The 'Other' Side of Healthcare

Yesterday I finally went to do some blood tests that I needed to do. After my various public hospital experiences, I decided to go private this time. The difference between the atmosphere, well...
First of all, the laboratory was located in Itaim Bibi, a very rich neighbourhood of São Paulo. Just by looking at the building you can smell the scent of rich people. (I know, I know, we are just bitter poor people, right? Ha ha ha..) 

As opposed to in the public hospital Clinicas:

And from the inside:

They even had those look-at-us-our-clients-are-so-posh-and-international-that-they-require-clocks-showing-different-time-zones-in-large-cosmopolitan-cities clocks:

Except, I happened to know that the clocks were wrong, because the time in Sydney was 1.30PM then. Anyway.

Today I went to do some photocopying at the Xerox (that's pronounced 'sheroks' here in Brazil, by the way). I wanted to copy four whole books. The guy looked at them and said, I can only get that done for Friday (today being Wednesday). I did my Desperation-Face. OK, maybe I can have two of them ready for tomorrow. Desperation-Face. I said to my friend next to me, Oh.... não vou estar em São Paulo a partir de amanhã (I won't be in São Paulo from tomorrow onwards.) ..hum... Xerox-man gave in, OK, you can come back at 7PM. 


So, my friends: this was an illustration of the fact that service people generally stretch time to get things done as much as they can get away with things are 'flexible' here. But that's cool, I got lucky today.


On the way home, I greeted João, my security-guard friend from USP, who asks me the same questions every time I see him. O Shiva, você estuda na letras? Vai ficar até quando? Na Austrália o povo fala inglês? Wa, tooh, tree.. Shiva é um nome de deusa, já sabia disso? (Hey Shiva, you study in the letters department? For how long are you staying in Brazil? In Australia they speak English? One, two, three.. Shiva is a name of a goddess, did you know that already?) Every time. He's nice though, I like him. 


When I came home, I said goodbye to one of my housemates who was going home for the summer. This one I didn't really know that well - my only memory of him is one conversation on the way to class at the beginning of semester, trying to explain the difference between generativism and functionalism in linguistics - needless to say, my technical Portuguese failed miserably in this context and he will probably forever only remember me saying clearly that 'Chomsky fills me with rage', but not know why. Maybe next year, when he comes back...


We are travelling to the Amazon tomorrow and will come back on the 24th of December. Unlikely that I will be heard from too much during that time. BUT: if you don't hear from me after that, you can start to worry. Fique a vontade! to worry, as I am a hypochondriac and fairly-totally-like100% sure that I will get malaria there and die. I am just a little bit traumatised with brazilian hospitals. So........... wish me luck.