TimsBlog

We took a ride into Centro Monday. The dead center and oldest part of Sao Paulo. Might also be the poorest and most defiantly the most dangerous. Even Allen pointed out that its not safe at night there. Many dug addicts that will steal your stuff. It looked like what I would expect time square in NYC to look like at its scariest. Of course during the day its safe enough. They had tons of shopping stores with what looked like upper class clothing stores and what not. We were headed for the computer/electronic area. We needed to get DV tape for shoots. It was just like Pantip (the computer mall) in Bangkok, but on street level. They sold everything form computer stuff to guitars to DJ and car audio equipment right down to a place that had all sorts of transistors and Radio Shack stuff. Guys were on the sidewalk hawking Windows Vista.

I guess this is a good time to mention that Allen bought a car. Taxis here are expensive. A taxi ride cost $10 or you can walk it in about 15 to 20 minutes. Allen’s reasoning for buying the car is that he can spend $500 a month on taxis or buy a car for $250 a month. Driving here is still a pain. Between traffic and one way streets its not easy. His new car does run on propane. Thats a bonus since gas is expensive here too. Side-note they hate Bush here and gas prices might be one reason. anyways I got a chance to snap some pictures off while in the back-seat. I’m not too happy with some of them, but its still better than pictures of the view out my apartment window. I have so many missed opportunities photo wise everyday do to the fact I can’t risk getting my camera stolen. We will be seeing more of the city now I suspect since Allen has a car now. The graffiti is amazing here. They even use it for shop billboards. They will do a mural for the store and put a small tag at the bottom with their name and phone number sort of like a business card. Design wise its been inspiring. i have seen many simple shapes and images used that I could use in my web-design. Not that I have any web design work that needs to be done, but sparking ideas is always a good thing.

We are getting internet installed at this very moment. We realized last night that we did have an open WIFI access point the whole time. It was fast one moment then dog slow the next. We are guessing its from the apartment bellow us. It was just good enough to get me logged into mail then dump the connection when I sent an email out. either way we will be so happy when its installed. Its cable here so its a 3 Mbit line from what I can gather. its about 380 kbs down and about 70 kbs up. This is from a site that tests speed. In real world surfing and downloading we could only get 45 kbs down and 25 kbs up using airport. this could be an apple airport thing where it sees two computers sharing the internet and throttles us back or it could be something else. Either way I survived in Bangkok with 45 kbs down so I will live.