A tale of two pets: Blackito and Penny

Penny at two months old.

AROUND two weeks ago I told my mom she should get a cat to deal with the small field mice that were digging holes all over our property.

"My friend Camille says her cat eats all of their mice," I said to my mother.

Within a few days our driver, Ali Omar, appeared with a stray, black kitten. He had huge ears and a spunky disposition. Even our dog Nog-Nog liked him. I decided to call him 'Blackito'. He liked me and would curl up on my arm and purr while we watched TV at night. Then I decided we should take him to the vet for a check-up.

Little did I know that the veterinary clinic that we took him to was where he had been originally taken from by our driver when he brought him to us. There we found his mother and siblings lounging around a glassed-in room, abandoned cats waiting to be adopted for free. Well, not exactly for free.

The vet looked at 'Blackito' and when we asked her what the dry spots on his head were, she said: "Oh, that's scabies."

"Is it contagious?" my mom asked.

"Yes it is, and you should be extra careful with your delicate skin as you can get it too," the vet told my mom.

My mother in her old age has found her skin has become especially thin and delicate, easily bruised and cut. The thought of getting scabies from the cat was just too much for her, and so Blackito's fate was sealed.

"You can leave him with us for a week and we will treat him if you buy us the medicine," the vet said smiling angelically at us.

We readily agreed and went off to the pharmacy to buy the human medication that the vet said was okay to use on Blackito. Little did we know that this medicine cost $93 for a box of only 15 pills! And the vet said he needed to be treated for a whole month, at one pill a day!

Horrified at the high price, and angry that the clinic had not warned our driver that Blackito had scabies or that the medicine was so expensive, we felt cheated and lied to. We finally decided to buy one box of the pills and gave it to the clinic for Blackito's treatment. This cat sadly wasn't coming home with us again.

Fast forward around ten days and I found myself stopping at the same veterinary clinic to check up on Blackito. He looked better and was still being treated in isolation for his scabies. But I still didn't feel that pull one feels when one falls in love with an animal. Instead, my eyes were on a litter of puppies that the vets told us had just been dumped that very same morning in front of the clinic.

One of the puppies, a fluffy female, especially caught my eye and I asked about her.

"What breed is she?"

"Oh she's a mongrel," said the vet.

"How big will she grow?" I asked.

"Not that big, sort of like a small poodle," she answered. "You can take her home for a week and see if you like her."

That sealed it. I scooped her up in my hand and off we went.

"Look what I brought home!" I announced brightly to my mom as soon as I got home, proudly holding up my new puppy. "Isn't she a doll?"

And my mother agreed. We've called her Penny. Nog-Nog is rather jealous of her, growling at her if she gets too close to him, but we're hoping he'll loosen up and warm up to her once he realizes that we won't neglect him for the newcomer.

Penny cried the whole first night in my house, probably because it was her first time ever away from her mother, according to my mom. She's only two months old and already has razor-sharp teeth. She plays with us now and runs after us in the garden, her chubby figure bouncing around behind us.

Although we've only had her a few days, last night she hardly cried and was quiet until around 6 a.m., which is when I usually wake up anyway. I'm just glad that Blackito led us to Penny in a strange but loving way.

Nog-Nog wearing his sweater as we watch TV at night:

Vintage Cupcakes in Brasilia Could Be Better

IT SURE didn't take that long for the current rage of cupcakes in the US to reach Brazil.

I first read about the opening of Vintage Cupcakes in Brasilia a few weeks ago in an article in the Correio Braziliense. According to the paper, Gustavo and Ana Lacerda, a Brazilian couple who had lived in the US, decided to open a string of stands selling traditional American cupcakes in a variety of flavors. Their first stand is now open in the Patio Brasil shopping center on W3 Norte.

I'd been meaning to swing by and try them out, and yesterday after having lunch with my friend Alisson, I had the chance to. Their tiny stand is located on the top floor of the shopping center near the Leitura bookshop and in front of the Banco do Brasil.

Each cupcake is sold for R$6.00 (around $3), which is rather pricey for Brazil. But each cupcake is quite large, and each one comes piled high with a mound of icing, which you can see from my pictures. The problem is that the frosting is not velvety smooth and buttery, but rather tastes like it is made from vegetable shortening such as Crisco!

I bought four cupcakes to try: A chocolate and marshmallow one, a Nutella and banana one, a dark chocolate one and a Macadamia nut one.

Several Brazilian bloggers have raved about them on their blogs in Portuguese, click here and here, but then I've found that Brazilians tend to gush about many things and are extremely generous in their praise!

The saleswoman told me that they are baked fresh every day in a kitchen in Aguas Claras. The kitchen was set up at cost of R$200,000 ($100,000) according to the Correio, and the couple plan to open three more stands in Brasilia before allowing their concept to be franchised in other parts of the country.

The cupcakes I bought did not taste very fresh, tasting possibly at least a day old.

I miss the yummy cupcakes that I've tasted in New York and Washington, and wish they could be duplicated here. Is that too much to ask, or are Brazilian taste buds that different from ours?

Four shows: One night

Yana Tamayo poses in front of one of her series of watercolors that

explore the geometry of various public buildings in Brasilia.

LAST week I attended four art exhibitions in one night in Brasilia. I had originally intended to just see Yana Tamayo’s solo show, but when I arrived at the Galeria CAL of the Casa da Cultura da America Latina in the Setor Commercial Sul, friends I met there told me there was another show upstairs and more at the Caixa Economica.

Tamayo’s show reminded me of senior art shows one sees in universities. She is still young, only 31, and the show was co-sponsored by the University of Brasilia, so that may account for the sense of a talent still not fully developed that I felt she was.

Entitled Projeto Desvio de Serie (para olhar a cidade), Tamayo told me that her aim here was to look at Brasilia’s architecture and public spaces with new eyes, and show that in her art work. One of my favorites was her video installation that showed a speeded up 19-minute long video of a green public space with a road in the background on which cars drove by. The movement of the cars and the moving shadow cast by overhead clouds looked cool to me, reminding me of TV police series in which detectives watch video surveillance tapes to catch a criminal.

She also did a series of small watercolors in which she reduced popular buildings, such as the Conjunto Nacional shopping center and the Olho do Tatu underpass at the Central Bus Station, to blocks of geometric color. Her Y-shaped water towers of Ceilandia reminded me of the water towers of Riyadh and Kuwait.

Her show is open until July 19 in the Quadra 4, Edificio Anapolis.

The second show that I saw that night upstairs from Tamayo’s was by a much older artist, Marlene Godoy. Her work is abstract and consists of huge panels of all types of melted waxes that she layers into different designs. I didn’t really like her work: For me it looked like institutional art that would look best in a corporate boardroom or the lobby of a five-star hotel.

Moving on to the Caixa Cutural, which is the large exhibition space next to the headquarters of the Caixa Economica bank at the end of L-2 Sul in the Setor Bancario, I saw two exhibitions: One of the drawings of the great Franco-Swiss architect Le Corbusier, the other of the Austrian pop artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser.

I enjoyed Le Corbusier’s architectural drawings immensely, especially those of the public buildings he designed and had built in Chandigarh, India, in the early 1950s. From his masterful use of raw, unfinished concrete, that he used in so many of his buildings, it is easy to see how he was such a great influence on the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer and urban planner Lucio Costa when they were designing and building Brasilia in the late 1950s.

Hundertwasser’s exhibition showcased his posters that he had painted to celebrate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I must admit that I enjoyed the poetry written by the Brazilian Thiago Mello to accompany the artwork, more than the art itself!

Both the Le Corbusier and Hundertwasser shows are on display until July 19.

Le Corbusier's Chandigarh Secretariat building: A veritable ode to concrete:

Sad lack of coverage of Arroyo's Brazil trip

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva gives the thumbs up while meeting Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo at Itamaraty Palace in Brasilia on Wednesday. (AP)

THE just concluded state visit of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to Brazil this week unfortunately garnered hardly any attention back home and in Brazil.

The only stories I saw online were in the Diario do Pernambuco, a Recife newspaper, and the news service of the Brazilian Senate. The Senate news service article was eerily so similar to mine, that it may have been copied from my story for Arab News.

None of the Philippine papers seem to have sent reporters along with to cover the president's trip, with the Philippine Star reduced at one point to using a tiny story from the Chinese news agency Xinhua about Arroyo arriving in Rio de Janeiro to talk with Brazilian investors.

There wasn't single story in the Correio Braziliense, the biggest paper in the capital Brasilia, and there was no coverage on Globo's Jornal Nacional, the most popular news show on Brazilian television.

I interviewed the Philippine Secretary of Social Welfare and Development Esperanza Cabral this week in Brasilia, and she spoke to me about the new regulations that specify the punishments for those caught trying to buy or sell human organs in the Philippines. My story about it appeared today in Arab News. Click here to read it.

Arroyo's trip to Brazil was nevertheless a success, with several bilateral accords signed, including one on cooperation in the development of biofuels, which Brazil has much experience in, and another in agriculture.

President Arroyo visits Brazil

PHILIPPINE President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is arriving tonight in Recife, Brazil, for a four-day state visit to Brazil, the first ever by a sitting Philippine president.

I interviewed the charming Philippine Ambassador to Brazil Teresita Barsana for an article that I wrote about Arroyo's visit that appeared in Arab News today. Click here to read it.

The embassy is on a row of diplomatic missions in the northern section of Brasilia. There were Galinhas de Angola walking around the grounds, a bust of Philippine hero Jose Rizal, and of course the Philippine flag flying against the crisp blue sky of Brasilia.

‘Departures’: Death Japanese-style

Tsutomu Yamazaki and Masahiro Motoki prepare a body for a

funeral in a scene from Departures.

Warning: Contains spoilers!

WATCHING Departures on Saturday night with two friends at the CasaPark movie theater in Brasilia, I learned how much the Japanese honor their dead.

Winner of this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Film, I had forgotten that fact when I chose the movie for us to watch. I had read positive snippets about it online and the main actor, Masahiro Motoki, was more than handsome to enjoy watching for more than two hours.

Daigo Kobayashi (Motoki) is a violencello player in a Tokyo orchestra and is soon out of a job when the owner decides to dissolve the orchestra. Faced with unemployment, Daigo returns to his hometown with his relentlessly chirpy wife Mika (Ryoko Hirosue). She can never say ‘no’ to her husband, and soon becomes a Japanese version of a Stepford Wife. We wanted to wring her neck, she was so annoyingly positive.

Answering a classified ad entitled ‘Departures’ in a newspaper, Daigo thinks he is applying for a job at a travel agency, when in fact he finds out it is a funeral agency that prepares the bodies of the deceased to enter the after life.

The funeral agency is headed by a wonderfully grumpy Ikue Sasaki (Tsutomu Yamazaki), who soon teaches Daigo the fine art of cleaning and preparing a body for a funeral.

Daigo, ashamed of doing a job that is looked down upon in Japan, does not tell his wife the details of his new job, which she later finds out when she discovers an instructional video on body preparation starring her husband. This is when she finally becomes nasty and selfish, giving her husband an ultimatum: either leave his “disgusting” job or she will leave. He refuses, so she flounces off to stay with her parents.

Since my own father just died last December, I found the movie very moving, especially the scenes where Daigo is shown lovingly washing the body of his own father. It reminded me of how I too helped wash my dad’s body before his burial.

I must admit that I cried several times during the film, as well as half of the audience from the sniffling sound of wet noses that I heard.

Departures is an excellent movie, and I highly recommend that you go see it if you haven’t yet.

Apenas o Fim: A Cute Indie Brazilian Film

Gregorio Duvivier and Erika Mader in a scene from Apenas o Fim.

I WENT to see the new independent Brazilian movie Apenas o Fim (Only the End) last weekend with my friend Ricky after reading a long profile about the film's director Matheus Souza in the Correio Braziliense.

Souza, who was born and grew up in Brasilia, is a film student at the Pontifical Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) and Apenas o Fim is his first feature-length film. Filmed entirely on the green and leafy campus of PUC, the movie is about the last hour in the relationship of a young student couple played by Erika Mader and Gregorio Duvivier.

Upbeat, funny, rather neurotic, and full of references to pop culture, Apenas o Fim is a breath of fresh air in Brazilian cinema that usually churns out silly comedies or totally-depressing films about violent drug gangs living in favelas.

Souza follows the couple walk around the campus while talking and reminiscing about their relationship. Duvivier reminded me of an over-talkative but lovable character from a Woody Allen movie, while Mader with her reluctance to tell her boyfriend why she is leaving him or where she is going, was both mysterious and likable in a kooky sort of way.

"Were you never happy with me?" asks Duvivier at one point.

"No, I never was completely happy," replies Mader.

"Will you be happy after you leave me?" he asks.

"No, I don't think so," she replies.

"Then why don't you just stay with me?" he pleads.

Only two other characters appear on screen with the couple, both fellow students that they run across on the campus. Both exchanges are hilarious and add some much needed humor to stop the film from becoming an over-indulgent piece of navel-gazing.

The director Souza said that he spent his childhood weekends with his divorced father watching 10 movies that they would rent. "My father never talked much," Souza told the Correio. "Watching movies together was how we communicated."

There are plenty of references to famous movies in Apenas o Fim, including a film-within-the film that is not pulled off well at all and should have been left behind on the floor of the editing room.

Nevertheless, Souza certainly seems to have the beginning of a great career in filmmaking. Go see Apenas o Fim if you'd like to see what educated, twenty-something Brazilians are like.

Young artists in Brasilia

One of Yana Tamayo's photographs of the National Museum

in Brasilia surrounded by 'possible' other buildings.

ON Tuesday night I went to the opening of an exhibition in Brasilia of young Brazilian artists. Held at the ECCO gallery, which is in front of the Liberty Mall and sandwiched between two car showrooms, the group of people gathered outside the gallery's entrance made us think there was a line to get in. Fortunately, it was only people watching a man covered completely in yellow and black striped plastic strips posing in front of the venue and occasionally moving. This was supposed to be performance art, but I've seen better before. The people watching though were appreciative, clicking away with their digital cameras and cell phones.

The reason for the gallery being between two car showrooms became apparent when my friend Ricky explained to me that it was owned by Karla Osorio Netto, who comes from a wealthy family that also owns the car dealerships. "Oh, now I understand," I said.

The gallery space is quite large, around twice the size of similar privately-owned galleries I have seen in Dubai. Divided into two floors, the ground floor was showing the work of two artists, Carolina Ponte and Pedro Varela, called Pontos de Encontro (Points of Encounter). Varela did pen and ink drawings of mystical villages that looked vaguely Russian. I found them a bit too illustration-like and juvenile, but Ricky said that's why he liked them. Ponte does huge, colorful drawings of cities that span whole walls, and looked to me like something trendy and hip parents might have commissioned for the walls of their darling children.

Upstairs the exhibition entitled Um Lugar a Partir Daqui (A place starting from here) was much more experimental and interesting. Sponsored by Itau Bank, which claims to be the largest bank in Latin America, it included mainly installations and photographs. My favorites were Barbara Wagner's color portraits of men taking part in a street festival; Vitor Cesar's series of seven photographs showing a man standing behind various different shop awnings, his head cut-off, and the Brasilia-born Yana Tamayo's series of photographs questioning the iconic Brasilia architecture of Oscar Niemeyer.

Tamayo took plastic bowls and placed them on the ground in front of the Niemeyer-designed National Museum building in Brasilia, that looks like a giant, white flying saucer, and then photographed them from various angles. Ricky and I were able to track Tamayo down at the opening and she told us that she was trying to question the use of public space in Brasilia by producing the series of photographs in which she introduced new objects into the iconic skyline of Brazil's capital that will be celebrating its 50th anniversary next April.

Tamayo will be exhibiting other photographs at another exhibition scheduled to open June 23. She has promised me an invitation, so I will write about it when I go and see it.

— The Pontos de Encontro exhibition will be open until August 2, while the Um Lugar a Partir Daqui show will only be up until July 19. Call the ECCO gallery for more information, 61-3327-2027, or visit their website www.eccobrasilia.com.br.