Hairy Potty Man and the Deafly Hollows

-- Prologue --

It finally looked like something was happening. The pink-and-green clad ushers pushed all the onlookers back from the open area in the middle of the hall, forming a clear space for the performers for the Carnivale. The performers formed two lines, lips twitching in anticipation for the start of the music that will drive them into an orgiastic fervor.

The drummers from the stage started a rhythmic cadence signature to samba. The song had started! The performers began their sinuous movements around the cleared area, dancing in the manner of a conga line. Only that it was samba. A dance that, as Yi Lin says, makes the participants look like they were busy stamping dead millions of ants at their feet.

The visitors to the rehearsal looked on, swaying along as if enthralled by the beat. All of a sudden, as if the snaking conga line decided that it was hungry, the dancers started pulling in the onlookers. It looks like they are no longer here to watch the show, they are going to be part of the show! The conga line was now going to be half-local blood, and half-foreign blood!

And then, the Hairy Potty man made his appearance...

-- End Prologue --



Part One: The Philosopher's Cash

We had traded price for experience in deciding to come to Rio de Janeiro in December rather than in January. We had known that we would miss the world-famous Carnivale, but our budget was just too tight for the skyrocketing prices that the Carnivale peak would cause. Fortunately, we were just in time for the Carnivale rehearsals at the various samba schools, and could easily make plans to visit them on either of the Saturday nights that we were in Rio.

The school we chose to visit was Mangueira, one of the oldest samba schools in Rio, with a rich tradition of winning at the Carnivale. As the school was located in a favela, we decided to take as little money as possible.

Taxi fare (about 30 Reals per way) turned out to cost a bit more than expected, and I had totally forgotten to bring additional cash for the entrance fee (another 20 Reals each)!

After paying off the taxi driver for bringing us there, we were left with only 30 Reals, just enough to admit one person. I tried to convince the wife to go into the school alone.

"It should be safer in the school that out here in the favela. I'll just wait here. You just go in, take a few photos and come right out, okay? Here, take my camera."

And just as I was handing her my camera, I remembered that we had secreted some extra cash into the pouch when we went to the beach earlier. Hooray! We now have enough cash to go in together!



Part Two: The Chamber of Samba

This guys formed the band, and they literally sang all night

We entered the main chamber of the samba school, immediately noting that everything was decked in pink and green. Nervously, hoping that we were not wearing the colors of another school, we strode forward into the hall.

Big man, little instrument

There was currently only a small band playing, but the music echoed throughout the hall. The walls and tables were vibrating along with all the tables and chairs set out for guests. It seemed like speakers were lined throughout the hall, and every one of them was turned to the 'Are You Nuts??!' volume setting!



Part Three: The Prisoners of Standing

Getting a table is useful only until the rehearsal starts. After that, everyone is standing and/or dancing!

We picked a table out of those placed along both ends of the hall, and settled in to wait for rehearsals to begin. Then an pink-and-green clad usher came along and yelled something that we couldn't hear. And frankly, even if we heard what he was saying, we wouldn't understand a word. Locals here speak Portuguese, remember? In the end, he was jabbing his finger angrily at a little strip of masking tape that had some marking on it. Oooohh... the table was reserved!

Fine, fine. We moved on to another table that had no masking tape on it. After another 15 minutes, yet another pink-and-green man came along. That was when we realised... you want to sit at a table, you gotta pay another 30 Reals!

Since we had no more money, we had no choice. We just had to stand till the rehearsal started!



Part Four: The Legs on Fire

A samba school is okay, but discos, video arcades and bowling alleys give her headaches!

Coming to the rehearsal at 9.30pm was beginning to seem like a bad mistake. The rehearsal was expected to start at around midnight, which meant a minimum of 2.5 hours wait. We could not chat with each other to pass the time, because the music was just too loud. We could not sit around because we did not have the money to pay for the tables. There was nothing to do but to stand around and look like we were having fun, like some of the other locals and (drunk) foreigners who were dancing to the band on stage.

Midnight came, and the show had not started. But that ache in the legs from standing too long started to grow. By the time the rehearsal finally started at 1am, our legs were afire!



Part Five: The Order of the Maestro

The guy conducts with his hands. The girl conducts with her ass. I'm not kidding!

Something was finally happening. Loads of people suddenly showed up on the stage at the far end of the hall. A young man appeared, and took the conductor's platform. And without further ado, the entire percussion band (for that's what they were) burst into a cacophony of sound. Unfortunately, while I did shoot a video, the speakers at full blast drove the microphone on my camera nuts, and the audio it captured was very similar to static with a beat.

Not the pink-lingerie tranny at Sentosa, but we believe they are trannies nonetheless

This maestro was impressive though. He know what he was doing, and the percussionists followed his every signal perfectly, much to the pleasure of the Evil Queen Clown of Mangueira...

Okay, seriously, I have no idea who she is. But she reminds me of the clown from IT.

Part Six: The Half-Blood Performers

Locals and foreigners jiving to the samba beat

As the percussionists built up to a crescendo and finished off their performance, the rest of the band came back. The pink-and-green clad ushers pushed all the onlookers back from the open area in the middle of the hall, forming a clear space for the performers for the Carnivale. The performers formed two lines, lips twitching in anticipation for the start of the music that will drive them into an orgiastic fervor.

The drummers from the stage started a rhythmic cadence signature to samba. The song had started! The performers began their sinuous movements around the cleared area, dancing in the manner of a conga line. Only that it was samba. A dance that, as Yi Lin says, makes the participants look like they were busy stamping dead millions of ants at their feet.

Little girl knows her moves! She'll be a heartbreaker one day!

The visitors to the rehearsal looked on, swaying along as if enthralled by the beat. All of a sudden, as if the snaking conga line decided that it was hungry, the dancers started pulling in the onlookers. It looks like they are no longer here to watch the show, they are going to be part of the show! The conga line was now going to be half-local blood, and half-foreign blood!

And then, the Hairy Potty man made his appearance. This guy, obviously potty from an over-indulgence of alcohol, decided that because I was swaying to the beat, I must be interested in joining the conga line! Coming straight for me, he clasped one huge, hairy arm across my back (I could feel his sweaty pits against my shoulder... erks!) and tried pulling me in. I tried to resist and say no, I wasn't interested, but despite the Portuguese 'nao' sounding very similar to the English 'no', I somehow could not get my point across, and was sucked into the ever-growing conga line.

For the 15 seconds or so that I spent in the line, I must have been the stiffest person there. Thankfully, Yi Lin joined in as well, and I did not lose her in the crowd. We got out of the conga line as soon as we could. Spoilsports, yeah. But this was one occasion that we just preferred to watch and not participate!



Part Seven: The Deafly Hollows

The conga line goes around these two central dancers

Samba schools that compete in the Carnivale are judged upon several criteria, including costumes, the dance, and most importantly the song. The response of the crowd, however, plays an unofficial part in the scoring criteria, and that is why the samba school takes great pains to invite singwriters to compose new songs every year, then select them and try to gain popular favor for them. And they do this by singing the song over and over again, to get people familiar with it. Once peopls are familiar with it, then they would naturally react to the song being played at the Carnivale.

It's like this: You may not be a fan of 'Play that Funky Music' by Wild Cherry, but you recognise it when it's being played. And if you were listening to to it one day on the radio, wouldn't you sing along ...'lay down the boogie and play that funky music till you die"?

The rehearsal at Mangueira that night was the same. The same song kept repeating over and over, and the conga line just kept going round and round. By about the 30th cycle, we decided that we've had enough, and decided to make our way back to our guest house.

I wonder when did they finally stop dancing

We stepped out into the cool night air, with our ears still ringing. After spending some 4 hours in the samba school, we had developed a ringing hollow sound in our years. I'm not proud to admit it, but I think we shouted our address to the taxi driver. He just grinned like he was used to people shouting at him after a long night at the samba school, and brought us safely back to our guest house.

Home (sorta) Sweet Home (sorta).

Let The Feasting Begin!

Actually, the feasting had already begun a looooooong time ago - last year to be exact - and we started 2010 all feasted and fattened up already. I feel as if all this food has already sunk to hip level and attached themselves snugly to the inside of my jeans.

Before coming to Brazil, I had no inkling what Brazilian food was really like. We all know about this country's famous churrascarias (steakhouses) where piping hot, tender, juicy meat is brought straight from the grill and sliced right off the skewer and onto your plate. Back home in Singapore, a visit to a Brazilian churrascaria is always a full-blast all-you-can-eat pig-out event.

But looking at the svelte bodies on the beach, it's hard to believe that the locals stuff themselves with grilled meats at every meal. If Gisele Bundchen could eat a cow a day and still look so fabulously slim, then I can't help but hate her. So what do they eat here in Brazil?

Kilo Buffets

At home, the concept of a buffet is to let you consume as much as you can for a fixed price. It preys on a certain human weakness - greed - to entice people to get their moneys worth by either overeating or zooming in on specific items like oysters and sashimi, which are considered to be of higher value. More often than not, I feel really sick after a buffet and end up regretting that extra slice of cake (and ice-cream, and pie, and prawn, etc.) or an overdose of raw fish. And admit it - how may of us actually finish every plate of food that we cart back from the buffet spread?

Kilo buffets, on the other hand, are great way to eat anything that you fancy from the buffet table and yet control your gastronomic desires. You fill a plate with food from the spread, which is then priced at a fixed rate accordingly to its weight. Kilo buffets also help curb the temptation to make repeat trips to the buffet table - you try to fit your meal onto one plate, cos the weight of the plate is taken into account, so you don't want to keep paying for each plate that you take. The end result is that you pay only for what you eat, and that helps minimize food wastage from the buffet table too.

In Singaporean terms, a kilo buffet is basically the same as ordering "economical rice". But instead of choosing 2 Meat + 1 Vegetable, you can dine on quality steak, rich seafood and sinful deserts.

Or you could think of it as eating yong tau foo. The more pieces you pick from the fishball and beancurd spread, the more you pay.

Holding my breath for the result at the weighing station

Kilo buffets come in various qualities, which are priced anything from S$0.98 per 100g to more. We had our first buffet lunch at Broth, a small lunch-only restaurant with an average spread. Together, we consumed about S$30 worth of food.

Not cheap huh. Wait till you dine at Frontera. The buffet is priced at a higher rate than Broth. Rightly so, because the quality of the dishes at Frontera is excellent. Plus, you can really good churrasco hot off the restaurant grill.

My pick of the buffet: saffron rice, slices of picante from the churrasco, caesar salad, fillet of steak and some fall-of-the-bone stewed pork.

An amazing salad spread - which I didn't want to waste stomach space on

Large selection of meat, seafood, pasta, veggies and grains from the main buffet

Obviously, hunks of juicy meat weigh more than leaves. So you can pick according to your budget. If your pockets are feeling empty, you'll literally be eating grass to survive. What I couldn't fathom was why people were loading their plates with heavy potato dishes and dense, soggy, pasta! It's a pay-by-weight buffet.... hellooo....

We learnt, by trial and error, that certain food items are accorded a higher price rate. We paid dearly for a small plate of sashimi, which cost more than items from the main buffet.

How could we resist this after abstaining from (expensive) Japanese food for 6 months in South America?

Frontera is really popular and is pretty packed, all the way till midnight

We spent a whopping S$70 at Frontera during a dinner visit. Thankfully, we were too stuffed to seriously consider anything from the dessert counter.

But that didn't stop us from returning, just for dessert! We chose to come back on 18 December, to celebrate 4 years of marriage (4 years 8 months, if you take into account the day we legally signed our lives away to each other) with some sweet stuff. We chose our candies carefully and took care not to repeat items on each others plate. We learnt that Brazilians have a very big sweet tooth - the cakes were all stuffed with cream and custard and laden with caramel, sugar frosting, chocolate rice, chocolate balls, coconut, etc.

Which made dessert very heavy - literally. Which in turn made it very expensive, as cakes are priced higher than items from the main buffet.

Ouch. But wedding anniversaries are special events that call for some splurging right? (Please agree - it would make me feel better.)

Close your eyes and pick your calories

Snacks

Away from the buffet tables, there are a couple of snacks that we liked in Brazil, like this molten lump of cheese encased in a layer of bread:

Chewy cheese-filled pao de queijo or cheese bread

Fresh Fruit

Brazilians enjoy an abundance of fresh tropical fruit like papayas, pineapples, watermelons, honeydews and rock melons. Plus, they are blessed with the fruits of the Amazonian jungle - many of them known only by their indigenous names that have no English equivalent.

We loved assai, an Amazonian fruit rich in vitamins and minerals, and reported to aid weight loss, give you nice skin and heighten your prowess under the blankets. It's the new wonder fruit! The purple berries are blended with ice, and you eat the gritty slushy mixture by the spoonful. It's hard to describe the taste - I would say, like Ribena blackcurrant drinks, but more flavourful.

We also tried cashew juice. Yups, you've heard and eaten tonnes of cashew nuts, but few people know that the nut is actually the stem of the cashew fruit. Which is what makes these nuts so expensive - you have to wait for an entire fruit to grow and mature before you can harvest it's stem. The fruit itself, which looks like a yellow pepper, is not usually eaten. Not surprisingly - cos it doesn't taste too good. It doesn't even have much taste, really. And the juice leaves a strange after-feeling in the mouth. It's funny how drinking juice left my mouth felt dried out!

Fruit juice stands are literally chock-a-block - there is at least one for every block you walk, and sometimes even 2. Brazilians are a lucky lot.

My favourite - a healthy does of assai. A great frozen snack to have after a hot day at the beach.

Japanese Food

We were surprised to learn that Sao Paolo has the largest Japanese community outside of Japan. So it's no wonder that Japanese cuisine has found its way to Rio and into the hearts of the cariocas.

When we heard about the all-you-can-eat ala carte buffet or rodezio at Nik, a Japanese restaurant in Ipanema, we purposely avoided going there until our final night in Brazil, with an idea of saving the best for the last.

Sad to say, all that deprivation only made the glutton in us reared its ugly head. We had arrived at the restaurant pretty late for dinner, around 10pm, only to learn that the place closes at 11pm. All discretion flew out of the window as we frantically ticked plate after plate of sushi off the food list. Even before we had finished eating what was already delivered to our table.

Chew. Chew. Chew. Tickticktickticktickticktick!

While it was a pretty good selection, I was a bit bummed to find out that many cooked items like tonkatsu, agadashi tofu and grilled fish weren't available for the rodezio.

Which means that we ended up with lots of sushi...

Clearly very happy to be eating sushi again

And more sushi... and a couple of giant handrolls.

Stuffing our mouths with rice

And finally, TOO MUCH FRICKIN' SUSHI!!! My eyes widened each time the waiter appeared with a platter filled with rice rolls and my mind whirled, "Did I really order that?!" And to make things worse, we were horrified to discover that we had somehow ticked off bowls of rice, noodles and vegetables along the way. I didn't even remember doing that! My stomach must have had wiped out my brain and taken over my entire body, especially my writing (or ticking) hand.

OH. DEAR.

Erm, waiter, can we da pao please?

We knew that leftovers were charged at S$1.50 per piece. We did a quick calculation of the damage. Not good. We sheepishly tried to ask for the leftovers to be packed for take-away, only to be told that the S$1.50/piece charge applied. Uh oh.

The next best thing to do was to minimise the damage - but not by eating (cos I couldn't eat anymore - not with pieces of half-digested fish threatening to come back up my throat!) I'm not proud to say this, but I found the bowl of fried rice very useful for hiding pieces of sushi under. And the remains of the broccoli skewer found a new home in the bowl of vegetables while the leftover chicken pieces gravitated towards the noodle bowl. Dan, however, was an honourable being and made a highly commendable effort to put away the food with his mouth. Unlike his wife who was guilty of fervently stabbing at her food to make it all fit into the rice/veg/noodle bowls.

We finally admitted defeat when the restaurant closed it doors and all the staff were waiting for us to finish eating so that they could go home. We felt like criminals for wasting all that food.

And so, that brain-numbing eating ordeal meal put our pre-Christmas feasting to an end. We repented greatly by surviving on instant noodles and airline food (not that there was any served on American Airlines at all. Lousy airline!) till the after Boxing Day, where we restarted our feasting machinery with pancakes at IHOP and kept it well-oiled with pints of creamy Ben & Jerry's!

But no, no sushi for us for awhile. Ugh.

Capoeira by the Beach

At one end of Ipanema beach is a rocky outcrop which we (not the Brazilians) call The Rocky Outcrop.

We climbed TRO one fine sunny day, hoping to get a good view of the seals along Ipanema. Unfortunately, we only managed to get pictures of people who look like seals from afar. Good enough, I guess.

Better enjoy this beach before 12 December 2012! :)

But the bonus was, we stumbled upon a crew filming a foursome atop TRO. Took a video of the foursome, edited it, and now, uploaded it for your viewing pleasure! :)



It's amazing how these guys were so smooth and slow and sure in their movements. Interestingly enough, they were so good that we abandoned our plans to take up capoeira while in Rio de Janeiro. Simply because we only had time for one lesson, and it seemed wasteful to pay money just to learn the basic steps with no follow up lessons, knowing for sure, that we would be at nowhere near this level when we're done.

As the wife says, "I can't even do a handstand!"