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“Foda-se fihlo da puta.” I loved screaming that from the passenger seat of a black Ford Escort XR3i on the way back to my hotel having had another easy day’s work in São Paulo, Brazil. I was actually shouting, “Fuck you, you son of a bitch.” The driver - my interpreter - started to teach me the more important Portuguese words (that’s what they speak in Brazil - in case you didn’t know).

His name was Val, short for Valmir, and quite a common name in Brazil from all accounts. He’d turn out to be a good friend, always there when you need him, always helpful. He worked for an agency that represented the company I worked for in the UK. It was common practise to have an agency in each country to promote the product your company was selling and exporting worldwide. Some agents I never saw, some were a bunch of arseholes, and others like the one Val worked for took you in like a member of the family and made your stay more enjoyable especially when travelling alone.

As we crawled along the streets in peak traffic, air con on, rock radio playing the same music each day, I’d sit, relax and look in awe at the size of this Metropolis. Skyscrapers littered as far as the eye can see, São Paulo is one ‘mother’ of a city.

Not renowned for being ‘touristy’, it’s not your Rio de Janeiro, but nevertheless its still a fantastic place with such friendly people, and if you ever get the chance, I would recommend you visit this city.

I came here about eight or nine times, always staying in hotels just off the massive Avenida Paulista (you could say São Paulo’s ‘golden mile’), buzzing with activity day and night, plenty of shops, bars, cinema’s and an abundance of McDonalds. As you can well imagine I ate junk food galore when staying here and, on allowances trips, pocketed a small fortune. I’d change my routine mind you. I’d try many different restaurants and never ate in the same McDonalds two nights in a row. Instead I’d rotate which one I’d visit and what I’d eat, though most of the time I’d eat a Big Mac because it was easier to pronounce. ‘Biggy Macky’ is how they say it. Actually the XR3i I was driven around in was pronounced ‘Escorty.’ I’m not sure if every wordy had a letter ‘y’ on the endy mindy you!

São Paulo was also the place where I first discovered Dunkin’ Donuts another cheap alternative, this time for my sweet tooth - dessert to take back to the hotel as I sat drinking a bottle or two of some local brew and watching dubbed television. There were no English speaking TV channels where I normally stayed, but I soon found out that the local cinemas didn’t dub the movies but actually displayed subtitles. That meant I could go to the cinema on many occasions and enjoy a movie in full English. Likewise the choice of movies was way in advance of those films we see in the UK. I’d be able to watch new movies more or less at the same time as their US release date and not a few weeks or months later, which is often the case in the UK.

It passed the time away when I was on my own and helped my pale complexion blend in with the more olive skinned locals. The only downside to subtitles is when you go to watch a comedy. The words are displayed on the screen before the actors were actually speaking them. Therefore everyone in the cinema would be laughing a good few seconds before I would. I guess it made me look rather slow or a bit of an idiot laughing after the event - well in the eyes of the locals reading the subtitles it did. I was the one laughing at the right moment, not them, but unfortunately it meant I’d attract the odd stare or glare and probably the odd muttering of ‘foda-se’ or something just as colourful. At least with ‘serious’ films such issues didn’t occur.