Belch after dinner when you meet the parents?

Ivanildo and Jamesom (motoboy) and I had a conversation earlier this morning where we debated which cultures it was acceptable to burp in publicly. I think Jamesom (he talks fast so I don't understand everything) said that in Japan and China it was either acceptable or expected, or rude to not do it, after a meal. I could be wrong about what he said and even if I did get it right definitely don't quote me or him on it. I could research it but I have a lot of stuff to take care of before I head to Buenos Aires (at 7am tomorrow, sigh ...).

Our conversation began because Ivanildo let out an enormous belch while we were sitting around doing work (or in my case, pretending to do work) in the office. I didn't even really notice, but then he said (in English), "I'm sorry, Matt" in a poignantly insincere voice. He then attempted to defend himself by saying it was acceptable in his culture. I asked him if he would do it the first time he went over to his girlfriend's parents house, and he admitted he probably wouldn't. We agreed that after the first time it's fine. Jamesom said that in some or all cases he would be comfortable doing that, although I'm not sure if I completely believe him. Anyway.

Ivanildo's son Matheus told me two days ago that the people here were planning a surprise party for me and Adriana, whose birthday it is today or approximately today. I'm trying to pretend like I don't know what's up, although it's hard to fake for me.

And last night Cintia told me that when I talk my eyes bulge out, or rather, I have big eyes. She said also that I use a lot of facial expressions to communicate, presumably to compensate for my lack of language skills. This is in striking contrast to what my American friends have seen/heard, which is a monotone voice accompanied by an equally bored/jaded/expressionless face.

news

Today is the 457th birthday of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, where I have lived for the past 5 months.

The first Brazilian astronaut is going into space very soon. He said he was going to bring a Brazilian flag and soccer jersey with him in the hopes that the national team would win the World Cup. How bringing a jersey into space will help with this is of course a little unclear, but I'm sure the thinking is that anything helps.

And for those of you who were on the edge of your seats about what I'm going to say next, the winner of the most recent round of Big Brother Brasil is a Bahian woman, for the second time in a row. She gets to take home R$1 million. Sweet. Or as they say in Brazil, "Otimo".

And I'm leaving for Buenos Aires on Saturday (April 1). I should be there maybe 4-5 weeks and then I'll be back in the States for my brother's graduation from college, and then back in Salvador at the beginning of June for a few months at least. I'm not willing to look much farther into the future than that. I'm very much looking forward to European-style coffee and different street smells.

Colgate helps sex life

I woke up yesterday morning with what looks like either a large bug bite, poison ivy, or some other sort of irritation in the left corner of my mouth.  People at work say it’s probably a spider bite.  Regardless of what it is, I don’t like it and so I wanted to do something about it.  Adriana, a friend at work, who is known to be a big fan of home remedies and other such useless things, told me that she had something to put on the corner of my mouth to make it look less freakish.  After disappearing into her cubicle for a minute, she came back with a small bottle of Colgate gel toothpaste, which she claims will fix pretty much anything (one of my friends at my real job recommends Viagra for all of the same problems).  So I quite stupidly decided to humor her, since I know nothing about dermitology, and the result was that I had a patch of blue gel toothpaste smeared in the corner of my mouth for about 5 minutes, with about 3-4 coworkers laughing and pointing, including Adriana.  After she had caught her breath, another coworker went into her purse and got something that actually helps for this kind of thing.  I very quickly rubbed off the blue stuff and put on the stuff that might actually help.  My face still felt cold from the toothpaste and smelled like it too.  I brought the house down I mockingly suggested a little later that the toothpaste might even help people out with sexual problems.

what is wrong with you people?!?!

One thing that just bugs the living bejeezus out of me is when people can’t find things to keep themselves occupied. How hard is that? I mean, just think of what you want to do and do it. I’ve never had trouble with that. I guess some folks don’t know what they want, or maybe aren’t creative enough to find something interesting out of everyday life (which I can sympathize with). But I find that so many people, in so many different places, in every stage of life and on a daily basis are looking to others to provide them stimulation, and they’re very often disappointed.

The guy next to me at work is playing computer Solitaire for the 10^th time in the past hour. I want to turn to him and say, “Your life is shit.”

a glimpse at family life in Pernambues

My boss is my across-the-hall neighbor. He got me the apartment for the month, which was quite convenient, uncomplicated, and cheap, at least from my point of view. I should point out that he's really not my boss because I don't really work there, since I'm a volunteer. So at least he can't fire me, if, say, I decide to hammer a poster to the wall (unlikely, but possible) at 2am on a Tuesday. It's a real comfort knowing that.

He always invites me over for dinner. And I always accept, even though I always feel weird doing so, because I have no food, since I have no refrigerator. They eat pretty much the same thing every night, with slight variation: beans with meat and spices mixed in (feijao), rice, sometimes spaghetti with red(dish) sauce, and either chicken or sometimes the frugal side of pig or cow parts. Luckily for me I'll eat just about anything, especially when it's free. If you don't like beans, though, and you live in Bahia, you're sort of out of luck. Luckily I do. One of my Bahian friends doesn't like seafood, which is like saying you're from Italy and don't like pasta. Bummer.

Living in close proximity to my boss/friend and his family provides me with an interesting glimpse on day-to-day life of a Bahian family, which is essentially the same as an American family except none of the men are ever wearing shirts (so it's like Kentucky, I guess). My boss/friend, Ivanildo, has two sons (ages 5 and 10) and a 2-month old daughter. Every night he comes home and dons the same pair of blue oversized Bermuda shorts. He then spends the rest of the night (in his shorts only - no shirt or shoes) yelling and swearing at his sons, and playing with some electronic gadget or trying to get his their toys (Power Rangers, toy trucks, a yo-yo I gave them, etc.)to work. Don't get me wrong, he's a great Dad, but it's one of those households where as long as you're not a kid swearing at an adult, it is acceptable for the adults, and to a lesser degree, the kids, to use profane language. For instance, he taught his son Matheus to say "shit" in 3 different languages: English, Portugues (merde), and German (schise). Education, of course, is always paramount ;).

moved to Pernambues until April 1

So I moved into a new neighborhood, called Pernambues, which is the most populous bairrho in Salvador. It’s pretty poor, to say the least. By American standards it’s a slum but by Salvador standards it’s a few steps up from a favela (slum). Lots of people live in cheaply and quickly built brick buildings (complexes?) that look as if a swift gust of wind could knock them over without a problem. Some of them don’t have windows, just window holes, and doorways without doors. Mine, luckily, has a door. And isn’t too bad, except there’s nothing in it. Except a lot of mosquitoes. Which have been experiencing a pretty high mortality rate since I moved in. As has the skin on my feet and lower legs. Anyway.

I have a twin-sized mattress on the floor of my bedroom with no pillow and a sheet that stretches over it. My landlady also gave me a couple of sheets to use as covers which I haven’t really used because it’s been hot. The air circulation, too, isn’t nearly as good as my last place, which was on the 9th floor and had a lot of wind. This place is on the first floor, and for security purposes it’s not a real bright idea to keep the windows wide open all the time. Most of them have Compton-style security grates (that look like you’re in jail) on the front to keep out fat people.

The place wouldn’t be too bad if there was anything in it, which, unfortunately, since I’m only there until April 1st, there isn’t. I think I’m painting a worse picture of it than it really is – the tiling in the bathroom is nice as hell, as well as the kitchen. It has two clean bedrooms and the rent is cheap as hell (~$166/mo). It has two bathrooms, although only one has a working shower and the other the only working toilet, so you can’t do the one-stop shopping you’re used to when using the bathroom in the morning. Plus the wiring on the shower that works is faulty. I know this because when I tried to adjust the head I got zapped. Not bad but I didn’t want to do it again.

That reminds me – I’ve been shocked by what I believe is no more than 110-120 volts on three separate occasions, in three separate places, within the past month or so. The first was at my last apartment when I tried to plug in my hair clipper in the outlet next to the mirror in the bathroom. ZAP. Ow. No more using that socket. The second time was when I tried adjusting the shower head in the bathroom of my new apartment. It didn’t feel quite as strong that time, maybe because my nerves were already fried from the other place. But then I was over at a friend’s house (SHE lives in a slum – another story) and when I took a look at her computer to try to fix the sound, I got zapped pretty good, probably around 5 times, because it took a while to fix. The clue should have been in the net of power cables that were hanging down from the ceiling, particularly the one that came down to rest on her bed with approximately 6 appliances jammed into it through the use of (quite unsafe, I might add) splitter adapters.

“Are you getting shocked?” she asked when she saw the look on my face around the 3rd time it happened.

“It doesn’t hurt that much,” I said.

post-carnival reverie

Carnival ended last week, and for most of the locals it was a welcome relief. And to be honest with you, 6 days and 7 nights of all out partying is a bit much even for the biggest diehard partyer. Plus all the music is really freaking loud, so I'm sure there's plenty of people with permanent ear damage as well. Most of my friends who live here skipped town for the entire week or longer, and although I had a great time being here (you have to try it at least once) I can see why years and years of this would eventually wear you down.

Last Thursday, after dropping my brother off at the airport, I caught the Excutivo (that's what they call a public bus with air conditioning) back to the neighborhood where I live. I saw another guy waiting outside the bus while he was polishing off some acarajé, which, granted, is pretty messy to eat, before jumping on just as the driver took off. I noticed this guy because he was tall and had hair that I would term "high-maintenance", in the sense that it was long, sort of dredded but maybe more like Sammy Hagar's, and he kept running his hands through it. You know, like a girl. And he was clearly conscious of being an "ultra-hip dude", what with the hair, sunglasses, wildly colored t-shirt and bermuda shorts, and Nikes.

So who gives a crap about this guy? Well, it gets so much better. As the bus pulled away I had my head turned towards the window and was listening to my generic iPod-copy MP3 player. It's called a Wolverine, presumably which means in a contest it would eat an iPod with no problem. The guy sat down a few seats in front of me and to the left. I turned from the window to look to the front of the bus when I saw out of the corner of my eye that Ultra Hip Dude had the front of his hair caught in something that looked like a cell phone. I tried to get a better look at it, and decided that it wasn't a phone. I still don't know what it was, but my best guess is that it was a transparent green plastic toy, size and shape of a cell phone, that had a propellor at the top. And of course this is what this jackass had his hair caught in. I started to laugh, quietly, but the laughing got out of control quickly enough that I had to turn back towards the window and cover my mouth so he wouldn't hear me. A couple of times he threw a nervous glance over his shoulder to see if anyone had seen what was going on. Time dragged on into a good five minutes or more, and it seemed like that his hair was pretty much epoxied to the propellor toy. He must have tried it out with his hair too close to it, and it got caught and wrapped around the propellor. Which of course is awesome. But seriously, he's lucky he didn't hurt himself.

Anyway, ten minutes later I'm thinking to myself, OK, he must be unstuck by now. I looked back over at him. Nope. Still stuck. I started immediately laughing out of control but luckily he didn't hear me. At this point we were both getting worried about what would happen when he got to his stop, or worse, what would happen if the bus filled up, because that thing was really in there. As time passed he was getting more nervous and looking over his shoulder more frequently.

Eventually I decided to get on with my life and forgot about the guy. A little while later I saw that he had escaped, and was looking very cool again (phew). It was sad to have to leave my brother at the airport because we had such a good time over the past week, but this guy made up for it a little. I should mention too that he looked about age 40.