The two faces of Brazil. The satirical online newspaper The Onion has put this picture on the front cover of its 2009 World Calender. I think the image captures something of Brazil's contradictions - beauty, devotion and religious fervour, on the one hand - favelas with gang violence which rival war zones, on the other. As the tagline I read for the photo says: "People at their most beautiful, humanity at its ugliest".

This addition should be added to this montage of alternative Christ the Redeemer photos I published on here back at the start of 2007. Click here for those.

Should I stop or should I go? A small display of Brazilian traffic lights. This post is dedicated to Ruth Leckenby - a long-standing fan of the Brazilian mode of traffic signalisation.

Trip to the dentist. This week has flown by in a whirl and I'm not sure next week is going to be much easier. Sporadic posting will probably result. One reason for busyness this week was a trip to the dentist that was supposed to only last an hour and took all morning. That was Tuesday. Neither Rachel and I had been to the dentist in probably 3 years so it was high time. We picked a Dentist Nelson (good name) who was the most jovial, friendly medical professional I have ever met. It reminded me of this observation I made around the time Gloria was born of Brazilian Doctors. It was like meeting a cross between Dr.Patch Adams and Dr.Julius Hibbert. Anyway, after a quick inspection, Dentist Nelson, gaffawing all the way, delivered the not-so-good news. I need to have quite a bit of work done, the result of which is my wallet is probably going to hurt even more than my gums will. But, we'll probably go ahead with it as it will be cheaper here than in the UK and the idea is to "invest" in my teeth not causing problems later, I suppose...

Homophones. I've been doing some work with my higher level students on homographs, homophones and oronyms. I found this cool poem which sums up homophones and oronyms quite nicely. You need to read it aloud for the full effect...

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rarely ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect in it's weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

Obama and Hamilton. So, fans of both the politician and the racing driver have had a good week all in all. Brazilians are preferring to "not mention the war" concerning the dizzying climax to the F1 season at the Brazilian Grand Prix. I, meanwhile, by not being a fan of Ferrari or Felipe Massa have been seen to be rather smug of late.

CONSPIRACY THEORY: Barack Obama, Lewis Hamilton and Theo Walcott are secretly brothers imbued with special superhero powers. It's not just that they each have mixed black-white lineage and have recently become lauded by the public for their extraordinary abilities, they also have similar faces - so much so that one chap out here keeps me calling me the Obama supporter because I cheer for Hamilton.

Every cloud has a silver lining. There's a whole series of posts waiting to be written about driving in Brazil, and, on balance, there's a bit of work needed to be done by my Brazilian counterparts to ensure efficiency and safety in their road travel. But for now, let me concentrate on some of the positives.

I recently discovered the joys of driving with the window down. Usually the car is so hot that AC is necessary, but why not, I thought to myself recently, switch off the AC and enjoy the fresh(ish) air of Natal's rush hour combined with the cacophony of sounds that eminate from every street corner. It's oddly liberating, it relaxes me and it's giving me a truckers one-armed tan in the process. Things I love about Brazil #51: driving with the windows down (and not freezing in the process).

On weekends and on mornings off I'll get into my car with flip-flops on as will the majority of drivers in Natal, I suspect. Driving with flip-flops is actually illegal (you don't want your havainas wrapped around the accelerator by accident!) so people shuffle them off and drive barefooted (barefeeted?), which is something I had to get used to when we arrived here. Sometimes the police try to scare tourists by telling them driving barefoot is illegal, but that's a big porky pie.

I reckon driving barefoot is the automobile-piloting equivelent of swimming naked in a lake at night. It feels mischievous and wonderfully liberating and may result in your extremeties (I'm talking about toes in the car example) being unusually exposed to the elements. After some time, and most people I know who drive barefoot agree with me on this, that skin to metal contact results in better clutch control and a feather-light touch on the accelerator. Things I love about Brazil #52: driving barefoot.

And, as a direct result of the thing I love about Brazil #54 - things I love about Brazil #53: Somebody fills your car up with gas, checks your oil and your tires without you having to get out.

A few firsts...

The first first: My first visit to INPE (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais). Thanks to one of the teacher's at the language school who organised it, I took 4 students on a field trip (well, a 20 minute walk) onto the campus of UFRN (Universidade Federal Rio Grande do Norte) where INPE have a base. INPE is to Brazil what NASA is to America, except on a much smaller scale.

I learned a whole lot from the hour-long presentation, given by a middle-aged, CPE-level, English-speaking engineer who went by the name of Alexandre Nowasad. Principally, I gathered some interesting insights into why a developing country like Brazil needs to be involved in the space race.

Brazil doesn't have it's own satellites but it shares a couple with the likes of China and the USA. They also have 10 offshore buoys (compare to the USA which has a whopping 300!) which measure depth, sea-temperature and weather patterns and Brazil has some fancy equipment at the South Pole amongst other places. INPE seem to have their fingers in a lot of pies, working with the likes of the the Brazilian Air force who launch INPE's satellite pieces, the private sector in testing materials and products in specialised conditions, with the Navy and also with various environmental agencies, governmental and non-governmental, as they try to map and account for the climate changes in the oceans and the amazon. The last point is crucial for Brazil. As our excellent host informed us, vast expanses of dense foliage still mask potential species of animals and plants and possibly some lost Indian tribes still in the jungle of Brazil's interior. Brazil's vastness makes it exceedingly difficult to govern efficiently - INPE are trying to help the country's elected officials have some idea about who and what they are officiating over. Also, given the controvesy in recent years concerning the destruction of the rainforest, Brazil needs to know what's going on inside its own borders for the benefit of future generations. As Alexandre succinctly put it: "We have to know whats in our own house if we want to protect it".

THE DUMMIES GUIDE TO INPE: As I'm no engineer or scientest I appreciate all the help I can get in understanding the intricacies of something like INPE. At one point Alexandre said: "Has anyone seen the film The Day After Tomorrow? Do you remember the satellitles, the buoys and the control room at the start of the film - basically, we do that for Brazil but on not such a big scale". Helpful.

A few more firsts tomorrow and through the week...