Time is flying. Upon successfully renewing my visa this
week, I realised that I will be leaving Brazil in a mere 68 days. What is
perhaps more alarming is the amount of things that need doing before that time
comes, not to mention the small matter of the world’s largest sporting event.
You may think that beaches, buses, burning and boozing have been dominating my
time here and, to a certain extent, you would be right. I do know my way around
the bus system, have spent a fair few hours on beaches, have enjoyed the odd
tipple and seem to burn around the clock, whether shirtless on a clear day or tucked
up in bed. But in fact, I have been putting my time to fairly good use.
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| A distracting sunset |
Back in late February, I managed to secure two jobs, with
which I have been occupying my time. The first is with a sports newspaper,
Lance! (http://www.lancenet.com.br/) which focuses almost entirely on football. If I were to give
myself a job title, it would be ‘Foreign Liaisons Officer’. Until now, my role
has mainly been to phone journalists in various countries around the world and
arrange contacts for during the Copa (World Cup). It has been challenging, due
to the need to flip between languages and everyone outside of England thinking
that not responding to emails is an ok thing to do. Nevertheless, it has been
fun to masquerade as a successful journalist when conversing with Ghanaians,
who are none the wiser to my true identity.
Now, my duties have extended into the translation sphere. It
is nice to be given the responsibility and, when translating from Portuguese to
English I can have a bit of fun creatively, almost making it my own article. I
have also written a few articles in Portuguese myself. My attempts to use
flowery language have been shot down by not keeping with the newspaper’s style,
but I have tried nonetheless. I am yet to have anything published for the
paper, but did manage to get a piece up on the website. It’s about Leicester
City Football Club and if that doesn’t excite you enough to whack it into
Google Translate, then I don’t know what will…
My other job is with the British and Commonwealth Society of
Rio de Janeiro, working as their ‘Communications Policy Advisor’. The job has
been to analyse all the societies communications vehicles and come up with way
to make them work better. This has been more interesting than it might sound,
with the chance to try my hand at website design and lead the social media to
charge proving to be fairly interesting. Although admittedly, the hearing
tweets of an exotic bird on a nearby jungle trek would be more entertaining
than reading those of a conservation company on Twitter. (See what I did
there?)
One real perk of this job has been the opportunity to meet
people that I would not have been able to otherwise, whether that be British expats
or young Brazilian lawyers. I have been given the chance to go to corporate
events with the British Chamber, fundraisers in Barra de Tijuca (the ‘Miami’ of
Brazil) and eat out at fancy restaurants for business lunches. It is something
that quite simply couldn’t have happened if I were just a student.
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| João's farewell party |
I suppose I’m trying to press home that my life is not all
just fun and games. I am working 5-day weeks and getting myself around town,
being useful. This week alone I have ventured into several different districts,
running errands and attending meetings. One Direction almost scuppered my plans
on Wednesday as I rushed to the office, after they caused most of Ipanema to be
taken over by screaming fans, trying to get a glimpse of them leaving their
hotel. When I had finally wriggled away, my voice was a little hoarse. The
previous night had been spent saying farewell to a Portuguese housemate, such
that I had forgone most of the night’s sleep. Quite how I managed to stay awake
and functioning in the office until 9pm is beyond me, but it bodes well for the
future.
So, in conclusion, my free time is more limited than I have
been letting on, thanks to my somewhat debatable claim of being an international businessman. Of course, working 5 days a week is neither impressive nor
noteworthy, but when you have a whole country’s worth of experiences to get
stuck into, it does impinge on your time. Believe it or not, some of us ‘year
abroaders’ do actually work and have things to do. But then again, many a
distraction is all too close at hand and I am far too eager to slack off.
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| the front garden - need to spend more time here |
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