Homage to Brasília

Homage to This Guy

This guy is one of the drivers that works in the embassy motor pool. Sometime earlier this week, my friend and colleague David Mosby and I got to talking about him and his superhuman attitude. This man is a humble chauffer and he is always happy. There is no other person in the embassy more thrilled to be at work. I imagine that this guy opens his eyes in the morning and says to himself, "beleza." Then he goes to his window to look out at the morning and listens to the birds sing and says, "otimo." Then he makes his way to work and does his thing, all the time seeming like his heart is ready to burst with joy, simply because he's alive. I pay a solemn homage to this guy, he seems to know something that few others ever come close to understanding.

'Procuradoria Geral

Marcelo and I went out for lunch again yesterday. This time he took me to the crazy cool procurement building that I photographed for yesterday's entry and also back in July. Anyway, I got to see it up close and I was pretty impressed. The architecture is obviously very interesting, and Marcelo did a good job of articulating that the whole complex still looks more like a mock-up than a real building. It's the kind of thing that never actually gets built, but somehow managed to get built. Then again, almost all of Brasília is like that.

The complex is made up of two black glass drum-shaped buildings and a strange (is that redundant?) annex that houses the restaurant. Oh, and there's another little random round building thrown in there too. I love how the sunlight reflects off of its windows.

Anyway lunch was great. I sampled a few new wacky jungle fruit juices and the bus boys had mind-numbing b.o. Marcelo is a cool dude for sure. The world's a better place because of him.

I left the bike at work and went to dinner with a bunch of people to bid farewell to the great Jaime "Jaim-dogg the Crime-dogg" Ramirez. Ah! Good times. I've discovered a friend down here that I never would have expected. My boy Ron is, if I'm lucky, a version of me 15 years in the future. Every day we spend a few minutes stepping back from each other in surprise exclaiming "no way!" as we learn that we have some bizarre shared taste. First it was the Simpsons, then Radiohead, then writing and journalism, and now the list has grown to include a never ending list of obscure British psych-rock-pop-shoegazer bands from the past 25 years. It's uncanny. I rarely meet people who have heard of any of these bands, let alone people who admire them, and I don't think Ron does either. So that was great. He and I spent most of the night talking about music. Sheeoot!

Which brings me to a point. I had a great time last night, and I had a little epiphany that went like this: I was sitting in the restaurant feeling great, comfortable and happy. I felt like I was hanging out with my buddies from home when I looked around and realized that I was hanging out with a bunch of people that I would never have expected to hang with. I haven't seem my friends in months, but these guys managed to replace them perfectly well. It was unexpected and wonderful. Props to the embassy crew. Too bad I forgot my camera.

Check the racism that they can get away with down here.