More impressions from Brasilia
Working here is again different than it’s been in the past. Sitting away from the translation booth means sitting closer to the (open) window, which provides a very welcome, though slight, breeze of (slightly) cooler air. It’s really nice for a change - until a car with a bunch of loudspeakers mounted on it stops outside and blasts music and what sounds like a commercial at the building we’re occupying. Speaking loudly over this noise to be heard is hard, turning the headphones up loud enough to hear the (simultaneous) translation over the noise from outside and the raised voice of the speaker an exercise in frustration, if not futility.
Luckily, the car moves on after a few minutes.
Then comes back for a few minutes.
This goes on for a while. We’ll have some comparative quiet, then it comes back. When I decide to investigate, I’m told it’s someone from a labour union, appealing to workers to join in a strike. So it’s a political protest, and no one can do anything against it. I feel that it impacts the quality of life of our work significantly.
For lunch, we go out to local restaurants which cater to all the other lunch-seeking workers in the office buildings around here. Food is fast and cheap (and okay). At least I’m not forced to live above my per diem rate, which is good. Walking to and from the restaurant is a welcome chance to stretch one’s legs. It also affords a glimpse of Brasilia from street level. The infrastructure is worrying, particularly when passing underneath bridges which show crumbling fissures in the places where the concrete supports meet the roadbed of the bridge or the ground underneath. I’m not sure if I actually see rust leaking out of any (presumably) reinforced concrete structures, as the ground Brasilia is built on must have a rather high iron content - construction excavations are bright red, while paths trampled across otherwise grass-covered earthen embankments look like livid scars crisscrossing the city’s tissue. And there are many of those - given that pedestrians did not appear to figure into the architect’s plan of the city (way back in the 50s when cars were the next cool thing), I notice these improvised walkways everywhere. So the city adapts - but the adaptation seems destructive. Together with the crumbling infrastructure, which does not appear to have seen maintenance in the 50 years since the entire city was rammed into the ground over a construction period of a mere four years, this casts a depressing pall over the place. Or maybe it’s just me.
Other things are depressing. I’m not at liberty to discuss details of our Mutual Evaluation, but the Brazilian code of criminal procedure is a matter of public record. We are told it was written under the impression of twenty years of military dictatorship, which goes a long way towards explaining the endless, tortuous (from a prosecutor’s vantage point) appeals process. There isn’t a period of limitations for criminal proceedings, there are three - two of them can be retroactive. So if a criminal proceeding is brought, the prosecutors need to go by the standard period of limitations, which is based on the maximum sentence for the crime being prosecuted. But if the sentence handed down is less than the maximum (which is usual), a shorter period of limitations applies - retroactively. Which means that the verdict made in the third instance (after two appeals) can mean the case (retroactively) lapsed between the first and second instance. Final verdicts against rich defendants are therefore very much the exception to the rule. If I was a prosecutor here, I think I would have killed myself some time ago. There are certainly enough tall buildings around to jump from.
Back in the hotel, I manage to figure out what to do about the air condition. There’s a window unit in the bed room, and one in the room with a table and workspace in it into which the door opens. They sometimes make quite a racket when turned on, sometimes run relatively quietly. They have two settings: On and Off. The setting that works best for me is “off”, on both, with all the windows and both doors onto the small balcony wide open. At night, that’s pleasantly cool. During the day, I wouldn’t know - I’m never here during the day.
That may change on Monday, which is a holiday here (which is why we're working all of Sunday as a team, consolidating notes etc.).
Luckily, the car moves on after a few minutes.
Then comes back for a few minutes.
This goes on for a while. We’ll have some comparative quiet, then it comes back. When I decide to investigate, I’m told it’s someone from a labour union, appealing to workers to join in a strike. So it’s a political protest, and no one can do anything against it. I feel that it impacts the quality of life of our work significantly.
For lunch, we go out to local restaurants which cater to all the other lunch-seeking workers in the office buildings around here. Food is fast and cheap (and okay). At least I’m not forced to live above my per diem rate, which is good. Walking to and from the restaurant is a welcome chance to stretch one’s legs. It also affords a glimpse of Brasilia from street level. The infrastructure is worrying, particularly when passing underneath bridges which show crumbling fissures in the places where the concrete supports meet the roadbed of the bridge or the ground underneath. I’m not sure if I actually see rust leaking out of any (presumably) reinforced concrete structures, as the ground Brasilia is built on must have a rather high iron content - construction excavations are bright red, while paths trampled across otherwise grass-covered earthen embankments look like livid scars crisscrossing the city’s tissue. And there are many of those - given that pedestrians did not appear to figure into the architect’s plan of the city (way back in the 50s when cars were the next cool thing), I notice these improvised walkways everywhere. So the city adapts - but the adaptation seems destructive. Together with the crumbling infrastructure, which does not appear to have seen maintenance in the 50 years since the entire city was rammed into the ground over a construction period of a mere four years, this casts a depressing pall over the place. Or maybe it’s just me.
Other things are depressing. I’m not at liberty to discuss details of our Mutual Evaluation, but the Brazilian code of criminal procedure is a matter of public record. We are told it was written under the impression of twenty years of military dictatorship, which goes a long way towards explaining the endless, tortuous (from a prosecutor’s vantage point) appeals process. There isn’t a period of limitations for criminal proceedings, there are three - two of them can be retroactive. So if a criminal proceeding is brought, the prosecutors need to go by the standard period of limitations, which is based on the maximum sentence for the crime being prosecuted. But if the sentence handed down is less than the maximum (which is usual), a shorter period of limitations applies - retroactively. Which means that the verdict made in the third instance (after two appeals) can mean the case (retroactively) lapsed between the first and second instance. Final verdicts against rich defendants are therefore very much the exception to the rule. If I was a prosecutor here, I think I would have killed myself some time ago. There are certainly enough tall buildings around to jump from.
Back in the hotel, I manage to figure out what to do about the air condition. There’s a window unit in the bed room, and one in the room with a table and workspace in it into which the door opens. They sometimes make quite a racket when turned on, sometimes run relatively quietly. They have two settings: On and Off. The setting that works best for me is “off”, on both, with all the windows and both doors onto the small balcony wide open. At night, that’s pleasantly cool. During the day, I wouldn’t know - I’m never here during the day.
That may change on Monday, which is a holiday here (which is why we're working all of Sunday as a team, consolidating notes etc.).