Commuting

It's a little over 8am here. Yup, the morning commute. From my home to work it takes a little over 30mins. First I have to walk 250 metres to the station and "wulla" four stations later I have arrived.

I've noticed the pattern in commuting during peak and off-peak. Word of advice, don't try contemplating getting the train from Grajaú til Pinheiros, during the morning rush hour and vice-versa when finishing work.

One thing that I can say about the trains are Thank God they have aircon. Something as simple as that, you'd think it was the bare minimal to have in a tropical country.

São Paulo city has a population of well over 10 million people. So you can imagine how carriages are fully packed. In comparison to London, it's shocking. Atleast in London people have the common courtesy of waiting for the next tube if the current one is packed. Here on the otherhand, they push and shove you. Even when you can blatantly see that there is no more space inside the carriage some bozo always trys to creep in and force everyone else to become even more squished, like a tin of sardines.

When an empty train does arrive at an interconnecting station, the crowd run onto the train like a stampede of animals. At times, you can see actual smoke coming from both their ears and feet.

Commuting by bus. Atleast people form orderly queues for the bus. People here are more than happy to wait for the next empty bus in order to be guaranteed a seat. That's the surprising thing.
Bus drivers are nutsos, have you ever seen the film Speed, the one with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. The idea was to keep above a certain speed limit in order not to detonate a bomb. So the foot was down.
Yeah bus drivers drive like that here, utter nutters.

The metro, (as they say here) runs from 4am til midnight, Sunday to Friday and 4am til 1am on Saturdays. Sundays are pretty shitty on service as one comes every 10mins. Plus, they are always closing lines early for "maintenance" purposes. Those maintenance purposes better include fitting every carriage with aircon. Taking the metro during rush hour aint fun either. Same thing with the squishing inside carriages scenario.

Saying this and all, São Paulo is a big city with even more people residing here. So things are more expensive. Cars cost an arm, leg, eggs and sperm. It's ideal to have one, but you end up spending half of your life in traffic.

So transport in general, on the whole needs improving a lot more. It's a far cry from London. Let's hope that Brazil ups the anti and gets producing better quality modes of public transport and lower the taxes imposed on foreign cars entering this country. Otherwise I wont have anymore eggs left!

Asian gang

Since becoming acquainted with this city over a year and a half ago, I met some great people. People to whom I consider to be good friends, to whom I can trust.

It just so coincidentally happens to be that we're all Asian. One of the members is called Bruno, he's a Brazilian Japanese guy. He's just like a brother to me. I can go shopping with him, talk to him about anything and console in him in relation to oriental traditions.

The second gang member is Arvin. He's from Bangalore, India. I met him in a Couch surfing event.
Let me explain what is couch surfing. Those who want to travel & explore another country need a place to stay. Those generous members on the site, offer their couches as a good samaritan. That way you get to explore the new found area from a different perspective and maybe pick up tips a long the way. This CS meet is a regular event that occurs every Tuesday evening.

The third and fourth members are Taegyu and Sungmin. Both Korean exchange students at USP. University of São Paulo. I became acquainted with them back during the time I was living in a republica (shared house). So, we stayed used to meet up regularly for our Korean dinners, karaoke and drinkathons. Something I learnt from them was that Koreans drink beer like water.

Moving onto the fifth and sixth members. A Hong Kongese guy called Paco and a Japanese guy called Ioshi. I met both from a site called Meet up. The group was called São Paulo Happy Hour. It was a relief to have met Paco, another Cantonese speaker. I feared that once I had moved here that I would forget my Cantonese. The odd phone calls to my family only kept reminding me how much I really missed the Chinese culture and my family. So it was great to meet Paco!
Ioshi is only going to be here til June, then he'll return to Tokyo. Since leaving London, I've forgotten how Oriental English sounds. I mean, with a heavy accent! There are times when I need someone to translate what he has said in English. He reminds me of a character in the British tv programme Mind Your Language. Taro, the business man from Japan. He was always arguing with the Chinese character Soo Lin. A great tv show might I add and strongly recommend everyone watch.

Well there's the gang. In actual fact, both Koreans have returned home now that their exchange programs have ended.

So, for the moment it's just us five. At times I remember the expression "it's not about the quantity, but the quality". I see this when I look around at my circle of friends.
It's a contrast to my circle of friends back home. My best friends since secondary school and all girls. Compared to my Asian gang of men here.