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.