Travelling to Brazil for the G20 and getting critically ill in Canada.
G20 Summit Rio
This month I travelled to Brazil to attend the G20 Summit in Rio. We had excellent access to the leaders, who often strolled right past us or gave press conferences we could directly attend. This was a nice contrast to previous Summits. At the G7 Summit in Italy, we were effectively sequestered hours away from the leaders, who stayed in the luxurious Borgo Egnazia resort. The upcoming summit in Canada appears to follow the same pattern, with leaders retreating to Kananaskis, far removed from both protesters and journalists. Interestingly, less-developed—and often less-democratic—countries seem to offer better access to world leaders than their developed, more democratic counterparts. This could be because democratic nations find it harder to keep protesters and crowds at bay (both Brazil and India shut down large sections of the city using the military), or perhaps because less-developed countries are more eager to give journalists access in hopes of generating positive coverage and promoting themselves on the world stage.
Everyone from the team at the Rio media centre, featuring me with my new glasses.
António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, holding one of our books.
António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, holding one of our books.
Olaf Scholz, also holding one of our books.
Meeting Trudeau again, probably for the last time given current polling.
Interestingly for this summit, there seemed to be a large number of paid Chinese supporters. These guys were all over the street leading to the Summit building (and also all over the place outside the Summit). They all had identical shirts and hats with Chinese flags, and each small group had a large flag. They seemed to be Chinese nationals living in Rio who have been paid to hold Chinese flags in the background of video and photography taken by the media. If I had to speculate, I would assume this is for domestic audiences, who can then be assured that there is support for China in Brazil.
It is very unclear to me what benefit this serves.
I stayed in a small beach house in Ipanema, which was lovely. I had a day after the Summit ended to explore Rio. I found a very interesting church in Ipanema with a shrine to Guido Schaffer, who is apparently a Brazilian surfer and doctor who died in a surfing accident in 2009. The shrine exists because he has been beatified and proclaimed Venerable, meaning the Catholic Church deems him able to intercede on behalf of individuals who pray in his name. The alter had a large number of plastic heads, breasts, little people, spinal segments, kidneys, and even a penis with testicles. These are probably votive offerings, representing organs (and maybe children) that people are praying for. I found this quite fascinating, as I was not aware that Catholics did this. The Pitt Rivers museum in Oxford has a large collection of ancient votive offerings, so I associate the practice with being quite old.
It is unclear to me what disease the plastic penis is meant to represent.
After the Summit, I stopped by Canada on my way back to Oxford to visit family and friends – and in the process of doing so got horribly ill. It took a good week to properly recover.
INFLOW-AI Model
I finally got my predictions to work with a high degree of success! These predictions can now go on to inform logistic decisions being made by MSF and UNHCR. I will present my model to UNHCR soon.
