Set adrift on memory bliss

Bill has this story he likes to tell. It's about this Brother-in-law who is a lawyer or something for an insurance company. Turns out this company did some study and they found that somewhere around 60% of the people who have been out of work for about six-months or longer never go back. And apparently it has nothing to do with the amount of insurance claim they might recieve.

We talked about this a lot. Bill sold his company about 5 years ago and has just been travelling since. I've been mucking around for about two months. We both kinda agreed that there was something basic about men that requires them to do something. Something to give meaning to their existence. And that seems to be unique to men, most women seem to find meaning in their children. Men seem to be different, they need more, need a sense of accomplishment.

Given how much we started talking about this, and especially how this relates to both of our lives we had to call it something. So we came up with the "Rudder Theory" Without something to give your life purpose you just lose direction and abandon your idealism. Start drifting out aimlessly.

Maybe it doesn't even matter what. Lately I've decided to do some stuff I've been meaning to do. Learn to swim, learn to dance, speak Spanish fluently...and a few more things. At some point I´ll likely return to the "real" world, but for right now, reality is no friend of mine.

Today was a good day

Every once in a while the stars just align and everything is as it should be. You wake up and find your two Argentinean friends crashed out in your living room in Rio while checking out the view of the Copacabana. You feel good about the fact that you saved two friends from sleeping out on the beach.

Your sister cooks you a great plate of eggs to go along with the fresh papaya (yes I know I have an issue with fruit, let's just accept it as a healthy obsession).

You spend the day relaxing at the beach with all of your friends. The beach vendor even cuts you a deal on the umbrellas. Flaco lounges around singing Bob Marley, or at least the words he knows "Da dah dah da da, I shot the sherrif, bah bah bah ba ba bah"

You finally find the zone swimming. With each stroke you remember how you promised yourself you'd become a good swimmer before you left Rio. Today everything is working and you still have two weeks to go. You find that buoyancy equilibrium in the water and learn to relax while floating. You figure out what is was with your form that was messing you up. Follow through, don't lose momentum and pace yourself. Before you know it you've hit the end of the beach and can't even see friends around the curve of the shore.

When after your ready to leave and have paid the aforementioned beach vendor you remember you forgot the cup of matte you also had, and run down there to give him the extra 1.50 Reals. This brings a smile to your face for some reason.

You realize that your Spanish has improved to the point that you are playing translater between your sister who speaks no Spanish, your little buddy who speaks a little and the Argentinians who only speak a bit of English. And everyone gets along great.

Your new friends take off back to Argentina for yet another farewell. But not before presenting you with about 3 shots left in a bottle of something you've never heard of before and an offer for a place to stay if you make it to Cordoba.

You head to the all-you-can-eat chorosco buffett that you don't really want to see because you know your sister does. And it turns out to be fantastic. They do good work there, and are ever so attentive to all your needs. You eat and eat like you never have before. The secret it turns out, is to eat plenty of vegetables and salad, and pace yourself.

It's Carnaval, you're staying 50 feet away from Copacabana beach, but you head to Ipanema to party. At two in the morning you and your new friends decide to move the party to Lapa until the wee hours of the night. You post party in your apartment overlooking the beach. Life could suck more.

Samira shows up

My sister Samira and I have become pretty close over the last couple of years. She’s been out to Seattle a few times to visit me and I’ve been to Cleveland several times. We talk fairly regularly on the phone. We met up in Las Vegas twice and now she’s here in Rio for Carnaval. It wasn’t always like this. When we were growing up I was the mean older brother who would pick on her and she was the annoying little sister that would tell. There was some story about being thrown out of a window, but what happened depends on whose version you believe. But some things just seem to change over time. I’ve grown to like tomatoes too.

Samira doesn’t speak any Portuguese or Spanish so I knew it might be a little difficult when she showed up. I made sure our doorman knew to expect a little girl with a suitecase. “She’s my sister” I told him. Well turns out he almost didn’t make the connection. I don’t think we look too familiar right now. I’ve always been the dark one in the family, everyone else is relatively fair-skinned. And after 2 months in Latin America I’m now the dark dark one of the family. “You look black” she told me. I’ve been hearing that a lot lately.

Samira and I immediately started in on the family gossip. How her trip to introduce my parents to her boyfriend went, the latest stories about our nephews. I told her a few of my stories. “Yeah I know” she replied a couple of times “I read about that on your blog, everyone in the family is reading your blog.” Hmmm…maybe I should be a little more careful with what I write.

We’re actually not that similar personality wise. She’s idyllic and social, I’m bitter and jaded but usually hide it well. But maybe it’s just the similarity in age, or just middle child syndrome, for some reason we really get along well. At some point after I moved out to Seattle and left the rest of the family behind in Cleveland it was Samira I kept in touch with most, and some strange way, me moving 2000 miles away brought us together.

I've become kinda protective of Samira in the last couple of years. It's funny, you watch someone grow up and you see them making the same mistakes in life that you made earlier. And you try to help them so they can learn from your mistakes, and don't have to experience the same crap you did. But really, some lessons in life you can't pass on quite so easily. Everyone needs to stumble through it on their own, and learn from the experience. Samira is kind of like that...and I suppose the best thing you can do is be a good big brother and be around to see what happens.

But honestly she's a lot more mature than I was at her age. At 22 she's already giving me good advice about my own messed up dramas (usually involving women). And the thing about sisters is they can call bullshit on you like no one else. They've known you for their entire life, and you're just not going to fool them with the same line of crap you give to everyone else to justify your actions. And when she does call bullshit one me, I listen...at least I think I do.

I'm glad she came to visit. I know we're going to have a blast in Rio. We always have a blast when we're hanging out. Who would have thunk that just a few short years ago. Now I just hope my other sister Asma makes it to Buenos Aires. That would be fun.

Ellick comes to town!

I’ve been looking forward to this for a while. Actually this excursion to Rio for Carnaval was the only part of this entire trip that was planned and had actual dates associated with it. Before I left the States Ellick and my sister Samira had decided to meet up in Rio for Carnaval. This was going to be their big vacation for the year. I had invited pretty much everyone I know to come visit me on my South American and I had gotten a lot of responses like “that sounds great, we’ll check our schedule!” But only Ellick and Samira had actually bought tickets.

About 2 weeks before Ellick was set to arrive in Rio he sent me an e-mail letting me know there were two fatalities of denegue fever in Rio. Uh ok. Then he told me about the recent gang wars in the favelas. “Don’t worry” I told him, “I mean, what’s the worst that could possibly happen?”

We had already made arrangements for a very nice apartment right on the Copacabana beach. It was literally 50 feet from the beach. Ellick was going to arrive a little after noon, so I headed over a little earlier. I was thrilled when I walked in the place. This was by far the nicest room I’ve stayed in the 2 months that I’ve been traveling. The AC worked, the beds were nice and everything was clean!

While I was in the shower I heard a knock on the door. “Ellick! Great to see you man.” He took one look at me “Dude, you’re dark.” I guess a month of hanging around the beach has changed my complexion a bit. Then he started looking around the apartment. “This safe doesn’t look very secure, someone could just rip it out of the cabinet and take it, and these curtains are really flimsy”

Ellick settled in for a bit and then we decided to hit the beach. Yeah Copacobana was right outside our door but we were heading to the Ipanema side to meet up with my hostel friends. I always love introducing friends to each other. It’s a great feeling when two groups hit it off, and then you have one larger group.

Sure enough all the Chileans, the Slovak and the English girl were all hanging out at the beach at our usual spot. Ellick seemed to fit right in, everyone is so friendly that it really wasn’t much of a problem. I asked Ellick is he wanted some beach food, “it looks really dirty, I wouldn’t eat it” he said. I started looking for the guy selling shrimp. Ellick told me I was going to die.

There is nothing quite like a relaxing day at the beach. I love the whole atmosphere, everyone has a smile one their face, the vendors are walking around selling whatever you could possibly want, it’s hot but the water cools you off perfectly. First I went for a swim in the ocean, nice and refreshing. "Watch out for the undertow, it´s really bad here." Ellick warned.

Afterwards I finally felt like spending some money. I saw a great little Brazilian soccer jersey that would look awesome on my nephew Muneer. I´ve had this thing for soccer jerseys lately (sorry, I mean futbol kits). “Be careful of the vendors” Ellick told me “they’ll try to rip you off.”

I’ve actually been really impressed with the beach vendors. They walk around all day in the blistering heat of the beach, with huge packs on their back selling, well, everything. They’re generally pretty nice and take no for an answer fairly well. And I’m sure they completely rip off some people. But I think those are also the people that come down here and speak nothing but English and get upset when no one can understand them, the ugly Americans.

As the sun decided to set, we decided to head back to the homestead and meet up with the crowd a little later for dinner. Ellick and I needed to visit the ATM so we walked by the HSBC bank near our apartment. “Let’s not go in there” he said, “those guys hanging out in front of the bank look pretty sketchy.” Yeah they did look a little sketchy, but I felt ok since but the police station was two store fronts down on the same street. But whatever, we walked around for another ½ hour looking for another bank.

Dinner was great, social as always. Then we all decided to head out to one of the many beach stands and drink some beer. It was Igor (the Slovenian) and Teresa’s (the Chilean) last night in Rio. They were both flying out early the next morning. We had already exchanged contact information and I had made plans for staying with Igor for a few days while I got situated in Buenos Aires and with Teresa when I visited Chile.

It was strange, one group of friends was leaving and another one was just arriving. My sister Samira was showing up in two days and that would finalize the transition. It’s become more and more apparent to me, the two groups were wildly different sorts of people. The Latin Americans are fun and social. People from the US are cautious and paranoid, some more so than others.

But Ellick finds a way to mix his adventurous side and his paranoia together. I know I have a tendency to throw caution to the wind and take a few more chances and do some things I know aren’t a good idea. None of them have really screwed me too much, everything has always worked out and I’ve wound up with some good stories out of it. I find it odd that Ellick and I get along so well considering we do have these different world views.

Sometimes in life you just run across good people. No one is ever perfect, everyone has their own quirks. But the difference with friends is that their quirks are funny and not annoying. And you put up with them, and you give them shit for their idiosyncrasies, but at the end of the day you’re still good buds, because you don’t just find good people everywhere you look.

People are strange

I’ve spent the last week staying at a hostel here in Rio. It’s a great place, I’m really starting to enjoy the hostel life. Everyone is very outgoing. You meet interesting people from all around the world. And when you’re traveling by yourself this is a big deal! I just wish everyone had a little better hygiene, the bathrooms were clean, the air-conditioners actually worked and there weren’t six people sleeping in a room. But besides that it’s fantastic. Here it seems to be an even mix of Latin Americans and Europeans / US Citizens.

And it’s amazing how different the two groups are. The Latin Americans are always so social, so lively, so friendly. They all know how to share really well. If someone buys a bottle of water, a beer, a banana or whatever else, it’s going to get offered to everyone. But as far as I can tell, it’s not done out of some sense of obligation or duty. It’s just that it doesn’t occur to them not to offer something they have to their friends who might want to try it.

Us “westerners” aren’t like this at all. In fact normally this behavior throws us off our balance, confuses us. We don’t know how to respond. I’ve seen a lot of us say no to the initial offer, and then grudgingly accept when the offer persists. And then we feel honor bound to return the favor, which of course defeats the whole purpose.

The Latin Americans also are always the life of the party. Actually when I’m hanging out with my new Latin American friends, whether it’s the Chileans or the Argentineans or the Colombians or whoever the party is wherever we are at.

The “westerners” are not the life of the party, ever. We like our private time, and sometimes we need our space. We like to go off by ourselves and read books at the beach, while everyone else is socializing and dancing and eating.

I find it really fascinating that the people from the poorer countries of the world are the most generous with the things they do have. They also seem so much happier than the folks from the richer countries too. You never see a Colombian moping around because he’s depressed. I think I’ve decided I don’t actually like us “westerners”. We’re selfish, we’re greedy, we’re power-hungry, we’ve got a superiority complex and we can’t dance worth a damn.