Moving out of Tokyo, I suddenly have a lot to write about in my Blog. Many times my Japanese (and sometime international) acquittances made questions about life in Brazil that I dismissed as “not so different from the rest of the world”. However, after 6 years living in Japan and 2 weeks back in Brazil, I started to realize that these questions may actually have interesting answers.
So suddenly I have a lot to talk about. I’m trying also to take pictures of some of these interesting points, but this has been a little difficult since I don’t feel comfortable carrying my big honking camera when walking around by myself (hey, one difference there!). But let’s see what I can do.
I’ll try to provide updates about my life, research and random stuff as well, along with the Life in Brazil discussions. For starters, let me introduce my new living arrangements: The Lego Beach Resort!
I’m living in the 23rd floor of a building with a great view of the bay and the mountains. The neighbourhood has plenty of bars and other shops, and is much cleaner and well kept than I was expecting. The apartment itself has three rooms, a living room and a kitchen, for PLENTY of space. I’m sharing it with Ju, a friend of mine from my Unicamp days. She is also a former Comp.Eng. graduate, which means the apartment is kind of a Nerd Fest, something I was missing since my undergrad days. For example, the living room’s walls are decorated with a Retro Mario theme, and cabling can be seen everywhere. (see the picasa album for more info – with captions!).
The building also has some things of note. First one of its elevators has a creaky wheel or something, so it shakes and make terrible noises all the way up. I took that elevator by mistake on my first day here, and boy I don’t remember being so afraid for my life before (I was kinda enjoying the rush, though).
One particularly Brazilian thing, not only in this building but on the vast majority of apartment buildings in Brazil, is how they have “service” and “social” elevators. On a first look, this might seem a reasonable idea – you would want at least one elevator that should not be used for trash, animals, cargo, etc. However on practice the social and service elevator are the same size, and usually side by side with each other, and reflect on Brazil’s practice of segregating rich people from their servants. Fortunately, newer apartments don’t seem to have service elevators like these anymore, or when they do, it is actually a proper cargo elevator.
Gas is in the tubes, like in Tokyo, but water is heated by electricity – which last I remembered was cheaper in Brasil than gas, due to our hydro plants.
Compared to Tokyo, the rent is indeed cheaper. I’m paying about half what I used to pay in my Tokyo apartment. Considering that I’m sharing the flat, it means that the full rent would be similar to that of my old home. For a much bigger place, in a great location, and with good services. Remember also that Rio is considered to be one of the most expensive cities in Brazil.
Tomorrow my research activities begin. I’ll keep you all posted, and feel free to ask more about my living arrangements in the comments!
One comment: Water is not always heated by electricity. It depends on the building. Many buildings have gas heaters in the bathroom for the water. I’d say it’s 50/50 for electricity/gas. Not that it matters, but I just thought I’d mention it ^_^
Also, I wouldn’t read as much into the “service elevator” thing as to say “fortunately” some places don’t have them. Like you said, it really is mostly for animals and trash. Also, people just coming back from the beach, dripping with salt water and sand, are supposed to use the service elevator. Why would it be “fortunate” not to separate those things?
Them being the same size is mostly a flaw in the building design (granted, when they were building, they didn’t know which one would be the service one, so), and if this were a reflection of segregation, we would insist that maids use the service elevator.
It’s a stretch to call people who live in that building “rich”, but as compared to the maids, okay, we are. However, if there *was* a segregation going on, either now or historically, that would not necessarily be a bad thing, as in “rich people are better than poor people”. It’s not about rich/poor. It’s not about “better”. It’s “I live here” versus “I work here”. That’s a valid separation, but it does not actually happen.
Hey! :-)
Ju, I agree that the way you describe it is the way that works now, but I don’t think the work here/live here was the distinction in the past. Remember that maids used to (and in a few cases still do) sleep most days of the week in the houses they worked in. In this case, the work/live border gets muddled.
Anyway, I’m not a big fan of the purely “I work here/I live here” separation. I don’t really see what it achieves, and I DO think it creates some bad social habits.
So Gas/Electricity is 50/50 now? Cool, didn’t know that. Funny that Brazil is going that way, and Japan is going the opposite way (most of the heating (water, environment, etc) were done by gas, but now there is a push for more electrical heating).
That “reverse cultural thingies” are quite interesting to notice, eh? Keep them up before you become jaded to Brazilian way of life again!
About service elevators, although it is true that some services like trash collection are obviously done using the service elevators, for other things, I’ve never noticed too much of a difference in the building I used to live. And perhaps most people there agreed with me, because after some time they were divided in stopping in even or odd floors.
Then family moved to a “properly separated” elevators. But that is just to say that one goes to the kitchen and the other to the living room. Although there’re unwritten rules like after going to the supermarket we should use the service elevator (it’s closer to the kitchen!) and most services use the service elevator, the cable TV guy always came from the social… because it’s closer to the living room. And the census guy too.
Uh, sleeping there doesn’t make it their house. For one thing, they don’t own it. That’s a BIG difference.
As for the water, I’d say the gas heating is mostly in the older buildings. But I might be wrong.