Living in Brazil

So my Carnaval experience was interesting, but not too special.  I didn’t go to Rio and didn’t go do much of anything in person.  I marveled at how so many restaurants were closed, how empty the streets and parks, and wondered how much earlier the grocery stores would close.

I watched some coverage on TV.  Spectacular costumes and productions in the evening parades.  I was blown away.  It’s bigger and better than anything in the U.S. of its type.  Thanksgiving and New Year’s parades are small and silly in comparison.  Mardi Gras in New Orleans is just small and sad.  Really impressive.

And it went on for hour after hour, day after day.

The giant cars carrying gods and dinosaurs were spectacular, but some small things were great, too.  One of the schools had people in strange black costumes, connected by ropes, and they danced about as neurons, sometimes coming together and covering themselves with umbrellas so that they looked like a giant brain.  All sorts of animals, all sorts of people, dancing, laughing, smiling.

One night there was a guy doing reports on small stories around Carnaval.  The guy is named David Brasil, but man, I thought it could have been Michael Meyers doing a character.  A gay, stuttering, Brazilian TV host.  I saw David Brasil on top one of the giant floats the next night, too.

Lots of discussion in the living room and on TV about who had fake breasts (always denied by the girls in question when asked).

So many people, so much effort, so much money, so spectacular.

Back to normal now, more or less.

So, I have a student visiting in town and we’re working hard, and it’s also Carnaval here.  I’ll be posting about Carnaval soon, although my experiences are primarily from watching TV.  Carnaval is not covered well in the U.S. and I really had no idea what it was really like.  Anyway…something of interest to post quickly about tonight.

There is a town here in Rio Grande do Sol that is the twin capitol of the world.  There are 38 pairs of twins among the 80 or so families of on area in the city of CÂNDIDO GODÓI (cut and pasted from the article as I don’t know how to make all the accents in html).

The mystery has persisted for decades, attracting international attention and inspiring books and investigations by geneticists. It is one reason locals are in no hurry to try to prove their water theory. They are too busy posing for journalists and marketing their town to tourists as the “twins capital of the world.”

Anyway, interesting.  Some speculation about the involvement of Mengele, likely groundless.  And this gem about the marriage options in the area:

“It’s not too much of a mystery to me,” said Fabiane, whose family has five pairs of twins. “My brother married his third cousin. There are lots of cases like that, people marrying their cousins or other close family members.”

More of a gene puddle than a gene pool, apparently.

So I tried to send my colleage here money via paypal to pay my rent.  It was a million times easier for her to rent the apartment for me, and I have been paying her once a month via paypal.  Until this last time, when paypal marked the transaction as “suspicious” and then made me and her both jump through a bunch of hoops.  And then they finally reversed the transaction anyway after a couple of weeks, so I still owe her last month’s rent and in a couple of weeks will owe her next month’s rent.  And I haven’t gotten my HSBC account here just yet (checking the mailbox every day).

It’s frustrating.  I am tempted to just try sending her the money via paypal again and see what happens, but if the same thing happens I know it will annoy me more than it will annoy paypal.  My alternative is to wait on the HSBC account and see if I can arrange a transfer through them, or to visit the ATM several days in a row and extracting the maximum cash, which doesn’t seem the best thing either.

And sorry to drop off again with the posting here.  I try to be daily at least during the week, but I have a student visiting from the U.S., I opened up applications for my annual astronomy workshop Launch Pad, worked on a secret project, and I published an anthology of astronomy-based science fiction stories Diamonds in the Sky, so it has been pretty busy.

A day late, I guess.  Anyway, Saturday Feb. 14 marked two events.  American Valentine’s Day, which is not celebrated here in Brazil except for apparently by my girlfriend (of course), as there is June 12, O Dia Dos Namorados.  The good news is that in the big Hipermercado (Bourbon Ipiringa) you can buy a dozen roses for R$12.90 and score big for not a lot of money.

The other thing is that the clocks changed back an hour.  It’ll be another month, a little more, before the U.S. changes the clocks.  I remember the saying in the U.S., “Spring forward, fall back” that helps me remember which way the change goes, even in the southern hemisphere.  The thing is, it’s still pretty much the middle of summer with lots of late sunshine and warm days.  Fall is still months off for all practical purposes.

I have posted several places about this topic, but basically I wanted to be very explicit and put a lot of things all in one place.

I have gotten along fine for months here using primarily credit cards and an atm/debit card to get cash.  To use a debit card to get cash, you need to find an international ATM, which is usually indicated by a raft of stickers that the other machines don’t have, featuring things like VISA, PULSE (or is it PLUS?), American Express, etc.  In Porto Alegre I usually use Banco de 24 Horas machines.  In Rio I have used machines from Banco do Brasil, Bradesco, HSBC, Citibank, and more.  Many will have the option of instructions in English.  You do have to watch for scams.  Criminals have invented a machine they put on top of ATMs to steal debit card information and I know Americans who have been hit (in Rio).

Sometimes the ATM machines will tell you the exchange rate before finishing the transaction, sometimes not.  There is always some kind of additional international fee and/or currency conversion fee, usually 2-3 percent.  As in the U.S., there is a daily limit.

The most reliable places for me to find international ATMs has been in malls.  Sometimes supermarkets (which are sometimes in malls).  Just walking into banks on the street has been very uncertain, without much luck most places, although in tourist areas of Rio you can find them there.

You can also use debit cards, and often credit cards, at the larger supermarkets.  They will usually ask which one you have (debito or credito?) and may want the last four numbers of the card.  For debit cards you will also need to key in your PIN.

Credit card companies are suspicous these days.  I have had cards suspended when I’ve used them nearly daily on a two-week vacation in Brazil.  You can imagine what can happen when you live here.  I have a couple of cards that I called in about, telling the company that I would be living here this year and that I would be using the cards to make charges.   So far so good.  I haven’t had either card suspended.  I have also avoided using them for U.S. charges.  So I have my U.S. cards and my Brazil cards.

I haven’t done this, but I imagine it would be a good idea to photocopy your cards and keep phone numbers to call in case of loss or theft, although I do essentially everything online.  I pay my credit cards online via transfer from my U.S. checking account, and know what I am using and carrying.

I have gotten by without checks.  I give my friends cash or send them money via paypal.  Paypal works in Brazil.  Paypal does have a 3 percent fee.  Paypal also sniffs for suspicious transactions (e.g., an American sending money to a Brazilian) and can suspend accounts and/or transactions, requiring a few days to process investigations (generally asking for explanations, new passwords, etc.).

The name of the game is having multiple ways to pay for something and back-ups.

Also, when I am in Rio the wallet is always in a front pocket and I generally keep some loose cash in a different pocket.  Safer that way paying for cabs and things without needing the wallet.

Don’t tip in general.  It will be made clear when a tip is customary, and it is not most places.  I will usually tip the taxi driver, however, when I am taking home groceries or something like that and he helps with the loading and unloading in the trunk.

Prices are rounded to the nearest 0.05 reais, or five centavos, and sometimes those will get ignored.  Still, you will see prices like R$19.99 and R$29.99.

When buying more expensive items and paying with a credit card you will be asked if you want to pay in installments (the number of payments depends on the price).  Sometimes you get a break paying all at once, but often it is the same price.

My friend Rob wrote an interesting post about investing in Brazil from the perspective of a foreigner.  Enjoy!

It looks like I’ve succeeded finally, although it will take a few days to be processed.  Thanks for the comments private and public from those of you who provided information or offered advice.  A lot of this stuff in Brazil is trickier to do than in the United States.  I mean, if you’ve got money, foreigner or not, there’s a bank in the U.S. happy to hold it for you.  Just don’t ask where they put it while they’re holding it…

Anyway, I digress.

Apparently Banco do Brasil, the big national bank isn’t very foreigner friendly and requires residence for at least a year before they will open their doors, or so I was told.  Another friend, an American with permanent residency, recommended HSBC.  They have a nice wesbite with pages in English where they explain their requirements.  There are two HSBCs within easy walking distance of me, both close to busstops I use.

I had everything on the list (due to all the other things I’ve had to do already) except for “proof of residency,” and what that was exactly wasn’t clear to me.  I was already registered with the Federal Police as a foreign resident and had an “RNE,” and my situation with having bills in my name at my apartment is awkward since it was about a thousand times easier for my colleague here to do things in her name.  We just called the bank and explained the situation and asked what they would like to cover this.

Well, what they told us they wanted was a notarized letter for the University, providing the University address and stating certain things clearly about who I was and what I was doing in Brazil.  We put that together, and I went today.  The process was pretty quick and easy, although they didn’t initially take my birth certificate and called me back because they needed a document with my parents names on it, and the other items didn’t have it.

Oh, and if you haven’t been inside a bank in Brazil, at least a bigger bank in a bigger city, it’s a bit of a trip.  Mostly everyone just does business with ATMs, much as in the U.S.  If you need more, the banks have these revolving doors with built-in metal detectors that won’t turn if they’re set off.   You have these slots to pass through items like cell phones, keys, etc., to get past the metal detectors.  This is in addition to several armed guards, who watch the process.

I still have to wait until next week for the account number and a debit card, as HSBC here sends their stuff to an office in Curitiba, if I understood correctly.  Anyway, one more technical step done in establishing myself in Brazil.  I have to say it hasn’t been too tough to get by using only my ATM/debit card from the U.S., although losing that would make things difficult in a pinch.

The hell of it is that amazon.com was backordered on kindles when I was back in the states before Christmas and I am still waiting for my original, and now they have the latest version, the Kindle 2 for sale.  Same price as the old one, $359.  Some improvements, but some drawbacks, too, according to this article.

I am a book guy, and having to haul a pile of books around from country to country through airports is a real drag, especially with current weight limits and extra fees.  I have just gotten to the point where taking my music with me is trivial.  Movies are coming next.  And finally books, too.

I should finally get my Kindle in March and I will report on how I like it.

Another website focusing on foreigners living in Brazil, www.gingoes.com.  It has a forum, too, that looks like it will be very useful.  It’s very frustrating for me to find official and correct information about various legal issues, both because of my poor Portugeuse skills and because government documention of things just doesn’t seem very good.  For instance, for registering as a foreigner with the Federal Police, I went to their website to find a number to call to talk with someone about how to do it.  The phone number from the website referred me back to the website.  Nowhere but in the building, on a sign on the wall, did it provide the hours to go register, which cost me one wasted trip as they closed at 2pm in the afternoon.

Anyway, I’m working on getting a bank account now and I still need one more thing to do that — proof of residency — which I should be able to do now.  How is more mysterious.  An electrical bill is likely enough, but I don’t want to wait, but apparently the Federal Police can provide me a document.  I’m told the hours for this are more restrictive — 9am to noon.  And it isn’t clear which documents I need to take with me, so I will be taking all of them and hope I don’t need to print something off the web somewhere (I will look).

Crap, I’m looking into this and I wonder if all the bank wants is my RNE — Registro Nacional de Estrangeiros — which I did last month.  I have a temporary card and a number for this, which I guess does establish me as a foreign resident…hmm, no.  Looks like the banks have a separate requirement for the RNE AND “proof of residency.”  My friend who called for me emailed about “Extrato do SINCRE” which she had never heard of.  Well, one more round here.  And some more online research, which may save me a few cab rides and some confusion.

I’d read or heard a little about this before, but last week quizzed one of my Portuguese teachers a little more in depth.  Apparently Brazilians refer to nearly all foreigners, non-Portuguese speaking foreigners anyway, as “gringos.”  The phrase doesn’t have the negative connotations the way it seems to when used by Mexicans to refer to Americans, and in fact Brazilians may refer to Mexicans as “gringos,” which I find strangely amusing.

I’m not very politically correct, so please forgive the use of the N-word.  It’s in an appropriate context.  The word doesn’t have much meaning here in Brazil as far as I can tell, and most Brazilians, if they know it at all, know it from rap music and videos.  A few years ago in Rio I saw a Brazilian girl trying to be friendly with a couple of black Americans in dance club.  She smiled at them and said, “Hey my nigger,” which she had surely seen in a video and probably thought she was being cool and culturally understanding.

There’s some low level racism here in Brazil that seems tied to social class (as in the U.S., a higher fraction of the rich are lighter skinned, and a higher fraction of the very poor are darker skinned), but there doesn’t seem to be racial cultures here as much as in the United States, and while I’m sure there are racially charged words in use, they are not the same ones Americans are used to.  I’m still learning my dirty words here, and the majority of them seem to have to do with sex or excrement rather than race.

Anyway, I’m sure I’ve got a lot to learn about these topics and don’t appreciate the subtlties, but wanted to note these things here.