Greetings from the education factory.
Fortunately the machine has not yet killed me.
Much apologies for all my adoring fans who are oh-so upset at my empty promises of Brasil pictures.
I must admit that Facebook has stolen what little bit of free time that I have and now my poor little blog has been forsaken. Lucky for you all I have my first big presentation tomorrow and am in need of some delicious distraction. I benefit, you benefit Voila! All is calm in the universe and you get to see some more pics. I also get to elaborate on all those little nuggets of info I teased you with about my travels.
The above picture has been inspired by my friend Ben's trip to China. He came back from his travels with many a picture of the Great Wall....he had a similar ly enlightening photographic experience.
I ripped the above picture off a Rio tourism site on the internet. Wow doesn't it look clear and crisp, a virtual piece of heaven if I do say so myself. Who wouldn't want to go when it looks like that! Well just hold your britches ladies and gents, below is a picture I took of almost the exact same scene, just a bit off to one side. Notice any difference?
Did you spot the difference? If you didn't please concentrate on the slick of brown haze gently caressing the horizon. Yum! Those tourism sites are thanking their lucky stars for Photoshop, that's I all I can say about that! What you also can't see from this photo is that the Rio airport is in between those two big mountains and big jet airliners fly in between them at shockingly low heights and spew jet exhaust all over the place.
Here's me and Luciano romantically looking over the smog haze. That's right people, nothing says loving like smog! This picture is pretty funny because we gave my camera to this kooky Chinese man to take our picture and then all of a sudden out of nowhere all these other Chinese tourists came with their own cameras and starting snapping our picture feverishly. I have no idea why but I am happy to know that my beautiful mug is being passed around the last great bastion of communist delight...well besides Cuba that is.
Ahh yes, what trip to Brasil is complete without a visit to the big man upstairs himself. Just after I got home Christ the Redeemer was named one of the new 7 wonders of the world. Just between you and me, it's not that wondrous. It's actually quite small. But Brasilians are really freaking proud of it so whatever you do don't diss the big man. The funny thing about the whole "new 7 wonders" thing is that it was decided through an internet vote that was open to the public. Everywhere you went in Brasil there were huge billboards begging people to vote for the Redeemer, there were TV commercials, adds on buses and train stations, adds on the radio and in the supermarkets and newspapers. Everywhere you went they were begging for the people of Brasil to put their mark on the map. I guess it worked. But like I said before...just between you and me, he ain't that spectacular.
Another interesting thing about him is that even though he's on the top of the highest peak in Rio (enough to shower his holy love over every impoverished favela resident in the city) , Brasilian's aversion to all things walking and climbing has made them invest in elevators, and escalators up to the very top platform of the mountain. You do not need to take a single step.
"Oh honey, Brasil no like shitty walking....Canada people make so crazy all their walking to every place"
Out of the mouth of a master of "honey...no more walking, I soon die".
I'll whip him into shape yet!
Ah yes, the requisite self-portrait that makes the taker of the photo look like they have a goiter growing under their chin. On a positive note, I don't look too bad! Too bad we managed to chop off the big dude's head.
I like this pic because
1) there's no smog
2) I have a slightly "what the hell are you looking at?" look on my face
3) How many times do you get a picture of your head hovering over a tropical horse racing track...no too often.
With that we will leave Rio to live out its days in smoggy loveliness until my next trip down to samba land.
Now it's time to unravel some of those mysterious "things to come" morsels I left you so long ago.
I am copying this straight from my July 14 posting...let's adventuring into the not so distant past shall we?
The Princess wrote on July 14th 2007:
Highlights to include:
1) "snob" brand toilet paper...this is the Purex of Brasil. No joke. Nothing says softness like "snob"!
2) "blowtex" brand condoms. The minute I saw them I burst out laughing. Luciano could not figure out why I thought they were so funny. This of course led to a rather interesting conversation about why it was so darn hilarious which then ended with me having to try to explain why we call it a blowjob when there is no blowing involved. I could not come up with a good answer so I fell back on that old teaching English in Japan standard "uh, just because".
Well ladies and gents, that was fairly epic. More to come I promise. I have Sunday off, perhaps I will find time to entertain you with my fanciful mental meandering, perhaps I won't. Ooooh! The suspense!
Cheers from the procrastination station
J
P.S if you want something darn rooting-tooting to look at check out this site it's pretty neato
http://play.blogger.com/
It automatically streams all the pictures that are being uploaded to all the blogspot pages at that very moment. Pretty interesting to look at.
Fortunately the machine has not yet killed me.
Much apologies for all my adoring fans who are oh-so upset at my empty promises of Brasil pictures.
I must admit that Facebook has stolen what little bit of free time that I have and now my poor little blog has been forsaken. Lucky for you all I have my first big presentation tomorrow and am in need of some delicious distraction. I benefit, you benefit Voila! All is calm in the universe and you get to see some more pics. I also get to elaborate on all those little nuggets of info I teased you with about my travels.
The above picture has been inspired by my friend Ben's trip to China. He came back from his travels with many a picture of the Great Wall....he had a similar ly enlightening photographic experience.
I ripped the above picture off a Rio tourism site on the internet. Wow doesn't it look clear and crisp, a virtual piece of heaven if I do say so myself. Who wouldn't want to go when it looks like that! Well just hold your britches ladies and gents, below is a picture I took of almost the exact same scene, just a bit off to one side. Notice any difference?
Did you spot the difference? If you didn't please concentrate on the slick of brown haze gently caressing the horizon. Yum! Those tourism sites are thanking their lucky stars for Photoshop, that's I all I can say about that! What you also can't see from this photo is that the Rio airport is in between those two big mountains and big jet airliners fly in between them at shockingly low heights and spew jet exhaust all over the place.
Here's me and Luciano romantically looking over the smog haze. That's right people, nothing says loving like smog! This picture is pretty funny because we gave my camera to this kooky Chinese man to take our picture and then all of a sudden out of nowhere all these other Chinese tourists came with their own cameras and starting snapping our picture feverishly. I have no idea why but I am happy to know that my beautiful mug is being passed around the last great bastion of communist delight...well besides Cuba that is.
Ahh yes, what trip to Brasil is complete without a visit to the big man upstairs himself. Just after I got home Christ the Redeemer was named one of the new 7 wonders of the world. Just between you and me, it's not that wondrous. It's actually quite small. But Brasilians are really freaking proud of it so whatever you do don't diss the big man. The funny thing about the whole "new 7 wonders" thing is that it was decided through an internet vote that was open to the public. Everywhere you went in Brasil there were huge billboards begging people to vote for the Redeemer, there were TV commercials, adds on buses and train stations, adds on the radio and in the supermarkets and newspapers. Everywhere you went they were begging for the people of Brasil to put their mark on the map. I guess it worked. But like I said before...just between you and me, he ain't that spectacular.
Another interesting thing about him is that even though he's on the top of the highest peak in Rio (enough to shower his holy love over every impoverished favela resident in the city) , Brasilian's aversion to all things walking and climbing has made them invest in elevators, and escalators up to the very top platform of the mountain. You do not need to take a single step.
"Oh honey, Brasil no like shitty walking....Canada people make so crazy all their walking to every place"
Out of the mouth of a master of "honey...no more walking, I soon die".
I'll whip him into shape yet!
Ah yes, the requisite self-portrait that makes the taker of the photo look like they have a goiter growing under their chin. On a positive note, I don't look too bad! Too bad we managed to chop off the big dude's head. 
I like this pic because
1) there's no smog
2) I have a slightly "what the hell are you looking at?" look on my face
3) How many times do you get a picture of your head hovering over a tropical horse racing track...no too often.
With that we will leave Rio to live out its days in smoggy loveliness until my next trip down to samba land.
Now it's time to unravel some of those mysterious "things to come" morsels I left you so long ago.
I am copying this straight from my July 14 posting...let's adventuring into the not so distant past shall we?
The Princess wrote on July 14th 2007:
Highlights to include:
- Brasilian bio-tour
- lost in translation
1) "snob" brand toilet paper...this is the Purex of Brasil. No joke. Nothing says softness like "snob"!
2) "blowtex" brand condoms. The minute I saw them I burst out laughing. Luciano could not figure out why I thought they were so funny. This of course led to a rather interesting conversation about why it was so darn hilarious which then ended with me having to try to explain why we call it a blowjob when there is no blowing involved. I could not come up with a good answer so I fell back on that old teaching English in Japan standard "uh, just because".
- Brasilian doctors
- Rio
- the Future
- the past
- the present
- UBC
- and pics pics pics
- My Facebook addiction
Well ladies and gents, that was fairly epic. More to come I promise. I have Sunday off, perhaps I will find time to entertain you with my fanciful mental meandering, perhaps I won't. Ooooh! The suspense!
Cheers from the procrastination station
J
P.S if you want something darn rooting-tooting to look at check out this site it's pretty neato
http://play.blogger.com/
It automatically streams all the pictures that are being uploaded to all the blogspot pages at that very moment. Pretty interesting to look at.
1 Comments:
nice pics! nice entertaining update. are you getting your teaching credentials? i must email you...jenni g. and ruth have invited me onto facebook, but i have yet to jump on the bandwagon. i know grace is into it too. maybe i should succumb to the dark lord...
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