Books in English – A Continuation

In May of 2007, I wrote about the Problem with books in English and I updated my thoughts on the topic on Feb 13, 2009 update: books in English. Today I received a comment from Carolina about the possibility of using Kindle, here is what she says, ‘

Ginger --- The Kindle is now available to purchase in lots of places internationally including Brazil. (Import duties apply.) Go to Amazon.com. Search for Kindle. On any Kindle page it will tell you it is available now internationally and gives you a link to search for a country. Pull the dropdown box to Brazil. Click on the link to coverage areas for wireless downloads, and type in a city & country. Looks like Nova Friburgo is within the hi-speed area, certainly Rio is.
Kindle comes with a U.S. electric adaptor, but international ones are available for an extra charge. Kindle isn't lighted like a computer screen, but a light is available to attach to it.
Apparently 350,000 titles. plus newspapers and magazines are now available in English. Not all can be downloaded everywhere due to copyright laws. Some titles cost $0.00 (older books in the public domain ---Jane Austin, Conan-Doyle ---or some by writers I never heard of.) Most others range from about $3.00 to $12.00. New books on best seller lists are less expensive on Kindle than in book form ---no printing costs ---but probably cost more than used paperbacks.
I understand Amazon's goal is to have every title ever published available on Kindle eventually.”

I hope this helps any x-pat who is looking into alternatives - I am personally an enthusiast of laying on the sofa reading, taking a short nap, then reading again. I sit on the veranda, in the piazza (the patio) or in front of the fire. I like the old way of reading and turning pages and don’t know it I can adapt to this new way but THANK you Carolina for the info. Just an FYI – The high speed is available in Nova Friburgo – if this is what Carolina is talking about they sell it with the cell phones, is a little box that cost R$150.00 plus the line charge by minutes of usage…. even at high speed I wonder about the cost of a download of a book. With the cost of the book, the use of the “kindle box” (cost of box/ # of books read) and the cost of the high speed download – I would think that the cost of a book soon gets as high as just buying one – the advantage would end up being the variety of choice in titles and when you want it you can have it.

Additional footnote and comment - by Texas Heather

Photo by Ginger V – my reading (napping/thinking) room.

Carnaval 2010 On Video -

Last night Camillo and I went into Friburgo to watch the local Carnaval – March of the Samba Schools. We watched the first 3 – EXCELLENT! There were a GAZillion people watching, and cheering, and going for beer and coming back – milling, jostling humanity.
We didn’t have a place to sit so I elbowed my way to the front of the crowd (then felt guilty and let some young people in in front of me….). We were late – can you believe that, the show was to start at 8.00 and it must have started at 8:00 - we had to hustle through the crowds to find the front of the parade and to muscle into position so I could take photos. I took only my little Sony which is on its last leg, and I was having trouble with the focus. I don’t think that was because of the camera but because the front line of the crowd was not 3 feet from the action and all the marchers were moving and turning and twirling – my poor little camera couldn’t keep up.
So I shot quite a lot of video and this morning experimented with combining about half of the footage I shot to make one long video…… please enjoy it along with me as I see the results for the first time…..

 

Carnaval 2010 Nova Friburgo VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Firing up Carnaval 2010 – Nova Friburgo

Camillo and I went downtown Nova Friburgo last night to see the opening of CarNAval! 2010. As is typical here, the prefecture website said, ‘starts at 5pm’, and listed the 3 blocos and the order and the times they were to come down the main street, at 6 they closed the street to major traffic, at 6:15 they walked down the street asking people to move their cars and a little after 6:30 you could here the drums coming.

WARNING: click to start this video and be ready to adjust your sound.

Finally the first Bloco

By 6:45 the first bloco had come through and the street began to fill with the young, the old, the bored and the enthused. And we waited, and waited and the people walked – up and down – up and down, saying hello to friends, seeing and being seen. and we waited. At 7:45 the sound of drums coming - no one left the street, no one moved out out of the way – there was mass chaos.

A note of explanation – the blocos are supposed to represent the ‘normal people’, the people from the neighborhoods. They used to be on Tuesdays (fat Tuesday if your in New Orleans) – the REAL Carnaval - but as the cities become more focused on drawing tourists to ‘their towns’ the whole of Carnaval has expanded – till now it really gets going in Friburgo on Friday nights and keeps people from doing anything productive until Thursday mornings.

The first bloco was a traditional – men dressed as women - march. I was surprised at the number of teenagers that were dressed in ‘drag’ and really enjoying themselves. I can’t imagine the young men of middle America, 1960s version, participating with such enjoyment. The second bloco, ‘bloco das piranhas’, which loosely translated piranha to ‘prostitutes’ – means march of the prostitutes? – anyway I couldn’t tell the difference between the two groups. Maybe I wasn’t understanding. The whole purpose of all of this though (I think) was participation – those standing on the sidelines (myself included) taking pictures or just LOOKING – missed the point – to really enjoy this ‘car NAV al’ you have to go out on the street and strut your stuff.

click below for more

Blocos, Nova Friburgo 2010 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

My Town FSO - Aquariums

As far as I can tell, having walked Nova Friburgo downtown area many times, there are not aquariums here. Neither big public one nor little ones for the home. There are pet stores with doggy stuff, and bird stuff, but it just isn’t the habit here to have fish or cats in the home. Maybe its the heat or the humidity or the proximity to the ocean or that if you want a fish here it needs to be a fresh caught – dead one. I did remember seeing fish in the pond at the park of the sitting dog so I went back into my archives to find you a fish story.

Foreign travelers have come to feed us bread crumbs……

EEEK! – Look out he’s coming!

RUN!

oh, don’t worry, I know him – he lives over under the rocks…. !

He just wants to share our bread crumbs.

Tchau!

Friday My Town Shoot-out / Circles

Last week as I noted this topic roll into position I thought OH NO, N Friburgo doesn’t have any circles. What am I going to do? But just like every week when I say this, when I start paying attention I usually see things I have never noticed before. I have been seeing circles everywhere, everywhere I went that I always go….

at the garden center (next to the gas station)
On main street – centro Friburgo
On the street where we live…..
	The front gate Bell - (the door bell?)
	The cars that we drive and around the house.
	widows of the guest house…..
Outside	Inside

I have more…… but its time to go take the pie out of the oven….. see you next week.