Living in Rio

I have had quite a few PM's about various aspects of living in Rio, so I thought I would write a little piece about some of the intricacies of life in Brasil.

Getting a bank account

The first thing you need to do is get a CPF, which is the equivalent of a social security number in the States. Virtually anyone can get a CPF. All you need is your passport and your birth certificate. You bring this documentation to Banco Brasil, and they type you in the computer, and then you pay a small fee (like R4.00). Next you go to the government building and they assign you the CPF number. Sorry I don't remember the name, but there is one in Ipanema.

To get a bank account, you need two things, a CPF number, and proof of residence in the country. Proof of residence can usually be accomplished by a light bill or gas bill in your name. The typical way to accomplish this is to get a lease in your name and then you will receive all your bills at your new apartment. The problem with this approach is that you have to wait at least a month to have your documentation. Fortunately for me, Bobby at Blame it on Rio has helped numerous people through this process, and he was able to cut a few corners for me. I won't go into the details of what he did, but Bobby can help you.

Once you have a bank account, then you can wire money from your American bank account down to your new Brasil bank account. When you wire money down in dollars, you have 90 days to turn it into local currency. So you should time it so that you are happy with the exchange rate before you send the money down.

Once you get that done, you can now enjoy a nice feature of a bank account in Brasil. Huge interest rates. I am getting on my checking account somewhere around 1.9% per month. However, I don't recommend this approach as an investment instrument due to exchange rate risk. I am happy with my situation, because I know that I will be spending my reales in Brasil and I have no plans of repatriating my money back to the US.

Paying Bills

There is one awesome feature in Brasil. All of your bills are sent to you with a standardized bar code. Most people bring these bar coded invoices to their bank, and the bank scans them in, and accepts the money. But the nice feature is that if you have that number you can pay all of your bills on line. You just type the bar code number into your online checking account, the date you want it to be paid, and it's done. It takes less than two minutes. The bar code number is a long number like 30 digits. But the good news is that you can pay 100% of your bills from your computer in the US or Brasil and it takes next to no time.

Visa Electron

I have a Visa Electron card. I really love this card. First it acts as an ATM card, and you can use it in virtually any ATM machine that accepts Visa Electron which is virtually every bank in Brazil. It is so convenient to have an ATM card that is accepted in all of the machines, just like in the US. Also, the Visa electron can be used as a debit card, and is widely accepted in stores, restaurants, and all of the termas. You hand them the Visa Electron, and then you type in your 6 digit PIN into a little hand held machine, and the transaction completes in less than 20 seconds.

Electronics

In general, electronics in Brazil are super super expensive. Last month, Feb 2004, I regularly saw a Olympus 2.0 megapixel camera going for about $400. Same camera in the States goes for about $150. I believe the problem is related to duties. This pricing discrepancy exists for computer products, audio products, video products (VCR's, DVD's), digital cameras, network routers, telephones, and on and on.

So I found myself bringing large amounts of electronics into the country in my luggage. No big deal, nothing illegal or sneak around about. One piece of advice. Take the things out of their original box. It's not that it won't get through customs, but things brand new in the box is usually a red flag to custons about people trying to smuggle goods into the country for commercial purposes. It just slows you down if you get stopped.

DVD Players

All DVD players are not the same. Not all DVD's play in all DVD players. The reason has to do with region coding. United States is Region 1 and Brazil is Region 4. It's all fairly stupid and a pain in the butt. If you want to watch both DVD's encoded in either Region 4 or Region 1, then the movie studies want you to buy two separate DVD players. A shabby region 4 DVD player in Brazil starts at about $200! Compared with $40 for one in the US. So the solution is to buy a 'region free' player. These can be purchased off eBay and they are usually pretty cheap about $40. The problem is you are buying off brand electronics from the 'underground', so quality is suspect. I have bought 4 DVD players in order to get 2 working. But at least I got everything working now, which is cool.

Televisions/VCR's

Brazil's television standard is PAL, and in the US we use NTSC. All of the televisions and VCR's that we purchase in the US are NTSC, and will have some incompatibilities if you bring them down to Brazil. Note: these problems do not exist for DVD players, since most DVD players have a NTSC/Pal option. Unfortunately for me, I did not know this simple fact, and I imported 2 X 42" plasma TV's and 1 X 50" plasma from the States. By and large, you can't buy plasma TV's in Brasil, so I am not unhappy that I purchased them, but I needed some solutions to get them to work right.

Television Options/solution

The cable company in my area is called Net. And it is horrible. The selection of channels are poor, and signal quality is poor, and the output signal is coaxial which what we used in the late 70's. The price is about R200/month.

DirecTV is available in Rio, and it is pretty good. The box has a S Video connector, and more importantly it supports both NTSC and PAL. Also, if you are a American football fan, you can get NFL Sunday Ticket. It is not as good as the US, but you get two early games and two late games on Sunday. Note: there is a 3 hour time difference starting in October, so during most of the season, the early game starts at 4 pm, and the late game at 7pm. You also get on ESPN Brasil, the Sunday night game, and the Monday night game. So you get 6 games a week. YOu also get pretty good pay per view. About 6-8 American movies with Portugese sub titles. DirecTV also has a myriad of language options for both the subtitles and the audio. It almost has as much flexibility as a DVD.

Antenna - The one flaw with DirecTV is that they don't have the number one channel in Brazil. Globo. All of the popular novelas and also the most popular Brasilian football matchups are on Globo. You can easily get Globo plus a ton more channels through the antenna. There are easily 20 different channels you can get on antenna. But of course your antenna signal comes down in PAL. So you also need to get a PAL/NSTC converter. So I bought three of these. http://www.avtoolbox.com/standardspage.shtml

Internet Access

I can not live anywhere without internet access. I have DSL service in Rio called Velox. It costs about R120/month for 256k. It is not fast as my cable modem in the US which gets regularly between 2000-3000k but it is more than adequate. It has two anomalies. First, they make a distinction between your broadband provider and your ISP. So in order to get internet access, you have to log in twice. First to Velox, and secondly to your ISP. My ISP is called Super IG, and I pay an additional R40/month to these guys. This causes an issue if you have multiple PC's sharing one broadband connection. If you want to do that, which you will because of Vonage, you will need to create your PC as an internet server. This means that you will need to have a PC with two network cards and then some network sophistication to get it running right.

The second issue is that they don't use static IP addresses. This means they change your IP address every once in a while. My experience is roughly every two weeks. When this happens, then you have to reboot the server in order to get everthing running again.

Vonage

This service rocks. Basically it is an internet telephone. You order the box, and they send a box programmed with your telephone number. It is a regular US telephone number, and then you hook it up to your router in Brasil. You hook up a regular phone to the Vonage box, and you are set. When someone calls your US number, it rings in Brasil. You dial out, and it is the same as dialing from a US phone. Just 1 and the area code. And it is only $35/month.

Cell phones

I am no expert on cell phones, but I know a little bit. Most of the US is using TDMA and PCS technology. The prevalent international standard is GSM which is what they use in Brasil. There are ways to get your cell phone in the US to work in the Brasil if you get a GSM phone. It seems complicated and expensive. The simplest and most cost effective way is to buy a second cell phone in Rio. It costs less than $100.

It's worth it

Wow! That's a lot of stuff, but I find that is worth it. I have all of the comforts of the US, plus I am living in Rio. You really can live like a king. Your money goes so much farther in Rio. My maid costs $100/month, and she is happy to have the work. The computer guy is working for $4.00/hour and he is happy too. Aside from electronics, the cost of living is more than affordable, and then of course you have the women!

Bluestraveller:

Thank you for the useful and well-explained tips. Interesting that a post about living in Brazil is mostly about devices that did not exist 10 years ago. Sometimes I wonder how we survived before all of this.

BT,
Thanks for all the info! I'll be moving to Porto Alegre next February, and I'm sure your tips will come in handy.
Bwana

Bwana: Really? Where are you planning to live?

BS

Somewhere near UFRGS...

BT,

About the Direct TV... You're getting a brazillian service plan??

Is there a cost savings with that?

I don't know if they're using the same satellite, but I bet they are. Geosync orbit is about 22,0000 miles up and directly over the equator.
So if a satelite is hitting both the west and east coast US, and it's coverage range is circular, and you're only 22 degrees south of the equator, you're likely in it's zone even though you're quite a bit east...(could be wrong, but...)

These services get your physical location (and assign you a plan) based on your phone # (area code) as I understand. They use either caller ID or a call-back method. They then program your receiver. The plan options are based on contractual relationships with networks, and limited by goverment regulation. But if they don't really know where you are.......

Can you use your US phone number and get a US plan for the same programming you'd get here in the US?

Have you tried to get Xm there? Sirius uses low earth orbit satellites as I understand, so range issues are different.

eJ

Bwana:

Sabbatical or something more permanent? Interesting that you chose POA over Rio.

eJ,

I researched extensively the possibility of getting a US signal in Brasil. There are many web sites on this subject. Although the satellite is the same, the American footprint is only broadcast in the northern hemisphere. Actually, it is more restrictive. The American footprint can only be received in certain location north of Cuba, but not south. For example, you cannot get American programming in Venezuela either. Furthermore, there is a northern limit also. For example, you can get DirecTV american footprint in Toronto but not in Alaska.

So therefore, I am getting the DirecTV Brasilian feed in Rio. It is still much better than nothing, but the ultimate would be to get the American feed but I was never able to figure out a way to get that done.

Bummer

B.T.

Great advice. I have one question about the CPF card. How long does it take once you get the number from the bank and submit it to the government? Do they give you the card immediately or do they send it to a Brazil address? On my next trip I will be in Rio for 2 weeks; is this enough time to submit all my stuff and give an address of someone who lives down there and receive the card? Thanks

Good information

BT I don’t even want to know what they nailed you for importing those TV's. Plasmas are still in the R$15-25k range here...

I have a note on the DVD players. I bought a R$400 Samsung progressive scan DVD player at Rio Sul.. typed the model number and "region hack" into google and 2 seconds later had the codes to punch in to remove the regional coding restrictions, it plays all my DVDs from everywhere

Sharing the velox: You can just get a cable/dsl router and avoid the whole dual-nic scenario. The cable/dsl router keeps you logged in via pptp

I dropped velox at home for a net virtua 1mps line. Just like being in the states, although its R$399 a month...

Cell phones: I have AT&T wireless GSM in the US and use Tim here in Brazil. I just swap sims when i go back and forth. If you buy your phone in the US you have to get it unlocked to work with other services.

I miss some of my favorite shows down here (most eventually show up 3 months later) but I just download them using bit-torrent and watch them on the computer.

Cueball.. the actual CPF card is mailed to your Brazilian address within a month or so, but you can pick up the number off their web site within a day 2.

Dood

Sabio,
Sabbatical, not permanent. I really like POA and Rio Grande do Sul. Beautiful area, nice people, and gorgeous women. I'm in Rio constantly, and this will be a nice change of pace. I'll be in Rio for a month or two prior to moving to POA.

Dood,

I have a cable DSL/router, but I am told because I have two logins to Velox and Super IG that I have to have a separate PC. If there is a way to avoid that scenario, I am all ears.

Virtua was not available in my area in July 2003. Are you actually getting 1mbps on downloads? I upgraded to the 512kbps service with Velox and I am paying like R180.

I am going to buy a GSM phone this week here in the US. I was not planning on using it in Brasil however. They tell me that I can, but the charges are really high. $2/minute. It just doesn't seem like it is worth it. Where do you buy the SIM chip?

What is bit torrent? Howard Stern was at my place and showed me and GCL how to download lots of shows from newsgroups. I was able to watch the Sopranos the day after its debut. That was cool. You got to love the internet.

Hey bt..

You just set up the cable dsl router as normal pptp with the phone numerbers as your user/pass, and the router logs you in to velox automatically. You can then login to you isp from any computer connected to the router (www.veloxzone.com.br if i remember correctly)

Virtua: I'm actually getting 1mbps with virtua.. It's awesome.

Cell: just go to any tim store and ask to buy a sim (chip-ee), up to you if you want pre or pos-pago (pos pago is they bill you every month). I think they charge about R$40. You have to make sure the gsm phone you buy in the US is UNLOCKED. Your best bet is to buy one off ebay from someone with good feedback.. Just type "GSM UNLOCKED" in the search and you'll get a whole bunch.

newsgroup downloads take forever.. Here's some links on bittorrent:

bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/

And the best site to get files:

http://www.suprnova.org/

They have everything.. movies, music, tv shows the next day.. etc...

Hey Dood,

Right now, the configuration is:

DSL Box -> PC -> Router

Are you saying that I can now change the configuration to be?

DSL Box - Router -> PC

That would be great if I could do that. Then I can just log into the network from any PC?

I just bought my Cingular GSM phone last night. It is really night. It is the best phone for me because I spend so much time in Rio that the rollover minutes is very desirable. But the sales guy could not answer one key question. When I get down to Rio, and I put the new SIM chip into my phone. All it does it allows me to use my US cell phone in Brasil. It really is the same as getting a 2nd Brasilian cell phone, no?

I looked at your links. That looks like it has a lot of potential. Do I have to be running BitTorrent first before I can browse suprnova?

BT, yep.. DSL Modem --> DSL Router --> PCs..

You can then login to the net from any connected pc.

Cell: All you have to do is drop your brazilian sim in the phone and you now have a brazilian phone number. The most important thing though is the phone has to be unlocked. Since you already bought the phone direct from cingular, you have to use one of the unlocking services. The same search on ebay should help you. Unlock GSM and the phone name.

You can browse supernova without bittorrent, you just cant download anything.

I picked up a Cingular phone a couple months ago promoted as a "world phone." Motorola. The sales kid swore to me, guaranteed me, that it was unlocked. (I pressed the issue) He said it was the only phone they sold that was unlocked. I still haven't had opportunity to try it, but a friend of mine insists the kid was lying...we'll see.

My friend bought a t-mobil specifically to use in PI only to find that it was the wrong frequency to use there.

Here's the best article I've found on the issue.

http://www.thetravelinsider.info/2002/0308.htm

You can get SIMs off the web, but most sites I find selling them aren't selling BR SIMs.

Those I've found are packaged with different preloaded minutes, so difficult to compare prices.
(roughly $75-90)

Somebody from Singapore is selling a dual SIM thing on eBay. (Holds two SIMs) Anybody know anything about this??

There is a huge difference between a 'world phone' (e.g. a phone that will work in other countries -- but on their expensive plan!!) and an unlocked phone that allows a SIM chip from another country!

If you just bought a phone direct from a service (e.g. Cingular) you are all but guaranteed to have a locked phone (albeit a 'world phone'). Although I'm no expert... let us know.

I went through this process of unlocking. simply go to this site...
http://www.unlockme.co.uk/dct4free.html

the free program download is simple enough..IF you know where your phone was locked at..VERY important before you buy a tri band phone...without the right region code it will lock itself down after 5 tries...then it takes the hard cables to unlock...Dood steered me to ebay and I bought one of those new nokia 3650's..pretty nice both here and there...try to stay away from a T-moblie locked phone as they too many regional codes...

Check with Cingular, they should be able to give you the proper unlock code. They may have a rule that they will only unlock the phone after you own it for at least 3 months.

Yeah.. I forgot to mention, the phone has to be a tri-band GSM to work here in brazil.

For those members who do not know, I live in Brazil also.

Dood, I will try out the torrent stuff you mentioned. I am currently getting all the programming I care to see via the news groups except 1, American Idol. However the day after they air, I download The Apprentice, Survivor and Sopranos. Not sure how long they take because I just start it downloading in the morning and walk away. I see SuperNova has Idol, so this may be a good solution for me. The only other advantage to the newsgroups I can see is that I can download each days Howard Stern radio show (1 day delay, but commercial free). If I find they carry stern on these torrent sites I will have everything I need there.

Thanks for the tip (good thing we talk so often or I would never find out about this stuff).

Udate on Torrent -- I am downloading an episode of American Idol, and it says I will have the complete episode in only 28 hours. Unless I am doing something wrong it is considerably slower than newsgroups, although Torrent is free and newsgroups are not.

Keep in mind that since Bit Torrent is a distributed peer-to-peer computing model, you are probably downloading from someone who is on a slow connection or someone whose bandwidth is saturated by multiple connections.

It isn't the program itself that is slow or the bottleneck; it is the person you are downloading from. Other factors like your route to theirs could also influence speed. Newsgroup providers typically maintain multiple upstream bandwidth providers and huge storage arrays so the connection and retention is always good.

This is turning out to be a great thread. I just went to Best Buy and told them that I needed to have my phone unlocked. He talked to his boss, and then called Cingular. No one knew what I was talking about. He insisted that it should work without this unlock code. Can someone help me understand what I need to do better?

I dont think they are going to tell you now. Cingular has a reputation of doing so only after 90 days. See this article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4416003/

BT,

Do the ebay thing I mentioned... It'll cost you 20 bucks but it'll be unlocked. You can not use a brazilian sim (or any other one) in your phone until you get it unlocked.

Bittorrent is iffy sometimes, but like Xen said above it all depends on the "feed". You are actually download parts from different people at the same time, so 1 slow person can screw it all up.

BT..talk to me I will unlock it for you...I spent quite a bit of time figuring it out...give dood the $20...I have been with cingular for 8 years when they were named someone else and they still would not help me...

gcl...how about ole Tom..will he win it for us this time?? pretty cool you guys can download all the shows...

I just got off the line with Cingular and it was so easy once I got someone to understand the problem. She sent an email and I already have my unlock code. I am really anxious to get down to Brazil on Sunday and buy my new service to see if I can have one cell phone and two SIM chips.

Yes, this really is getting good.

I had to see what you guys were talking about with Vonage........JESUS!!!!! This is cool.

Don't know where I originally found this sight, maybe from somebody here?... but this sight has good articles on on both Vonage and Packet 8 VoIP.
Packet 8 now has 30fps picture phones!

http://www.thetravelinsider.info/info/index_roadwarriors.htm

So tell me....If I bring a Vonage box with me, will customs give me a problem with it?
Are you guys with US numbers billing to a US address?

The website above has a link for unlocking your phone for $5.00.

Again, does anybody know if (or how) this thing works???

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3395981175&category=42423

Ejack,
There is really no issue in customs as long as you are going to be using the stuff for personal use. I think one trip I had a surround sound amp, two portables, and a 17" LCD monitor. They opened up my luggage and they let me go through. They are looking for people that are smuggling stuff in for commercial purposes not personal.

Once you have Vonage and a high speed internet connection, it is the same as being in the US except that you have termas to visit in the evening instead of strip clubs.

My naive, innocent, childlike faith in the goodness of humanity has been reaffirmed.

The Travel Insider (see above) said the easiest way to check my phone was to swap SIMs with somebody else's phone.

I pulled the SIM from my Cingular, Motorola V60i and swapped it for my friend's SIM in his T-Mobil, Nokia 3593.

My phone worked....his didn't.

Okay, maybe the kid unlocked it before he gave it to me...he had time if he knew how, as he programmed it for me.

But I'll just go on believing that I'm a fantastic judge of character.

Somebody knock me upside the head before I get to Rio.

>My naive, innocent, childlike faith in the goodness of humanity has been reaffirmed.

Ejack, can you lend me 50 bucks? I promise to pay it back next week, since I'm sucha good human. And I won't steal any of your garotas either..... ;-)

Seriously, thanks for the tech tips, guys!

BS

Okay, update on my Torrent update. I gave up on American Idol. I am now trying to download City of God, and it says it will be finished in 96 hours. I am simultaneously downloading Kill Bill from the newsgroups. It is not even a race since I will probably have the newsgroup movie in 2 hours. In any case, I cant find City of God on newsgroups tonight, so again, Torrent has newsgroups beat in terms of content (assuming I can ever get anything successfully downloaded).

GCL,

I had the same experience with BitTorrent. I tried to download Fight Club and a Sopranos. When I woke up in the morning and it still had 28 hours to go I ditched.

Sterling

Given the large user base of KazaaLite (not Kazaa) users -- in the millions -- seems to me that at least for downloading movies, it might be be a better choice instead of suprnova. Anybody tried it?

Torrent update -- I have 25% of City of God now (18 hours later). And in the Newsgroup corner--I loved Kill Bill. It downloaded in DVD quality in just a few hours. I burned it onto a DVD-RW and watched it this morning.

Regarding Kazaalite. I used it a lot when I lived in the states looking for porn. Typically I would download a bunch of stuff onto my computer. Then jerk off to it. Then I would feel like a sleezbag for having all that porn on my machine and delete it all. Then within a few hours I would be horney again, so I would go back to downloading porn again. In case anyone is interested one of my favorite subjects to jerk off to was the Handjob Hunnies series. My favorite actress in that series was Layla Jade because she spoke so nasty while doing it. I probably jerked off to her 30 times (which is more times than I think I ever fucked one single girl). A few weeks ago, Dennis Hof (the owner of the Bunny Ranch) was in my office using my Vonage phone and he called her up to tell her about me--well he said, "Layla, I have a porn addict here who used to jerk off to you a lot... here talk to him". Anyway, her voice was the same over the phone as I remembered it, but fortunately for Dennis I didnt start spanking the monkey in front of him (I have never jerked off in Brazil).

Dennis is considering bringing some porn stars down with him on one of his next trips and having them shoot some stuff in my office. Layla is one of the ones who may come. So if she does and I have the chance to fuck her, I am wondering if she will be upset if I tell her I only want a handjob?

Okay, I better go now. Thinking I said too much. There, it's out there. Deal with it.

Actually, I like the tugjobs site a lot. It's the same stuff basically. Hannah is a solid 10.

One cannot help wonder how much faster traffic would be at sexxxychat.com were GCL not consuming so much bandwidth for his personal (sick) pleasures.

Sadly, I cannot claim to have never rubbed the rhubarb while in Brazil. That was a must during my unfortunate deportation episode from Sao Paulo.
A full accounting of this shameful event is actually published here: 2003/01 DonGringo - To Hell and Back, or Visa - Don't Leave Home Without It (Panama/Cuba)

Sad.

GCL: You need serious help....

;-)

BS

GCL... Did you jerk off on the keyboard I used?

Torrent update--we are now at 64 percent and the download claims I am only 19 hours away from enjoying City of God. I also have had my techguys battle a virus on my server which wasnt there yesterday.

Alderon--you used a computer in Brazil...so the answer to your question is easy. NO--I didnt jerk off on it. But I did import my monitor...so it is suspect.

Hey Rich..

The torrent thing is iffy, the problem is when only one person has the feed. It's still a "new" technology, and it sucks when someone on dial up is the only person that has the feed you want.

The best time to get stuff is when there's a new release because people dont have a choice to upload/download. Everyone is a feeder for the file.

You know, you could just go over to blockbuster and rent city of god for R$4.

Unlock your phone using online code generators

I was able to unlock my phone by using the following website http://www.uniquephones.com/unlock/index.php. I have a Nokia 3650. The entire process only took me 5 minutes. If you are interested about unlocking your phone easily, read on.

The most user friendly code generator calculator I found was on Unique phones website. http://www.uniquephones.com/unlock/index.php. They are other calculators available online that you can obtain on the unlockme online site that Layne mentioned above.

Most online calculators generate 7 codes and usually the 1st code or the 7th code will unlock your phone. I am 4/4 on unlocking phones on the first attempt (unlocked 3 of my colleagues phone today).

I guess the hard part will be purchasing a SIM card with my pigeon Portuguese when I'm in Rio at the end of the month.

Howard69Stern