Fly-Brother.com is Now Live!

Ladies and gentlemen, my tenure at Blogger has come to an end. Fly Brother has flown over to WordPress, with a new URL: fly-brother.com. The new site will continue to give you the fly international flavor you've come to expect from Fly Brother travel posts, plus offer links to podcasts, videos, books, and music that will lift you whether you're in the air or the armchair.

So, please update your links and subscription feeds to reflect Fly Brother's new address:

I Love What You Do For Me, FEE-atchee!

I bought a car. Finally, after taking three hours to get to the doctor's office, or seven hours to do three things by bus in Brasília (which really means Orlando in Portuguese), I have my 2011 Fiat Palio Fire Economy. Fiat (pronounced FEE-atchee here) is an Italian car company that doesn't exactly make Ferraris, but keeps me from having to hoof it around the Brazilian capital. I financed the $18,000 thing for sixty months, which means my monthly payment is about 10% of my pre-tax salary, but I think I got a good deal, all things considered; cars are a luxury Brazil. Anyway, I would write more, but I gotta put some kilometers on my new baby. She's preto vulcão, which means volcanic black* (or, Black Like Me, as I like to say), but I need a name for her. Suggestions?

*Y'all know I'm taking it over to somebody's cousin's house in the hood to get a spoiler and that darkboy tint on the windows, right?



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Impactful Author José Saramago Dies at 87

Portuguese author and Nobel Prize winner José Saramago, whose chilling Ensaio sobre a cegueira was published in English as Blindness, and later made into the movie of the same name, died today at his home in the Canary Islands. Usually, his stories analyzed human behavior in the face of incredible circumstances, such as the plague of sudden "white blindness" that hits an unnamed city in Blindness. Saramago outlined the disintegration of society as both the inability to see and the accompanying wave of uncertainty sweeps through the population, with the book being much more disturbing and graphic than the film (i.e. read the damn book, slackers!).

The movie version, released in 2008 with Julianne Moore and Danny Glover, was filmed mostly in São Paulo because of the city's relative lack of distinguishable landmarks (for most people outside of Brazil), which supports an atmosphere of urban placelessness that is the reason for Saramago's omission of proper nouns in the novel; the events portrayed could essentially happen anywhere.

Like Gabriel García Márquez, Saramago was a master of magical realism, making fantasy tangible in the lives of his protagonists, but unlike Gabo's fanciful Caribbean dreamscapes, Saramago danced around the fringes of nightmare and sometimes crossed over into the darkness. Get thee to a library and get lifted!

Here's the trailer from the film:


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80 Years in the A

Y'all wasn't exactly expectin' a pitcher a'Mammy, wuzya?

Eighty years ago this week, Monroe, Louisiana-based Delta Air Lines began serving Atlanta Airport with one daily nonstop to Birmingham. From that skimpy hop over the state line, Delta has developed ATL into the world's largest airline hub, with nonstop flights to over 80 international destinations and who-knows-how-many domestic cities (well, Wikipedia probably knows, but...). In fact, it's because of Delta that whether you're going to Heaven or Hell, you'll have to change planes at ATL.

A large part of the reason I like Delta (theoretically, anyway) is because of its commitment to Atlanta, a Southern city that, for all its faults, has always been much more progressive than the region to which it belongs, no doubt a positive consequence of its connections to the rest of the world. Likewise, Southern culture gets exported as well, from the unrefined graciousness of the cleaning ladies in the terminal to the gleam of the TSA agent's gold tooth—my home culture, for better or worse. Oh, and there's also that Chick-fil-A in Concourse A.

You can read more about Delta and the A at the airline's blog. Meanwhile, in honor of Delta's 80th anniversary at the doubly-named Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, I leave you with Atlanna's own OutKast and their Southern Gothic classic, "Ms. Jackson," probably filmed right down US-19 from the airpert itself. For real.



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An Afternoon in Brasília, Part Deux -or- Why I'm Gettin' A Car With the Paycheck I Just Got

I know the numbers are hard to read, but let's try and follow along anyway, shall we?

Mode of Transport
Green Line = Bus
Red Line = Foot

1. Spot where the bus dropped me off in the vaguely-named block, SHIS QI 15, for a doctor's appointment (Brasília's full of vaguely-named blocks. "SHIS" means South Sector of Individual Habitations in Portuguese. Don't know what the "QI" stands for). Time, 5:30pm. Appointment, 6:15pm.

2. Point where I realized that I was entering SHIS QI 13, and not headed towards Bloco "O" in QI 15, the location of the doctor's office. Decided to head towards the lone commercial strip in the block and ask for directions.

3. Point within the commercial strip where I encountered at least four people who either couldn't give me directions to where I was going, or gave me convoluted directions in a language I didn't understand. In addition, there was no ATM in this commercial strip and I had no cash; therefore, a cab was out of the question. My appointment was in 15 minutes. I found a lady who spoke rudimentary English who told me I could walk to the office in about 20 and pointed me in the right direction.

4. Point where got pissed at seeing the bus stop where I'd disembarked a mere 35 minutes before.

5. Point where I stopped and wondered if turning right would mean a short cut. I continued straight, of course.

6. I got to the gotdamn medical park and spent another 15 minutes running from building to building asking people in white coats where my doctor was located, only to have them tell me with pained faces, "You know what, honestly, I don't really know. Ask the doorman." Y'all don't know shit in Brazil, do ya? Time of arrival at doctor's office, 6:20pm. Appointment, 6:15pm. I wish somebody would have told me I had to reschedule.

Liked that? Read about another afternoon I had recently in Brasília.

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VTP: India

This post is part of a monthly series of eye candy at Fly Brother, imaginatively named VTP (short for Vintage Travel Posters). We'll see how travel companies and bureaus have been enticing people off the couch since international leisure travel first became a bourgeois conceit. Few places stimulate the imagination for better or worse than India, though travel posters seem to have focused primarily on elephants, the Taj Mahal, and multi-armed Hindu deities to sell a continent-sized country full of over a thousand languages and just as many cultures. Still, the colorful, detailed designs make up for the lack of thematic ideas.

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Re-Post: Scenes of Sampa

These photos are from a couple of years ago, but I think the energy and feel of São Paulo remains palpable in each shot. I was also a little bit too occupied with getting my club on this weekend to refresh the album with new images; sometimes a playa just has to play.



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Fly Brother Podcast Season Finale - Season 1, Episode 10: São Paulo - Scratch & Sniff

In this, the season finale of the Fly Brother Podcast:

São Paulo: Scratch & Sniff

Playlist:
"Homenagem a Barra Funda" – Julgados Culpados
"A Noite Sem Fim" – Suba (Background)
"Lagoa Pinheiros" – Suba
"Um Dia Comum (Em SP)" – Suba (Background)
"São Paulo" – Morcheeba / From "A Life Worth Living" – Vikter Duplaix

Links mentioned in this podcast [in English unless denoted with (P) for Portuguese]:
Fly Brother - fly-brother.blogspot.com
NEGES Foundation - www.negesfoundation.org

Official City of São Paulo Site - www.cidadedesaopaulo.com/sp/en
Total São Paulo - totalspguide.com

Capim Santo - www.capimsanto.com.br (P)
Escola de Samba Vai-Vai - www.vaivai.com.br (P)
Livraria Cultura - www.livrariacultura.com.br (P)
MASP - www.masp.art.br (P)
Mercado Municipal Paulistano - www.mercadomunicipal.com.br (P)
Museu AfroBrasil - www.museuafrobrasil.org.br (P)
Pinacoteca do Estado - www.pinacoteca.org.br (P)

Kamaroty Music - www.kamarotymusic.com.br (P)
Diquinta - www.diquinta.com.br (P)
The Week International - www.theweek.com.br (P)
Julgados Culpados - www.myspace.com/julgadosoficial (P)
Suba - suba.isallineed.net

Accor Hotels - www.accorhotels.com
The CouchSurfing Project - www.couchsurfing.org
Traveller's Point - www.travellerspoint.com
Air Canada - www.aircanada.com
Continental Airlines - www.continental.com
Delta Air Lines - www.delta.com
Korean Air - www.koreanair.com
TAM - www.tam.com.br
United Airlines - www.united.com

Shoot me your comments, questions, suggestions, requests, or just a shout-out: flybrother [et] rocketmail [daht] kom.

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Fly Favorites: May 2010

This phat-ass image by ESCOBAS.

See who's artistically reppin' your hood at Cit/ID.

A Brother in Sweden profiles the Noo Awlins Indians (thas hah we say it in Flawda).

Der Spiegel highlights "May Day Riot Tourism in Berlin" while the Economist covers Germany's French-like attempt to save its language from that gaudy party-crasher, English.

Dhani Jones is back tackling the globe Mondays on the Travel Channel (does this fool ever wear shirts?).

Using "The Beautiful Hortense" and Chihuahuan Mennonites to appropriately describe place at Cuaderno Inédito.

Fall for the next installment in the Cities of Love film series: Rio, Eu Te Amo (here's hoping it's more like the sparkling Paris, Je t'aime and less like the Wonder Bread NY edition; I want to love this movie).

Fly photographs and classy culture from the Motherland on Out and About Africa.

The current time in Paris, brought to you by funky Franco-Japanese timepiece, Uniqlock.

Resurrecting the Miami Herald's award-winning series on Afro-Latin America.

The hoof-stompin', devil-worshippin' Satanique Samba Trio (click "Imperialist Pigs" for the English site, LOL).

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From the AV Room: Brazil in Black and White

A Brazilian airline's image of Brazilians:




A Korean airline's image of Brazilians:



Just sayin'.

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An Afternoon in Brasília -or- Why I'm Gettin' A Car With My Next Paycheck

Like Florida and California and any other sun-shiney place that boomed in the 50s and 60s, Brasília's spread way, way out. So an afternoon of running errands without your own private vehicle just might look like this:

12:00pm - You finish work early with the anticipation of making a deposit at the bank, stopping by the TAM office downtown to pay for a plane ticket that can't get paid through the website because of a glitch, and pick up tickets for Saturday's tango and milonga event at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (because if you wait until Friday, they'll be sold out...trust).

12:15pm - A kindly coworker whose waiting for her own lift to the airport offers you a ride to the bank, which is on the way. That's 3 reais (pronounced hay-ICE...as of May 25, 2010, USD 1 = BRL 1.85) and at least 30 minutes of walking/waiting/bus time saved.

12:30pm - The friend arrives to pick you and your coworker up. They chat about flying up to Belem, at the mouth of the Amazon, to work on a government project and return two days later.

12:50pm - You arrive at the bank, take a number, almost make it to the counter when some relatively-healthy-looking 50-year-old shows up and gets to skip you because he's "elderly," but aside from that, you make the deposit with relative ease.

1:15pm - You run out to the bus stop to make sure you catch the bus actually headed to where you're going. The first bus that passes is not one that's going where you're going.

1:35pm - Neither is the second.

1:50pm - Neither is the third.

1:53pm - A small car with three women and a male driver pulls up and yells, "Rodoviaria" (which means bus station, which is where you're going). You say, "sim" and one of the ladies squeezes in the back while you squeeze into the front seat with the broken seatbelt and hope to high heavens that homeboy doesn't wreck the car. Oh, and your knees are pressed into the dashboard, so really, you wouldn't go anywhere if there were to be an accident, you'd just have shattered kneecaps.

2:10pm - You arrive at the Rodoviaria, thank your driver and tup him the R$3 you would have paid the bus driver, then navigate the few blocks through the concrete ant farm that is downtown Brasília, dodging cars, soaking up sun, and feeling heady about the fact that you're navigating the few blocks through the concrete ant farm that is downtown Brasília.

2:22pm - You get to the TAM office, located at the once-grand Hotel Nacional, and take a number: 162. They're now serving number 148.

3:40pm - You leave TAM, ticket in hand, but got-damn if it wasn't like pulling teeth to get them to waive the R$30 "administrative fee" for processing a ticket that you should have been able to do yourself, if it hadna been for that glitch. Cute office manager, though.

3:42pm - The free "hourly" shuttle bus to CCBB, which is located way off in BFE, despite its rich and profound cultural programming doesn't come until 4:50pm. You say, "screw that," and walk back to the Rodoviaria. There's gotta be a bus heading that way.

3:58pm - You ask a couple of random, blue-shirted bus drivers which greenhound is headed for the CCBB until you score; the driver of your chariot agrees to drop you off as close to your final destination as possible.

4:16pm - The driver drops you off as close to your final destination as possible: on the side of a six-laned highway with traffic zooming by at, I don't know, 100 kilometers per hour and the CCBB squarely on the opposite side of that highway and a barbed wire fence. Lucky for you, the sun's starting to hide behind some clouds, so that should cool things down a bit.

4:19pm - You dash across three lanes, then straddle the middle divide.

4:21pm - You dash across the other three lanes.

4:36pm - You arrive at the ticket booth of the CCBB because it's located on the exact opposite side of the complex from where you crossed the highway and have to circle the entire thing on foot. Brasília really does hate pedestrians.

4:40pm - Tickets purchased! Next free shuttle bus departure back to downtown is at 5:50pm. The free wifi is out. You've got paperwork for your job to do while you wait, and eat an overpriced pancake wrapped around some chicken and cheese at the gallery cafe.

5:25pm - The shuttle bus arrives, but the driver says it isn't leaving for another 25 minutes. Real quick, snap some pictures of the twilight sky being covered over with rain clouds and some of those cool cosmic-clover streetlights they have all over Brazil.

5:50pm - It's actually pouring rain, uncharacteristically, since it's supposed to be the dry season. The bus departs. You can't see shit out the windows.

6:28pm - After fighting through a sea of flashing tail lights, the shuttle arrives at the drop-off point closest to your house: a taxi stand near the subway station at which there are no taxis standing. It's still raining, but not pouring. Some people are like, "screw that," and walk out into it. You do, too.

6:35pm - You're walking faster than the pack of cars inching along the road next to you and you're glad you didn't waste money just sitting in a cab. Your shirt's getting soaked, though.

6:49pm - You arrive home, your three goals accomplished.

Total elapsed time: 6 hours, 49 minutes.

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Global Juke Joint: Mama Used to Say

Afro-Belgian musical group Zap Mama has effused pan-African rhythm and flow for the last 20 years, badooing and doowapping on politics and partying in English, French, and Bantu. Started by the striking Congolese-born, Belgian-bred Marie Daulne, and using their voices as musical instruments, the all-lady ensemble carries you from London to Lyon to Lagos with a mix of traditional West African rhythms and their diasporic progeny: soul, reggae, funk, jazz, salsa, and house. I've recently rediscovered them on my iPod, so I thought I'd share.







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5 is Never Enough

Many Americans might think the question of how many continents exist on Earth should be settled (of course, the demotion of Pluto as a planet a few years back ought to remind everybody that even "established" facts can change). But in Latin America, where I've lived and worked since 2005, the established number of continents students learn is five: Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania, and...America.

Already, us United Statesians are considered arrogant for claiming "American" as a nationality, when it's seen as a continentality akin to "European" for most in the rest of the hemisphere (that's a whole other post), so trying to separate the Americas is viewed as a knock against Latin Americans: "North Americans don't want to be on the same continent as Latinos." This, of course, conveniently ignores the grouping of Central America and the Caribbean, regions soaked in Latin-based languages and their associated cultures, soundly in North America.

I've had arguments with both students and other professors regarding this slight difference in continental calculation. Fivers argue that America should be counted as one landmass because it's so separate from the others, and that Europe, Asia, and Africa—all three of which are connected to each other—should be counted separately because of the varied cultures. Poor Antarctica is consigned to continental limbo because she has no human population native to her frozen expanses.

I, a staunch sevener, counter that technically, there should be four continents, since the very word comes from the Latin, terra continens (thanks, AskOxford!*), which means "continuous land." Ignoring the divisions caused by the man-made Suez and Panama canals, America, Eurafrasia, Antarctica, and (maybe) Australia are each continuous lands. My argument, however, is that since Eurafrasia is indeed considered three continents by both camps, North and South America, connected by svelte and sexy Panama and her 37-mile waist, should only naturally be counted as separate. And, considering continental drift and geologic history, the isthmus that comprises Central America is indeed very, very young, having risen from the ocean a scant three million years ago, while South America started separating from Africa 130 million years ago and North America from Europe 70 million before that.

I don't know how the Brits or other English-speaking countries view things, or how many continents other teachers accept in their classes; on my tests, it's seven. Get it right.

*In the interest of fairness, I consulted the Real Academia Española for the official Spanish-language definition and got cada una de las grandes extensiones de tierra separadas por los océanos ("each one of the large extensions of land separated by oceans," basically, no real help for either argument).
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Fly Brother Podcast - Season 1, Episode 9: Multilingual Swagger

In this episode of the Fly Brother Podcast:

The Fun and Frustration of Learning Other Languages

Playlist:
1. "A Ring" - Towa Tei
2. "Plekete" - Zap Mama
3. "Chica Chica Boom Chic" - Bebel Gilberto & Carlinhos Brown

Links mentioned in this podcast:
Fly Brother - fly-brother.blogspot.com
NEGES Foundation - http://www.negesfoundation.org/

Florida A&M University Study Abroad - www.famu.edu/index.cfm?oied&welcome
New York University Study Abroad - www.nyu.edu/studyabroad/
University of Texas at Austin Study Abroad - www.utexas.edu/student/abroad/

Alliance Française USA - http://www.alliance-us.org/
Goethe-Institut - www.goethe.de/enindex.htm
International Language Institute of Cairo - www.arabicegypt.com
Instituto Cervantes - nuevayork.cervantes.es
The Japan Foundation - http://www.jpf.go.jp/

Berlitz - http://www.berlitz.com/
International House - http://www.ihworld.com/
Meetup - http://www.meetup.com/

Shoot me your comments, questions, suggestions, requests, or just a shout-out: flybrother [et] rocketmail [daht] kom.

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Fly Brother Interview on Jay Travels

Atlanta-based fly blogger and brother Jay interviewed me a few weeks ago for his international travel site, Jay Travels. The resulting madness went live this Tuesday, featuring my musings on Greenland, Mickey Ds, and prostitutes. Here's an excerpt:

Have you ever experienced a problem when traveling (passport, victim of crime, etc.)?
Once, in Rio de Janeiro, I was walking home from the gym with a Brazilian friend and while we were talking, a kid of maybe 9 or 10 came up to me and started talking in Portuguese. I told him, in Spanish, that I couldn’t help him and he grabbed my wrist. I, in typical American fashion, yanked my arm back and told him not to touch me (or as we say in Florida, bag back!). He started yelling at me in Portuguese and I yelled back in Spanish, then turned to make my way home. He came up and kicked me in the butt, then ran back across the street.

Things escalated from there, with him throwing a rock at my foot and my friend pulling me away from the scene because Lil Man was about to get the whippin his daddy clearly wasn’t giving him. Meanwhile, my friend kept commenting how kids these days don’t even seem to fear two over-six-foot-tall men anymore. When we got back to the house, my anger had turned to anxiety because I was lucky the kid only picked up a rock as opposed to pulling out a knife or gun. And it didn’t matter that I understand all the socio-economic backstory behind this young, black street kid; I was identified as foreign and subsequently as an easy mark. That ended my short-lived love affair with Rio.

Check out the rest of the interview here. Thanks, Jay!

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Executive Decisions -or- Sometimes, It's Okay to Pass

For those of us averse to a sedentary, monotonous lifestyle, there often comes a point when we have to make executive decisions regarding our time, our resources, our needs, and our wants. I'm both extremely sociable and intellectually inquisitive, so living in the capital city of a large South American country known for its highly-sociable population and culture, executive decisions have been the order of the day, almost every day.

Had I not committed myself to an every-third-day blogging schedule, posts at Fly Brother would be haphazard and sporadic, reflecting the random socializing that inevitably presents itself whenever more than two Brazilians get together. As I'm inclined to accept any welcome diversion to the mental and sometimes emotional strain of penning new text, it takes major focus on my part to decline the enticing offer of movie night or an embassy cocktail or karaoke or sushi with the crew, especially on school nights (booty calls, however, always get answered; y'all know how it is).

Now, if my professional objective were only to stack then spend bills, rolling out every night would gravy. But to appropriate a recent tweet I ran across, "a real writer's job isn't to be popular." That particular tweet referenced an article on the responsibility of journalists, or any event chronicler, to report the truth, no matter how unpopular or even dangerous doing so might be. I take that quote, however, on a much less profound level to mean you can't be a real writer and be hanging out all gotdamned night; not unless all you do from noon to four, once you wake up, is write. Sometimes, you just gotta say, "nah...I'll pass. Thanks, though" (you do, however, still want to be invited to stuff).

And it's not just about writing; it's about balancing your life in such a way that all of your projects become manageable and still get done, whether or not that's raising well-read, well-rounded kids or starting a business or planning your first round-the-world trip. After all, life's too short to just be focused on work, but ain't none of us heir to a hotel dynasty. Like they say in Spanish, unos por otros (basically, one thing for another). Yes, you may have a twinge of regret about missing one thing or another, but when you've finally reached your objective, you won't regret not doing what it took to get there. And there will always be another movie night or embassy cocktail or booty call (though maybe not with the same person, since you flaked out the last time).

So yesterday, instead of meeting up with a large group of friends for the closing day of the Robert Polidori retrospective I'd been wanting to see, I decided to stick around the house, stock up the fridge, finish preparing two tests, call the important women in my life and thank them for their interminable maternal love, deflect the few regrets that did arise about waiting too late to get to the Polidori showing, and continue conceptualization of upcoming Fly Brother expansion.

I've also decided to cut my planned two weeks on the road this summer to only nine days, starting with the TBEX '10 travel blogging conference in New York, followed by a week of fellowship with two very good friends in Toronto (holla TDK and La Femme Nikita). Ottawa, Montreal, and Quebec City were originally on the itinerary, but it felt wiser to shorten the trip and deepen the finances available to me in NYC and YYZ than to spread myself too thin across eastern Canada. Executive decision.

And now, I can buy a nice video camera and take you good people with me on some of my fly-falutin' adventures. See...it's all about you, baby (wink).

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