Yesterday I had dinner with one old friend and five new ones. They came from Brazil to attend TechReady, a Microsoft event, in Seattle. I had a lot of fun and they gave me a fresh batch of news from Brazil. I've been there a couple of weeks ago, but visiting is not the same as living there and I was happy to get their point of view.

 

What I got is that they are fed up with the government, incompetence and lack of education of the population in general. And losing their hope. It is easy to be depressed because:

- During 15 years government after government called the population to sacrifice to support their latest "silver bullet" plan. And everyone responded. It was not until the mid-nineties tha we finally controlled inflation, this after the government "witholding" everyone's money (yes, they reached into our bank accounts and froze them.

- Brazilians suffer on their daily lives with economical growth. Long bus lines, overcrowded roads and cities, airports in complete chaos. Rolling blackouts.

- Corruption everywhere.

 

I took the cheerleader role and reminded them that:

- It takes huge resiliency to support so many governments failing without civil unrest. We have an amazing ability to organize and act even if it doesn't feel like that. After so much suffering everyone is trying to understand who the "sucker" is on every situation and looking for hidden agendas, but that is not necessarily bad.

- The reason infrastructure is falling apart is because we're growing faster despite what our government allows. It is not a good situation to be in, but my grandfather was not able to travel across states during the rainy season. He had no refrigerator either. Half of the folks on our table were old enough to remember declaring land phone lines on their federal tax return. One sold his phone line as down payment for his house.

- One corrupt police officer touches the lives of hundreds, if not thousands of people. It doesn't mean the population is corrupt. Actually year fater year the UN ranks Brazil as one of the most friendly places for foreigners and one of the tests is to drop a wallet and check if someone returns it.

- All seven folks yesterday take money from their pocket and directly help someone. We pay college for some, give money to relatives in worse situation and beef up tips for people we know are in trouble.

- We rarley allow our jobs to turn us into souless gouls.

 

One of them asked me if I was optimist about then years from now. Heck, I'm optimist about next month. It is unfortunate that my country does not improve as fast as it could, and it is very hard to see such incremental changes. But they're there and living abroad makes it easier to see them.

 

 

Today if you tried to use Live Local Search or Live Books Search between noon and 1:30PM (PST) and you could not... that was me. I apologize for the outage. I don't say that as a figure of speech, I mean it literally: I changed something that took both services down for 90 minutes.

 

The scary part of the whole deal is that I could (and still can) take the service down. It doesn't matter how much you know about something, there is always something you don't, and today was my turn to find out.

 

In my defense other people reviewed the change and it was, by itself, correct. It did uncover a problem somewhere else. At least that is my story and I'm sticking to it.

 

This was the fourth of a sequence of very long weeks. And still Thursday...

 

News from Iraq: Ambassador sums up Iraq for lawmakers: 'Fear' (CNN).

 

Mission Accoplished! Come back home already!

In the US family planning means choosing whether you want kids and when. In a bunch of other places family planning means picking up who, in your extended family, will be the lawyer, the doctor, the accountant... this way you're covered getting sick, opening a company or getting out of jail after bankrupting your company.

 

Family planning as I described is hot that popular anymore; sign of the times. But this old joke still works in more traditional places:

Mom1: - What beautiful children you have! How old are they?

Mom2: - Thank you! The lawyer is 5 and the doctor is 9.

 

Ha!

Last Saturday I and two close friends travelled to Canada to watch two U-20 Fifa Soccer World Cup games. The doubleheader started with Spain beating Jordan 4-2, but we only watched the second half. It took as a while to find a parking spot and one of my friends was so anxious to get to the game I was afriad he was jump out of the car and run. The second game was Costa Rica vs. Scotland and it ended up with Costa Rica beating Scotland 2-1.

Brazil started the turnament as a favorite, but only got to the round of sixteen because it was lucky. There was a 1,000:1 chance that Brazil would play in Vancouver. It had to finish third in its group and lots of other results would have to align. Ends up they will play there.

The doubleheader costed U$43, including the TicketBastard "convenience" fee. I rather go there and pick up my ticket, but it is way more convenient for them to charge extra online. I cannot find a single ticket for Brazil's game for less than U$200. I guess I'll have to watch the game on TV.

I don't know what I liked the most, watching the games or talking to my friends. Now they have material to blackmail me for years :)

Today is 4th of July, American Independence Day. So there is no better day to do something patriotic here in the USA. Since terrorists are considered by many as the worst threat to America, and are largely sponsored by oil producing countries, try to save oil.

 

Stop driving your car is not very practical in certain regions (like mine) so start with something that will cost you nothing and actually improve your life quality. Just leverage the summer temperatures and line dry your clothes. You save money and energy, and clothes end up with that fresh smell without using any chemicals.

 

You cannot possibly think that the society here will be vain enough to complain, right? After all this is national security!