Things I miss about England #69: small talk. There's an old joke: Two Italians, two Frenchman and two Brits are stranded on a desert island. The Italians immediately strike up a conversation and launch an Italian restaurant. The Frenchmen do the same and start a patisserie. The two Brits move to opposite sides of the island and never speak to each other as they haven't been formerly introduced.

Now, what would happen if you put two Brazilians on the island? I think they'd watch football together buut sleep with knives under their pillows for fear of the other guy stealing their wallet in the night (see this post for more on why Brazilians have the lowest levels of trust for all of South America). Either that, or they'd discover they were distantly related, in which case they'd team up and start a successful samba school.

So, why the long preamble? Well, its just that how Brazilians get to know strangers is profoundly different to how Brits do it. For many Brits there is an expectation that small talk, although often a nusiance, is an essential part of social interaction. For example, weddings. There are always a few tables at British reception dinners made up of a handful of odds and ends friends and relatives who have to sit next to each other. By the end of the meal, Mr.X has discovered he shares a passion for tiddly-winks much like Ms. Y sitting next to him and Mr. Z has learned that he shares an office with one of Mrs.A's old school friends. etc. etc.

In Brazil, the situation is wholly different. At a wedding, all the family and kids would all come along and there wouldn't be set places so there would never be this need to confront people anyone didn't know. What I've noticed (by often being on the receiving end as a stranger in various settings myself) is that to get to know Brazilians you have to approach them in much the same way as Donnie Brasco did the mafia. Just keep showing up with people who can vouch that you're "safe" and after some time you'll be absorbed into the group and find yourselves doing the same things as everyone else. Equally, its possible you could hang around some Brazilians for a long time and never learn any details about their lives - you just happen to have a few shared experiences together. I have this sort of relationship with some of Rachel's friends - I'm definitely part of the gang on account of being married into the Barlow clan and a handful of them are even my facebook friends, but none of us have actually had anything like a conversation. Small talk has been absent.

Why do I mention this now? Last Saturday we went to a birthday party for a kid from Nelson's school. The usual candidates were there - Nelson's best pal Rafa and her Mum and one or two others that Rach has gotten to know. To my delight, I found that one of my ex-students, a lawyer was there with her husband. And then, one of her friends, also an ex-student turned up. They eye-balled me suspiciously for a while to the point where it was just getting embarrassing for me and for them so I crossed the balloon-infested floor to do "small talk". After some stiff handshakes and kisses they asked me how I was and what I was doing there. I explained my presence at this festa on a Saturday night and pointed out Rachel, Gloria and Nelson strewn around the corners of the room. My two friends/aquaintances shot me a quick glance as if to say "why are you telling us this? We won't be introducing you to our families". So, I quickly changed the subject to the weather or travel or something and moved on. We never spoke again all evening. Small talk was absent, and I have to say I missed it.

Things I love about Brazil # 69: live music. On Friday afternoon I took Nelson on an adventure. We recruited Tio Dyego and made our way onto the UFRN campus for the Sciene Week fair. Now, thoroughly accustomed to the fact that any Brazilian event doesn't have to do what it says on the tin, I wasn't sure what to expect and I thought it might be lucky if we saw anything sciene-related. As it happens, they were starting to take down some of the stalls as it was the end of the week but I, and Nelson, did get to see some cool stuff. I found out one interesting fact: UFRN (the State university of Rio Grande do Norte) had about 8,000 students in 1970, about 9,500 students in 1998 and now has nearly 30,000 - a testament to both how little education was prioritised until relatively recently (this stems from the colonial legacy - unlike the British, the Portuguese were not interested in educating their subjects) and also how much the government sees tertiary education as the key to Brazil's future as a competitive developing nation.

Most perplexing though, was how the sciene fair was dominated by two large stages for Rock concerts. Indeed, the evening performances by the acts on stage constituted the heart of the week´s events as the students themselves had been given the week off from studying to contribute to the whole hoopla. As for me, I was able to see, over a popcorn with Nels and Dyego, the start of a set from a pretty nifty campus band and it brought back fond memories of propping up dingy bars in York catching the latest wannabe act. In the end, as was the case with the local elections a few weeks ago and also with a recent Catholic procession that practically rearranged the paving stones outside the language school thanks to a bass drum, academia, debate, religion and a serious consideration of the facts very quickly give way to a party atmosphere where he who plays loudest wins. If heaven is a place where Brits will provide the hymn-writers, Americans will supply the electric guitars and Africans will be the singers then without a doubt we can expect the Brazilians to provide the walls of speakers on wheels.

OK, OK, we get the idea. I'm carrying my new birthday camera around everywhere which means its handy for any slightly odd or obscure thing I see. Actually, Rach and I often chuckle at the frequent occurrence of random things we come across just from driving around - a donkey standing in the middle of the road with nobody around, a man taking 15 dogs for a walk, a man juggling fire for money at the traffic lights, a huge hole in the road when there wasn't one there yesterday, a strike or protest of something or other... Anyway, we saw this picture above at a petrol station. They seem pretty adamant about not accepting any sort of payment by cards, don`t they? I wonder if they accept cash? If so, I bet they don't have any change.

Legião Urbana (Urban Legion). Back in Recife, Rach managed to dig out two CDs for the Brazilian band Legião Urbana for me. I'd first heard their music when it was playing on the loudspeaker at the Maracajau water park. Rach rolled her eyes when I said I liked it. This was the band all of her friends were into at school but she obstinately refused to listen to. They're kind of the Brazilian Smiths, and I think some of their songs exhibit a heavy REM influence (no bad thing). In many ways the band were known for being anti-religious or anti-church, but my current favourite is the ballad "Monte Castelo" from their album Os Quatro Estaçoes (The Four Seasons). It's a well-known song of theirs from circa 1989 based on the famous words of 1 Corinthians 13 from the Bible. You can watch a performance of it here.

James Blunt. Speaking of music, one of the worst imports of music here from the UK has to be James Blunt's tepid and squeeky vocal performances as sung over the top of predict-a-chord dirgey songs. Unfortunately for us, (but darned lucky for him and his publicity machine) a James Blunt song is being used as the theme to a Brazlian Globo TV soap opera called Duas Caras (Two faces). Now, James Blunt can count among his fans every middle-aged housewife in Brazil as well as every middle-aged housewife in the UK. Ana, the lady who helps in our house, listens to a radio station that plays only Brazilian popular music and James Blunt. Caramba! The song is all over YouTube, but someone has helpfully put Portuguese subtitles over this video of Mr.Blunt perfoming the number in question.

(Small fact: did you know that the Globo's soap operas are so famous and widely watched and Globo is itself such a huge a corporation that they can insist on late kick-offs for any domestic or international Brazilian football fixture so the match doesn't cut into soap opera time. This annoyingly means all major evening games, including Wednesday's Libertadores Final, start at the ridiculous time of 9.50pm!!! If the game goes to penatlies, as it did on Wednesday, it finishes after midnight. I'm always asleep by the second half).

Congrats to cousin Simon and wife Katie on the arrival of Lucie Iona Payne.

Things I miss about England #71: General administrative competence. OK, so it's debatable if this is even such a good thing in England given the numerous horror stories we have in trying to secure VISAs and passports or sign up for a new phone deal or phone the DVLA, but Brazil, on average has to be a lot worse. Don't get me wrong - it's not all bad. My ID arrived in one piece (after 18 months) and we recently got Gloria her Brazilian ID relatively painlessly. But, trying to get Gloria registered as a British citizen is not proving to be easy given there is a postal strike on at the moment. Furthermore, moving house and trying to switch our cable and internet providers and trying to get a spare key from the estate agents is proving to be a jumbled mix of red tape, conflicting stories and loopy administrating for poor Rachel who is burdened with sorting it out.

Things I love about Brazil #87: interesting city names. Our recent travels to Joao Pessoa and Recife and my plan to travel to Fortaleza this month have reminded me that Brazil has some excellent names for cities. Those three I mentioned translate literally as John Person, Reef and Fortress. Of course, we live in Christmas (Natal) which is close to the beach towns of Kite (Pipa) and Chicken Port (Porto da Galinhas) and down south there is Saviour (Salvador), January River (Rio do Janeiro), Saint Paul (Sao Paulo) and Happy Port (Porto Alegre). These names aren't like the ones we have in England are they? There ain't no Skegness, Cricklewood, Blackpool or Ponders End round here...

Oops, I've just noticed I have two entries for "fresh milk" in my things I miss about England list. Why didn't anyone tell me? I must really miss fresh milk to place it at both number 16 and number 48. In it's place (at number 48) I think I'll put celery, another food related item that I really miss...

This post has grown and grown to become another monster entry. Sorry folks.

Sarah Sheeva the daughter of Baby Consuelo visits Gloria. Right, well this was out of left field but a relatively famous person in Brazilian pop culture stopped by for an evening with us recently. I had to do a bit of research on the internet to find out exactly who the socialite in my front room was, but this is the basic story.

Baby Consuelo/Baby do Brasil was a famous Brazilian singer, something of an institution I guess, with hits stretching back to the 60s. Her kids also formed music groups and bands and had moderately successful careers in Brazil. Anyway, sometime in the late 90s, Baby and several of her children and relatives converted in dramatic style to Protestant Christianity out of a lifestyle of dark religious practices and the excesses of a rock and roll lifestyle. The conversion was dramatic and long-lasting - Baby has stepped out of the music industry and is now a pastor in a church. Her daughter, Sarah Sheeva, who was a member of the pop trio SNZ along with her sisters also quit (much to the dissapointment of sections of her fans) and now takes up her time recording Christian worship music and touring doing evangelistic events.

Sarah was in Natal as part of one of these tours for a week of meetings that our church group had some hand in arranging. Of course, we were unable to attend because of the arrival of Gloria, so, instead, she visited us for a "quick visit" with a special view to meeting a new baby. Actually, the quick visit was definitely of the Brazilian variety in that it wasn't quick at all and it soon became a two hour sit down and chat about the state of the church in Brazil, the nature of conversion, the details of Sarah's family's past and present and the wonder and blessing of children. Sarah (who in terms of appearance could pass for a younger Cher) dominated the evening as I guess only a gifted evangelist with a history of performing on stages can - she spoke with real and heartfelt enthusiasm about what Jesus had done in her life. I couldn't catch everything she said in her southern Brazilian accent, but I was left with the enduring impression that this person's life had been totally turned around. The inexplicable, total, genuine and positive transformation of people by God is one of the most compelling evidences, in my opinion, of the reality of Christian truth. As Rachel later said - before she or her mother became Christians, you would be hard pressed to imagine a family in the Brazilian public eye further away from ever becoming believers. Their story is partly due to the witness of a family friend who committed to praying regularly for the family over a period of ten years.

So, above, a picture of Gloria mixing it with her famous friends. Sarah is the one holding Gloria. And here is a (kind of cheesey) video of Sarah in her hey-day as part of the trio SNZ, although she looks so much like her sisters I'm not sure who she is in the video!

ps. I tried to find some info on Baby, Sarah and SNZ on wikipedia but the only substantial articles were in Portuguese. SNZ is made up of the initials of the three sisters in the group - Sarah, Nana and Zabelle. As it happens, I discovered that SNZ is the name of an American music group and that the initials stand for something altogether more ridicilous.

Rachel is superwoman or "no babies were born during the making of this conference". I knew there was something good about my wife when I married her, but I had no idea about her special abilities to run a full-blown conference when 9 months pregnant. The Cultura Directors Conference which drew over 100 delegates from Brazil's four corners seems to have passed very well (save for the hired bus drivers bogging off just before delegates were to be taken to a Saturday night drinks do). My duties mainly involved baby-sitting Nelson and one or two of the other kids of the other delegates. I'm exhausted today but the one who really deserves a break is Rach. Next on the agenda for her: having a baby.

Things I miss about England #84: Custard. Especially when it's lavishly poured over a pub-menu sticky toffee pudding.

Things I love about Brazil #58: Puddings. There's an oft quoted maxim that says Brazilian go to restaurants for the desert trolley and not the main courses. That's because they have the sweetest of sweet tooths (sweet teeth?) in recorded history. A Brazilian recently asked me, "Dave, are you like me in that when you're eating your main course are you just thinking of the desert to come?". I replied: "No, when I'm eating desert, I normally wish I had had more main course".

The Brazilian deserts are an acquired taste - I would describe many of them as sickly sweet. Unlike British deserts which tend to be made out of pastry or eggs or flour, Brazilian puddings look and taste like a bowl of left-over icing or thick milky syrup. It's as if they've discovered that what people really like is licking the spoons that stirred the cookie mix and, so, geniuses that they are, they skipped the part where you have to cook anything and just put out the cookie mix to eat. Many popular puddings - such as doçe de leite (literally, "sweet of milk") or brigadeiro (pure chocolate balls) - are runny or pasty and extremely rich. The strangest one might have to be my wife's favourite, the local delicacy called cartola. Banana, cinnamon and melted cheese swimming in sugar served hot. Hmmmm, are you sure those combinations really work?

Anyway, Brazilians do not eat (and can't endure) spicy food at all - I think it's because all available taste buds have been harnassed into coping with the endless tide of sugar passing through their lug holes and over their tongues. But, like curry, it's possible to get accustomed to it, and after 18 months here I admit to being partial to the odd thing of three from the afters menu. And, due to the CDC conference with the all-inclusive hotel lunches, I've been making sure to visit the desert trolley to sample some of the delights on offer including passion fruit moose, cashew nut pies, cheese cake, chocolate cake, tapioca pudding or, my personal favourite, pudim de leite.

More extraordinary music. Did you listen to the songs on YouTube which I posted a few days ago? Well, I suggest you do (the first two are actually good) but no matter if you didn't, thanks to Felipe, one of my students who is a fan of forró music I was able to track down the clip I really wanted to post. I don't know why this makes me break out into fits of laughter. Maybe it's the cheesey and amateurish video which includes views of Recife's main tourist attractions, maybe it's the larger than life lead-singer with the flowing hair and the motorbike, maybe it's the way the "girl" reads the comic book on the sofa or maybe it's the butchering of the music to Robbie Williams' song Angels by the never-ending accordians and badly-played piano. Either way, it's a little window into what Brazilian chavs like to listen to. The outfit are called Desejo de menina (Desire of the girl) and the song is Minha alma gêmea é você (My soul is twinned with you). Click here and brace yourself to be impressed.

Things I miss about England #36: second-hand bookshops. I came across a box of random literary, historical and political books in English at the language school this morning. I instinctively started rummaging through them to see what was there and how much they were worth (I didn't work at York's Barbican Bookshop for nothing!). When I was done I suddenly realised I missed secondhand bookshops. Books simply don't occupy as prominant a position in society here as they do back home. Bookshops of any kind are thin on the ground, let alone ones that sell second-hand books.

Things I love about Brazil #10: music. I've grown to be quite a fan of Brazilian music with bands or singers like Lenine, Kid Abelha, Maria Rita, Marisa Monte, Pato Fu, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Legião Urbana getting frequent airing on my musical equipment. Bebel Gilberto is also great but strangely she isn't famous in her own country and not many of my students know who she is.

Anyway, it's not just the musicians are great its the way they do music. Brazilians are a lot less coy about what's cool or not and they are a lot more relaxed about plagiarism and using each other's songs. It's not uncommon for artists to cover several recent hits of their contemporaries during a show. All this makes for a healthy culture of collaboration and idea swopping as long as everyone gets their due in the end (which is doubtful). Not surprisingly, British or American hits are often reworked into Brazilian musical norms and sometimes songs are translated into Portuguese or are written with English and Portuguese words mixed up.To illustrate this here are 5 (I would hesitate to call it a "top" 5) Brazilian pop innovations - you can watch all the clips on YouTube.

1. Kid Abelha and Donovan Frankenreiter - King of the free ride. American bluesman teams up with Brazilian acoustic outfit. Results extremely pleasing.
2. Vanessa de Mata and Ben Harper - Boa Sorte / Good luck. A beautiful duet with Lenny Kravitz wannabe and Brazilian soul singer. The song was released before they had even met each other.
3. Caetano Veloso - Come as You Are. Elder statesman of Brazilian pop music decides to make album of English covers including this odd version of a Nirvana song.
4. KLB - Angels. A fairly accurate and schmaltzy Portuguese cover of the Robbie Williams hit by a Brazilian rock band.
5. Rhianna - Umbrella (the forró version). The American diva's huge 2006 hit gets worked-over by an accordian in this surreal Portuguese version in the tradtional north-eastern forró style. (The video superimposes the Brazilian version on top of the official video. As far as I can tell the Brazilian lyrics have nothing to do with umbrellas).

Hope you enjoyed that. But, still, as much as Brazilians love music, the music industry is seen as the opportunity for the poor to advance themselves and it is uncommon for middle class families to allow their children to pursue music careers. Parents would rather their kids developed language and academic skills so as to become lawyers, doctors or diplomats. In short, whereas middle class kids in the UK might take music lessons and try joining bands at uni their Brazilian counterpoints sign up/get signed up for 2 and a half hours of English lessons per week with teachers like me.

One final note about music. Do you remember I mentioned a few weeks ago the musical exploits of Cultura's driver Sr Ricardo? Well, he leant me a CD of his music and I was astonished to see it had a "proper" inlay cover (above). If you know this man and you see him every day dressed in his work clothes you will probably, like me, find that front cover and fold-out deeply hilarious. But, I won't say a bad word against this guy - this man is a legend. Watch this space. When he's headlining his unique brand of worship music at Spring Harvest, remember I called it first.

Life. The CDC (Cultura Directors' Conference) starts today with Rach in chief co-ordinating role. This means all the Directors from all the Cultura's in Brazil will descend on our little town and have "a whiskey club" as Rach's Dad calls it. We've been bracing ourselves for this for several months and it's not been helped by an increasingly pregnant Rachel just two weeks away from her due date. So far, so good - nobody seems too stressed. By Monday it will all be over and maybe Rach can relax a little.

A week is a long time in blogging. It's been a busy few days which is why I haven't updated my blog since last Tuesday - quite a long time for me. What have I been doing? Mostly, not sleeping too much (Nelson is waking up each night in a bit of a state, not sure why) and teaching private English lessons at no notice to a Jewish man (a rare thing in Brazil) who is a store manager (not such a rare thing) and watching countless...

Great Britain projects. Each year students of Cultura are encouraged to do a project. This year's theme is Great Britain. I'm finding it fascinating watching Brazilians give their opinions on my homeland. Part of the interest lies in their choice of what to do their project on - the traditional, "stereotypical" British things are well represented - the walls of the language school are plastered with posters of David Beckham, football, the Beatles, the Queen (both the monarch and the Rock band), tea drinking, London tourist attractions and fish'n'chips.

Other titles have included Mr.Bean, Sherlock Holmes, The X Factor and Harry Potter. The one project that so far actually taught me a lot about something I knew nothing about was an Advanced group's presentation of famous British fashion designers: Vivian Westwood, John Galiano and Stella McCartney. (You will notice that for many people here Great Britain = England. Despite encouraging my students to try and "think out the box" and maybe do something about Scotland they all stuck to what they knew. One project was entitled "Ireland" and talked about the Republic - an interesting political mishap out here in Brazil which would infuriate a significant percentage of the Irish population).

British pop music has featured highly in many presentations and it's a reminder to me how much British rock bands and singers have influenced the landscape of world music. The Rolling Stones, Amy Winehouse, McFly, Lily Allen, Oasis and Led Zep have all featured in students' projects. On one level I'm proud of British music - I enjoy it and a lot of it is good - but the students seem to emphasise the reputation for drug taking that many of these personalities have and that's a shame.

I especially enjoyed listening to an excellent presentation from Moyses and Leonardo (students of mine from last semester) who gave an adlib, blow by blow account of the history of Oasis beginning with how Kurt Cobain's death spelt the end of grunge and Oasis' first album the introduction of Britpop. They were followed by Raul and Daniel talking about the history of British music festivals - Reading/Leeds, V festival and Glastonbury. I had to hold my tongue from interjecting throughout with "I was there!" and "I went to that, it was ace!".

Afterwards, I spoke to the students and Leonardo asked me: "have you ever seen Oasis, teacher?". My reply, "Yes, I have - on the Be Here Now tour" led to raised eyebrows from the young chaps. I felt like the old timer at the home asked to retell his war stories or an astronaut recounting how he stepped on the moon. I maybe overdid it a bit, spouting forth with tales of being a teenager in mid-90s London but they all seemed generally awestruck. Leonardo's closing words to me were: "I hope to go to a concert one day". What was telling about his response was that it wasn't just that he wanted to go to an Oasis concert, he wanted to go to ONE concert... Natal is 3000 kms from Rio, the place anyone big would play if they toured South America. Leo's ambition to make it to ONE gig of a large international act was still a pretty big dream for a Natalense. If you're reading this in London you need to remember to thank the Lord in your prayers that you live in the centre of such a rich cultural world. Many people wish they could be there.

Things I miss about England #56: Going to Rock gigs. In view of the above, R.E.M. have announced their tour support and will be playing some European dates with the Editors (who are OK) and the Disciplines (who are ace). Akkk, I wish I could see them but I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere!

Things I love about Brazil #95: Radio Rede Hallelujah. It's helping me to learn Portuguese even if it's a bit cheesey. Rede Hallelujah is a Christian radio station and I have it on in the car at the moment.

(ps. I've lost count of where I'm up to on the things I miss / things I love list but it will be resolved this week).