After completing my GCE 'O' Levels, I applied to enrol in a polytechnic instead of a Junior College, unlike many of my classmates. Crazy as it sounds, the poly appealed to me for 2 main reasons: No school uniforms and no more studying of Chinese.
I eventually regretted both reasons; when I visited my friends at their JC, I realised how short the girls' skirts could be, and of course, I could have spent 2 more valuable years upgrading my Chinese from a conversational standard to a business standard.
Ah well, I enjoyed poly life anyway.
One of the modules I took in my Business Management diploma course was Marketing, where I was first acquainted with the term 'Marketing Mix', which is also generally known as the 4 Ps - Price, Product, Place and Promotion. The 4 Ps are the variables that a savvy marketer can manipulate to position his product in the market to generate mucho dinero.
In later years, when studying for my degree, I found that the Marketing Mix was reinforced and expanded into Packaging, People, Processes, Physical Evidence, Power and the Phantoms of Christmas Past, Present and Phuture (heh... this post is written on Christmas after all :p).
But let's bring in the focus a little. We have a Product - rubber slippers (or thongs, or flip-flops, whatever you call them), of a brand called havianas.
A pretty brown pair for the wife
Havianas are sold in Singapore only in New Urban Male shops, which specialises in beach/casual wear. Correct me if I'm wrong, please, because I can never bear to step into the shop. The People there are all young buffed up, top-heavy youths with heavily gelled hair that stand straight up. I suppose the chain tries to project a metrosexual vibe, but to me, it just ends up damned gay.
Prices of havianas there start from about SGD 40. And amongst my friends, none of us own a pair of havianas, preferring instead to go to Sports Connection to buy other slippers that cost less than SGD 5.
Things are totally different in Brazil. For one, the Power of havianas is such that many guide books actually say that if you want to blend in with the cariocas (residents of Rio de Janerio), you gotta wear singlets and shorts (or swimwear) all day, and you NEED a pair of havianas to complete the look.
havianas here cost only slightly cheaper than in Singapore, but we caved in and bought many pairs. Well, I bought one pair. The wife bought 3, and an additional pair for her sister. Why? Because havianas are just so pervasive in Brazil!
Solid black pair for me, with Brazilian colors down the sides
What really astounded me was how much the havianas have become a part of culture. Not only are people wearing them all over, but they are literally sold all over the place too! Check out these Places:
At a supermarket
At a flea market - the Hippie Fair that is open only on Sundays
In a department store - the LeBlon Shopping Mall
In a boutique along the busy streets of Rio
And I bought my pair from a roadside 'general items' store. And there were newstands that sell the slippers too. Go figure.
Strangely enough, it really doesn't seem like a 'pride' issue, where the locals sell havianas because it is Brazilian in origin. Neither does it seem like a profit thing - with so many competitors, how much can a single retailer sell? I've also ruled out special designs available only for certain sellers, because the same designs are everywhere. Somehow, it just IS.
Light graffiti prepared with love in Rio de Janeiro
We never thought we'd say this, but we actually miss Christmas shopping, and placing presents under the tree. And most of all, we miss being with friends and family during this festive season.
Our Christmas this year is a little off-beat, but with a tight budget and traveling schedule, I guess singing Christmas carols while cuddling is gonna be the best way to celebrate the love of the season.
Thank you for sticking with us so far. We hope you have been enjoying the stories of our travels since we set off from home in March 2009.
As the year draws to a close, we would like to wish you and yours a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
God of War is probably one of my favorite games on the Playstation. It's an action-adventure game that combines savagery with cunning, with stunning graphics and a superb gameplay experience. When I finally get back to Singapore, I would probably want to buy God of War and God of War II for the PS3 and replay them, warming up for the time GOW III is released.
But hey, Sony did not pay for an advertorial on this blog, so let's get down to business. The only reason I mentioned GOW is because of a scene between the (anti-)hero, Kratos, and Icarus. You know, the idiot who made wings with wax, then flew too close to the sun? Well, turns out he didn't die after all, but became muy loco, as they say in Latin America. Check out the clip below.
Ouch.
That said, the tale of Icarus was what went through my mind as the wife and I went on a hang-gliding experience just off the coast of Brazil. Though the 15 minute flight cost each of us 200 Reals (SGD 160), we thought that this was a new experience worth trying out. After all, we really couldn't think of anywhere else nearer to home, where you can just take to the skies and glide along the coast.
So we waited and waited for a good day. Hang-gliding is a little like hot-air ballooning. The weather plays a very important role in determining if you were going to stay grounded for the day. Rain forced us two postponements, wind in the wrong directions forced one, and general cloudy weather caused yet another postponement. When Marcio, our freelance tour agent called to tell us all conditions were "GO" if we could get ourselves ready in half an hour, we quickly pushed aside our other plans for the day and jumped to it.
The tour itself was really short and sharp. The hang-gliders (also called pilots) called a cab to pick us up at the guesthouse to bring us to the hang-gliding association. There, we paid a small registration fee and signed our lives away on indemnity forms (seriously, what the hell did we buy travel insurance for, I wonder...). We were then hustled into a waiting car with the glider neatly stowed on it, and brought up the hill to our launching point. And oh, during the ride to the launch point, a portable dvd player was placed in our laps for us to see what we would be experiencing during our flight! As we say in Singapore, chop chop curry pok!
After a couple of rehearsals on the take-off procedure, it was Yi Lin who started flying first! It happened so quickly I didn't even have the chance to prepare my camera for video. This quick clip is therefore in black & white. You don't have to adjust your monitor...
Now, being the super 'ngiao' (stingy) people we are, we had originally wanted to take our own photos and videos. This was pretty difficult, and really not recommended, because
1) We had a zippered pocket on our harness, which you can put your camera in. But when you are flying, that pocket is facing down. Reaching your hand into the pocket to retrieve your camera is a scary affair, because one slip, and it falls. Bye bye camera!
2) The pilots earn extra income by selling the photos and videos they take via a camera positioned on the right wingtip of the glider. The camera faces both of us while we are suspended in the centre of gravity, right down the middle of the wings. Being in the centre of gravity, the pilot can control the direction we face simply by pulling a line, causing us to swivel left, right and even 180 degrees!
So this is the trick my pilot used:
He would exclaim,"Hey look, that's Sugar Loaf Mountain on the left!" I would then point my camera to my left to snap a shot at it, but at the same time, he is already adjusting the glider so that the mountain is on my left (positioning the glider camera), and then he would swivel us so that my feet now point towards the mountains, then he would snap a pic with the glider camera. With the Mountain behind me, it was pretty impossible to make the movement to aim a shot at it myself.
Well, the first 2 pictures below are taken by me. Everything else was taken by the pilot because I had already given up on being able to take anything myself!
The majestic coastline from the air. Sugar Loaf Mountain is in the background
Huge waves with lots of foam, both above and under water
"Hey look, the hill where Christ the Redeemer is on!" Then our bodies are swivelled so that the hill is behind me (my left arm points to the front of the glider)!
"Hey look, the beach!"
"Hey look! Sugar Loaf Mountain!"
Finally, in an eyes-front position
As we soared through the sky, I could also see the rich/poor divide between the city's privileged, and those who live in the favellas. The estates of the rich are easily recongnisable with their private swimming pools, cars and neatly manicured gardens, while the favellas are squashed together in a haphazard manner. I also learnt from my pilot that on a good day, they do 6 such flights in a day. When the weather is bad, there is no income, and they end up doing odd jobs to supplement their income. What happens to odd jobs that need to be done in good weather then, I wondered - but I did not ask :p
Before long, it was time to land. We made a smooth landing on the beach, with nary a thud - our legs gently settling on the sand.
While the gliders and quickly and efficiently being kept, my pilot came to me and showed me the pictures he snapped. Definitely way more than what I took myself, though his angle was fixed. We figured that as I was holding on to my camera, the pilot was (successfully) trying to distract me from taking my own pictures. I had about 30 pictures recording my flight, while poor Yi Lin only had 12 shots captured by her pilot. Since the pictures are sold at 60 Reals per flight, with minimum of 12 shots to be taken by the pilot, it was obvious that her pilot must have felt no threat from her, since her DSLR was too heavy to be taken out during the flight.
So, here's a tip for future hang-gliders. Bring a small cheap camera and wave it around pretending to take pictures next time. The pilots will take more pictures of you to distract you, thus increasing the value of what you pay for them!
She may be on the ground, but her heart is still flying from that wonder experience!
Once we decided to only purchase one CD, the pilots again impressed us with their use of technology and chop chop-ness. He extracted the memory card from the camera and stuck it into a portable cd-writer. Within 2 minutes, we had my pictures in a CD, and were sent off back to the guesthouse!
"It's one tiny, two-letter word that makes amazing things happen. GO is action. it's the spark that starts the flame that sets everything in motion. GO gets us to try things we've always wanted to try. GO keeps us going no matter what life throws our way. GO reminds us it's a big beautiful world out there, and it's time to make the most of it.... to get out there and play. to get out there and do. to get out there and experience all the incredible things life has to offer."
A pretty brown pair for the wife
Solid black pair for me, with Brazilian colors down the sides
At a supermarket
At a flea market - the Hippie Fair that is open only on Sundays
In a department store - the LeBlon Shopping Mall
In a boutique along the busy streets of Rio
