Rio Gringa

Hillary Clinton in Brazil

This week, I had the delightful experience of getting some insanely vicious malware onto my laptop, which I tried every possible way to get rid of using advice from IT people, and ended up having to pay to get it fixed. Thankfully, I'm up and running again, and I'm now really considering switching over to Mac.

In any event, this week is a huge week for Brazil-U.S. relations, as Hillary Clinton has landed in Brasilia and is set to meet with Lula tomorrow in her first official visit to Brazil. Recently, I wrote about Lula's foreign policy over on FPB and about Hillary's visit, amongst other things. The post resulted from an email exchange about politics with a Brazilian friend, the hubby of an American blogger friend, who explained to me how Lula is a lula, in the political sense, a metaphor that had never occurred to me quite like that. So thanks, Henrique! [Update: Henrique sent me an interesting op-ed about Hillary's visit - read it here]

Hillary's visit is packed with a lot of action items (she only has one day), but Iran seems to be at the top of the list. The US government wants Brazil to get on board with sanctions to try to contain Ahmadinejad, who many suspect is building a nuclear bomb. From the look of things, Lula is likely going to say, não, obrigado, because the Brazilian government does not want to be told what to do by the US, even though the Iran policy has yet to be finalized. Personally, I'm not sure sanctions will work on a mentally unstable dictator hellbent on destruction, but if anyone could pacify a lunatic, maybe Lula's the man for the job. I'm not a huge Lula fan, but I definitely recognize his diplomatic skills. He's due to make an official visit to Tehran, and maybe he can bring some cachaça to placate the Iranian leader, a la Ze Carioca. Or maybe he could appease him with humor?

Hillary and Lula have some serious trade issues to discuss, including a bitter WTO conflict and the purchase of airplanes for the Brazilian air force (the US wants Brazil to buy Boeing, but it looks like they are leaning toward France). They're also due to discuss aid in Haiti, since both countries are taking the lead in recovery efforts. Hillary is somewhat of a controversial figure in the US, but regardless of your political views, she, like Lula, is extremely capable in terms of diplomacy. The best we can hope from this visit is smoother sailing between the two countries, and maybe even a rumored visit by Obama to Brazil sometime soon.

There's no rehab for stupidity

I was always taught never to use quotes in speeches, papers, essays, and the like, but I've always loved them. I have Quote of the Day on my iGoogle and if I come across something I like in a book or a movie, I always add it to my quote collection. Here's part of it:

"The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned." - Antonio Gramsci ["O desafio da modernidade é viver sem ilusões, sem se tornar desiludido."]

My syntax is highly complicated cuz I emigrated from the single greatest little place in the Caribbean
Dominican Republic/I love it, Jesus, I'm jealous of it --In the Heights (musical)

"It's OK, muchacha, he said. Santo Domingo will always be there. It was there in the beginning and it will be there in the end." --Junot Diaz, in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

"There is nothing in the world so monstrously vast as our indifference." -- Machado de Assis (I found this quote originally in English, and for the life of me I cannot find the original in Portuguese)

La indiferencia es bizca. -Carlos Eire, in Waiting for Snow in Havana [Indifference is cross eyed]

תיקון עולם - Repairing the world

Conoces bien, cada guerra, cada herida, cada ser
Conoces bien cada guerra en la vida y el amor tambien. --Sergio Vargas, "La Quiero a Morir"

"Os ricos não podem continuar vivendo como se fossem uma ilha no meio de um mar de pobreza." --Ayrton Senna [The wealthy cannot continue to live as if they were on an island in a sea of poverty.]

Lo ha hecho pecho. --Cuban saying [What's done is done]

"O povo sabe o que quer mas o povo também quer o que não sabe." - Gilberto Gil [The people know what they want, but the people also want what they don't know.]

Deja que el mundo te cambie y cambiarás el mundo. -The Motorcycle Diaries [Let the world change you and you will change the world.]

There's no rehab for stupidity. -Chris Rock

"El que tiene un derecho no obtiene el de violar el ajeno para mantener el suyo." - Jose Marti [Someone with rights cannot violate the rights of others to maintain his own]

"Todos los días la gente se arregla el cabello, ¿por qué no el corazón?" - Ernesto Che Guevara [Every day we fix our hair, why not our hearts?]

"You've got to have an exit strategy to stay principled. If not, you'll compromise principal for materialism and comfort." - Omar Minaya

"Mas se você achar/Que eu tô derrotado/Saiba que ainda estão rolando os dados..." - Cazuza

"Morar em Nova York é bom, mas é uma merda. Morar no Rio é uma merda, mas é bom." -- Tom Jobim [Living in New York is good, but it sucks. Living in Rio sucks, but it's good.]

"Los seres humanos no nacen para siempre el día en que sus madres los alumbran, sino que la vida los obliga a parirse a sí mismos una y otra vez." - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"Paradise was always over there, a day's sail away. But it's a funny thing, escapism. You can go far and wide and you can keep moving on and on through places and years, but somehow you never escape your own life. I, finally, knew where my life belonged. Home." --J. Maarten Troost

What are some of your favorite quotes?

On comments

I've had this post on the back burner for awhile, and the time has come to put it up and make it a page, as well. I'd like to dispel some misunderstandings about commenting on this blog, and to provide some real-life examples to put things into perspective. For those of you with your own blogs, if you can't relate to this yet, you will likely be able to in the future.

FAQ: Comments

1. You're all about free speech, and yet you moderate your comments. That's unfair!

Contrary to what some believe, free speech does not apply to commenters. Most major blogs, newspapers, magazines, and websites moderate their comments in some form due to the hailstorm of crazy that is the Internet. For some real life examples, consider this:

At political rallies, only certain people are chosen to speak, and usually plan ahead of time what they will say. In magazines, they never publish every letter to the editor they receive; they only pick a few to use. In newspapers, op-ed pieces are carefully chosen from a huge pool. On the TV news, much more footage is taken than actually goes into a broadcast; it is meticulously pared down to only certain interviews or certain parts of interviews. On the radio, only certain callers are picked to speak on the air.

Predominantly carnivorous

If I don't speak in Portuguese to Brazilians, I'm perfectly happy speaking in English just to hear their accents (it's disappointing when their English is perfect).

Alex Castro was discussing this accent issue on his Twitter yesterday, and posted this hilarious video from BBC'S Creature Comforts series. I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to be a lion, but rather some other wild cat that is actually found in Brazil, but it kind of doesn't matter because his monologue (and hand gestures) are priceless.

On the lighter side

I am insanely busy this week, and I'm also working on posts for Portuguese Blog and FPA Brazil Blog, so I'm going to keep it short. Please enjoy: Tuti tu tu tu.

2009

I'd like to take a break from our regularly scheduled programming to end the year on a high note.

This has been one of the most roller coaster-like years of my life, one that definitively changed the path I would take. The year began in Brazil, where Eli and I started his visa application process that would take a little over six months to complete. We did a lot of traveling at the beginning of the year, hanging out in Arraial do Cabo and Buzios with both of our families. There was the Globo Rio incident, and I still have not told the entirety of that story because it's kind of ridiculous and let's leave it at that. After that, though, my blog really took off.

Things finally started progressing with the Goldman case early in the year, and both Eli and I became more involved in the Bring Sean Home efforts. I made the rounds in Rio to the places I hadn't yet visited, trying to take advantage of my time knowing that I would be leaving soon. I made new friends, and fell out of touch with old ones. I continued volunteering at the ballet school. I still found it difficult to ignore all of the poverty and violence in the city. I spent most of my time in my beloved neighborhood of Botafogo, eating out, trolling the bookstores, walking along the orla, seeing lots of movies, and escaping the heat at Praia Shopping.

I tried to be good, trying to practice Spanish and exercise, but turned out not to have much time for the former and patience for the latter. I drank a lot of fruit juice, stressed out a lot, and didn't spend nearly enough time in the sun. Toward the end, things started getting unpleasant due to a number of factors, and I was ready to go home.

In May, I came home to New York, and Eli stayed in Rio to wait for his visa interview. I had my first job interview three days after I came home, and would have another ten or twelve over the next six months. I came really close, but didn't manage to get anything. I fell into a bit of a funk.

Nevertheless, coming home meant seeing my family and friends again, which was necessary for my sanity. I was grateful and relieved to find that despite the fact that I'd basically disappeared for two years, I still had so many people I could count on.I haven't had the best luck since I've been back, but I do have them.

In June, Eli got his visa and came to the United States for the very first time. His first few weeks were a whirlwind, showing him the sites and overloading him with touristy stuff.

In July, we got married, though we have yet to have our big wedding. We only had ninety days to get hitched, since he came on a fiance visa. Luckily, though, since we did everything quickly, Eli's residency went through in just two months.

We spent the summer lazing around, traveling a bit in the tri-state area, taking walks in the woods, hanging out in Manhattan, and getting Eli accustomed to American life. He took a bartending course, and then got a job a few weeks later. He's still working there, but he was promoted to assistant manager. There are so many fantastic stories from his job, but I haven't quite gotten permission to write about them yet...they're coming in 2010.

In the meantime, I moped, did some writing, and applied to dozens of jobs. Finally, in October, I was hired for a temp job where I am still working. I got a second temp job in December, where I am also working. Though I'm technically working five days a week, I have no benefits, and essentially no job security. Eli still doesn't have health insurance. I'd mostly been applying to non-profit jobs, but discovered that my first temp job, which is for-profit, turned out to be a wonderful place to work. I just hope I can stay.

Even though I came home to discover just how bad the crisis was, things turned out fine, at least for the time being. I'm lucky, incredibly, terribly lucky, to have an amazing, wonderful husband, a generous and understanding family, a (warm) roof over my head, great friends, and at least a semblance of a career path. We still have a long way to go and some hurdles left to clear, but we're getting there. I just hope next year there are less bumps along the way.

Reader's Suggestions

I've had quite a few people send me stuff over the past few weeks (thanks, everyone!) and since this week is very busy, posting may be light, so I wanted to get in another post before things get really hectic.

News links

• Amazon road trip
• Racial legacy that haunts Brazil
• David Goldman's custody battle over son in Brazil pushed back
• Sarney's metamorphosis

Bank test