Great photos on Folha's sport section

I always look forward to reading the Folha de São Paulo's sport section and it's partly because it always has a great front page photo + caption combo. Here's a couple of recent ones I liked:

São Paulo crashing out of the Copa do Brasil

Neymar taking the headlines again as Santos wins the Paulistão

Gentrifying the cafezinho

Commodity price of coffee past 12months

It’s Arabica harvest time in Brazil, the largest producer of arabica beans, the base ingredient of coffee.  And according to international forecasts demand is almost certain to outstrip supply again this for the fifth consecutive year meaning good business for Brazilian farmers, and there must be a lot of them; Brazil produces one third of the world’s coffee!

Ironically Brazil, the chief beneficiary, is itself partly responsible for price hikes. Along with China, India and Indonesia, Brazil has a growing middle class who is rapidly taking a liking to high-grade more expensive coffee meaning more need for Arabica beans. Next year Brazil will be the largest consumer of coffee as well as the largest producer. And São Paulo is a good place to witness the gentrification of the cafezinho. Here are my last 5 coffees:

As you can see they quite often come with a small glass of sparkling water which, in my humble opinion, is exactly how an espresso but other than São Paulo I have only seen this consistently done in Italy...

It's 23ºC (73ºF) in São Paulo, turn on your heaters please

Temperature like most other measurements is relative because although feeling hot or cold feels more like a natural instinct than a personal opinion there can great differences in perception. Presumably this is guided by our known temperature range, the maximums and minimums that we our accustomed to experience.

AT least this is the only reasonable explanation for why every Paulistano I have met recently has at some point started complaining about the cold weather and the imminent arrival of winter. “But, it’s not cold here” I’ve been telling them as I struggle to understand how you can simultaneously complain about cold temperature whilst wearing shorts. And it’s not that I keep a temperature conscious social circle. An article appeared on the Folha de São Paulo today which is headlined “Para aplacar o frio, padarias servem cremes e sopas” roughly translated as “Bakeries serving soups, to counter the cold” so I hurriedly rushed on to Google to check the onslaught of Siberian weather up ahead. Here´s a screen shot of Google’s response:

That very effectively allayed my immediate fears but I am now dreading the summer. If they think 23ºC (73ºF) is cold, we’re in for a roasting when the summer comes round!