My First Full Day: Size DOES Matter

Well, today was my first full day in Miami. My body was still set to Garanhuns time, and i could not sleep past 3AM (Miami time). Did quite a bit today. First, I noticed The Herald has shrunk in size. I mean A LOT!! It is freakin' tiny. Nowhere near the size when I left!! We visited my grandma, which wa snice, and she will celebrate her 90th birthday next week. My sister and niece will visit, which is GREAT. I also went to Burger King. The large is HUGE. I mean Super Size was not that big when I left!! I hadn't had "fast food" in close to four years and that thing laid in my stomach like a ton of bricks. All in all, nice for the first day back. More to come...

My First Day Back

Well, I got in yesterday. The flight was fine, no probs really, except for some bratty kids behind me, whose parents really didn't try to discipline at all, jus tlet scream and yell and act up, till the stewardess came and laid down the law. The flight actually got in early, and I had no problems with luggage or going through customs, anything like that. It was really nice to see my mom and my aunt after four years. I first left the US on January 29, 2006, so it has almost been "exactly" 4 years, to the day. Anyways, we had Domino's Pizza, which was nice, and later I went with my mom for a "cafecito" at Latin American. What happened today, as I expected, is that despite being a bit tired from the flight, my bodt, which is used to waking up at about 5AM Garanhuns time, is still running over there, so today I woke up at 0330 AM Miami time. It usually takes 1 or 2 days for my body to shift over. OK thats all for now.

HaHa pt. Deux

HaHa

THE BOSTON TEA PARTY...
52% SCOTT BROWN (R) 1,153,808
47% MARTHA COAKLEY (D)D: 1,052,391

This Will Never Get Old

Not gonna deny it. I'm laughing...

Never wanted to be "Politically Correct"...

Weight Watchers clinic floor collapses under dieters.
As the dieters queued to see how many pounds they had shed, the floor beneath them in the clinic in Växjö, in south-central Sweden, began to rumble, according to a report in The Local, Sweden's English-language newspaper.

"We suddenly heard a huge thud; we almost thought it was an earthquake and everything flew up in the air.

"The floor collapsed in one corner of the room and along the walls," one Weight Watchers participant told the Smålandsposten newspaper.

Soon, the fault lines spread around the room, and other sections of the floor gave way.

Luckily, all of the dieters escaped uninjured and managed to move the scales to the corridor, which was not damaged in the accident, and were able to complete their weekly weigh in.

The cause of the floor's collapse remains under investigation.

I'm Going Home

After close to 4 years in Brazil (I arrived this last time on Jan. 30, 2006) I am going home for a short visit. Funny that, even though my life is here (Garanhuns) now, I still consider my mom's place, and the States home. Anyways, to celebrate, I present my favorite part the Woodstock documentary. Ten Years After doing I'm Going Home..

Togo’s National Team Bus Ambushed

Gunmen in an area plagued by separatist violence used machine guns to open fire Friday on a bus carrying Togo’s national team to a tournament in Angola, wounding at least nine people, including two players. Some players said they wanted to pull out of the African Cup of Nations tournament after the violence, but an official in Angola said it would go ahead as planned.Togo’s bus in a convoy from Congo was six miles across the border in Angola when it came under fire. The bus driver died in the 30-minute ambush, according to the Togo captain Emmanuel Adebayor, who was not hurt.

“We were machine-gunned like dogs,” Thomas Dossevi, who plays for the French club Nantes, told Radio Monte Carlo. “They were armed to the teeth,” he said, adding, “We spent 20 minutes underneath the seats of the bus.”

The wounded were taken to a hospital in Cabinda, and Portugal’s state-run Lusa news agency said it received a communication from the region’s main separatist group, FLEC, claiming to have carried out the attack. The Togo Football Federation said defender Serge Akakpo and the backup goalkeeper Obilale Kossi were among those injured.

Check!!

Provided, without commentary..

Chess Wager Gets Violent With Shovel

A fight over money ends with a stabbing; a shovel is the weapon.

By KRISTIE BORGES

A snow shovel has turned into a weapon in Bridgeport during a dispute about over a chess wager.

Two men were playing a game of chess on Tuesday night when a dispute broke out over a wager they put on a chess match several weeks ago, police said.

Bridgeport police say 46-year-old Ronald Swinton's shovel caught Robert Spears, 39, at just the right angle to gash his chess mate's abdomen. Spears was seriously hurt in Tuesday.

The move with the shovel instead of the pawn ended with Swinton’s arrest.

He’s charged with first-degree assault and breach of peace and was presented in Bridgeport Superior Court on Wednesday.

Spears underwent surgery at St. Vincent's Medical Center in Bridgeport. At last check, he was listed in serious condition.

Swinton is next due in court on Jan. 15, according to court records.

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LottoFever in Brazil

When I was a kid, there was this TV program my sister and I enjoyed, called Lottery. It was about this mythical national lottery. Two guys, one from the lottery and another from the IRS would travel around the country, informing the winners and the taxman would then take his cut. This show provided one of the great family memories. it was Christmastime. This one particular show dealt with a cameraman at a local news station. The anchor woman was a real nasty piece of work who belittled all her coworkers, but was loved by the audience who only got to see her perky personality. The important thing here is, the camera man won the lottery. To get back at the anchor woman, he flipped the camera on during one of her tirades, and it gets transmitted on air, for everyone to see what she really is like. My sister and I must have really enjoyed this for some reason, because we started cheering and saying "oooh, burn, burn burn.." For reasons we never really understood then, and I doubt we ever will, this led my father to believe the Christmas tree was on fire, and he ran out of the bathroom in a panic. Anyways, lotto fever has hit Brazil. They are giving away a mega jackpot for the end of the year. The prize is R$120,000,000. And someone HAS to win. If no one picks all 6 numbers, they will distribute it to those who picked 5 of the 6 numbers. If no one has 5 numbers, they will distribute it among tose who picked 4, etc.. Now I really don't play MegaSena. I prefer the two soccer lotteries. One is called Loteca, where they give you 14 games, and you have to pick one team or the other, or a tie. If you pick 14 you get the grand prize, 13 also wins, but not near as much. LotoGol has only 5 games, but here you pick the muber of goals each team will score, 0, 1, 2, 3, or more than 3 (3+). Here you win with 5, 4, or 3 correct scores. The kids saw all the media hype with this end of year drawing and asked to buy one ticket. Everyone picked one number, except for Eric, who could not decide who his favorite player is, Ronaldo (#9) or Kaka, (#10), so we threw both of his in. You never know when lady luck knocks on your door...

History repeats itself, family edition

The very first apartment I lived in when I was a kid was on the second floor. We had this large glass window from which you could see the cars driving into and out of the apartment parking lot. Everyday, as my dad would drive off to work, he would stop and wave back at my mom and I. I must have been no more than 3 or 4 at the time. One day, for whatever reason, my dad was in a rush and he drove off without waving. I remember crying and crying and left the living room. My mom, trying to minimize the situation, shouted "Danny, he came back he came back, run, run.." Of course, he hadn't driven back she was trying to make me feel better, but I remember feeling worse because I "missed" him a second time. Anyways, we have a bus stop right in front of our house. Now I usually walk everywhere but Adriana tires easy so she usually takes the bus. As she gets on, Eric always shouts out the front door (we have these little 'windows' on them, where the door is closed but there is an opening that allows you to see the street), "mãinha, mãinha" (mommie, mommie) and she waves back. Mãinha, by the way, is used mostly in the Northeast of Brazil, most everyone else just uses "Mãe", or 'mom'. Today for whatever reason she didn't turn back and Eric started to cry, thinking she didn't hear him, or whatever, but all I could think of was when I went through the same thing way back when. I almost thought of pulling the same "she came back" on him, but I remembered it made me feel worse that I had missed him so I just let it go. He forgot the whole thing in about 15 minutes, but it just made me remember that earlier incident.

New Eats..

Added a bunch of blog feeds on the right hand side. Most are blogs I at least TRY to follow with Google Reader. Don't have time to read them all, every day, but they are entertaining. I added a bunch of ex-pats in Brazil, so if you got one that ain't there, PLEASE let me know.

I dunno whether to laugh, cry, or scratch my head...

I dunno whether to laugh, cry, or scratch my head...

Obama and Lula are most popular presidents in Latin America

According to LatinBarometer 2009, an annual poll that measures the preferences of Latin Americans, Barack Obama, U.S president, and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, are the most respected presidents in the region. Colombian president Alvaro Uribe is in the middle of the list, while Hugo Chavez, from Venezuela, and Fidel Castro, Cuban leader, garnered the least support, making them the most disliked figures in the region. The poll includes more than 2000 interviews in 18 countries throughout the region.

And the hits just keep on coming

OK, so what were the most popular posts? Well, far and away, not one post came close to this one about a Brazilian arms shipment going to Venezuela. This was actually a repost from another blog. I got some interesting hits on it: two from Cuba, a handful from Venezuela, and someone, I don't know who, who works at the State Dept. in Wash. DC got it in an email and then resent it to other people there. I know this from the stat tracker that shows where they got the link from. The second most popular post is the review to Bad Buddhist Radio I mentioned yesterday. #3 is a post that was pretty popular among the ex-pats living in Brazil because it deals with "Brazilian pizza". It seems a lot of people had been meaning to do a similar post on the differences. This post about "real crime" shows in Brazil got a respectable number of hits, it seems some Brazilian found the video funny and started emailing it around and around, and I got more email than I expected about it, as did the "price of a can of Pepsi" post that I also mentioned yesterday. The cricket posts all got a good number of hits, but these two about Mark Vermeulen and this one about Mohammad Asif got a good number more than the rest.
Thanks for stopping by....

Trafficing and Googling Wickets & Guayaba

Well, I thought it would be interesting to end the year with stats for the blog. Now, I took about a year and a half off, but it seems things are as stable as they are going to get. I hope to be posting about once week more or less. On with the stats. Obviously, most of my traffic comes from Google, but #2 was from a blog by a friend of mine which went off air last week, "Pumpkinseeds & Contradictions". #3 was direct traffic by people who knew the address and Blogger was tied with the same number of referrals. The rest if the top 10 is rounded out by fellow expats who either added me to their blog roll, or people who clicked on my link when I left a post. On to keywords people use when they hit my blog. This one comes with an asterisk *. #1 is the coach of the team when I worked there, Marcelo Neveleff. HOWEVER, there is a set of RELATED words that move one topic to the top, and that is "Bad Buddhist Radio". I did a review here and that gets hits all the time with a string of key words, from the name of host of the show Ryu Cope, to Bad Buddhism, or Bad Buddhist Radio. Lots of traffic form those words right there. Another bizzare occurance is people who Google "price of a can of Pepsi". I get hits on that because of this post here, where I talk about a strange custom in Brazil of giving gum balls or candies as change when they do not have enough coins. Well thats enough for today. Next post I will bring some more stats. Maybe...

Page Updates

Slowly but surely I am revamping the site layout. I am changing most of the links to RSS feeds, so if you had a link it is now on the feed thingamajigger by subject. Stay tuned..

Today, I am a Man

BA-RUCH AH-TAH A-DO-NUY,
EH-LO-HAY-NU ME-LECH HA-O-LUM,
SH’-H’-CH’-YA-NOO V-KEE-Y’-MA-NOO
V’-HI-GI-AH-NOO LAZ-MAN HA-ZEH.

At least in the eyes of the Brazilian government. I got my provisional "Carteira de Identidade Estrangeira", the Brazilian equivalent of a Green Card in the USA.

Lost in Translation

There used to be a running joke in Star Trek TNG where they would quote Shakespeare and the Klingons would reply "it's just not the same from the original Klingon", implying that his workds were orginally in their language. I kinda related to it after I moved to Brasil and read Hemingway or other English authors in Portuguese. I never really thought about it when I read Dostoyevsky or other authors whose original language was not English. (BTW, you have never really read Dostoyevsky till you read it in Portuguese). Marti is pretty good in Portuguese too. Anyways, the other day I was in the DVD rental place and saw the first season of The Muppet Show. I grabbed it in a instant and rushed home. Now, at first, I watched it alone in English. Then, when the kids got home I ranted and raved about what a great show it was, how I watched it as a kid, blablabla, yadayadayada. So I switched the audio to Portuguese for them to watch. It just wasn't the same. I mean, Jim Henson is Kermit, Ms. Piggy is Frank Oz, as sure as the Sun rises in the East. My favorites, Waldorf and Statler, the two old guys who used to complain about everything, their wisecracks didn't have the same effect. The kids, they enjoyed it though. Eric and Ericka laughed the whole way through. Adriana just kept looking at us, shaking her head saying I was more a kids then they are.

The More Things Change...

WOW!! Haven't posted in over a year. And, while a lot has changed, nothing really has. I am still in Garanhuns. The last time i posted, I had just moved into a new house. Guess what? I just moved into another house. Got a job teaching English. The kids are fine, but Adriana is a bit sick and needs to go to the doctor, female plumbing type problems. Hope to be able to keep this up now. No promises on how often I will post.

After a long sabbatical

Rather timely, yesterday was the anniversary of this....