Our last day in Porto Alegre, a bunch of us went to the open-air market at Brique da Redençao, which runs every Sunday from 9 or 10 am. The official booths even take Visa, though you have to go to one of a handful of special stands to use it, and ONLY Visa is accepted (this is true of many places in Brazil, as we had found).
It’s a combination of artisans’ fair and flea market, with some very interesting things. I bought a mate cup (cuia), a little wooden carving of a jaguar, a stunning jasper necklace, and something very special for my daughter – all of which got me grief upon arrival in Australia (they’re very strict about quarantining wood and animal products, to protect their fragile ecosystem). But nothing has been confiscated. Yet.
The night of June 25th, Bruno took Teresa, Lynn, and me to see O Teatro Magico, a cross between a band and Cirque du Soleil. They were one of many groups in town for FISL because they release their music under a creative commons license – you can download it here.
As you can see in the above clip, there was plenty going on. Our toes kept tapping and our bodies swaying, although we’d already been on our feet most of the day working the Sun booth (my legs were very, very sore the next day).
^ me with my Shamu hat, in the distance is Whale Island in New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty
Web 2.0 sure is useful for our far-flung network of Woodstock alumni. Jigme just wrote me on FB that he arrived in Wellington last night #
last day of seminars in Wellington – two hours of conversation with a core group of interesting people #extconv – glad to have met you all! #
relieved to see that Brisbane will be warmer than NZ, and San Jose warmer still. My body wants the warm! #
@Britopian What a ridiculous, hysterical article. Most child molestation is done by someone who already knows the child in real life. in reply to Britopian#
:|: zoomata :|: » Blog Archive » Italy’s “Brain Drain†Becomes Big-Screen Drama http://bit.ly/bhZUb#
NZ’s metered bandwidth completely sucks. the families I’m staying with both run out mid-month, then access is dial-up speed for rest of mo. #
No water in the house this morning due to broken pipe on the street. Hope to get a shower by noon. Apparently it’s time for me to leave NZ. #
@ben and you put up with it?!? (bandwidth metering) It takes only one provider to decide otherwise – they’ll own the market. in reply to ben#
@rafmanji @ben Even Italy does better than this – on Lake Como I get 7 mbps down, 2 mbps up, unlimited, for about 40 euros a month in reply to rafmanji#
RT @BigAdmn: Free training for Solaris sysadmins: new advanced modules on backups, restores, UFS and ZFS. http://www.sun.com/training/solc/#
Fate is playing 52-pickup with my life, and I’m still watching to see where all the cards will fall. So I’m not playing with a full deck. #
@bklein34 thanks. I try to stay on the laughing side, but some days it’s harder than others. That’s why I travel so hard. in reply to bklein34#
Another group activity in Porto Alegre was an evening of cachaça tasting at Ãgua Doce. Brazil’s national drink is made from distilled sugar cane juice, but beyond that there’s plenty of scope for variety in distilling and aging methods and flavor additions.
Some of us tried a few during dinner; I especially liked a coconut-flavored one that Eduardo got. Then we had an official tasting of five different types (aged in oak, aged in cherry, “plain” as used for mixing caipirinhas…). Most of us bought a bottle or two to take home, my choice was a sweetish liqueur version.
