Check Me Out

I posted over at Expat Focus today. Go read all my opinions and thoughts on Christmas in Brazil. No, it's not going to be sappy. Don't you know me at all!

A Brazilian Christmas...Without The Trimmings!

Anti-Vaccine? Not in the 3rd World

There are many things you never expect to hear, even living abroad. I remember when my pediatrician mentioned in conversation how it was meningitis season. Say what?! Don't you mean cold season??

That too.

Seriously, being raised in the states you take certain things for granted, like the lack of gnarly diseases. Our most reason run in was with Scarlet Fever. I thought everyone was joking but no, 2 kids at my sons' school were diagnosed with it. Our pediatrician actually diagnosed one of them. What's next, Cholera?

But it is a fact of life in a third world country. While people in the bigger cities pretty much have little risk of being exposed to anything like this, things happened. A close friend of mine's son came down with not one but two types of meningitis at the same time.

That is where the public system comes in. They do massive free vaccination campaigns down here. Any given month it is any given thing, and people push you left and right to go in and take it. I can't even tell you how many arguments I've gotten in with peoples' nannies when I said my kids didn't need them! My kids are up to date on vaccinations. They have it all, Brazilian public and private.

Sorry anti-vaccine, it is a fact of life where I live. I do, however, draw the line at double vaccinating. They truly push everyone to go back in as mass vaccinations are the easiest way to eliminate a disease in a population.

Of course I went to my pediatrician and asked him directly. Does Chatterbox (as The Menace wasn't born yet) really need to get this again? He said no but to not talk it about (oops). He said that the sad thing is that the public medical community is so overloaded that it can not manage to educate the general public as it should. If they should give an out then people who should get vaccinated may not, nulling the process as a whole.

While the process of being harassed into getting repeats of yet another vaccine annoys the crap out of me, I understand where it comes from. Part of me wonders if Americans have forgotten why vaccines were made in the first place and how powerful these diseases can be. Obviously it is a personal decision but it does effect the public as a whole.

My bottom line, if you are going to live in the 3rd world, please vaccinate. S

Shame on You Rio de Janeiro!

I saw a horrific sight the yesterday. It was supposed to be my Sunday Steam of Consciousness post but with the continued lack of internet it has been moved to Monday.


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Today I am horrified. I saw something that shook me to the core. Walking innocently home, I saw a pharmacy delivery man beating a homeless man. It wasn't in a dark alley or at night. It was the middle of the day on a very busy street, next to a busy plaza. The most disturbing part was that no one did anything. 


I wanted to be able to just walk away and ignore it, tell myself the homeless guy must have had something coming to him. But I know that homeless guy and I saw him sleeping right there just 20 minutes earlier. 


I was the first one to yell leave him alone. By then his mouth was already bleeding and the man was dragging him down the street by his dreads. An old lady joined me in yelling. All the men, the multitude of men standing there, didn't get involved. Just a Mother with a small child (who would rather he not see something like this) and an old lady. Everyone else just watched. 


A different older woman passed by and said to me that he must be a theif. I looked at her and said that I have spoken with him before and he had never tried anything. I also said that even he is does that mean that you get to just beat this skinny starving homeless man? Is it ok? 


Sadly my true sacastic nature doesn't quite translate yet. I was dying to tell her that her line of thinking is a slippery slope into linching people and maybe she has forgotten that the dictatorship is over. I'm also dying to know what the best translation of daft cow is in Portuguese. Would have really fit the moment. Regardless, she looked embarrassed enough with her assumption and walked away with her head down. 


But I was pissed. Pissed at everyone watching. Pissed at no one breaking up the fight and figuring out what the hell was going on. Especially pissed because of the unfair size advantage of the beater and the fact that the homeless man was begging him to stop, not even fighting back! I give props to the little old lady who was shouting with me because she had the young man balls to walk up to the man doing the beating and yell at him. The man just said that the guy had it coming to him. She kept yelling at him but the guy was determined and started dragging the homelessman away. 


I took off towards the plaza to find a police officer. That's when I noticed that the delivery man was dragging the homeless man in the same direction. Hell, if a man is going to publicly beat another man and then drag him to the police, something must have happened. 


Still, the lack of response by the general public was disturbing. Hell, it happened right next to a bar with at least 20 men sitting there watching the fight and the game simotaneously. 


I think the neighborhoods of Laranjeiras, Catete and Flamengo should be ashamed of themselves! I sure am ashamed of my neighbors enough for everyone. Have you seen this? What would you have done?

First Language Limits??

Mr. Rant and I speak to each other in English. I have had just about the entire population of Brazil tell me that we should actually be speaking in Portuguese. They tell me that I would be speaking far better if we did. And every single time I just smile and inform them that we already have a challenging enough time with communication. While perfecting my Portuguese would be awesome, it would be very difficult to do if Mr. Rant and I weren’t on speaking terms.

The truth of the matter is that it is weird to speak to him in Portuguese. We have been speaking in English since the day we met! I know Mr Rant in English and that got me thinking, is there something to this? Take a Brazilian friend of mine. I met her upon her turn to Brazil after years of living abroad. She was excited to speak to me in English as that was what she was used to at the time.

Now, over a year later, we still find it odd when we speak to each other in Portuguese. We always slip back into English.

And it goes both ways. I have always spoken to my Brazilian Sister-in-law in Portuguese though she can understand, more or less, when I speak in English. Even on moments where she says to go ahead with English, I can’t. It’s weird but I feel more comfort, for many reasons, speaking to her in Portuguese.

It seems that languages aren’t merely a form of communication but also have a sort of intimacy level when it comes to who you are talking to.

Has anyone else noticed this or did I just publicly confirm my craziness?

UPDATE

For starters, I'm still technically without internet. Thankfully my new building has a free lan house for residents. I get to come, get my fix, and also get to watch preteen mating rituals. Fun for the whole family.

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I hate Etna, the furniture company. They caused a mini drama at my place on Monday by not showing up. When we called they informed us that the truck was sitting there all day waiting for the last piece of our ordered furniture and it got too late for delivery in Zona Sul. Apparently their phones only work one way. In the end they showed up ridiculously late on Tuesday and only managed to put together the bedroom closets (still thank goodness for small favors!) and left us with even more boxes in the living room. Going with their own flow, they can only come back Saturday to up together the living room shelving. Not a pain in our ass at all...

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Not only did Etna screw me that way, they also screwed me in another way. I'm just going to let the dirty jokes leave your mind before I finish... I don't know if I have mentioned on this blog how Mr. Rant and his family consulate the phases of the moon before doing anything big. If the moon is out of phase everything will go to shit. Seriously, I was asked to plan my births around it. You could say that they take it pretty seriously. Of course seeing that I am a stubborn person I made an executive decision that we would buy the furniture even though the moon was out of course. And look what happened! Damn you Etna! The phases of the moon are going to control me for the rest of my life!

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So now that we have gotten rid of half of our unneeded belongings, minimalists anyone, we have somewhat of a home. I even threw away the old antibiotics I was saving in case of a zombie apocalypse. How many of you guess that one was about me? As a celebration, I decided to take advantage of building perks. Did you know my place has a sauna with a dive in enterance to the pool? I think I had a mini orgasm the moment I saw it. Best yet, very cute cougar bait as eye candy! Not a bad way to relax at all.

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Last but not least, it is finally December! I don't know what is going on in Rio de Janeiro because I can usually tell the month by the amount of sweat vacating my body. These days it's much more of a September/October level. Hell, I just may wear pants out this evening! So if any of you out there do not believe in Global warning pay attention, my sweat glands are telling you otherwise.

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So that is all for this ranter today. As I do not have internet, nor a computer set up, I am going to be inconsistant at best. We did talk to our internet company and should have it by now. My favorite part of that experience was that they told us we had to make an online payment before we could get our internet switched over. Of course we were calling because we do not have internet and they neglected to switch it as scheduled. Irony anyone?