Bonus really old unpublished posts: shopping holidays

While doing housekeeping around here, I found a couple of really old posts (from Brazil, circa 2007, and Peru in early 2008) that I started and for some reason never published. It’s kind of too bad, because it doesn’t really make sense anymore and I can’t figure out how to publish it in between the posts of whatever month it was originally written. I don’t know if that’s even possible, and I guess it would kind of go against the point of a blog, but it would fit much better in context. But I’m publishing them anyway (for now), because my last post was kind of lame and short and I’m too tired/lazy to write another one at the moment. I’m guessing the one on shopping holidays was written in April 2007, but I really have no idea. Posts below the fold.

1: Shopping Holidays (2007)

Today is another public holiday. I’m not quite sure which one it is (considering it’s the 3rd or 4th public holiday this month, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that nobody’s really keeping track). Brought up as I was in the hallowed traditions of Memorial Day sales and Labor Day back-to-school shopping, I tend to forget that if you’re anywhere but the States (maybe Canada as well?), the concept of a “shopping holiday” is confusing at best.

Even a shopping weekend is kind of a weird idea in most places. When I was in Mozambique, a friend who had spent a couple of years in the States told me that during his first week in the US he made sure to move in and stock up on everything he’d need before the weekend. When Sunday rolled around, he went to visit a friend and was amazed to see that all the stores were open. It’s not a funny story unless you’ve ever woken up on a Sunday and realized you forgot to buy milk at the store. But anyway. Not only is shopping on a Sunday a little bit weird in most of the world, even a full uninterrupted day of shopping is fairly unusual. Aside from in the very biggest cities (and sometimes even there), the siesta is alive and well. If you’re eating lunch and need an aspirin in any city from Arequipa to Quelimane, you’d better hope your headache or heartburn or whatever it is can wait until 3 in the afternoon. In many places, they’ve managed to maintain the tradition of the “floating siesta,” which basically means that they shut the door in your face at noon on the dot and open back up when they feel like it.

This actually has very little to do with Rio — the siesta is practically non-existent here, things stay open late, and “flexible” (read: unscheduled early) closing times are rarely a problem unless there’s a game on. Shopping holidays, though, haven’t really caught on. How do I know this? No comment. Is it true that this knowledge was the hard-won result of a loooong bus odyssey out to the huge malls in the Barra da Tijuca suburbs on a perfect-for-shopping holiday, only to find out to my dismay that the stores didn’t open until 3pm? I SAID, no comment.

Anyway, happy random Brazilian holiday.

2: Memo to Miraflores (2008)

You may have noticed that Lima doesn’t get a lot of rain. In fact, I believe that it is what is known in common parlance as a “desert” (Desert, n. a place like Lima, Peru, that only gets 5 millimeters of rain a year). There are large portions of the city that don’t have any running water, and even larger portions that have polluted and overused the water supply that there is to within an inch of its (figurative) life. Therefore: please don’t water the grass in the parks at noon when it’s sunny out. And TURN OFF THE FOUNTAINS.

That is all.