Here are a few insights on the wonderful Brazilians:

1 ~ Brazilians love their Futball (soccer).  On my 9th floor apartment, I can see a soccer field and a goalie training court.  Brazil tends to get some amazing storms at times, which doesn’t seem to phase them.  Below is a picture of the soccer field during a hellacious downpour.`didn’t slow the game down.

2 ~ The other day as I walked to work, I saw an electric unicycle go down the street at a pretty good clip.  There was no seat, so the rider was standing up and wisely wearing a helmet.  Didn’t have time to to take a picture, because it went by so fast.  I did notice it had a red light in the back to show which is the front and which is the back.

3 ~ One of the brew-houses my buddy Ricardo and I visit, has a pretty lady named Alice (accent on the second syllable) that I have gotten to know well.  She has tattoos on her arm and is planning to get both sleeves covered with them.  I ask her what she thought the percentage of people in Brazil who has tattoos, and she thought about half.  That is what I figured.  I am amazed at all the people with tattoos, and you know many have them placed discretely where they are not seen.  I find it quite fascinating tattoos in Brazil are so prevalent.  Below is Alice.  I am the ugly one.This type of brew-house is common throughout Sao Paulo.  Here is the selection of beers that they brew:4 ~ Sometimes, I have to stop and laugh at my idiocy. The apartment building I live in, has bio-metric screens (finger-print readers) that we use to access the building.  I do not fully understand Portuguese, so when they were taking my finger-prints for the access, they asked me to put my fingers on the magic little screen to record my prints, I obeyed.  What I didn’t realize, is they were wanting prints for both “open the door” and “help! I am panicking!”

The idea is, if somebody has a gun on me and wanting to follow me up to my apartment to rob me of all my furniture and possibly molest me, I am suppose to use a particular finger to get inside which will also alert the building security I am panicking.  Again, since I lack the ability to speak Portuguese other than, “another beer please” and “where is the toilet?”, I didn’t know there was a difference between fingers.  So, in the year they had this system in place, several times a day as I came home I was setting off the panic alarm.  Every day.  I remembered  one time someone called me to see if I was panicking, and since I didn’t know what they were saying, I just hung up on them.  What a silly thing to ask, if I am panicking!

Well, they sent me a message the other day and after running it through Google Translate, I saw the humorous errors of my ways.  So, now it has been corrected.

5 ~ Here is a picture of morning the other day.  Always nice to step out on my balcony with my morning coffee and sit with this in view.Life is good if you are open to it.  Until next time, smile always and grab the next adventure with a firm grip.  D.