Six months in –you know it had to happen - Greg falls victim to street crime.

Yep we all knew it would eventually happen, unfortunately i never imagined it would happen quite like this…..

You see rather than being violently assaulted by some gun toting maniac, Greg was back in London arranging shipping of the last bits of our belongings over here to Sao Paulo!!!

He was staying near Clapham Common with Carey and Lou (thanks dudes!) when some dodgy crack head swindled him out of his pocket change using the age old trick of asking for change for the phone.

Though he only got away with about five pounds (and Greg feeling more than a little embarrased), the irony of being “robbed” in London after travelling around South America and living in Sao Paulo for six months was certainly pretty funny!

Though the statistical chances of being a victim of crime are definitely higher in Brazil, that’s possibly not the whole story. For example according to Wikipedia (the Brazilian government doesn’t release crime statistics) last year Brazil had 24 murders per 100,000 residents, New Zealand had 1.2 murders per 100,000 people, Australia 1.53 and the UK 2.03. So there is no doubt that there is more crime in Brazil, but i don’t think that its spread as equally across the community in Brazil as it is at home.

In Brazil from what we have picked up from watching TV and in the print media the majority of crime happens in the poorest parts of the country. The slums/favelas that surround most of the cities in Brazil are effectively un-policed, a combination of local gang control, police corruption and a simple lack of police resources means that the poorest people in Brazil have no real recourse to legal protection.

It is interesting to note that New Zealand has one of the highest numbers of reported crimes of any country in the world. Kiwis reported 12,000 crimes per 100,000 people according to the latest statistics on maps of the world coming in third after Iceland and Sweden.

Possibly due to a lack of faith in the police forces of Brazil and the fact that crime statistics are rarely if ever reported one Brazilian professor has created a website allowing people to record details of the crimes they have fallen victim too, you can see these anecdotal crimes here on wiki crimes.

So we are glad to say Greg is now safely back in Sao Paulo!

all quiet on the western front….

Hey folks,

I know its been a while, but things are a bit quiet here in sunny Sao Paulo at the moment. Winter has set in - sometmes it barely gets to 20 degrees during the day - but we are just surviving.

Our initial six months in SP is almost up, but we are having so much fun in Brasil we have decided to extend for another year or two (but really anymore than a year is virtually forever right)!!

So we are going through the process of getting properly set up, finding a bigger apartment (with room for visitors), shipping all of our stuff over from england, buying a car, getting our portuguese up to scratch and getting Greg a real job.

Unfortunately all of this stuff (as well as Greg trying to get his book finished) means that theres not many adventures going on at the moment, so please bear with us..

The good news is that as we are staying longer, you now have another great reason to come and visit us in sunny Sao Paulo!!!

Also from November Qantas are going to start offering direct flights from Sydney to Buenos Aires - which is only three hours from Sao Paulo, aparently they offer cheap flights initially to get deman up - so start booking folks!

So watch this space, we will put up some information on our house hunting adventures as there is lots of people searching for information on setting up house in Sao Paulo. In the meantime i would suggest looking on http://www.gringoes.com/forum/default.asp where there is lots of good information on living in Brasil and Sao Paulo.

Hope all is well with you all!

Have fun

greg and cath

An adventures blog with no adventures…

So Craig and Janine have gone back to London, Easter has come and gone and we are now back in Sao Paulo with no more holidays planned in the near future… this doesn’t bode well for excitement and adventure now does it?

So I am not sure what I am going to fill the pages of our blog with except for the not so exciting stories of our day to day life in Sao Paulo. So here goes….

Today I did some washing, flooded the laundry, and well, um, er… no this probably isn’t going to work is it….

I promise I will be back tomorrow with something exciting to say…

I am of course open to any suggestions….

Till then see ya!

g

Beijing 2008 Torch Relay Truth

Beijing 2008 Torch Relay Truth

the inside scoop…

Well here goes, my first attempt at blogging… unfortunately I don’t have the literary prowess or humour of my husband, so instead I will stick to the serious stuff.

As you all may have heard by now, Venezuela and Equador have sent troops to the border of Colombia. These news story may not have had too much meaning for me a few months ago, but as we had visited Colombia and Venezuela just a week ago, there was a special significance for us.

My impressions of Colombia and specifically Bogota were very positive. Each person that we spoke to during our visit was optimistic, proud of its government actions in responding to FARC, improving education, and building infrastructure in Bogota. The city was clean, working toward building public transport, improving security, yet there was an overhang of fear generated by what FARC may do. By all accounts, FARC started off 50 years ago as an organisation committed to a socialist agenda, but it appears to have lost its way.

Instead it has become an organisation built on drug money, bombings and kidnaps. A true “terrorist” organisation, as opposed to the oft quoted American definition of “terrorism” which somehow always relates to oil supply. FARC continues to torment the Colombian citizens as they try earnestly to improve their standard of living. Colombia has a democratically elected government that is attempting to stabilise the country. Governments before had taken the softly, softly approach to FARC but to no avail. So this government decided to bravely take the tough stance and eliminate them.

You would think that neighbouring countries may indeed support the efforts of a government in this situation. Alas, this is not the case. It appears Mr Chavez has a wider agenda. To see Caracas as it currently is, is a tragedy. Litter, crime, graffiti, abandoned houses and people struggling without supplies such as milk, sugar, and a currency that deteriorates daily … They have a president who EACH day talks randomly for up to 5 hours live on radio and TV stations. When oil is at its highest ever price, it appears there is no public investment of these monies. Instead, he is only interested in becoming the next Latin American Bolivar. He gives money to Equador, Argentina and other Latin American nations to buy their servitude… and in turn, to serve his own power hungry ambitions.

I truly hope that Colombia has the will power to ignore these taunts from Venezuela and that other Latin American nations do not fall fecklessly to the offerings of Chavez. It is a continent made up of many great nations, with huge potential, I sincerely hope this is not the start of something that can only end in tragedy.

Bro finally gets a chance to update his blog..

Gregs brother Joel has done his first update on his trip driving from Chennai to London on his blog for those who have been eagerly awaiting it:

http://blog.ithoughtyouhadthemap.com/

At last report he was alive and well in Lahore, Pakistan.

off for work again..

That’s right folks we are off tomorrow for another of Caths work trips. Our itinerary is as follows:

29th - 5th Mexico City

6th - 7th Lima

8th Nazca Lines

9th -11th Santiago

12th - 16th Buenos Aires

17th first visitors arrive yahhhhhhhhhhhhh!

So our well travelled friends and family, if you have any top tips of places to see, eat or drink in any of these locations, please let us know!

have fun y’all!

Greg and Cath finally get a home phone number..

Hey dudes and dudettes,

Thanks to magic of skype, we now have a home phone number you can call us on that will reach us wherever we are in the world.

The phone number is based in Australia, so basically you call it and pay for a phone call to Oz, Skype then redirects it (at no cost to you) to our laptop where if we are online we can pick it up like a normal call, or if we are offline, you can leave a voice mail and we will ring you back.

The number is +61 (07) 3103 2028 or if you are already skyping then you can catch us online as gregandcath.

Hope all is well in whatever country of the world you are in looking forward to hearing from you all!

g n c

damn it, have to take another work trip…

So we are off tomorrow on a one week work trip - Caths work, my shirk, we are in Bogota, Colombia for Saturday - Wednesday, then Caracas, Venezuela for the rest of the week. Then hoping to have an overnight trip to one of Venezuela’s many Caribbean islands for the weekend. Then back in SP for work/shirk monday morning.

I know its a tough life, but someone has to do it.

We don’t know much about our destinations except Bogota is the safer of the two cities - apparently thanks to a very progressive tax regime - whereby you can specify what you would like your tax dollars to be spent on, Bogota has undergone a massive renovation of the last couple of years and is now one of South Americas most livable cities. It sounds like Caracas and the whole of Venezuala under the control of the ever entertaining Mr Chavez has gone in the other direction and the economy is in something of a melt down…

So it sounds like fun. More news from the road - if we can get on the net!

Have a fun weekend

g

The honeymoon is over….. Gregs first day at work..

We all knew it had to end some time, but this morning at 9am (ok really it was 9:17 - but whose checking)? Greg went to work, ok in reality it just meant walking from the lounge to the dining table, but after over two months off work – these few feet were very hard steps to take.

So I am now officially writing a book – 350 pages on the exciting topic of SAP Human Resources to write, delivery deadline of 15 July – by my rough calculations that means I have to produce 15 pages (about 7600 words) a week on SAP HR every week until 15^th July in order to met the publishers deadlines.

Shit!!!!!

So if you have any spare words please send them my way!

Over and out

Greg