Chegada na Australia, primeiro dia em Wollongong

Aviso: Acentos nao funcionam por aqui, entao vai ser sem mesmo...

Quando falam que a Australia eh longe, eles nao estao brincando. A viagem demora, demora, demora... aih demoramais um pouquinho e voce pousa na Nova Zelandia. Aih voce sai do aviao, passa pela checagem de passaportes de novo, tira um monte foto "pagacao-de-mico" pra depois provar pra todo mundo que esteve na Nova Zelandia (e q eu nao vou poder mostrar agora pq ainda nao sei direito como vou transferir as fotos pra esse computador tosco que eu tou usando aqui), decola de novo uma hora depois e, depois de mais tres horas, voce chega em Sydney.
Sobrevoar Sydney eh aquela emocao: a Opera House, a ponte, a sensacao de que finalmente vc estah chegando... eh tudo muito massa! Eu pousei entao por volta das 11 da manha do dia 30/10, horario local. Depois de fazer a imigricao sem maiores problemas (a galera, apesar de detalhista e tal, eh muito amigavel) e me despedir da Amanda, uma brasileira gente boa que veio sentada do meu lado no aviao e vai passar seis meses estudando em Sydney (e q vcs poderiam conhecer se eu conseguisse colocar nossa fotos pagando mico no aeroporto de Auckland aqui), mochila nas costas, peguei meu trem pra Wollongong pra parte "profissional" da viagem.
Cheguei 3 horas da tarde em Wollongong e mais 20 min. andando, cheguei no albergue: muito bom, arrumadinho, serve tambem de moradia pra uma galera da Universidade de Wollongong. Por volta das 4 sai pra explorar a cidade, andar na praia, essas coisas... a praia daquie eh basicamente identica as praias do Brasil, mas a agua eh fria pra caralho. Os australianos realmente curtem esportes, andar na praia, etc... a cidade eh super agradavel, bem q Campinas podia ser assim... pra quem conhece, parece Barao Geraldo, soh q mais seguro, mais limpo, mais arejado, casas sem muro e com a praia a no maximo 5 minutos de distancia... ou seja, nao parece nem um pouquinho com Barao Geraldo...
Outra peculiaridade: as moscas aqui sao um pe no saco. Pra todo lugar que voce anda tem mosca pousando em voce... e elas sao bem mais corajosas que as brasileiras, voce tem que realmente tentar bater nelas pra elas voarem... mas daqui a pouco elas pousam de novo de qualquer jeito... eu sei oq voce tah pensando: eu tava precisando de um banho. Nao que isso nao fosse verdade, mas mesmo depois de cheiroso, continuou assim... aih eu percebi que nas camisas das pessoas andando dah pra ver sempre 5, 6 moscas pousadas... bizarro, ne???
Bem, alem disso, as pessoas sao muito, muito amigaveis mesmo... todo mundo fala com voce, te trata bem... muito massa mesmo. Dei sorte e no meu quarto tem um brother que trabalha na universidade e ja me disse que vai me levar (de carro) pra conferencia... hehehehehhe o dfoda eh que quando eu disse q era brasileiro ele insistiu ate a morte pra eu aparecer num jogo de futebol deles aqui amanha a noite... coitados, imagina soh a decepcao deles... :-)

bjos a todos, espero poder colocar fotos nos meus posts aqui em breve...
Rafa

Switching to Portuguese for a little while...

While I'm here in Australia I'll post mostly in portuguese, because I want my mom to be able to understand... I hope all my (imaginary) non-portuguese-speaking readers can enjoy the photos... :-)

Australia!!

Yeah baby, I'm going to Australia!!!!! I can finally say that, short of a lightning bolt falling on my ass, I'm flying to Australia this Sunday. I just got news today that my visa application got accepted, I've had my ticket for a couple of weeks now, now it's just a matter of waiting a few days and BAM!!!!, Australia it is!!! Naturally I have quite a few plans already: there is this conference I have to attend and there's some people I'm visiting. Let's see what I already have:

• I land in Sydney Tuesday, the 30th of October. Go straight to Wollongong, where ProvSec 2007 (the conference I'm attending) is taking place.
• The conference is actually on the 1st and 2nd of November, so that will give one day to explore the town and see what's up. Then there's a couple of days of working and then, on the 3rd, I'm back in Sydney.
• now the doubts begin: I'll outline what now is "Plan A" and then talk about my douts... I should spend the weekend in Sydney and then monday morning catch a bus tour to Melbourne: that takes 3 days and I should be in Melbourne wednesday evening, 11/07. Below there is a Google Map of the bus route (both this part and the part from Melbourne to Adelaide).
  

View Larger Map

• Then I should be in Melbourne 'till the weekend, a good 4 days to get to know the city. Here I should meet some nice friends from Winterkurs '06 who I haven't seen in quite a while and who'll be kind enough to put a roof over my head!!! :-)
• Then it's time to be off to Adelaide. I'd like to do a roadtrip (still following the route on the map above), people say this road by the sea (the Great Ocean Road) is awesome and I 'm one to love roadtrips... but I'm still to find some company and I don't think I'm up for it alone... so I might just take another bus tour here... well, anyway I should be in Adelaide around the 14th... and count on the hospitality of yet another WK'06 friend to put up with me! :-)
  
• once again, should stay there 'til the weekend and this time I'll go across the country to Cairns (all the way up on the northeast), see the Great Barrier Reef. I'm still thinking about how long I should be there, don't know if I should take diving classes or just snorkel around (the problem is that diving classes would cost me around 2 days of the trip... that's A LOT)...
• After Cairns, probably around the 25th, I fly back to Sydney. Then I still have 3 days to kill over there before I catch my flight back home, on the 29th...
  

So, does that sound like a plan or what?!!? :-) I'll be sure to take a shitload of pictures and try and post here as often as possible... so, is there anything fundamentally amazing I'm missing here??? Anywhere I should go??? Anything "not-so-interesting" I'm wasting my time on??

Hairspray [Movie]

I've already seen a few movies I'd like to talk a little about since I last posted. Let's see if I get to talk about all of them this time. First of all, there's Hairspray. This movie musical is just sheer, old-fashioned fun. The best part is that it isn't that silly kind of comedy... it's actually a really sarcastic (thus, funny) criticism of a big part of american society. It takes place in the '60s, the beginning of the end of all the segregation between black and white people. Basically it follows Tracy's story, a chubby teenager that dreams of being a dancer on a "cool kids" TV show in Baltimore. As in any musical, the soundtrack is of utter importance, and this one gives a lot of fuel to the movie: funny, bright, cheerful songs about some dire times; songs about pride of being black and/or fat (the two groups of people that fight against discrimination in the movie). When you're first introduced to the nicest kids in town they sing:

[The nicest kids in town] throw off their coats
And leave the squares behind
And then they shake it, shake it, shake it
Like they're losing their mind
You'll never see them frown
'Cause they're the nicest kids in town
...
Nice white kids
Who like to lead the way
And once a month
We have our "negro day!"
...
So every afternoon
Drop everything
(bop-bee-ba, ba-ba-ba-ba, bee-ba)

Who needs to read and write
When you can dance and sing?
(bop-bee-ba, ba-ba-ba-ba, bee-ba)

Forget about your algebra
And calculus
You can always do your homework
On the morning bus
Can't tell a verb from a noun
They're the nicest kids in town

When I heard that song I immediately got excited and thought: OK, this is gonna be good. And good it was. This song sets the tone for most of what's to come; not so subtle, very sarcastic critique of a society about to be swept by a big wave of change. Just great!!! I couldn't not mention one particular song, , that goes something like:

...
but i won't ask you to be color blind
'Cause if you pick the fruit
Then girl, you're sure to find...

The blacker the berry
The sweeter the juice
I could say it ain't so
But darlin', what's the use?

The darker the chocolate
The richer the taste
And that's where it's at...
...now run and tell that!!
...

Come on, that's just awesome!!! :-) Besides all the great music and sarcasm, the cast is really good too. The girl they found to play Tracy (Nikki Blonsky) is perfect: just about with the right "chubbyness", charisma, smile, voice and dancing skills (for the part, that is)... and what can one say about John Travolta playing her 300 hundred-pound mom?? Just brilliant!!!! It's not often you get such a plain fun movie addressing such important topics... I don't know how they did it, but it's an amazing mix of great music, great cast and relevant storytelling... unless you're seriously prejudiced against movie musicals you should try and watch this.

Blue [Album], by Joni Mitchell

I guess the most obvious thing to say about Blue (and believe me, quite a lot of people have said it already) is that the songs in this Joni Mitchell masterpiece are as comfortable in a pop music record as they would be in a poetry book (and a really good one, in case you were wondering). Always present in any decent list of the greatest albums of the century, Blue is usually the best rated by a female solo artist. This is a true singer-songwriter masterpiece: simple, beautiful arrangements, confessional lyrics, a brilliant, distinguished voice... The story goes that Joni wrote most of the album while traveling through Europe, taking a break from the biz after her first few records made her a pretty famous singer. She sings of love ("My Old Man"), infactuation ("Carey", "A Case of You"), hopeless romanticism vs. a more pessimistic view ("The Last Time a Saw Richard"), the blues (well, "Blue", "River"), homesickness ("California", I guess "River" fits here too) and the pain of giving a child up for adoption ("Little Green", which she actually did, by the way, when she was 20 something years old)... this is very personal, very beautiful work of art... she's said that, around this time in her life (1971) she had basically no defenses and thought that she should always show herself to the world as she truly is... and it shows...

Interestingly enough, the first song I ever heard from this album was River, and the only thing I knew about Joni Mitchell then was that Alanis Morissette considered Joni (one of) her biggest influence, musically speaking... there was this TV show I liked, called Ally McBeal, and it was always filled with good music (specially Barry White!!), and in this particular episode Ally asks Robert Downey Jr.'s character to sing a song for her (it's near christmas, I think) and he sits at the piano and sings "River" beautifully... it was a beautiful scene and I just had to find more about that amazingly sad and melancholic song... the second big contact I had with songs from Blue was through Legião Urbana's rendition of "The Last Time I Saw Richard" (Legião Urbana is a brazilian rock band, by the way... gone since mid-'90s, but probably the best we've ever had), which just struck me as so amazing and Dylan-esque I was really surprised when I found out it was Joni's. Guess I should have taken the hint and gone and bought the bloody record, but I didn't: not until Rolling Stone put it as number 30 in their "500 greatest album of the century" edition, the highest ranked album by a woman; it wasn't only the position in itself, but the review was quite enticing (for my taste). So I finally got the album and gave it a good listen with the lyrics at hand (the lyrics are really important here, in case you haven't picked that up yet): simply amazing.

The title track, "Blue", is one of the greatest of the record, in my opinion... it shows every important trait of the album: sadness, melancholy, truthfulness, emotion and simplicity: it's basically her, her music and her sadness.

Blue, songs are like tattoos
You know I've been to sea before
Crown and anchor me
Or let me sail away
Hey blue, here is a song for you
Ink on a pin
Underneath the skin
An empty space to fill in
Well there're so many sinking now
You've got to keep thinking
You can make it through these waves
Acid, booze, and ass
Needles, guns, and grass
Lots of laughs, lots of laughs
Everybody's saying that hell's the hippest way to go
Well I don't think so
But I'm gonna take a look around it though
Blue, I love you


Blue, here is a shell for you
Inside you'll hear a sigh
A foggy lullaby
There is your song from me

Other song that always catches my eye is "The Last Time I Saw Richard"... just beautiful.

"The last time I saw Richard was Detroit in '68
and he told me 'all romantics meet the same fate someday
cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe'...
'You laugh', he said, 'you think you're immune, go look at your eyes
They're full of moon
You like roses and kisses and pretty men to tell you
All those pretty lies, pretty lies
When you gonna realise they're only pretty lies?
Only pretty lies, just pretty lies'
...
Richard got married to a figure skater
And he bought her a dishwasher and a coffee percolator
And he drinks at home now most nights with the TV on
And all the house lights left up bright
I'm gonna blow this damn candle out
I don't want nobody comin' over to my table
I got nothing to talk to anybody about
All good dreamers pass this way some day
Hidin' behind bottles in dark cafes
Dark cafes
Only a dark cocoon before I get my gorgeous wings
And fly away
Only a phase, these dark cafe days

Can her optimism/romanticism beat Richard's pessimism?? By the way, I found the version by Legião Urbana on YouTube:

My birthday

Sunday was my birthday!!! Yeah, a little older now... what can you do?? My parents came to visit and saturday we had a little celebration at a very good bar here in Campinas. It's a pity it was a long weekend, so many people were away and couldn't be there (well, not such a pity, since that's gonna be enough reason to do some more partying!!!). Here are a few photos from the occasion: http://picasaweb.google.com/rafael.castro/MeuAniversRio2007. I'd really like to thank everybody that remembered the day and sent me messages, gifts, nice happy thoughts, anything at all!!! It was a really great weekend and I hope that eventually I get to celebrate with everybody, in person!!

Donnie Darko, Mad World & Gary Jules

Donnie Darko is probably one of the weirdest movies I've ever seen. The time-traveling, sci-fi tale of a guy and his giant, slightly-psychotic, imaginary bunny friend (if that's even a worthy depiction) is an instant classic of cult movies. If you haven't seen it, you should. But, even if you don't like the movie, you gotta love Gary Jules' cover of Tears for Fears' Mad World. I didn't really pay attention to the soundtrack when I first watched the movie, I didn't use to be big on soundtracks. But so many people told me how great it was, I just had to go back and give it a listen: it's awesome, and this particular song is just unbelievably beautiful. Gary Jules' voice is amazing, and simplicity of his version of the song just adds to the whole sentiment of the song: when he sings

"And I find it kinda funny,
I find it kinda sad,
The dreams in which I'm dying
are the best I've ever had."

he really sounds like the type of guy who would feel like that... it's great. So, after some digging around I found out he releases his albums through CD Baby, which is just great. So you can buy the (DRM-Free) mp3's, you can stream his stuff from the website or you can buy the actual CD. Being in CD Baby means that most of the money actually goes to him, which is kind of reassuring, specially after all the news about the RIAA going on lately. If you still don't know the song, watch the video below. If you like it, check out these albums at CD Baby, you can listen most of them for free and see whether Mad World was just luck. :-)

Tropa de Elite [Movie]

I have only one thing to say about Tropa de Elite: Fuckin' Awesome!!!!! I don't remember the last time I was this blown away; I seriously think it's the best movie of the year so far, and a definite candidate to hold the crown all the way through. It tells the story of a captain of Rio de Janeiro's special ops division who's having a baby and wants to quit the force but first has to find and train a worthy successor. It's raw realism in depicting the urban war in Rio is shocking, and to know that it's actually based on a (n apparently very badly written) novel by a former captain of the special ops just enhances it's effect. The cast is amazing, and Wagner Moura, I'd say along with Lázaro Ramos, Selton Melo, Rodrigo Santoro, is definitely firming his position as one of the most important actors of his generation. The movie is violent, funny and real, it's a slap in the face of many, many people.
By now everybody's seen Cidade de Deus (City of God) and the comparison is unavoidable: I honestly don't know which is the better one: it'll take a few days and another go at Tropa de Elite before I can make up my mind. Tropa de Elite is that good.

Another point for not living in the US

Just a quick note on a story from the NY Times on how Bush says interrogation methods aren't torture. The fun part is that he won't disclose exactly which interrogation methods he's talking about, all people know is that the CIA is authorized to use them. Conforting, isn't it? I loved this quote in particular from Bush's press secretary:

“I’ve had the awful responsibility to have to work with The New York Times and other news organizations on stories that involve the release of classified information,” Mr. Fratto said. “And I could tell you that every time I’ve dealt with any of these stories, I have felt that we have chipped away at the safety and security of America with the publication of this kind of information.”

RIAA and trials for online music sharing

I was talking to a friend of mine a couple of days ago how we thought the world (well, at least the western world) had reached a peak of freedom maybe a decade or so ago and that now everything is going down the drain. The Patriot Act and the DMCA (not to mention Bush's reelection) have literally made me not want to live in the US for as long as I can foresee. Software patents (hell, patents in general) already spread to Europe. In Germany it's now against the law to host or write any program that could possibly be used to hack another computer (yeah, that's right, anything that could possibly be used, how the hell are you supposed to define that?? How the hell are you supposed to be a network security engineer when all the programs you use on a daily basis (to defend from attacks) have suddenly become illegal?!?!). And now, the RIAA won their first trial case against mrs. Thomas.
Let me paint you a picture: Jammie Thomas, a middle-age mom, was accused by the RIAA of sharing music files back in early 2005 through KaZaA (everybody remembers that spyware-infested program, don't you?). She is an avid music fan. She owns literally hundreds of CD's and DVD's. No real evidence of her distributing any of the music was presented; she was found guilty on ground that making the songs available was already copyright infringement. The "evidence" presented against her were a username that coincided with her e-mail address, the IP address used to share the files (which, as anyone that knows anything about how the Internet works knows could be forged and is by no means evidence of identity; heck, if it were why the hell would we need half of the cryptographic protocols we study?!?!? I'd go back to Salvador and sell coconuts at the beach....). By the end of the trial she was ordered to pay US$9.250,00 per song (out of a possible US$150.000,00, so one might say that she actually got lucky)!! She was charged with sharing 24 individual songs, so that amounts to US$220.000,00.
It's easy to have sympathy for her, right?! After all she's a mom, a formerly good customer who spent thousands of dollars on products by the same guys who sued her; she was convicted for sharing 24 songs... how many "illegal" songs have you listened to in the last few years?? Downloaded, shared?? She is supposed to pay US$220.000,00 in damages, it'd probably take hr quite a few years to even see that kind of money, let alone being able to pay it up. But take all that sentimental bullshit aside: if it were a single 25-year-old millionaire who got sued for
the exact same crime, it would still be very wrong to get this outcome.
I know customers don't usually care about the practices of the companies whose product they buy. Later on, they bitch and complain when they see something unfair: "Oh My God, how could they do that?? Sue a mother for US$220.000,00 because she shared 20 something songs..." They could and did because it's cheap for them and it's a win-win situation: at the very least they scared a whole lot of people from sharing music on the web. And what if they lost?? So what, lawyers come cheap to giant industry conglomerates, they are expensive for us, who have to defend ourselves. So, what I'd like to see happening is a boycott on music sold by members of the RIAA. Music in the US nowadays is mostly shit anyways, but they still have some good stuff on their catalogs; don't buy it. Buy independent music that is just as good (or even better). Put your money to good use and try to stand up for something: not the legality or morality of sharing music, but the immorality of their scare-tactics.

• More information on the case here, here and here.
• List of Record Labels members of the RIAA.
  

Paying what you want for music

Maybe you haven't heard about it yet, but Radiohead is releasing their next album, In Rainbows, in a few days and people can pay whatever they want for it. Yeah, that's right: you can download the album from their website for whatever price you feel is fair (of course there's some sort of "base price" or "transaction fee"). Magnatune, an online music store for independent artists, has been doing something similar to that for quite a while: their suggested price for albums is 8 bucks, but you can pay anything between 5 and 18 bucks... and, the best part is that, according to their statistics, people pay around 9 dollar on average... cool, isn't it? But that's a very small scale label/online store with basically no famous/mainstream artist (which doesn't keep them from being really good, check this out for example)... I have no idea what's gonna happen when Radiohead (arguably one of the biggest bands in the world for over a decade now) tries it... but it's gonna be mighty interesting to see.
I think everybody agrees that the model we have today (and that's been there for quite a few decades now) is dying... file-sharing, cheaper equipment, near-zero distribution costs (through the net, that is)... the future certainly looks grim for big record companies... but is pay-what-you-feel-like a plausible option?? Is it best fit for big, famous acts like Radiohead, or independent artists like the ones in Magnatune's catalog?? The next few weeks will tell us a great deal about it all... by the way, the most you can pay for Radiohead's new album is 99 pounds... interesting to know they put a limit there...

Wonder Years of the '00s??

I grew up on a regular dose of Wonder Years, the amazing TV series that let us all follow Kevin Arnold's life and cheer for him and Wendy to end up together. I still get a shiver every time I hear Joe Cocker's version of With a Little Help from My Friends (in fact, I stopped writing for a few seconds to look for it and am currently listening to it as write this post). I really loved this show and I think many/most people my age also loved growing up in the '80s/'90s with that beautiful image of the '70s that Wonder Years gave us. But, most of all, it was Kevin's problems and mishaps that caught us the most: his life, were it not for the silly limits of time and space was exactly like ours (or like we wished ours was like, sometimes). Wonder Years was a huge success, spanning 6 years and basically becoming one of those shows that'll always be in people's memory. A few years later, around 1995 a show called My So-Called Life introduced a 13 year old girl called Claire Danes to the world. I won't say MSCL was as amazing as Wonder Years, but it was a close call; it was more raw and in tune with the not-so-'70s-like world of the '90s, drunk teenagers, gay classmates, quite a different feeling towards parents than what Kevin & co. had. It only lasted for 13 episodes, so I guess there's no frame of comparison in terms of success between the two shows, but I really liked MSCL too and it felt, to me, as the Wonder Years of the '90s. Now, there's a chance we're seeing the soon-to-be Wonder Years of the '00s: Aliens in America.
The show premiered yesterday really, so this is a very premature statement; even so, I really liked what I saw and I'm confident this is gonna be one of the most successful new shows of the year (not that I know what else is out there...). It's about this really geeky kid, Justin, who's obviously picked on on a daily basis at school. His mom has the great(!!) idea of hosting a foreign exchange student in order to boost his popularity in school, thinking that they'll get a blond, great-looking athlete of a kid. Instead, they get a pakistani muslim kid, probably the only thing that could make Justin even less popular. It's probably not going to be as attaching as Wonder Years was, specially because we're meeting a Justin who's already 16 years old, unlike the little kid Kevin Arnold was when Wonder Years started. But I really liked the writing and acting on the show; and I loved the sense of humor of the show, the one thing lacking from MSCL (the show was a little too melodramatic). There is a 4-minute preview of the show up on YouTube (what isn't up on YouTube?!?!?), so check it out and see if you can find some way of watching the pilot. It's really worth it.