RioChic's new blog has moved to http://riochic.typepad.com/blog/

RioChic's new website is 

http://www.riochic.com/

This site will continue to be 

Big in Brasil...

and as such it may have occasional RioChic blog posts and updates, but not the ongoing fashion newsfeed which I create & post to the RioChic blog.

Hope that's all clear and straightforward.

I certainly wish I was...

RioChic on the Runway - a models blog.

One of our models, Mel, writes about appearing 

in our first runway show at the 

Bath Fringe Alternative Fashion Show 

on June 1st this year

http://ping.fm/EPhi

ORANGES, ORANGES, WHO'LL BUY ME BLEEDIN' ORANGES????

Well, hopefully in about a year's time, middle class Cariocas who like to squeeze 'em into juice...

Here's Marco, testing the oranges for, erm, orangeyness, a couple of weeks ago at our plantation in Palmital.

They are looking really big and healthy, precocious even, and full of plumptiousness, which is a good thing. 

The whole landscape seems quite different, now it's inundated with thick bushy trees, instead of wimpy plantlets.

We now have a Dept. of Agriculture inspector who visits every few weeks, and offers advice. 

Very helpful. 

If we stick to poo as fertiliser, we can be certified organic.

Well, not us, the oranges, obviously.

Although, personally, I never use anything else...

Oranges, typo Seleta, probably a bit sour this year, so not a saleable harvest, but looking good for next year.

Brasilian farmers tend to plant orange trees and leave them until they are harvestable, without tending them, and the resulting trees, if they survive, tend to yield 3.5 boxes of fruit per tree. 

Because ours are continuously tended with medicines, fertiliser, water etc.(we have 3 full-time staff,  2 of whom live onsite, plus tractor with water tanker etc.) it's reasonable to expect a much higher yield. However even at the low figure based on 3.5 boxes per tree, I look to profit around 40% per annum on my investimento.

All I gotta do is wait, and survive on bugger all in the meantime!!

As a result of which, I also have some more immediate ventures under way...see below...

WELL, ITS ALL HAPPENING HERE FOLKS!!!
Or is it?
Lots of rain and cold weather.
Flooding.
Finally an election result, a month and a half after the election...this takes 'manhana' into a new sphere entirely, and then factor in 24,000 discounted votes!!!
Corruption a-go-go!!!
Thats Saquarema for you. And most of the rest of the country too...
Unlike Britain of course where Democracy is all above board and fair square.
Did I say Democracy....sorry, I meant Mockracy, the system by which all Pretend Democratic Countries are actually run.
So finally, Franciane Melo, (co-incidentally) wife of the state legislator Paulo Melo is in the mayor chair.
Which presumably means hubby will release funds to improve Saquarema (see previous post for his petulant refusal to do so when his wife was outvoted!!!).
(That's hubby on the left of the poster.)



Meanwhile Dalton Borges, the actual winner on votes, has been disqualified and his votes, all 24 thousand of them, consigned to the bin. He has 13 charges of wrongful behaviour against him, including buying votes, so how he ever got to stand and be voted for in the first place is as mysterious (read corrupt) as everything else.
One might have thought, mightn't one, that a new election might have been in order, but no,
the judges in Brasilia deemed Franciane the winner.
And that's that. Sadly, it's probably the best thing for the area, but it's a shit way to get improvements...

MY NEW BIZ
I'm now involved with some buddies in a new business venture called Disk Comida...no, not as in vinyl disks this time..'Disk' over here means 'Dial a'...
Here's the link for the website...only a mockup at the mo' and in Eenglish temporarily...
http://diskcomida.blogspot.com/
And here's our logo which I accidentally nicked off the internet...

And no, it's not me...
Actually I keep telling Fernando, our chef, that it's him...well, he does have a moustache.
So basically, it's a home delivery meal service, plus event catering.
We're also offering my pad with it's massive living room and swimming pool for events, and also discussing the idea of a restaurant here at weekends.
The restaurant idea scares me somewhat, ( lack of privacy, being kept up to unearthly hours by drunken foreigners, as well as by the guests haha) but it's been on my mind for over a year, and this seems to be the perfect opportunity to have a bash...the high season starts soon, which is the time to do it so we'll see what we shall see...
...the delivery biz starts next week, we're just waiting on leaflets, then once they're out, just waiting for the phone to ring...beans and rice anyone?????
Herewith some pics vaguely related to our new venture...

OK this is a view of the scrappers where we went to buy spares for the
deliverymobile...it's a regular Aladdins hole...

On the right is Fernando, our chef, and behind the counter is the humorous scrapper boss...he has a nice line in pricing...you ask how much, and with much deliberation he goes, hmmmm, twenty two, thirty seven, plus fifteen, fifty two, and eighteen....how about twelve reais???


Here we all are at the printers, agreeing the final version-ish of the leaflet...
Blue ink on yellow paper...
Actually blue-ish ink on yellow-ish paper...


Long Shot.
Sums up my life actually...

CORSETS
(There, you weren't expecting that to happen, now were you????)

Check out my mate Fleur's new biz site...she makes amazing custom corsetry (and just about anything else you can wear, including a fine line in fairy wings as I remember...)



She did some great stuff for me too.
No, not corsets, you big stinkypants, and not Fairy Wings neither...
It was upholstery, alright???
Marvelous...good luck chuck!!!
That's a Gurkin on the left by the way...


http://www.fleurtyfairy.com/



MONORAIL ?
OK, now of corsets time for some boys stuff... (see what I did there?)
So I was watching a Brasilian movie on Sky called "Um Homem sem Importancia", 'An Unimportant Man', shot in Rio in 1971, and the main character and his mate head off on the famous old tram across the aqueduct and on up to Santa Teresa.
They then appear again on a different and much smaller tram (?), which appears to be a monorail...huh? Only with three wheels...huh?
I was always intrigued by peculiar/obscure transport modes, and this was obviously as pec/ob as they come...so, onto Google...and thence to a very helpful gent in New York called Allen Morrison whose made a massive study of all things tramlike in South America, the Universe and Elsewhere...
After I stayed up a night and photoed a rerun on Sky, he identified it as the Vila Jardim Santa Cecília Monorail, which provides the only access to about 45 houses with about 200 residents, upside a big hill in Santa Teresa.
This community is also known as the "Bairro Suíço" (Swiss Quarter) or "Morro do Alemão" (German Hill) because of its German-speaking population.
The 150 metre long 'monotrilho' was built by the residents in 1949, and is still there and as far as I know, is still active to this day.
The traction is provided by the tired road wheels at the rear, and the small wheels at the front grip the single rail and guide it.
It is undoubtedly both the most obscure monorail and one of the most obscure railways in the world.
Below are my pics from the movie, (complete with my TV!), and then pix of an almost equally obscure monorail in India...almost equally obscure but not quite!! (It has driven wheels running on a centre rail, and the big wheel you can see in the pic trundles freewheelingly along the roadway, just to stop it all falling over!)
Here's a link to Allen's page with more recent photos of the monorail...check out the rest of his site...it's amazing and absolutely massive...
http://www.tramz.com/br/rj/vj/vj.html

BOAT
OK so here we have some pix of the boat what I used to own and then half own and then not own at all.

Motor Yacht Glala.

Interestingly when you own a British registered vessel, you own 64 shares of it.

Odd number, I thought...why sixty four?

Why not a hundred...normally when you own all of something, you own

a hundred per cent of it.

Ho Ho.

Guess what.

There are a hundred shares.

You only own 64 of them.

You can only own 64 of them.

But guess who owns the other 36 shares.

Of your boat.

Whether you like it or not...

The fucking Queen!!

Actually, it works to your advantage, as she regularly chips in a third towards mooring fees and maintenance, which can all be crippling on an old boat.

And, luckily I know how to spell the word gullible.

Do you?????

So Glala now has a new owner, (well, he owns 64 shares of her at least!)

Below is a link to his website. He seems to be planning a big restoration, and talks about our work as having not been up to scratch in the late 80's. In fact the poor work he refers to was done by the guy I bought her from, who was somewhat of an idiot.

I'm about to send the new guy an email and fill in some informational/historical gaps.
http://www.ceze.net/glala/index.htm

This is Glala lying off Dunkirk during Operation Dynamo in 1940, the mass evacuation of the BEF and other allied forces back to Blighty.

Due to her shallow draft, Glala was able to get in close to the beaches and tow off whalers loaded with soldiers to the destroyers standing further out to sea.

She had an engine blown out during a Stuka dive bomber attack and had to head back to England for repairs.

The first 2 pix below were taken on the day of the relaunch in September 1989 after a year and a half of restoration on a slipway in Woolston,Southampton.

The bottom one is in Lulworth Cove in 1985, when she was a great deal less than seaworthy. She had just taken part in a Dunkirk Little Ships reunion.

Top photo below is M.Y.Glala the day I discovered her in early 1988, in use as a houseboat on the River Hamble.
Below that, a pic of her on Stem to Stern Boatbuilder's slipway, in Willment's shipyard, Woolston, Southampton, where we lived (on the slipway!) for a year and a half.
Phil Godard of Stem to Stern ran the entire rebuild and become a great friend of mine.
Anybody know where he is now??
Below that is Glala docked in the Isle of Wight, after relaunch, during sea trials/piss up. That was the day I bought a battered jam sandwich in a chip shop and nearly threw up. Seemed like a wicked idea at the time...the sandwich that is, not the vomitting...


MY BIRTHDAY MONTAGE CARD FROM HANNAH...thanks Spud!
Here it is.
My naughty childrens!!
All montagey!


CITRUSNESS..NICE PIC THEREOF.
Here is a picture of citrusness...one day these will be mine, all mine...
In fact my 1500 trees and all the rest are doing very well, after months of weather varying between rain and shine...perfect for citrusness...my trees are two meters or more now...must go and see them again soon...in fact I will save upo and go and wee on them...they like that...(as you will know if you saw The World's Fastest Indian...great film!!)



ETIQUETTE????
Now a Section on Etiquette...
Bet you weren't expecting this one even more than the other one you weren't expecting ...haha



How to greet a proper lady.

How to greet (or restrain) a not very proper lady.

ESCONDIDINHO

This is a new and very short section.

In fact, that was it !

No, ok...escondidnho is my new fave dish..

...basically if you boil up aipim, cassava, manioc, tapioca, gari, whatever you wanna call it, and then mash it up with cream and milk and cream cheese, (it goes transparent like wallpaper paste and all weird and gloopy...) and then bake it with prawns or carne seca or any meat or whatever underneath and some parmesan on topperneath it makes this sort of gooey with a thick crust kind of slightly cottage pie-ey mmmmm Yorkshire puddingy cum lasagne-ey comfort foody kind of yummy thing and basically...I like it.

I've made a rough version just with cream cheese and skimmed milk which was fine...

When I told Hannah about it she said she'd just seen some Indian cook knocking out almost exactly the same thing but currified...small world innit? No actually, it's really big but everyone eats one of the same three things pretty much...cassava or rice or pasta or bread...ok four things...actually Brasilians eat pasta, rice, potatoes, toasted manioc flour and chips at the same meal all the time...ok five things...

This is a picture of Escondidnho.

Obviously, really, isn't it???

It goes thick and crusty round the sides as well...mmmmmmmmm.

TOONI ON THE TELLY!!

How marvelous!

Tooni who used to work in the Bell in Bath is now one of the presenters on the BBC2 series 'Ocean'. Here she is in the Arctic. She trained as a marine biologist whatever that is but only so she could get on the telly I expect!

She told me once she was called Tooni because her mum'n'dad liked...you guessed it...cartoons!

(By that logic, my name should be Citroen Theatre Groupie)

By the way, for any Brasilians looking in, the white stuff in the picture is called 'snow' and is what we call 'cold'. It's very similar to 'hot' but not as.

The big white thing hiding in 'the snow' behind Tooni is 'a polar bear' and is very dangerous and very hard to spot, and behind that is a thing we call 'a boat'. It gets stuck in what we call 'the ice', as you can see here.

Tooni will be stuck there in 'the snow' with 'the polar bear' because 'the boat' will probably remain stuck in 'the ice' for what we call 'quite a long time'.

Good luck with the TV presenting Tooni!

LAFER

Well isn't this quickfire diversity at it's most diverse and quickfire!

I feel quite proud and all encompassing!

OK my fave Brasilian furniture tends to be by a firm called Lafer.

They also make or made glass bodied copies of the old MG, and are most famous for building the fibreglass Earhole phone boxes you see all over Brasil.

But sod all that, I like their seating...and here are pix of my absolute fave design...

One day it shall be mine, oh yes, it shall be mine...

Absolutely stunning, I reckon.

I search for these and other goodies every day online and off.

I have a couple of sections of this, the YOKO by Tok &Stok...the Brasilian equivalent of Habitat. I'm constantly searching for more. It's a rip off of Michel Ducaroy's TOGO design for Ligne Roset, which featured on the Big Brother set a couple of years ago, and which is closely related to my beloved Cinna Sandra set, which now lives at my mateToby's house in Batheaston. Hello Tobe! Hello Sandra!

It's illustrated in black leather below, and you can see mine in my ex apartment on the last bunch of blog, belower down.

This is another gorgeous, though tatty Lafer, upholstered over a

fibreglass shell on a wooden base. I'd love to find a set of these with the armchairs an'all.

OTHER STUFF

Odds and some sods...

This is a stunning 1960's piece by the American Paul Evans from his Cityscape series.
I doubt I'll ever find one of these.

Guess what you flick to turn on the lamp...

Old audio cassettes type lamp!

VARIOUSER AND VARIOUSER

Amanda, Sonia's niece, has now gone back to a life of evangelism

in Rio with her dad, the minister.

God help the church.

Wicked T.

And another shot of the Gurkin.

And the Anna.

Well, when I first opened my record shop, I bought crates of pristine stuff from a guy up the road, most of it on US labels. And the wooden crates had these weird stickers on them, but no address or contact, in fact they didn't make it clear what Liquorice Pizza actually was even.

So, the other week, after fifteen years, I trawled the net for clues, and there it all was.

LA and environs, a chain of record stores, all very fondly remembered by punters and staff alike.

Great name, and great graphics tambem. Ooooops. I mean as well.

If you flip back in my blog to March you'll find the guys from Bath's Jammadesamba staying with me for a break after drumming all over Rio throughout Carnaval.

Here the article in the local paper, in which Jackson says that Finnish girls samba harder and better than Brasilians. Tell it like ya see it son...and keep yer head down!

Talking of which, last night I thought I 'd been shot!

Whilst on the piss in my fave bar by the lagoon,my fullglass of caipivodkaexplodedwith a massive bang, simultaneously with me noticing a car pull up outside and then move on rapidly. I was so convinced, and lacking any other explanation, that i ran my hands over my body to find the bullet hole and ready for the pain to kick in! I still know nothing but I guess the ice erm, exploded!! (Does ice explode??)

Here's Sonia cooking up a storm at my place the other week.

I'm trying to put her in for 'Iron Chef'.

(Don't tell her.)

I told the estate agent I wanted to live by the Lagoon, not in it.

And here as a final finale, my road this morning after a certain amount of raininess
Which is why it really does matter whether Paulo Melo gets the hump as to whether or not his wife gets in and whose votes get thrown in the bin and who bribes who and all that shit...

Democracy, please, not Mockracy.

Well, Saquarema doesn't often make it into the international news, let alone into Hollywood movies, but this time we scored on both counts!!!
The star of this story was busted in Lake Shopping Mall, where I go on the piss now and again, right here in good ole' Saqua'!!

Justices turn down appeal in 'Alpha Dog' case
Story Highlights
Jesse James Hollywood's lawyers say 'Alpha Dog' film publicity would demonize him.
Prosecutor in real-life case assisted movie's producers.
Case, and movie, involve a drug-related kidnapping and murder.
Hollywood could receive the death penalty if convicted.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Supreme Court is allowing a prosecutor who helped in the making of the movie "Alpha Dog" to stay on the capital case on which the film was based.

Justin Timberlake starred in "Alpha Dog," the film based on the Jesse James Hollywood case.

Justices declined Monday to get involved in an appeal from Jesse James Hollywood, the accused mastermind of a plot to kidnap and murder 15-year-old Nicholas Markowitz.
Hollywood -- his real name, says his family -- says publicity over "Alpha Dog" would unfairly demonize him before potential jurors.
The movie was released last year. Hollywood and his lawyers argue the power of popular films to influence the minds of the general public makes their upcoming defense all but impossible.
Hollywood is charged with heading a Southern California drug ring, and ordering the murder of Markowitz in August 2000. The boy's older half-brother reportedly owed Hollywood a $1,200 drug debt.
Hollywood faces the death penalty if convicted.
The justices' refusal to intervene now means Hollywood's criminal trial can begin early next year as scheduled.
While police were investigating Markowitz's murder and building their a case against Hollywood and his accomplices, the suspect fled the country. He was found five years later in Saquarema, Brazil, and extradited to the United States in 2005. He is now 28 years old.
Don't Miss
Chief justice shows his writing chops
During this time, Santa Barbara County District Attorney Ron Zonen was contacted by movie producers, and he agreed to turn over to them probation reports, police files and other "sensitive" information on the case. He was also an unpaid consultant to the film. Zonen defended his actions, saying he was trying to help publicize the international manhunt for Hollywood.
The movie starred Bruce Willis, Sharon Stone, Justin Timberlake and actor Emile Hirsch in the role modeled on Hollywood. The fictionalized plot deals with a young drug dealer (named Johnny Truelove in the film), with a circle of friends, one of whom commits murder on Johnny's orders.
In real life, four of Hollywood's associates have already been convicted in the case, including triggerman Ryan Holt, who sits on California's death row.
The state's highest court ruled earlier this year that Zonen can remain on the case, but it criticized some of his actions.
"This is not to say that Zonen can or should escape censure," wrote Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar. "We find his acknowledged actions in turning over his case files without so much as an attempt to screen them for confidential information highly inappropriate and disturbing."
Hollywood's attorneys said that Zonen was unethical and that publicity from the movie tainted the jury pool. In addition to Zonen, they want the entire district attorney's staff removed from the case. "What we're saying is, when you do something like that, that's a conflict of interest," lead attorney James Blatt said. "You shouldn't be on the case."

AS IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY AND SONIA'S TOO WE HAD A PARTY SO I THOUGHT I'D BETTER POST SOME PIX...
And then I thought, well that's a bit sparse, so I've added some random bits too...
Latest news is that we've just had the Brasilian municipal elections all over the country...
I expect the goings on are fairly typical here in Saquarema...
...in which case WE'RE FUCKING DOOMED!!!!
In brief, 3 or 4 months of convoys of hundreds of nutters on momobikes, in cars, on lorries, beeping , screaming, shouting, waving, bannering, soundsysteming and anything annoying-ing...
Then 2 days of silence, then last Sunday, the voting...
The result...I think the polite term is "impasse"...
The winner is allegedly Dalton Borges...the previous Mayor...
But, he's been disqualified as he was found giving out food for votes (I heard it was cash actually, 10 reais (£3.00) per vote...)
So the Vice Mayor, Franciane Melo, who recieved a similar number of votes is in...or is she???
Supporters of both have been arrested for fighting in the streets in the last couple of days...
So last night, Paulo Melo, UN-coincidentally Franciane's husband, and State Legislator for Rio state, goes on his own radio show (on his own radio station no less) and announces that all the funds he was going to see diverted to Saquarema for much needed improvements (this included asphalting 250 kilometers of dirt roadways...have you seen mine???) are going to be RE-diverted elsewhere, because if the voters here in Saquarema don't want to vote for his wife Franciane, they're not getting any money for the town...
I ended up speechless, and had to go for a drink...
They're not getting my bloody vote...
Any of 'em.
I haven't got one.

Also on the corruption front, here's a pic of Pierry, my friend Sonia's 20 year old son who died, cause unknown, in his mother's arms in hospital here in Saquarema last October.

It now turns out that the Brasilian Navy, his erstwhile employer, had diagnosed him with throat cancer, but had not told him or his relatives, had not treated him for it during his time in the Navy's hospital in Rio, and had not informed the local hospital here in Saquarema.

Sonia is in the process of taking it to the courts, and has procured documentary proof, mostly through a sympathetic office worker at Navy HQ. The only possible reason seems to be budgetary, in which case there most be other similar cases, certainly in The Brasilian Navy, and possibly throughout the armed forces.

Oh yes, it's all one big fucking laugh here in sunny Brasil.

(It's actually been dull, cold and raining for weeks.)

SO WITHOUT FURTHER ADO OR ANY RELEVANCE WHATSOEVER...
Some pix of my flat before, during and after renovs in 2004.

Living room strewn with derelict belongings...airing cupboard and kitchen beyond...with handy internal porch with three doors...but note the original Georgian arch and alcoves mmmmmm...











The open plan kitchen a la Bath city Council 1974 ish...very collectable now...
The quaint walled garden...I'm sure I remember having children...

I heard council contract scafflers out there one day discussing whether my flat was inhabited...
"Not unless it's that tramp in the old trainers..."
I don't wear trainers...
Demolition in full swing...the council had done a great job...they'd just smashed their way through any Georgian features and rammed in partitioning to hide the mess of pipes and conduits and stuff...
But open plan becomes a tangible thingy...