Brazil Day 16 - Haircut and a press conference

I'm back in the media centre in the Maracana stadium at the moment. There's a Uruguay press conference later on that I want to shoot as Uruguay are all in the news with the Suarez affair, but I also want to get an external general view (GV) picture of the Maracana from a bit high up as the sun sets. Unfortunately, both events are at approximately the same time so I'm not quite sure how to work it out. I really need the GV shot ahead of tomorrow's Colombia v Uruguay last 16 match here which should be a cracker. I think I'll sacrifice the GV for presser if necessary.I also must announce that I have bought some Frosties and milk for breakfast. This is a massive step forward. Previously I've had a somewhat unhealthy doughy bread, cheese and bacon thing callex a Mixto, with Coke Zero to wash it down. I also have to go out for this to the cafe downstairs. But I do like my cereals as soon as I get up so I had a wander around the little store next to the apartment block and found the only recognisable type of cereal which happened to be Frosties. There was only one other choice to be fair, and I have no idea what they are. Fresh milk appears unheard of so I got some of that UHT stuff. And a bunch of the delicious bananas that are readily available everywhere here.I also changed some money and was delighted to find that you get R$3.8 for £1. This is much better than the R$3.3 I got back home at the Post Office. Everything is now a lot cheaper so I can live like a king.The money changer was in the big shopping centre in Botofogo which is a 5 minute walk from the apartment. Here's a pic you might have seen previously to give you the general idea.I had to get a haircut and found a barber up on the 4th floor, of which here is an incredibly badly taken photograph using my phone that I am embarassed to put on my blog, but it's the only one I have. Service was excellent, and a short back & sides (there's nothing else!) clipper cut was had for R$65 which is a bit pricey at £17 but I hadn't seen another barber anywhere.I also popped into the Nike store. England shirts are surprisingly not on sale at the moment, but there were a lot of them left. I wanted to buy some stuff for my family back home who are struggling on through adversity without me. It seems like the Nike people simply want to make it as difficult as possible for you to buy anything. Rather than just selecting the goods you want and taking them to the till, you have to get a staff member to put your goods behind the till with your name on, and then wait until they call your name out, then go up and pay for your stuff.Why make it complicated? And the staff behind the till seemed to take so long to do anything, more interested in speaking to each other than rapdily processing the ever elongating queue of waiting shoppers. Come on Nike - sort yourselves out - this was a disaster. Just get people to take their stuff to the till and then pay for it - how hard is that?Also, shirt printing was taking 5 days - drop off today, pick up on Tuesday. Shirt printing! The guys at the printing booth were not moving very rapidly despite the massive backlog.Anyhow - just go with the flow - I got sorted eventually.Back to now, in this real time rolling blog post. I've just left the Uruguay press conference where the Uruguay manager Oscar Tavarez positioned Uruguay as the wounded party in the Suarez chomping controversy. He has resigned his position on FIFA's strategic committee in protest. No pics available at the time of writing as THE EDITOR is having a well deserved break. But just imagine a slightly older guy with glasses and grey hair in front of a load of sponsor logos on a blue background and you're there.He gave a long speech on the situation which, seeing as I didn't have the translation headphones on, I didn't understand a word of. I snapped away with my 1D and 70-200 plus 1.4x extender (lighter, plenty of flexibility and no need to haul the 400 over here) looking for moments where he was giving me eye contact or gesturing in some way. I thought he was saying that they were banning Suarez for life or suchlike, so it was a bit of a shock to catch up on what he was actually saying a few minutes later. This made my pics of him leaving the room a bit more poignant and meaningful, especially the ones where he walks past a little FIFA sign saying "my game is fair play" which I thought quite apt.There's no time to select images on the back of the camera during a session like this as you might miss an all important meaningful expression (or a simple expression that, when captured as a still, can be made to look meaningful). I did manage to do all my selections on the short walk back to my desk in the media centre though, and got my pics captioned and out as fast as I could.As an aside the journos in the press conference sounded like the most unhealthy bunch of people that I've been amongst for some time. Coughing, sniffing, sneezing, spluttering. I think the main danger to my health is getting a bug from one of these people rather than getting mugged. I'm hoping to keep the germs at bay but the guy behind me sneezing all over me 3 times means it may be a folorn hope.I couldn't make my external Maracana GVs work unfortunately. The station bridge over the railway that I needed to cross was closed for repairs so I was on the wrong side of the tracks quite literally. It would have taken too long to get a taxi around so I gave up on it, took a few simpler ones from close in, and started walking back to the media centre.On the way I noticed some workmen repairing a scaffolding supported staircase which takes supporters from the station to the stadium. This was of some interest as this staircase had been a news item a few days ago when it was reported to be swaying a bit under the weight of all the supporters. Having pics of it being repaired might come in very useful in the unfortunate event that the thing collapses.Tomorrow is game day - Colombia v Uruguay - so the usual prep work is needed, plus getting to the stadium nice and early and so on. I'm feeling much more refreshed as I haven't flown for a couple of days and a slight break yesterday made a lot of difference. With my Frosties in the house I'm now unstoppable.