G'day,
A quick update as we all hold our breath for news from across the pond (or across the Panama Canal, in my case?)...
On Thursday we went on a bit of an adventure when our car broke down on the way into town - this may or may not have something to do with it being out of gas (the gauge is broken, see). Anyway, we were winched to a petrol station in a massive truck, and eventually on to the place where we bought the car in the first place to hand it over for general repairs, much to my amusement and Gaby's dismay.
Then on Saturday, having picked up my (hopefully now-functional) guitar we went on to the fashionable Rua Augusta for some stand-up comedy, at a sit-down nightclub imaginatively called "Comedians", and run by Danilo Gentili, the Brazilian talk-show-host equivalent of Conan O'Brien or Graham Norton who has apparently spearheaded the nascent stand-up movement here over the past few years.
Anyway, it was most amusing - despite the banter pouring forth at breakneck speed I managed to understand most of it, give or take the odd reference to niche Brazilian cultural touchstones which went over my head. It was pretty universal "difference between men and women"/"rich and poor"/"prostate exam" material overall, but delivered with enthusiasm and plenty of biting wit (we sat in the front row but amazingly got away with nothing more than some light ribbing). Interestingly all four comics made a point/running joke of mocking Osasco (a notoriously rubbish suburb - the Slough to São Paulo's London), which I thought only Gaby and I did. We laughed, we cried, we learnt some new naughty words, we went back to the in-laws afterwards to eat lots of cheese.
This weekend was also notable for the scores of students taking their ENEM exams, which are kind of like A-levels... Anyway, it's quite a big deal, and invariably some students turn up late, are barred entrance and have to wait another year to take the exam. This has led to an amusing annual phenomenon where onlookers with lots of free time head to the school gates and set up camp for the day, purely to laugh at the latecomers' misfortune - SchadenFest '16, if you will. The media gets involved and everyone has a nice day out, except for the poor bastards who miss out (and sometimes pass out). But then I have limited sympathy given the importance of the test, and it's a lot more wholesome than the equivalent yearly tradition in the UK...
In other awesome news, I have made a compilation crammed with sizzling guitars, and have an extra complicated proverb of the week for those of you keeping track - it's a rhyming couplet that translates roughly as "water dropping day by day wears the hardest rock away", or "keep at it!".
That's all for the noo, and speak soon!
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