No superheroes here

Pronunciation: e is pronouned as AY as in say without the y sound, or as i in sit, dd as the American pronunciation of the t in city or the dd in daddy. Yes, that’s true; we have no superheroes in Brazil. The closest thing we have to a superhero is Mônica’s gang. If you [...]

License to procreate

Let me tell you a little story about a guy in São Paulo who lives in my neighborhood and is a true stud, at least if you are talking about the past, when men were used as reproducers. Today, he is an irresponsible procreator. Just imagine, he has 4 kids with one woman and 3 [...]

Bolsa familia and its unexpected results

One of the good effects of Bolsa Familia (BOAsa fumMEElia),  besides helping the poor, was to get the impoverished in big cities like São Paulo to go back to their places of origin, and keep people in the disadvantaged regions from coming to São Paulo. Immigration is good, it can bring plenty of diversity and [...]

Women in Brazil Beware!

“In Brazil a woman gets hit or beaten up every 15 seconds. As long as the hitting or beating up takes places at home, people think it is not that serious.” Those are the words of a beautiful judge, Vanessa Ribeiro Mateus, who just took office as head of Sao Paulo State’s judicial branch in [...]

A unique “Cachorro Louco” in Brazil

A cachorro louco, rabid dog, is a motoboy (mOHtoboy) in Brazil. The word motoboy comes from moto(mAWtoo), a colloquial word for motorcycle, and boy, from office boy. Motoboys are lightly or gravely injured or die every day in the city I live in, São Paulo. They die so often their deaths are not even newsworthy [...]