Gaijin

Maybe I should start from their warm, friendly welcome. Or else, I could describe the apartment building and neighborhoood I should now start calling home.

But I’ll rather start from prejudice. From a couple of ideas - or rather sensations - inherited from my last trip down here.

I was a bit younger, that’s a fact, and had seen a whole lot of world and cities less than today. So I stopped at the very first level of it - a huge, unmeasurable city of little or no charm, with an unsafe, almost scary environment.

Well, it is not. São Paulo has the charm of the millions of people living here and making it a dynamic, diverse, sophisticated and funny place to be. There are countless restaurants, clubs, bars, museums and art galleries, as many theaters as in Broadway and a truly multi-ethnic and multi-cultural environment. Sort of a larger, hotter New York with Portuguese replacing English and tropical rains replacing snow.

By the way, my Portuguese’s getting better every day. I already managed to talk my way through an office meeting (”please say a few words to introduce you to the crowd!”), some essential shopping (”what kind of dishwasher do you need, Carlo maravilhoso?”), a hot water shortage in my apartment (”are you sure you switched the boiler on?”), a welcome lunch (”so, how did you end up in São Paulo?”), countless taxi rides (”what number did you say?”), subscription to the local gym (”what kind of package are you looking for?”), and most of all, six hours at the customs (”are you sure this Mac Mini isn’t new? It really does look as if you were trying to smuggle it, sir”).

I know. I know what I have written and I also happen to know what it means. Subscription to the local gym. So what? New life, new habits - a bit less cigarettes and a bit more sports. OK, seriously. Entirely quitting smoke is impossible when you have a hammock on your balcony. And as for sports, well it’s summer down here, and it keeps being summerish some 11 months a year. Well I currently look a bit like a panna cotta. So before I start working on the colour part of the problem, I’ll need to improve texture and consistency. Had you seen them running around Ibirapuera park, all in an amazing shape, you’d understand my embarassment.

The second element of prejudice was (and to some extent still is) personal security.
Now, there is definitely a higher risk to get mugged here than in Basel or Stockholm. And one might find it safer to stroll around the centre of Tokyo than the Centro of São Paulo. But I’ve never lived in Basel, Stockholm or Tokyo, after all. I was born in Palermo and have spent a reasonable amount of time in other large cities - so it’s just a matter of being slightly more careful than before: no expensive watch, money in different pockets, all my efforts into looking as “local” as I can. According to my landlord, I already do look Brazilian enough - only have to practise accent, suntan, pecs&abdos and vocabulary.

As for vocabulary, Brazilians seem all keen on teaching me, from the building concierge to shop assistants. I got into Tok&Stok a couple of days ago (Brazil being the only IKEA-less country in the whole wide world, I had to find a local replacement) and I realised I had no idea how to ask what I needed from a shop assistant. Never mind: one of them followed me all along the tour and provided words to translate what I scrapped on my notebook, mimed or pointed at with my finger. It soon became a funny game - we went around, I kept pointing, and he explained: “mirror, fork, cushion, carpet, cupboard, teapot, colander, drawer, bookcase, TV rack” (a rack is a rack in Portuguese as well, only pronounced “rackee” because they are unable to end words on an explosive consonant sound).

It made me 25 years youngers, somewhat. When I was one, I still did not say much - according to my family, I was waiting to be able to form full proper sentences, because that’s what I’ve done when I at last started speaking. So before I started actively speaking Italian, I went around with my father and pointed my finger at things - flowers in the garden, household appliances, whatever. “Nomenclatura”, he called that activity, building up my vocabulary before actually using it.

I just have got slightly less time, right now. And no dad holding me in his arms to walk around and fingerpoint.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 10:12 pm and is filed under General, Brazil. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.