Helpful street objects around Pinheiros

Despite what is usually said about big cities and what I have heard about São Paulo's residents, in my experience Paulistanos have been extremely proactive, thoughtful, considerate and helpful. In fact, I often notice small details on the street which are put there to make life easier for another Pauistano. Here are some interesting examples:

On a street corner in Pinheiros the newspaper stand has a lighter attached to it for passers by to grab a "light" or for customers who have just purchased cigarattes:

The same stand also has a pen for you to use:

And further down the street there are public telephone booths, called orelhãos, portuguese for big ears, as they look like oversized ears. Notice that they have built a lower one for disabled access:

Compare that with the thought of a disabled person trying to get a wheelchair inside the traditional telephone boxes in London and the orelhão wins hands down.

The world's hardest hitting Anti-Smoking Adverts

As a non-smoker who has lived the last 5 years in Spain, a country which is in the world top 10 for the number of cigarettes smoked per capita as shown in this graphic, I was pleasantly surprised by how few people seemed to smoke in São Paulo and in Brazil in general. In fact on the same WHO index it is ranked 74 out of 121 countries, well below all European countries with the exception of Norway. 

However, it seems like it hasn't always been that way and even today there is relatively high tobacco consumption amongst children in some areas. Hence, the Ministry of Health's rather aggressive no-smoking campaign which I noticed in a roadside restaurant yesterday. Originally launched in 2002, the law made it obligatory for cigarette packaging to dedicate 100% of one side to health warning images. The official images were designed to shock and they did but even so in 2004 they were made more high impact and today the images displayed in shops and packacking are from a third set of images released in 2008 which are amongst the hardest hitting I have seen anywhere in the world. Let me know what you think of them: