It appears that it’s been raining spiders in Brazil!

Sunday lunch: [batatas] fritas e feijão (fried [potatoes] and beans. Yum!

Hare Burger Hare Burger
Burger Burger Hare Hare

I phoned my much better half. She had some ideas about my draft ‘lessons for Scottish PB‘. Her main point was about the first item: If we don’t get PB right first time, people will lose confidence in it. She pointed out that nothing goes right first time, so what does right mean in this context? My current answer is good enough. For me, that means

1. PB systems must leave people feeling that they have chosen what happens.
   • This should happen in any context, no matter how much (or how little) money is involved.
2. The chosen projects must be delivered near enough on time and near enough on budget.
   • We can argue what near enough means at appropriate points.
3. There should also be the possibility of discontinuing projects if it turns out that they are unlikely to be delivered, or if the benefits can be delivered in better ways, or if an urgent need arises for the money allocated to the project.
   • But this must be done transparently, and must not even appear to be party-political.

I then walked to Hareburger. It was rather ironic that the first song jPhone played was 4st 7lb. Hareburger was supposedly 19 minutes walk from my hotel but it took me about 30 minutes to get there, mainly because I’m a little nervous about crossing roads. On the way I passed the inevitable Subway, another vegan eatery, and somewhere definitely not vegan.

This was my dinner at Hareburger: hare rock shutney mango’s fly, batata quanta rustica and suco de terra (hibiscus tea, beet, carrot, lemon and strawberry). The only problem with it was it was not enough for this gutbucket! (It was relatively cheap: about R$38 = £8.)

On the way to Hareburger, I’d passed a metro station which isn’t on the map I’d found online. (Blame the seeker, not the internet! Here’s the official map.) I realised that this station (Fradique Coutinho) was on the same line as Faria Lima, so I decided to save my feet. The city council had a stand offering free condoms.

At Faria Lima station, I walked on to Largo da Batata (Potato Square) to see if there were any interesting smells. There weren’t so I’ve come back to the hotel for a last coffee and to write this.

graffiti near my hotel

Largo da Batatas

Nighty-night!

I didn’t get to sleep until 5am, so I slept until after mid-day.

This afternoon I

• refined my interview and focus-group questions.
• emailed the coordinator of São Paulo’s participative councils to answer some questions he asked.
• emailed my Leith Chooses colleagues and the Scottish Government official to ask them other questions posed by the coordinator.
• refined the lessons I think Scotland can learn from Brazilian PB.
• finished some marking.

The marking led to some puzzlement. About 20% of the students didn’t include in their courseworks some things they were clearly told to include. Another 50% tried but didn’t do these things very well. The latter is understandable, but the former isn’t. Can any experienced academics out there tell me why on earth so many students just throw away marks?

Of course, I was far from perfect when I was a student, and I’m not a perfect academic.

Clearly this is not final – I’ve only been in Brazil for a week. Also this stems from talking with with some academics and two São Paulo city public servants, rather than original research. However, this is my current take-home: