Oi!
Abril is one of the biggest publishing houses in Brazil. Their magazine circulations are averaged at about 200 000 copies per month per title! One title, Veja, sells over a million copies per week. If a mag sells about 50 000 copies a month, it doesn´t look good, but they give magazines about two years to break even and then close it down if it doesn´t perform.
The people working at Abril are all very young. Some of them look as if they should still be in high school. Also, they must start working at a very young age because they all seem to be with the company for over 10 years – at least most of the people we´ve met. Dress code is smart casual to the office. The offices itself are a bit like newsrooms – our offices are fancier.
The Abril staff are very big on saving electricity. When you go to the bathroom, you´ll find the lights off and you have to put it on and then put it off again when you leave. And they all brush their teeth after lunch!!! They have little bags with their toothbrushes, toothpaste and floss and they queue to brush their teeth. I think it´s because they kiss such a lot when greeting.
The CEO gets escorted by bodyguards! They look like a secret-service agents complete with earphones. I asked if there had been an attempt on his life because of all the security but they said no that’s just how they roll here in Brazil! The CEO also hardly has meals at home. He goes out every night for supper for a three-course meal at one of the most expensive hotels or restaurants.
The women here hardly wear any make-up, but they don’t need to –they are naturally beautiful and stunning! And so SKINNY and short – about 155cm average. We asked the director of the weeklies (mags like YOU etc) if their ´before and after´ real weightloss stories are indeed ´real´ because we haven’t seen any really overweight people here in Brazil. They speak minimal English but we manage to understand each other.
One thing I must say – we complain about service delivery in SA, but take a walk outside of our country and you realize we have it good. Here everyone tell you they´ll get to you in ´ten minutes´ but that can mean an hour or so. And the cashiers take their own sweet time and queues are horrendous. These are the slowest queues I´ve ever been in.
Brazilians speak Portuguese. The currency is Reals (R$) and its about R4,50 to the Rand. Eg for $100 you get approximately R$164. Brazil has the largest Japanese population outside Japan and about 1 million Italians living here. We still have to locate the places to buy leather bags and shoes for ´cheap´. In Morumbi mall, every second store is a shoe shop with the most beautiful shoes ever, but a bit too expensive for our pockets. We´ve had good coffee at Abril, but we still need to find the supermarkets where we can buy really nice coffee to take home. We´re all hoping that Rio will be a better option to shop than Sao Paolo. ´(btw – the locals here pronounce is ´Sun´ Paolo). The weather here is similar to Cape Town in that you can have about 4 seasons in one day. At night the temperature is about 22 – 28 degrees and then during the day about 32 – 35 degrees. At 3-6pm it rains with lighting and then about 7pm clears up and gets extremely hot. If there is wind it’s a hot wind.
I need an iPad! I want an iPad! I was going to wait till version 2 came out, but think I have to get one soon – would´ve been so convenient to have one. Those of us who don´t have iPads or laptops have to share one PC, set up in English, but internet connectivity is a problem. When you get internet its super fast but then it goes down and takes hours to go back up again. On the other hand we don´t really have spare time to be surfing the net because our schedule is jam-packed. I have quite a few pages of notes that I still need to type out while its still fresh in my head.
On Wednesday night we went to Rua Sao Cristavo – it’s a kind of a ´Long Street´- but way cooler! Rua Sao Cristavo is situated in what you’d consider more of an affluent area – kind of like Bergvliet / Constantia but not snobbish. There were better looking houses but still not as beautiful as houses you’d find in our suburbs. We went to 533 Sao Cristavo (a small bar) and I attempted to drink a cocktail that tasted like pure rum / tequila and I have no idea to pronounce it. I managed two sips and then gave it a miss and rather had mojitos. The little bar we were in was awesome. It had pictures in frames in all sizes of soccer images from photos, magazine features and newspaper clippings of the last 100 years. It also had framed soccer jerseys signed by soccer greats like Pele. I was told that what happens in Brazil stays in Brazil so that´s the end of what happened at 533.
Then we took a walk down the rest of the street and it had lots of restaurants / bars type of places – all of them small and heavily crowded. What differs from Long Street is that none of these clubs played music. The noise came from everyone talking. We really enjoyed it – no music blaring – so you could have a good conversation. Because it was so hot the locals all had on shorts – the less clothes the better. People who go to Long Street are often more dressed up – but here it’s very casual.
The last bar we were at was so packed that we had to have our drinks on the pavement – but most of the bars are like that – and what they do is – if you don’t have a table they bring your beers in a big silver bucket filled with ice. (kind of like at shebeens at SA except instead of a ’kus’you get a silver bucket – I took a pic – so will load as soon as I can – that’s just how they roll here! Despite the bars being so full, you don’t get people shoving you around to get past – they are very polite and will ask you to move. One of Brazil’s staff, Ishmail, was our tour guide for the evening. He was in SA for the World Cup. He said Capetonians were good at ‘organizing’ things and that they don’t have such a word here when we say ‘we’ll organize for you’. He definitely wants to come back to SA especially Cape Town. He said he found the people of SA very friendly and that when he came back he missed hearing ‘howzit’. It was a really fun evening with Ishmail, we only got back to our hotel early hours of the morning.
On Thursday, the work day at Brazil seemed very long despite us only starting at 11h30 and finishing at 6pm (and a 2 hour lunch) because we were tired from the night before. So Thursday night we just had a light supper at the hotel bar and then had a early night. After spending a week at Abril I have to say my experience was WOW!!!! These people PUBLISH magazines in capital letters –their circulation, ad revenue and website traffic are unimaginable!! One of their websites, a teenage mag, gets about 70 MILLION page views a month!!!! And one thing I will never forget is ‘Veja is Veja’- will explain when I get back.
We’re leaving for Rio in about half hour – its now 11h30 AM on Friday morning. Brazil is just over 4 hours behind South Africa. Apparently it was 40 degrees in Rio yesterday – and we are very excited to go there because we hear it is very similar to Cape Town. We will be staying at Sol Ipanema which is just across the road from Ipanema Beach.
Am missing you all – hope you’re all keeping well! Will try to mail from Rio. Just two days to go before Bradley arrives – can’t wait!!!
Chat soon!
