AltSci Blog

Today I started walking early in the morning and ended at 2PM after a great lunch. Certainly until my cast is off, I will not be able to walk as much as I did today. I overdid it and I'm expecting awful problems to start to occur tomorrow with my arm. Generally walking and a cast do not mix. I will have no problem covering more territory by metro in the coming month though. It has now come to my attention that I am in way over my head as far as Portuguese goes. Every time I have attempted to listen or to speak it has been a train wreck. If someone with an automatic weapon were to shout an order or a question at me, I would be toast. Luckily those sort of people have no questions or orders for me.

Since I have now learned that Portuguese is more difficult than I thought, I am putting mouseover text which should translate a few interesting things for you. Look for italic green text like this and put your mouse over it for a few seconds. If you think of a better way to display this, let me know.

Looking to the left from the top of the hostel:

Looking straight from the top of the hostel:

Looking right from the top of the hostel:

An easy photo opportunity at Santa Cecilia Station:

Near Santa Cecilia Station:

Across from Santa Cecilia Station:

Easiest landmark ever:

It's amazing. I actually made it to São Paulo, Brasil. I can't speak Brasilian Portuguese (of course I can't) despite having a ton of confidence before I left. I'll make a lot of progress everyday. What's more interesting is that I am writing this blog hours after arriving. If you recall, I didn't post my first blog in Tokyo, Japan or Berlin, Germany until over 48 hours after. The reason for that is easy access to what a person needs. Information is key to speed sometimes and boy did it work. The taxi stand had a database that took a street name and listed hotels, hostels, and other points of interest. 88 Real got me to the hostel in 45 minutes. Had I been smart I would have taken the bus. I wasn't able to figure out which bus to take so that would have been a bad idea. The hostel was happy to put me up despite having my reservation be for tomorrow. The hostel has 110V power (same as US) and WPA wifi, so it was really easy to get online. After my adventure, I hopped on and posted this. No photos yet but just wait.

Today I got lost. Similar to my adventure in Tokyo and Berlin, I simply walked in one direction until I needed to turn and didn't keep track of where I turned. After a while I found a landmark and followed my way home. For a while though it was a bit difficult to find my way. São Paulo doesn't have long straight streets. That's why a street name can get you a list of hotels and hostels. The street I'm on can't be more than 5 blocks long. I'll post the actual length in another post.

São Paulo is wonderful. There are so many shops in my area that I am in awe. The streets are dangerous and the sidewalks are uneven as possible. The heat is wonderful and the mood is good. There is so much graffiti everywhere that I actually wonder if the graffiti artists have the same values as other cities around the world. Maybe not. The largest building I can see from the 7th story here has graffiti at the top. São Paulo is 2 hours ahead of US Eastern Time (BRST), so this is being posted at 2:20pm rather than 9:20am. The time difference is quite a kick especially since flight was 19 or so hours. I'm pretty sleepy having not been able to sleep on the flight.

Over the weekend I have made massive improvements to my blog. I chose a theme and applied it quite well. I made a logo which is not really a logo but the name of the site using my AltSci font. I'm not too thrilled about the splash part on the main page but I'll figure out what I should do later. The comment system is working (I even caught a bug in Django while I was at it). The quote system is up on the front page and the About page. So what's new on the Brazilian front? I have downloaded 64 PDFs and 72 MP3s from Busuu and am turning them into a study guide for myself. At some point I intend to compile this data from my mind into lessons for English speakers. It could also be used for Brazilian Portuguese speakers to learn English. I'll have to see if I meet anyone who can test it out. Currently my setup is 2 pages and I have enough data for 5-10 pages. I plan to only bring 5 pages with me though. I'll be traveling light to keep only one bag. If I was more confident of where I was going and how I could get there I would probably take a light duffel bag. Having carried it enough trips I don't want that extra weight. Since my wrist is broken I won't be able to switch hands which would be annoying if I carry anything heavy. Limits are not necessarily bad. My website is limited by the time I have available. Though I could have saved time and made it a copy of my other blog, I decided that I need a bit of Python on my website.

Now seems like as good a time as any to advertise my other blogs and my projects. Currently I have a really cool project that is already making some steps. It's also written in Python Django and has about 105GB more data than this blog. Almost none of it is original, but don't let that stop you from visiting Philisophical Transactions. A blog post here wouldn't be complete without a link to my normal blog and my previous travel blogs: AltSci Europe and AltSci Japan.