Month: July 2012

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Campinas & UNICAMP

Campinas is a big city that still retains some of the small town feel and traffic patterns. I got there early in the morning, having taken the Azul flight from Brasília that left at 5:56, in time to for the morning rush hour.  There was a lot of traffic on the road, but it never stalled.  Somebody told me that the traffic would often be worse, but was lighter during the school holiday month. I suppose that is true, but traffic in São Paulo or Rio is heavy even during the off months. 

We stayed at the Dan Inn. It was simple but acceptable and not very expensive.  Around the downtown you can easily walk.  There are lots of restaurants that were not yet open in the morning.  Marcos from São Paulo and I stopped at Starbucks. I don’t know if Starbucks is a sign of higher civilization or not, especially in town that made its first fortune on coffee growing and trading, but it is familiar.  It is exactly the same as Starbucks in the U.S., except most things are in Portuguese.  Not everything; they still do not have a small cup of coffee and the small coffee is called a “tall” just like it is in the U.S.  I didn’t have any small change and when I tried to pay with a “grande” $R 50 bill, the barista asked if I had anything smaller.  I told her that didn’t have any “tall” bills. She didn’t get the joke, which maybe wasn’t very good, so I paid with my credit card.  This works best in any case. 

Our first appointment was at UNICAMP, the university in Campinas.  UNICAMP is one of the best universities in Brazil and one of the premier research institutions.   It was founded in 1966 and concentrates on the sciences, with especially good results in genomics and nanotech.  It is responsible for 15% of the Brazilian research output and more than half its students are at the graduate level.  UNICAMP is rated as the second best university in Latin America. 

Brazil has a Federal university system and there are private universities.  Some Brazilian states have state universities. It is supported by the State of São Paulo, as are USP and UNESP).  The State of São Paulo earmarks 2.1958% of the sales taxes it collects for the support of its universities and there are a lot of sales in São Paulo.  UNICAMP gets about $1billion in state funds and raises around $350million from private firms.  These are mostly in the form of joint research funds.  

There is no tuition, but it is really hard to get in.  Each year they accept about 3400 students out of 600,000 applicants. The University has approximately 17000 undergraduate and 20000 graduate students. There are nearly 1,800 faculty members, 98% with a Ph.D. The university makes no distinction between in-state and out-of-state applicants, but Brazil doesn’t have the kind of tradition of kids going away to college, so most of the students are from São Paulo.  Besides the university itself, UNICAMP runs two large hospitals in Campinas, and one in each of the neighboring towns of Sumaré and Hortolândia.

UNICAMP has very few foreign students. The largest number comes from Columbia and there are only 161 of them.   Only nine (9) Americans are enrolled as full time students at UNICAMP, although there are some shorter exchange programs and the university has an increasing number of international connections.   

The university is located in a charming area of Campinas called Barão Geraldo. It is a semi-rural place with lots of greenery.  I had breakfast at a restaurant/bakery called Romana, pictured above. The whole area reminded me of Italy. It seems to have a high quality of life and it would be a nice place to live.

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Twilight Running

The pictures above and below are the lake from my running trail along Lake Paranoá in Brasilia. It is a very pretty scene. It gets dark in Brasília at around 6pm at this time of the year, so anytime I run on a weekday I am doing it in the dark, or at least the semi-dark. I don’t mind, no chance of sunburn. It is also a sublime experience to run through the landscape in the muted light. My system is to run a loop that takes me back about three quarters of the way. Then I walk the rest of the way, listening to my audiobooks. Right now I have the bio of Lyndon Johnson, “Passage to Power”. Great book and a great way to combine exercise, relaxation and learning.

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Salvador in July

I like Salvador more each time I visit. It looked very green this time. It has not become greener, but the dry season is beginning show in Brasília, which makes Salvador green by comparison. I stayed at the Pestana Lodge. This is better than the Pestana Hotel, which is connected to it by a bridge. The lodge also has the advantage of being a little cheaper than the hotel, so we save the G a little money. The picture alongside is taken from my room’s balcony. What is not to like?

Both the hotel and the lodge are right on the ocean, built into the hills on a rocky headland.  You can walk to shops and restaurants from there, although I don’t think many people do because of the supposed crime threat.  I walked around at night w/o feeling particularly threatened.  I think that the neighborhood is improving. 

One of the board members of the BNC has been active in Salvador for more than fifty years. He explained that crime was worse, so bad that people just didn’t go out at night. There are still parts of the city where you should not go, but things are better. He also told me about the growth of the city. The picture above is the SENAC building. When it was built in the 1980s, it was the tallest building, the only tall building in the area.  The picture below is taken from the window of the SENAC building. You can see all the tall buildings now filling the landscape. All of them are new. This part of Salvador is a completely new city.  

The challenge is similar to any densely built city – traffic. No big city has found the perfect solution. Salvador needs a subway system, among other things. There have long been plans to build one, but the current projection is that there will be only six kilometers, a distance that most people could just walk. I am not sure if the traffic is facilitated or hindered by the interesting local driving habits. On the one hand, you could say that our taxi drivers make use of the whole road, including short distances between parked cars, bus pullouts and places between moving vehicles where you wouldn’t think another car could fit. On the other hand, it seems a bit chaotic.