he told the ABS-CBN that he was ready to give way to live broadcast of Cory's funeral procession, but that the network had forced him to go on with his live show.

I call this a case of greedy ABS-CBN trying to have its cake and eat it too! They should have chosen one or the other, and certainly not try to mix the sad and emotional pictures of the former president's body being taken to the Manila Cathedral, while skimpily clad women gyrated and laughed on Wowowee. That was truly grotesque and revealing in a horrifying way of how ABS-CBN felt the money-making vulgarity of Wowowee had to continue no matter what, even if Cory Aquino were being mourned and buried.

Willie shouldn't have apologized. ABS-CBN should apologize for mixing the two events together. What they did was unforgivable and in terrible taste. Shame on them!

Suffering through Brasilia's dryness

2009-08-04T15:56:00.005-03:00

THE humidity levels here in Brasilia have been so low lately that the local government has warned inhabitants not to exercise outside between 9 am and 5 pm. That doesn't seem to stop most Brazilians who love nothing more than running around on the streets exercising with as little clothing on as possible! Men often strip down to just sungas, or tiny bathing trunks, while women are often seen wearing a skimpy sports bra and shorts combo. They literally worship the sun, which I guess explains why they exercise when the humidity levels are at their lowest.

I just checked the www.weather.com website and it says the current humidity level in Brasilia is a throat-scratching 19 percent! Many people have nose bleeds here because of the dryness, and the number of people catching colds soars during the winter dry season because of the fluctuation between day and night temperatures and the extremely low humidity levels. During the day the sun heats up temperatures to around 28 degrees C, and then at night they can fall to 13 degrees C.

It has not rained here for more than a month now, which explains why I always have dry lips and feel thirsty. I have to constantly keep drinking water, and even bring water with me when I go out in the car or walking.

Brasilia does have a lake, the Lago Paranoa, which is a blessing really, as I cannot imagine how much worse the dryness would be if the lake didn't exist!

The problem with this dryness is that drinking much water at night while in bed, means that I have to get up to urinate a lot also. A friend of the family told us that there is a nasal spray one can buy from pharmacies that helps keep the nose and throat area more moist during the day, and thus supposedly cuts back on the risk of one catching a cold. I will have to try it.

One obvious solution to such extreme dryness is to use air humidifiers. I bought one for my mom a few years ago and it did bring us some relief. Unfortunately it has broken down, so I'm going to have to buy two new ones tomorrow. Until then, my lips will continue to be parched and my throat scratchy from so little humidity in the air!

My interview with Cory Aquino

2009-07-31T23:55:00.007-03:00

Former Philippine President Corazon Aquino and I
during my interview with her in Manila in 1993.

I WAS watching the news on the television Friday night in Brasilia with my mother when the anchor announced the death of former Philippine President Corazon Aquino at the age of 76.

"Oh my God! She died!" I said.

I had been following the news of her brave battle with colon cancer, and had been relying the news to my mom every few weeks. I guess we both knew that she would not last that long, especially after we learned that the cancer had spread to her liver. But when death arrives, it still surprises us even though we had been forewarned.

I had the chance to meet Aquino and interview her in Manila for Arab News in 1993. She had just stepped down from the presidency the year before, giving way to Fidel Ramos who had won the 1992 election. I arranged the interview through her spokeswoman Deedee Siytangco, and I met Aquino at the PLDT building in Makati, where she kept a private office.

Aquino came across to me as being a very serious and austere person in a Catholic sort of way. She answered all of my questions, but did not embellish any of her answers. I don't remember all of my questions, but I do remember asking her about her daughter Kris, who was just then a rising star in show business. That was one of the rare times during our meeting that she laughed and cracked a smile. It was obvious to me that she deeply loved Kris no matter what problems she put her through.

The Philippines has lost a great hero. A woman who sacrificed much and had the courage to confront the Marcos dictatorship to end the brutality of a regime that had gone mad with power and corruption. She lost her husband, Senator Benigno Aquino, when he was shot dead on the tarmac of Manila airport when he returned to the Philippines from exile in the United States on August 21, 1983.

There are few people like Cory Aquino in Philippine politics today. From a very rich landowning family in Tarlac, she was above corruption and manipulation. Until recently, she helped lead a protest movement against the corruption in the Arroyo administration, a bright icon of moral decency for all decent Filipinos to follow.

No one will ever be able to replace her, but Filipinos should stop for a moment and honor one of their greatest stateswomen they have ever had!

A false alarm, losing weight and laser beams

2009-07-30T23:23:00.008-03:00

A FEW weeks ago I was at my dermatologist letting her zap my face with laser beams to supposedly get rid of a rosiness I have on my checks and nose. Not only that, but she claimed that the laser beams would stimulate the production of collagen in my skin which would make it plumper and help reduce fine lines around my eyes.

As a typical Brazilian who is extremely concerned about her own looks and that of others, she casually suggested that I undertake other measures to improve my physical appearance.

"Since you've decided to improve the appearance of your skin, why don't you join a gym and see a nutritionist?" she told me between blasts of bright red laser beams which I could see through my closed eyes, even though they were covered by titanium metal circles which had been placed there to protect my eyes from the laser's high beam.

"You really think so?" I mumbled.

"Yes I do. Just ask my receptionist. She'll give you the name of a nutritionist."

I followed her advice and the next week I found myself in the office of Daniel, a hunky 26-year-old expert in nutrition who asked me to undress in his bathroom and come out wearing only the shorts that his secretary had repeatedly reminded me over the phone to bring with me for my appointment.

He measured all of my body fat, weighed me and measured my height. Then he put all of the numbers into his laptop computer to crunch them and came up with the fact that I have 32 percent body fat! I was a little shocked at such a high number, but thankfully he reassured me that he didn't believe in crash diets where one starved oneself to thinness only to regain back the weight lost plus a few extra kilos once one abandoned the diet.

"I will make a diet for you that will cut your usual calorie intake by several hundred calories a day but which will not leave you feeling starved," he said.

Reassured by his common sense approach to dieting, I left his office promising to call him once I had enrolled at a gym he highly recommended (which he also uses) and worked out my exercise schedule.

I immediately drove over to Body Tech, a beautiful new gym near the lake and enrolled myself after a 15-minute tour of all the facilities. A few days later I returned for my physical assessment test which let me know that I was "fraco" or "weak" in cardio-pulmonary resistance after I lasted only six minutes during the treadmill stress test. It wasn't that the treadmill was going that fast, but the oxygen mask that the PE instructor had secured onto my face made me feel like I was gasping for air and suffocating.

In any event, I am now going to the gym three-times a week and have the assistance of a friendly trainer called Nino, who told me that on the weekends he likes to occasionally bike by himself to Goiania and back, a journey of 400 kms! When I finally asked him how old he was, and replied that he was 20 years old, I said, "that's why you have so much energy."

Which brings me to my much lower levels of energy. Last Monday I did my 30-minutes on the treadmill, 30-minutes of weight training for my muscles, and then another 20-minutes of cardio. I felt tired afterwards but happy, as I could feel the endorphins (those happy drugs produced by our brains when we exercise) course through my body.

Later that night though, I felt so exhausted that I just wanted to go to bed without washing the dishes in our kitchen sink. The next morning I noticed this familiar pain in my chest on the left side. I say 'familiar' because I had similar pains in 2006, accompanied by the same feeling of slight numbness all the way down my left arm and hand.

Alarmed that I may be having heart problems I stayed home from the gym on Wednesday and made an appointment to see a cardiologist on Thursday morning.

Thankfully, my doctor declared that my heart seemed to be in good condition after he performed an ECG on me, though he did tell me that he heard an extra beat when he listened to my heart beat with his stethoscope. He's ordered an echocardiogram of my heart and a stress test just to be sure, but he said I can go back to the gym. He said the pain and numbness I've been feeling are probably due to a pinched nerve in my back.

So, I'm back to my gym on Friday, and back to Nino telling me stories about his solitary 400-km bike trips to Goiania.