Brasil – first impressions
November 15, 2006 1:17 am gnome, marketingIt’s my first visit to Brasil, I’m still in Sao Paolo airport, and my first impressions are not yet made.
My first impressions of airports have been made for years, though, and nothing here changes any of my experience-driven broad generalisations.
“Duty Free” booze in Paris was more expensive than the same stuff in the superstore – they made up for it by having a good range of €100 – €500 collector bottles. Meh.
I bought a beer here in Sao Paolo airport, and paid twice what I would outside the airport (6 reals), and have spent 40 reals on international call cards and 20 reals on 2 hours wifi.
The exchange rate is somewhere between 2.30 and 3.00 reals per euro, depending on how badly you’re getting fleeced by the bureau de change, and whether you’re buying or selling euros. So taking 2.50 and a rough rate, that’s 8 euros for 2 hours wifi – which is expensive anywhere, never mind in Brasil. And I can’t figure out how to find an SMTP server I can send mail through.
Am I the only one who finds the mentality of fleecing international air travelers at every opportunity is really counter-productive? Surely places would like to make a good first impression? How about doing away with airport surcharges for taxis, and making an airport discount for anyone coming off an international flight?
I just found out that because of a last-minute conference rescheduling, I’ll be giving a keynote at Latinoware – talk about adding pressure. I tested the new laptop (a Dell D420, which does indeed rock once you get the widescreen sorted) with a CRT behind it, and it didn’t work too well – I’m hoping that by stopping the 915resolution hack at boot and constraining it to 1024×768 the projector will work. If not, I have not yet completely removed windows, dual boot to the rescue.
November 15th, 2006 at 11:42 am
International air travelers looking to connect to the Internet are likely to be business travelers, and the airports figure those folks will just pay the outrageous price and charge it to the employer. Tourists probably left their machine at home.
November 15th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
Use xrandr (and the little GNOME control panel for it) to change your resolution to 1024×768 before switching to CRT mode. It’ll look stretched on your screen, fine on the projector. When randr++ turns up, we’ll be able to do much funkier (and dynamic) stuff to make this easier.
November 15th, 2006 at 3:06 pm
I might just have been lucky, but every UK airport I’ve been to has gotten progressively better at this over the last five years. Free wifi, 24-hour bars which charge the same as city places, and discount commute fares with airline tickets; none of these were available in 2001 (although it was nice being able to take domestic flights without a passport). Random snacks are still extortionate, but it would probably take an act of Parliament to prevent people from doubling the price of crisps when given a captive audience.
– Chris
November 15th, 2006 at 10:31 pm
Nice Brazil’s for you…
I hope you like!
[]’s
Danilo Cesar
November 16th, 2006 at 2:14 am
Hey Dave! Welcome to Brazil! Good to know you’ll be attending Latinoware! There’s lots of GNOMErs there! Let me know about your impressions about my country! Cheers!
November 17th, 2006 at 12:50 am
Welcome to Brasil. 🙂
Let me tell you here the people have the notion that everyone that is an American or an European is wealthy. Every single thing that is “for tourists” is naturally expensive. 🙁
Since you are probably hanging out with locals, you’ll probably find that there are cheaper places. I’m sure you’ll have lots of fun. 🙂