Kevin

SLOW NEWS WEEK… No, wait. We ate sushi and almost bought a house.

Wednesday, 27. September 2006, 00:27:54

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

I spent the morning working on scanning documents to e.mail to the lawyer in São Paulo, who for some reason wants me to get a permanent visa.

Oh, yeah. It’s cuz we’re gonna pay her a wad of money.
Bob and I spent the afternoon wandering around town, looking for a bank machine that would dispense colorful money.

Once I had the money in hand, I needed a new wallet to replace the one made of duct tape. A street vendor was more than happy to help me out.
We wandered around looking for a place to eat dinner, finally deciding to dine at the interurban bus station a block away from home… Where they charged us the Strange Vegetarian Foreigner Rate of only 4 reais… less than two dollars per person for all-we-could-eat. Or, as they call it in Portuguese, “Self-Service” – pronounced “seu-fee SEHR-vee-see”.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

In the morning I stayed home to implement my innovative plan to send out the Tuesday Newsletter on Thursday, while Bob and Matt walked to CRA, the sports club, to pick up the family’s membership card.
Heidi dropped Bob and me off at the Correios, which is just like a post office except it’s yellow and blue. Bureaucracy seemed easier to deal with today. I got my CPF registration card renewed (It had only been expired for 18 years)

and Bob signed up for his card. It only cost us about three dollars each. Now we can buy real estate or anything that normal Brazilians do. Since we were in an unfamiliar neighborhood along Avenida Mato Grosso, we decided to wonder around. Just like every single other business district in town, there was a Lebanese deli with all kinds of amazing things.

FRIDAY, September 22, 2006

Heidi dropped Bob and me off at the site of the penthouse we’ve been eyeing. The superintendent’s husband talked to us and showed us around their home, next door to the unit we’re looking at. We talked to the guy in the sales office and got all the info we could about the place.

Once again our cover was blown. As we were walking through Jundiaí, a man with a car full of kids hollered out the window in English, “Hello, my friend!” Now just HOW did he KNOW that we were gringos?
Have you ever wondered what circus laundry looked like? I know I sure did. Up until today. The circus is in town, and that means lots of circus laundry.

The big news of the day is that ANÁPOLIS NOW HAS A SUSHI PLACE!

It’s located inside the China Arabian Town restaurant, where we had lunch today.

I had the fruit sushi, and Bob had the Lebanese-Chinese buffet. The sushi chef is newly arrived from Brasília. I was impressed.

We went to talk to our real estate agent, just down the street from the restaurant.
Later we decided to mail a registered letter to the States, now that we know where the post office is located. The REAL reason to go to the post office was so we’d have an excuse to walk by the Lebanese deli to pick up some fresh babaghanouj. By some wonderful coincidence, the way back from the deli led us past the popsicle-craftwork store, where I felt compelled to eat a jatobá popsicle, and, of course, an UMBU popsicle.
We went back to the neighborhood around the penthouse, and took a few pictures.

And if you walk for more than three minutes anywhere in town, you are likely to pass by at least one bakery. We marveled at the offerings, and took on provisions for the walk home. It rained after we got home. Maybe the dry season is over?
Buying real estate in Brazil can be a challenge, but the advantage is that every single last person in the city has a piece of property to sell us… The tangerine vendor, the guy who comes by to sell us lettuce from his truck… every person in the country, as far as we can tell, has the inside track on a great real estate deal.

Saturday, September 23, 2006

One thing that I like about Brazil is that if you have friends, you pretty much don’t need anything else… A car, money, food, a place to stay…
Hener and Tiago came by today to show us the city. First they wanted to show us a piece of real estate that used to be for sale. On the way into town, I had to show them my favorite pottery shop, where purchases were made.

Somehow, the car ended up back at the popsicle place, where I once again had four popsicles…

cajá, cupuaçu, jackfruit, and “squash with coconut”. The latter helped to make up for the coconut-milk deficit I’ve experienced since being away from the Thai restaurants of Seattle.
Hener drove us out north of town where we drooled over a mansion and its two-acre lot… with swimming pool and view... for sale.
If the dollar would go back to where it was a year ago, we could almost afford the place. Fortunately, Hener’s brother owned a place even nicer next door, so we went there to have a look around. Oh. Wait. This isn't the mansion. It's the 3/5 scale functioning house that Hener's niece had as a child.

The acreage featured many fructiferous trees… tiny jackfruit that wouldn’t be ripe until they were the size of watermelons…

and a cinnamon tree.

There was a water tower, which doubled as a view tower for Tiago…

and Tiago used his levitation skills to harvest yellow jambo (much better than the red jambo most people are familiar with).

The evening ended with a torrential downpour, which doesn’t much matter when you’re ensconced in a pamonharia, which is a very good place to buy pamonha, or, as we say in English, “tamales”. Except maybe for rice and beans, the pamonha-tamal link seems to be all that connects Mexico and Brazil in terms of cuisine. Well, maybe pizza.

SUNDAY, September 24, 2006

If Brazil ever designates a fruit-based holiday, it will probably be to honor JABUTICABA, and people will likely celebrate the new holiday the way we spent today.
If you have friends in Brazil, you pretty much don’t need anything else… Food, entertainment… all will all be provided for you. Ricardo, one of Brian’s students, and his wife Eliana invited us to go to her dad’s farm nearly an hour’s drive outside of town. Her brother, the granola and health-food mogul, and a car full of unidentified children came along as well.

The tree trunks were loaded with Jabuticaba, so we all picked and ate and picked jabuticaba, stopping for lunch, which had been cooked over a wood fire.

Then the car trunks were loaded with jabuticaba.

Ricardo gave Matt, Bob and me a tour of the unspoiled “cerrado” landscape… a rarity in an area that has been taken over by agriculture.

What do you do for a change of scenery when you live on a farm, surrounded by rustic beauty and domestic animals?

You might just get in your car and drive to the next farm,

to look at the rustic beauty and domestic animals of your neighbors’ farm.

This works especially well if you don’t already have a 1925 ox-powered sugar-cane mill on your own farm.

MONDAY, September 25, 2006

Bob and I decided to go back to the condo we liked, to talk to the contractor to compare new construction to already-build construction. He wasn’t in after all. Oh, well. We’d go to HSCB so I could open an account. No can do. I don’t have a permanent visa. Well, let’s wander around the neighborhood next to the condo we want to buy. Nice supermarket down the street. But wait. What’s that in the distance? Another condo… with even better penthouses!

Views of the city, with morning light. Let’s walk over there… It can’t be more than a couple of miles… And all along the way, we could look back at “our” condo, Saint Germain, from many different perspectives.

We walked and walked. Across the washed-out bridge…

Across Avenida Brasil… To the Salinas condos. Nice neighborhood. I talked to the gatekeeper... Any penthouses for sale? No. Any units for sale? No. Except in the new construction. Everyone wants to sell their places there.

There we were standing on the street in this unfamiliar neighborhood, wondering what we were going to do for lunch, when a silver car stopped. It was Brian and Shirlee’s next door neighbor, picking his kids up from school. Would we like a ride back home? Sure! What a country.
So, after lunch Bob and I walked back to talk to our agent at the real estate office. So, how come you didn’t show us the Salinas?
All kinds of legal financial and trouble. They may never even finish the new construction.
That would explain why no one was working on the new construction. Oh well.
We weren’t 100% sold on the idea of condos, anyway. We wanted more info on building our own home on our own lot.
We had a 4:00 pm appointment to meet Miriam so she could show us the homes that her family’s construction company had built. We saw some nice homes in a nice neighborhood, but in the end building a home sounded like a lot of work.

TUESDAY, September 26, 2006

Today Bob and I took Shirlee to meet our realtor, and to tour the penthouse at Saint Germain… the place that we’ve been looking at for the last week. I still love the place. Still, my ADD/OCD couldn’t be overcome… I scanned the horizon looking for other penthouses that we should go make an offer on. Wait… over there. Is that a penthouse or an industrial building?

Back in the sunroom, the owners and the realtor were waiting for our final decision… There HAD been another offer, after all. But would Bob be willing to “settle” for a condo, instead of buying a lot where we could build a cheap little dream house? In the end, Bob agreed to the deal, and we all got in the car to head to Itaú Bank to find out how to get a wire transfer through from our bank in the states.
It's getting closer to election time, so there are more and more clowns around town. This stilted fellow is standing in the center of the busiest intersection in town, promoting his candidate.

From the bank, we went to the downtown office of the realty company, where I phoned our bank in Seattle for last-minute wire-transfer info. We agreed to meet the next day to finalize the deal. BUT WAIT! There are still too many questions... Maybe we aren't quite ready to make a deal right yet.
There Bob and I decided to stay downtown and look around at furniture stores, and do some pricing. Toasters are not cheap. Home appliances are not cheap. All other furniture seems very reasonably priced.
Bob and I walked home in the dark, fortified with the energy we received when a lapse in judgment allowed us to eat a McDonald’s ice cream cone.