Entertainment
Supermodel Gisele steals the show as the new ‘Girl from Ipanema’
Rio de Janeiro : Capping her long and successful career, Brazilian supermodel and national icon Gisele Bundchen stole the show at the Rio Olympics’s opening ceremony on Friday night as she sashayed across the Maracana Stadium to strains of popular bossa nova track “Garota de Ipanema”, or “The Girl from Ipanema” performed by the original composer’s grandson.
Clad in a long-sleeved, gold-sequin spangled shimmering dress, Gisele essayed her most ambitious catwalk across the stadium, with the trail of her 500 feet walk, formed into contours of iconic works by one of Brazil’s greatest architects, Oscar Niemeyer.
“Tall and tan and young and lovely/The girl from Ipanema goes walking/And when she passes, each one she passes/Goes ‘A-a-a-h’/When she walks she’s like a samba/When she walks, she’s like a samba/That swings so cool and sways so gentle/That when she passes, each one she passes/Goes ‘A-a-a-h’,” seemed written for the 36-year-old model, despite she not being from Ipanema, a swanky beachfront locale in Rio.
Earlier reports had hinted Gisele would play a mugging victim before the young thief is chased and apprehended, but it seems the organisers had second thoughts and chose a better option for her appearance.
“The Girl from Ipanema”, written in 1962, was inspired by Ipanema resident Heloisa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto, then 17, who would daily stroll past the Veloso bar-cafe, from where music composer Antonio Carlos Jobim, popularly known as Tom Joabim, and lyrics writer Vinicius de Moraes saw her. However, Heloisa was not always going to the beach (“each day when she walks to the sea” as per the song), but in the everyday course of her life.
Moraes later wrote that she seemed “the paradigm of the young Carioca (slang for Rio residents): a golden teenage girl, a mixture of flower and mermaid, full of light and grace, the sight of whom is also sad, in that she carries with her, on her route to the sea, the feeling of youth that fades, of the beauty that is not ours alone-it is a gift of life in its beautiful and melancholic constant ebb and flow”.
It became internationally famous when an English version, with American jazz musician Stan Getz and Brazilian singer and songwriter Joao Gilberto collaborated on album “Getz/Gilberto”. This won the album of the year award at the Grammys in 1965 (and introduced bossa nova to the world), while the song itself, rendered in English by Gilberto’s wife, Astrud, won the award for the record of the year.
International online casino Casino Days has published a report sharing their internal data on what types and brands of devices are used to play on the platform by users from the South Asian region.
Such aggregate data analyses allow the operator to optimise their website for the brands and models of devices people are actually using.
The insights gained through the research also help Casino Days tailor their services based on the better understanding of their clients and their needs.
Desktops and Tablets Lose the Battle vs Mobile
The primary data samples analysed by Casino Days reveal that mobile connections dominate the market in South Asia and are responsible for a whopping 96.6% of gaming sessions, while computers and tablets have negligible shares of 2.9% and 0.5% respectively.
The authors of the study point out that historically, playing online casino was exclusively done on computers, and attribute thе major shift to mobile that has unfolded over time to the wide spread of cheaper smartphones and mobile data plans in South Asia.
“Some of the reasons behind this massive difference in device type are affordability, technical advantages, as well as cheaper and more obtainable internet plans for mobiles than those for computers,” the researchers comment.
Xiaomi and Vivo Outperform Samsung, Apple Way Down in Rankings
Chinese brands Xiaomi and Vivo were used by 21.9% and 20.79% of Casino Days players from South Asia respectively, and together with the positioned in third place with a 18.1% share South Korean brand Samsung dominate the market among real money gamers in the region.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is way down in seventh with a user share of just 2.29%, overshadowed by Chinese brands Realme (11.43%), OPPO (11.23%), and OnePlus (4.07%).
Huawei is at the very bottom of the chart with a tiny share just below the single percent mark, trailing behind mobile devices by Motorola, Google, and Infinix.
The data on actual phone usage provided by Casino Days, even though limited to the gaming parts of the population of South Asia, paints a different picture from global statistics on smartphone shipments by vendors.
Apple and Samsung have been sharing the worldwide lead for over a decade, while current regional leader Xiaomi secured their third position globally just a couple of years ago.
Striking Android Dominance among South Asian Real Money Gaming Communities
The shifted market share patterns of the world’s top smartphone brands in South Asia observed by the Casino Days research paper reveal a striking dominance of Android devices at the expense of iOS-powered phones.
On the global level, Android enjoys a comfortable lead with a sizable 68.79% share which grows to nearly 79% when we look at the whole continent of Asia. The data on South Asian real money gaming communities suggests that Android’s dominance grows even higher and is north of the 90% mark.
Among the major factors behind these figures, the authors of the study point to the relative affordability of and greater availability of Android devices in the region, especially when manufactured locally in countries like India and Vietnam.
“And, with influencers and tech reviews putting emphasis on Android devices, the choice of mobile phone brand and OS becomes easy; Android has a much wider range of products and caters to the Asian online casino market in ways that Apple can’t due to technical limitations,” the researchers add.
The far better integration achieved by Google Pay compared to its counterpart Apple Pay has also played a crucial role in shaping the existing smartphone market trends.
Content provided by Adverloom
Cheers and Cheers: Barzilla’s Joyful Ode to Inclusivity and Celebration
Casino Days Reveal Internal Data on Most Popular Smartphones
Meghalaya Reserves Legalized Gambling and Sports Betting for Tourists
Lockdowns in China Force Urban Communities to Defy Censorship and Vent Frustration Online
What monkey fled with a bag containing evidence in it: Read full story
IPL 20202 UPDATE: KXIP vs MI IPL Dream11 Team Prediction for Today Match, Update Point Table of all Team.
In a Live debate AAP leader Syed Asad Abbas hurls abuses to BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma.
‘India’s Most Wanted’ trailer out Arjun Kapoor on hunt of Osama-Bin-Laden
Time to move on: Sonakshi on Shatrughan’s joining Congress
