I am in Rio right now, which is anything else than a shrinking city. I have no figures ready but i guess there is a table which shows Rio’s growth in the last decades somewhere in Mike Davis’ excellent ‘Planet of Slums‘ which i finished reading just before coming here.

Now the lonely planet for Rio mentions that in Rio gas stations are one of the favorite places for party-goers to hang out as they sell beer all-through the night. This particular bit of travelers advice reminded me of one of the posters for the shrinking cities exhibition in Berlin a while back which showed an gas station that apparently served as the hang-out place for youngsters, supposedly because gas stations are the most exciting places to hang out in shrinking cities or something like this (I can’t find a single copy of the poster/image on the entire internets, but my sister has one hanging in her kitchen so go there if you do not know what i am talking about…).

Anyway, being in Rio we were of course looking for nocturnal excitement ourselves and the most exciting thing in town these days when it comes to going out are funk balls. The guardian has a fascinating article about the whole baile funk thing online (o.k. – if it has been in Guardian it is probably not the most exciting thing anymore for the locals but the whole thing still sounds quite exciting for visiting white boys). The only problem is that these funk balls take place in the Favelas and it does not seem like a good idea to venture out there in the middle of the night when you are drunk. However at some point we found some brazilians who had the same urge and took off to a ball in two cabs.

Of course being all slightly tipsy we did not really notice that it was 3A.M. and when we finally arrived at the venue the party was over and we did not get to dance at all (it was sunday night hence the early end). Instead we got some more drugs and gave some money to the 12 year old begging kid in an Osama bin Laden t-shirt (pictures of more OBL t-shirts here, here and here) and then descended from the hill to hang out at the gas station in shrinking city style:

p.s: Good thing to know that the USAF is giving $450K for ‘Automated Ontologically-Based Link Analysis of International Web Logs for the Timely Discovery of Relevant and Credible Information‘ – i wish them good luck making sense out of this post…

This time in Rio de Janeiro but as much connected to football (or ‘futchibol’ – as the locals pronounce it, but the also call Michael Ballack ‘Ballaki’) as last time. Brazil just lots the quarter final match against france and that led to an atmosphere of intense sadness in the streets (against the backdrop of lots of firecrackers exploding in the streets but i guess these have to be used anyway). People are crying, some of them are dancing and i have seen the first Portuguese flags hanging out of windows.

What a contrast to the last game when the city erupted into a spontaneous party after the win over Ghana, which even made people miss flights and will be remembered for some time. Also at some point during that party i discovered that the Cariocas have much more style when it comes to pissoirs than the dutch:

Anyway the world-cup just downgraded itself to a euro-cup. I really wish the argentinians would still be in, they did not deserve to loose.

One of the strange things here at the iSummit 2006 in Rio de Janeiro are the excessive amounts of hotel staff that seem to have no other function than to stand around and smile. seems like that after 2 days of conference somebody finally found something more useful for them to do and made them attach ‘a2k – make it happen’ stickers to their dresses:

Aren’t they looking absolutely fabulous like this?

Ok, cant go on being abusive of other people her like in the last couple of posts. does not really add too much to the whole and apparently it will be held against me by some prospective employer in the future anyway. Speaking about employment: it is no secret that the dutch economy (especially the construction, cleaning and agricultural sectors employ a huge number of (temporary) workers from Poland and other Eastern European countries (ironically germany seems to become an Eastern European country as well at least in this aspect if one is to believe the mdr (google cache).

Many of these migrants combine working in the the Netherlands (or western Europe for that matter) with living in Poland. these pendular migration strategies are made possible by the vastly improved transportation facilities between the east and the west. When reading about ‘improved transprotation’ images of high speed trains and low cost airlines come to mind, but these migration patterns seem to fundamentally rely on a parallel transportation infrastrcuture:

In my thesis i had already mentioned this parallel infrastructure (without giving much thought to it then):

A trip from Perlejewo to Brussels and back costs approximately 80 dollars, and the increased competition among coach companies is reducing the cost of such fares even more. The trip lasts approximately 24 hours, and there are even ‘door to door’ transport services. (Frejka et al. as cited on p. 53)

Last weekend i drove back from Berlin to Amsterdam relatively early on Sunday morning, and this provided me with an opportunity to see these transport services in action. A significant amount of the cars traveling west on the A2 were minibuses registered in Poland (and either displaying signs of polish tour operators or even more tellingly of Dutch temporary work agencies). Some of them traveling alone some of them traveling in convoys of 3 or 4 vehicles. in total i think i saw at least 60 or so of these vehicles of more than 40 companies, which as we are traveling at at approximately the same speed most likely is only a small share of the total traffic on that day. That translates into a lot of people commuting from Poland to work in NL on that Sunday.

In the last 3 years i have travelled a lot between Berlin and Amsterdam, but almost exclusively by train and while the direct trains from Berlin to Amsterdam originate in poland i have never really noticed polish workers using the train to commute to Holland. This is probably due to the exorbitant prices of railway tickets nowadays (a standard return ticket berlin amsterdam is €184) but having seen these minibuses in action there is obviously another advantage to them. most of them were traveling at 140KM/h or more and if one combines this with the fact that these buses seem to offer door to door services, this probably translates into enormous time savings especially when one assumes that most of the trips taken by these pendular migrants are from small rural places to small rural places (which tend to have lousy public transport connectivity). In any case i was quite impressed by this almost hidden, highly flexible parallel transport infrastructure.

Looks like the football world cup has begun today. Unfortunately i am traveling to berlin on this very same day (by train via Arnhem/Duesseldorf), which means that you have to share the slightly overcrowded train with about 300 english football supporters and lots of bottles of more or less warm beer (i never loved my sound-canceling headphones more). However it also means that the authorities are freaking out in the name of security and decide to stop the train at the border station (where it usually does not stop) in order to let a posse of badly dressed, short-haired idiots wearing reflective vests on board of the train to check everybody’s passport.

Now everyone including the train staff assumed they would board the train and then do the checking while the train is moving. Instead the well-dressed gentlemen who was in charge of the whole operation had the brilliant idea to stop the train for the entire duration of the operation.

When asked them if he thought that this was a good idea his even less intelligent sidekick (with a much bette taste in facial hairdo though) told us that the stop was not related to their activities, but due to the trains engine having to be changed at the border. Now this is the biggest bullshit i have heard in a long time as there was (a) no stop scheduled and (b) the ICE3 does not even have a separate engine but rather a number of electrical motors under all the carriages. He also told us ‘to shut up as it was none of our businesses’

Now, to make matters worse, the 20-or-so cops decided that it was most efficient if they would walk through the entire train in one big group instead of splitting up in smaller groups. the result: the aisle clotted by a slowly moving mass of cops who were permanently bumping into each other (i guess that is why they were wearing kevlar vests) and stepped on each others feet while shouting personal data of everyone looking remotely British or non-european into their mobile phones.

All in all this truly impressive display of collective intelligence took more than 30 minutes. No terrorists where apprehended, the English supporters got their first good laugh at the German police and everybody missed their connections (which on a Friday afternoon is a bit of a pain in the neck).

Also shortly before Duisburg the bar ran out of beer which is a bit embarrassing as the Deutsche Bahn is one of the main sponsors o the wold cup and has been running ads depicting happy supporters on trains for quite awhile now. Somebody at market research should have told them that happy football supporters consume more beer than average train passengers.

Went back to the indian DVD and CD sellers at the end of the amsterdamse poort shopping complex in Amsterdam southeast today. Looks like as if they have scaled back their DVD selling operations a bit (their Bollywood DVD’s still sell for unbeatable €2.50 each though). The stall also sells CDs with hindi film songs and all kinds of Caribbean, Urban and African styles even though the CD selling business ‘is not what it used to be before everybody started downloading the tunes’ (according to the owner). Despite the rampant downloading of our times you can still get your CD’s the old fashioned way and some of them have really interesting copyright notices:

in english this translates as: ‘The sale of illegal CD’s of Shifa Asgarali in Suriname is strongly prohibited. All rights of Asiactics Music & Movieworld also belong to Shifa Asgarali. Please don‘t download…. Our culture will be lost… ‘

Sounds to me as if the good Shifa Asgarali does not really care if his CD’s are pirated and sold outside of his native Suriname but the shopkeeper tells me that this is probably more an expression of naiveté . He thinks that Shifa Asgarali (who lives in NL) believes that people outside of Suriname still buy physical CDs which is obviously a bit of a outdated perception. According to the shopkeeper all CDs in suriname are unauthorized copies and as a result this note is a waste of cover space….

[no external keyboard so spelling is fucked up again] Am in Bruxelles for okno public1. It is cold and rainy as usually so people are freezing and are coming up with clever ways to keep their seats warm:

Or is this just an very effectie and selfish way of claiming a seat while you are ordering your next drink? [anyway it is good to see that my old powerbook is doing much better than the current one].

Yesterday the festival was much strange as the same building was also the host to a endless ascension service of 350 or-so enthusiastic African christians [apparently organized by an organization called ministry of spiritual combat]. For hours these poor souls listened to various men in shiny suits telling them all the inn’s and out’s about dirty thoughts, true belief and the virtues o self restraint. astonishingly these rather annoying messages caused great excitement among the audience which in turn expressed itself by loud chanting, wild dancing and blowing of fog horns. At some point shaina decided to investigate a bit more into the reasons foe their excitement and was told that the whole purpose of this ‘combat spiritual’ was to cleanse themselves of their sins much ‘like the hindus do when they take ritual baths in the ganges’.

At this point namita observed that the cleansed-out sins were probably ascending though the ceiling into and somehow transformed themselves into new media on the fourth floor of the building…

I have had my own share of mobile phone operatorsloosing it a bit when it comes to geography, but yesterdays fuck up by Monica’sprovider is equally noteworthy:

Yes that reads, ‘have a pleasant stay in Afghanistan’ which is especially noteworthy as she got that message when we were leaving the basement of the American Book Center in central Amsterdam.

My cuent tip to ancoue/san ancisco tuned into quite a compute nightmae. about two hous in the light om amstedam to ancoue i spilled ed wine oe my laptop (it was in the seat-pouch in ont o me and the wine went in quite elegantly ia the usb/iewie/netwok pots on the side o the laptop that was sticking out o the pouch. een i a m not stupid enough to wok on my laptop and dink wine at the same time while sitting in a cowded aiplane) so anyway the compute was dead i did not hae access to my pesentation (the whole eason o the tip) and the compute stayed dead een aet a 90 minute blow dye teatment once i had aied in ancoue. in act the compute stayed dead o 2 entie days and only stated poweing up on iday moning in san ancisco which caused me much happyness untill i typed the last lette o my passwod and discoeeed that the R key was not woking. niethe wee the 4, the F and the V, and no wee the USB pots so that i could not just plug in some USB keyboad. so what do you do in such a situation? apat om getting eally eally despeate?

you bette emembe that you hae a sepeate account o playing wold o wacat on you laptop which otunately has a passwod that does not inole any o the missing lettes. so again much happyness about haing a wokable compute in ont o you, but that still kept me away om my email account o my othe iles. so the next step was to go to the account peeences and change the passwod o the main account. this inoles typing the passwod o that account, but now that you ae inside the OS you can cut and paste missing lettes, ight? so cut an R, open the authentication dialogue box, type in the passwod minus the last lette and hit apple-V to paste but nothing happens, as you guessed it the V is among the keys that do not wok. no poblem though, why not use the menu ba instead? tuns out that access to the menu ba is disabled when a authentication dialogue box is open. the sult much unhapiness, bodeing on desperation :-/

now one o the ine things o OS X is that it is build on UNIX and the een bette thing is that you can alos change you acount passwods by using the temainal, swithcing to the desied use and execute the ‘passwd’ command. and the best thing? in the teminal you can use menu command including ‘cut’ and ‘paste’. so the passwod is changed, much happiness ensues and the day is saed. actually almost saed is moe pecise since (a) typing on a keyboad without 4, R, F and V is somewhat annoying, (b) in the meanwhile the compute got wam and stats to stink like glühwein and (c) the the passwd command does not aect the maste passwod o the keychain so i am still locked out o all my mail accounts and such things. last this is easyly esoled by deleting the deault keychain (much passwod typing joy ensues…) and the othe two issues i hae chosen to ignoe o the moment (hence the somwhat ucked up spelling in this post)

So everybody who knows me a bit will know that i am not particularly fond of all things white and liquid. basically i hate all white milk based products (except mozzarella cheese & ice cream) to the extend that i get physically sick just by being to cose to them or thinking about them. the stuff makes me literally shiver…

Now the dutch are particularily fond of milk! they seem to eat large amounts of cheese, produce one of the moost awful substances in the whole universe (‘vla’) and even think that it is ok to have a glass of milk for lunch (for adults!!). they seem to be so fond of all things milk that they commission art-works for public space that cherish diary products: on a playground along my route to work there is a giant milk-bottle sculpture. needless to say this thing used to give me the creeps every time i cycled past it. now some kind soul seems to have had mercy and has added a message that i can wholeheartedly support:

Still makes me wonder what the original sculpture was meant to say: kids in africa a worse off [ :( ]because they do not get a bottle of milk every day? and the dutch kids need to internalize this while enjoying themselves on the playground?