Rio: incipit secunda pars

To resolve last night's nailbiting cliffhanger, Alberto phoned me just about the instant I'd stopped writing. Alberto Dell'Isola Rezende Medeiros, is interesting not only for having more names than most people, but also for being at the forefront of Brazil's emerging gang of memory enthusiasts. He's also the person I have to thank for the trip - he persuaded Globo not only to put him on the show and fly him to the world championships next month, but to bring me out there too. As usual with people I've only known through emails, he is in real life absolutely nothing like I'd imagined - I was thinking earnest young student rather than fun mid-twenties maths teacher. It turns out that he likes all the important things in life - cartoons, the Beatles, classic arcade games and so on, and is a really great guy to hang out with.

So, on Tuesday afternoon Globo sent a car again to take us both down to the Village. Verônica, the other person I have to thank for the trip since she made all the arrangements and is also a lot of fun, escorted us to the studio dressing room where my outfit was waiting. Presumably operating on the principle that the less of me is visible, the better I look on TV, they'd got me a big black cloak, complete with hood, to go with the black suit and playing-cards tie. I looked seriously cool. We spent something like three hours hanging around while they recorded another bit of the show (a man won a makeover of his car by conducting an orchestra after minimal training, and I had a really vivid memory of my dad watching a similar show years ago and saying "the orchestra know what they're doing, they don't need to look at him...").

Eventually we went through to the studio where an enthusiastic audience (composed entirely of attractive young women, which surprised me a bit since the show is obviously aimed at all ages and genders) were cheering Luciano and a singer who performed a rather good if Eurovisiony song. Then it was Alberto's turn to go on stage and perform. He did a very cool thing with a gossip magazine he'd memorised, describing what was on any page Luciano, the singer or an audience member asked for. Then he did day-of-the-week calculations rather faster than I can do it as an encore. They had a calendar appear on the screen behind him showing the correct day of the week (or, in a couple of cases, the correct day of the week for a date other than the one he'd been asked, which caused some confusion).

So then it was my turn to come on ominously in cloak and hood (and snazzy headpiece with microphone attached that somehow gave it an even more Star Wars look - Alberto had already been insisting on calling me Master Yoda until I pointed out that Ben Kenobi would be more appropriate and slightly more flattering) and do the card thing. Luciano shuffled the pack, spread it out on the table in front of me and gave me a minute to memorise them (during which he whispered distractingly in Portuguese about what I was doing). I made a complete and total mess of things, so he re-shuffled them and did it again. I messed up in less dramatic fashion that time, but it was still embarrassing. He suggested using that take, but I insisted on doing it again, and luckily got it all right the third time. I think it'll look good on TV - I was trying to be unsmiling, cool and intellectual as the cloak seemed to demand, but I'm not sure I kept that front up the whole time (it's hard not to giggle at moments like this). Still, they're going to send me a tape, and if you're in Brazil you can see the finished product on June 22nd.

Henrique Athayde, a Rio-resident memory guy, had joined us in the dressing room and taken photos (I hadn't brought a camera with me as usual), and the three of us went back to the hotel for dinner before a night out on the town. Alberto had challenged me to a duel at StreetFighter II, but it turned out that the big arcade in Rio didn't have a single Capcom fighting game. Disgraceful. He had to beat me up on Virtua Fighter 2 instead, although I won on Daytona US. Then we went to the bowling alley nearby, played three games and equitably won one apiece. It's fair to say there wasn't a great level of skill on display, although strangely enough the scores got better after we'd started on the tequila.

A certain amount of alcohol later, we hailed a taxi back to the hotel, singing raucously all the way home. Henrique went back home and Alberto and I decided it would be a good idea to end the night by walking along the beach delivering what I think were really quite cool and harmonic renditions of Beatles songs at top volume. As I was still wearing my good black work shoes, I made sure to take them off and put them at a safe distance from the sea before going for a paddle, only for a huge wave to immediately come along and soak them. So now they smell of the sea and are full of sand as well as holes. Twenty degrees celsius at midnight!

Having finally gone to bed at about half past one, I had plenty of time in the morning for a lie-in, although my body didn't seem to agree, waking me up at about five o'clock as it had done all the time I'd been in Brazil. So then it was just a matter of being driven back to the airport (Globo's driver again, at my beck and call all week!) and heading home.

So, in summary, I got a wonderfantabulous three day holiday for free in return for two minutes' work. You've got to admit that makes me pretty damn cool.