São Paulo: The Guide of a New Paulista

  So I'm back. It's been a while since I've written one of these and I'm sure the absence of my blog has left a deep, deep void of sadness in your lives. A couple of weeks have passed and the sarcasm has increased, but I'm back on the grind now and here to give you an idea about my new home. São Paulo is widely regarded to as the grey jungle of Brazil. The tourism agencies tend to gloss their promo videos with panoramic shots of Rio de Janeiro, the Amazon and the range of paradise beaches that are plentiful in this eyelash fluttering country. To compound this further, most Brazilians from outside the state of São Paulo will goad the place and probably even mock you personally for even wanting to visit. So initially, the idea of spending three months in the third biggest city in the world did not strike me with any sense of fortune.

  The reason I left the glamorous shores of Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro for the stone high-rise of São Paulo? Work. What else would it be? The party times are over - from Monday 8am to Friday 2pm at least - and the time has come to stop pretending like the world is merely here to be enjoyed and to get a job. I actually got this job from my university bedroom in November 2015, as I scrawled through the internet for Brazilian work placements for English students. As I previously mentioned, the idea of Carnival had put me in a daze of green and gold, and I was determined to cross the Atlantic for a few caipirinhas and a bit of samba on the streets of Rio de Janeiro. I was lucky and found an internship at a translation company called Global Translations.BR, based in São Paulo.

  It was put to one side, with Argentina and a bit of time in Rio de Janeiro to come up beforehand, and so my 2nd March start date crept up on me somewhat. The fact this was one day after arriving in São Paulo, after Carnival, made it trickier to get myself into 'work-mode'. However we're nearly three weeks down the line and I'm heavily set into my new routine. I work an 8am-2pm shift from Monday to Friday so it's fairly chilled out, and the work is fresh and a good learning experience. I'm not here to talk about my new job though. Who wants to know about that? I'm here to talk about São Paulo and how I've found this 'ugly', 'boring' and 'solely work-driven' city.

Carnival: The Party to End All Parties

  As I checked out of 021 hostel at 8:30am on Wednesday, I was momentarily frozen in a parallel universe. I was digging my pockets for some cash to pay for my bar tab, constructed by empty cans of local beer, and pulled out an assortment of items. The first thing I pulled out was a pirate's eye patch. The next was a strip of street-given unused sex protection covered with colourful warnings of AIDS. The third was a small tube of golden glitter. As I handed over a sparkly few notes to the hostel receptionist, a third-person realisation slapped me in the face. I'd just risen from the depths of the world famous Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, and it was un-bloody-believable.

Representing my country of birth...
Brazil.

  The Carnival dream started in a snoozy Portuguese class last year. Our teacher was showing us more 'culture' and I wanted to commit a self-crime. That was until an array of videos popped up and we were greeted to a montage of a colourful, vibrant party. Our teacher, a Brazilian, was visibly animated by the images of his homeland and his excitement transferred straight over to me. I was immensely impressed by the footage, and an instant need to transport myself into the physical experience of the party overcame me. It felt like a drug. When I got home that day I started looking online for jobs in Brazil, I got lucky to be hired by a translation firm in São Paulo and the rest is... to be told in the rest of this blog (you lucky devils).

  So there I was on Wednesday, on a 6 hour bus from the financial capital of Brazil to the party capital. Everything went smoothly and there was a nice buzz in the air. Even the 2 hour traffic jam didn't bring me down (no thanks to Football Manager after I was sacked by Eastleigh FC, the b******s) and, on arrival, the terminal was a buzzing honeypot of wide eyed tourists and experienced natives who were on a Serengeti-like migration from normal life to Carnival. I hopped in an Uber and ended up spending 40 minutes directing the driver who couldn't read the map on my phone (his died). Somehow he thought Google Maps was as useful as a scribble on a page, but you know what? I still gave him 5 stars. CARNIVAL.