Brazil - The Third Installment

So, I went to Brazil about a week ago for the purpose of, among other things, attending my daughter’s first birthday bash. I set foot on American soil again a couple of days ago and felt compelled to share some observations and experiences I had on this particular journey.

Loyal Vituperator readers may recall my “Luxuries I Missed” rant in Part 1, as well as my list of kvetches in Part 2. This third installment is really just a review of what happened as well as some of the odd things I noticed. Yes, I have a few new b*tchings to get out of my system, but trust me, they’re far fewer in quantity when compared to the amount I shelled out for Part 2 (…after all, I wasn’t even there a full week this time). And I must say, most of the proverbial fan-hitting sh*t seemed to happen to my wife while I just kept dodging bullets.

So, here’s the story.

During our January/February Brazil trip this year, the wife and I agreed on what looked to be a great function hall to have our daughter’s first birthday party. Granted, our little girl was fewer than two months old at the time, yet we had already started making plans in anticipation of the big event. First birthdays are a really big deal in Brazil and those who remembered our huge wedding were sure to be keeping their eyes on us to see how (or if) we’d ever top our 2004 nuptials.

So, in an effort to keep some sort of organization to this blog, I’ll separate my observations and comments into three categories with subsets for each.

CATEGORY 1: GETTING TO BRAZIL

For starters, whoever coined the phrase “Getting there is half the fun” clearly never had to fly to Brazil. Oh, and we flew with the same F-Me Airline as last time (click here for my F-Me rant). We didn’t choose them because we liked them, rather because pickins were slim by the time we had enough money to buy our tickets and F-Me had the best prices. So, we get to the airport and the fun starts… for my wife.

A.) PAY NOW OR WE KEEP YOUR DAUGHTER: My mother-in-law, Dalva needed to get to Brazil about a week before the wife and I were able to fly out and she really wanted to take our daughter with her for a plethora of reasons. We acquiesced, but to make this a reality, she’d need our daughter’s name (we’ll just use the pseudonym of Sabrina for the sake of the story) printed on her tickets for the flight over... and on my wife’s tickets for the flight back. We were given assurances from the travel agency that once we had Sabrina’s name on those tickets AND got written and notarized permission slips into Dalva’s hands, all would be well.

Dalva had no problem getting our daughter out of the country, but when it came time for us to check in, an F-Me clerk told my wife that she’d need to pay for Sabrina’s tickets if she wanted to bring her back home. My wife showed him her tickets and how Sabrina’s name was already printed on all of them, but since Sabrina wasn’t with us for check-in, she somehow got disqualified on all counts and would be ineligible to join her own mother back on the flight to America. My wife was broke to begin with, so I fronted the money to ensure that Sabrina would fly home with my wife.

Fear not though. The travel agency has already promised to refund what we paid for the first tickets. Whether they uphold their end of the bargain when we go to collect, well… we’ll just have to jump off that bridge when we come to it.

B.) COUGH UP THE PERFUMES, TERRORIST!: I have like a MILLION reasons why I prefer to travel light, but ever since marrying the Transporter, I haven’t had an occasion to enjoy my "Light Travel" preference. Everybody in Brazil wants American paraphernalia, especially when it comes to Nike sneakers and electronics, so whenever the family down in South America gets wind that my wife’s heading down there, they all cut deals with her to have her buy stuff for them with the promise of reimbursing her when she arrives. For example, we might pay $200.00 for a digital camera here, but try buying that exact same brand in Brazil and you’re guaranteed to shell out at least DOUBLE that. So, one of the many things she was asked to bring was perfume. Her brother’s wife has a thing for Victoria’s Secret crap and she cut a deal to reimburse her for a variety of perfumes and lotions. The only thing is that my wife forgot that we can’t fill up a carry-on bag with liquids (…not even water), so she wound up having like sixty bucks worth of Vickie’s Secret goop confiscated. Plus, she was gone for like a f**king half hour, so my guess is that they must have “white rubber gloved” the hell out of her for having the audacity to attempt such an evil deed.

C.) SPEAKING OF TERRORISTS: For all of your frequent (and even semi-frequent) flyers, I wanted to ask you a question. Is it just me or is it impossible to get on a plane these days without seeing at least two guys who look exactly like they just graduated from Osama bin Laden’s Infidel Decapitation Academy? It’s weird because I can spend months in the city without seeing so much as one turban. I get on any plane in the States and it’s almost a given that I’ll see at least one poster boy for al-Qaeda with a beard thick enough to hide a Beretta and a few extra magazines. And if he doesn’t look like a terrorist, he most certainly will look sketchy enough to want to bring the plane down just for sh*ts and giggles.

D.) SKYMALL IS MY CRACK: I travel the F-Me Airline and these damn SkyMall catalogs are on every damn plane. They’re the most addictive catalogs in existence because they have all of the crap you never knew you always wanted. All of the really innovative inventions of the day are featured here and they create a demand for stuff that, twenty minutes ago, you didn’t even know existed. Plus, they let you take the catalog home so that your torment can continue long after the wheels touch down on the runway. “Hey, now that I think about it, I do need remote-controlled laser combat cars… and a singing animatronic Elvis robot… and a Steinhausen chronograph watch… and a vintage hot dog cart… and roses hand-dipped in 24K gold… and a scoop-free self-cleaning cat box… and an Oh GOD get this damn catalog away from me before I liquidate my house!”

I don’t even HAVE a cat!

E.) NEVER BUY ANYTHING FROM DUTY FREE: Those of you who have flown to other countries will have heard of duty free items. I’ll summarize the phenomenon for those of you who haven’t. Folks who bring more than $500.00 worth of certain types of crap to another country are required to pay an extra fee. I’ll illustrate the reason for this with an example. Let’s say someone in Brazil wants to buy a digital camera, but can’t afford it at Brazil’s prices. Then, they realize they can get this item much cheaper in the states. If they get somebody to buy them a camera in the states and then give them the money for it when they arrive, they have, in a sense, hurt Brazil’s economy. That’s money they could have kept in the country, had it not been for the nice American contraband smuggler.

So, as an incentive to buy expensive sh*t without penalty, they offer duty free items at airports (…and in some cases, on the airplanes themselves). Buy a digital camera at a duty free shop and, as long as you keep your receipt, said item is exempt from that extra penalty fee. The problem is that duty free items are f**king expensive. Seriously, buy duty free stuff only if you have money to burn because I guarantee you’ll find the exact same items almost anywhere else for a much more reasonable price.

I mean seriously, who the f**k is stupid enough to blow $500.00 on a $300.00 iPod?

F.) LUGGAGE? WHAT LUGGAGE?: Want to hear another great reason for packing light? Because you never know what the airline will do with the luggage you choose to stow away. Case in point: I checked in two huge, heavy-ass suitcases filled with stuff for my daughter’s birthday party. So, where did I put my clean clothes? In my carry-on bag… because I pack light and have little difficulty fitting my clothes into one small bag. Good thing, too... because while we may have arrived in Brazil without a problem, our luggage stayed in f**king Miami. Was this a big deal for me? Not really. I had my hygiene items and all of my clothes so I was sound as a pound. As for my wife, she chose to fill her carry-on bag with perfumes and a laptop she bought for her brother. Her clothes were checked in, so she was stuck wearing the same clothes for almost three full days before the airline got our luggage delivered to our Brazil address.

G.) YEAH, WE’LL TAKE THAT OFF YOUR HANDS NOW: Remember that laptop I mentioned just a moment ago? Remember that extra fee? If you bring expensive electronics with you, you need to declare them when you arrive. If you don’t, you run the risk of getting heavily fined. Well, my wife might have had a shot at slipping the laptop past the prying eyes of Brazil’s finest had it not been for the fact that she needed to fill out claim slips to get our luggage back. But fortune failed to smile upon her here as well and she was told she’d need to cough up $500.00 for the privilege of stepping onto Brazilian soil with the laptop for which she already paid $900.00. Meanwhile, I strolled right past everybody with my digital camera and my video camera. Go figure.

H.) IT’S ME! IT'S DADDY!: This part kinda broke my heart a little. I don’t know how strong the long-term memory of an infant is, so for fear that Sabrina wouldn’t recognize us after being without us for a week, I decided to burn a DVD for her. The DVD was basically a short video of me, talking to her, showing her all of the things she likes to play with at home, saying all of the things she has come to expect from me and showing her pictures of her mom and me to ensure that she wouldn’t forget us. Dalva assured us that she had Sabrina watch the video at least once a day and sometimes twice, yet when Sabrina and I saw each other, she didn’t smile like she usually does. I knelt down with my arms outstretched and called to her to come give me a hug. She didn’t move. She just looked at me with her wide eyes and her pout. Inside, I almost panicked.

“Has she actually forgotten who I am?”

I’m the only one who sings the ABCs to her, so I quickly belted an ABC tune out for her, followed by a tune that I made up that she loves to hear. I did all of my signature sound effects and kept repeating the fact that “Daddy” was here. She says “Daddy” a lot when she sees me and, according to Dalva, she said “Daddy” whenever she saw the video. After a few more seconds of nervous tension, something must have clicked because she walked towards me and stretched out her arms. Her facial expression revealed nothing, but her hug assured me that she remembered me.

I swear I almost cried tears of joy with her in my arms again. I’d missed her terribly and the thought that she might have forgotten me nearly tore my heart to shreds. A few giggles later and she was happy as could be, belting out “Da das” and “Daddies” as if not a day was lost.

CATEGORY 2: BRAZIL STORIES AND GRIPES

I said that I didn’t have many gripes, but I did have a few and I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention a few of them. Again, nothing huge – just me having a little b*tch session, but fear not. Some of what I have to say this time around is actually good.

A.) SANTA’S DAUGHTER: One of the things that Dalva wanted to do with Sabrina in the week prior to our arrival is to attend a Catholic church event for underprivileged kids. It’s called “Festa dos Pobres” which quite literally means “Poor People’s Party.” It’s like Brazil’s version of “Toys for Tots,” except on a smaller scale. The church members raised money to buy toys for children who would otherwise have nothing for Christmas and, though it would make more sense to have this shindig closer to Christmas itself, it was held in the first week of December.

Anyway, Dalva thought it’d be great if Sabrina helped with the distribution of gifts, so Dalva dressed Sabrina in her “Baby Claus” outfit for the party. Many of the kids actually believed that Sabrina was Santa Claus’s daughter and one of them actually said, “Santa didn’t bring us any gifts this year, but Santa’s daughter did!” Many of the kids posed for pictures with her and one of the kids even gave her a picture of him to keep and share with Santa when she gets back to the North Pole.

I just really thought that was awesome and I felt honored and flattered that these underprivileged kids thought of my little girl as being responsible for making their Christmas holiday a little bit brighter and happier. It's a short and sweet holiday anecdote to keep for the future when Sabrina gets a little older.

Okay, time for the gripes.

B.) WOULD A QUICK SWEEP REALLY KILL YA?: My wife’s family is great. I’ve said that on numerous occasions, so whenever possible, I give them every benefit of every doubt imaginable. Yet I couldn’t help getting just a little bit pissed off when I saw some of the areas where Sabrina was playing. One house we went to had a concrete floor patio area thingy just outside of the house. There were a TON of little bits of plastic lying around, not to mention cigarette butts and a few sharp metal objects and shards of broken glass, all within a baby's reach. Now, Sabrina had been there for a full week before we arrived and I’m fairly certain this wasn’t the first time she’d been in this area. My question is why couldn’t they have at least tried to sweep the area up? They knew a baby was coming. Wouldn’t it stand to reason that she might want to check out some of this debris for herself?

Sabrina may be a year old, but she's still small enough to want to pick up everything she finds on the ground. True, she doesn’t put absolutely everything in her mouth anymore, but that’s not to say she’s given up the pastime altogether. In the few short minutes I was in there with her, I had to pull several of those plastic bits out of her hand and one out of her mouth. Once she got a hold of one of the cigarette butts, I picked her up and brought her to the sink to wash her hands. From there, Sabrina walked to another house owned by one of my wife’s family members. Only this person owns a poodle who took a dump in the walkway leading to her house. Naturally, Sabrina made a bee line to the dog droppings and cried hysterically when I stopped her from picking them up. I’m sorry, but it’ll be a cold day in hell before I let her juggle pieces of dog sh*t in her hands.

C.) PLEASE TRY TO KEEP HER ALIVE, WILL YA?: It was this lack of proper baby care that made me suspicious when I saw Sabrina for the first time. Back home, we keep the house pretty clean and we do our darndest to ensure that Sabrina is healthy. She’d been in Brazil for all of a week and it seemed like she was falling apart at the seams. When we arrived, she was coughing quite a bit with night sweats. A couple of days later, she busted up her nose and forehead and two days after that, her throat was inflamed and she was screaming into and past midnight. Plus, she had a nasty diaper rash; something she virtually never gets under our care. So, what happened? Well, for the busted up nose and head, all accusing fingers pointed at her grandfather.

Dalva asked "Granddaddy" to watch her for five minutes and, within that time, Sabrina apparently made a break for it and landed face first onto the ground. Yet from what I’ve learned about this guy, I can’t get mad at him. He never did much in the way of parenting when my wife was a baby, so I can’t imagine he somehow magically learned how to do the job now. As for Sabrina's other maladies, I told Dalva to keep her in clean environments whenever possible and to try and keep her physical contact with other kids to a minimum. She did the opposite, so perhaps my fears were warranted. After all, under grandpa’s short watch, Sabrina almost f**king died and in the time before my arrival, she had a measles/rubella shot and a shot to clear up her inflamed throat.

D.) NOBODY HAD ANYTHING: To be more specific, I had a great degree of difficulty finding the following six things:

- FOOD: I went to a small number of houses during my brief stay in Brazil, but the refrigerators in these houses were, for the most part, empty. I don’t need food several times a day like some people. If need be, I can get through an entire day on a very minimal amount of food, yet it seemed that if I wanted to eat, somebody had to order a pizza or something else like that because nobody did any grocery shopping for real food like fruits, veggies and meats. Yet, I wasn’t mad or anything because I realize that money is tight and it’s hard to keep your refrigerator full when you’re busting your ass just to pay the bills. That leads me into the other great necessity of life that was in scarce supply.

- WATER: Sure, I like Coca-Cola, Pepsi and other such carbonated drinks, but when it’s as hot as it is down in Brazil this time of year, all a man really wants is some cold, refreshing spring water. Nobody had any. Some houses stocked Coke, so in the absence of water, that’s what I drank. Not a huge deal because at least they had something, but I would have thought water to be a cheaper beverage to buy than soda. Maybe I’m wrong, though.

- TOILET PAPER: This I didn’t understand quite as easily because a wise owl with glasses once told me to read and stay in school whilst handing me a book that said, “Everybody Poops.” Yet apparently, Brazilians don’t because it was damn near impossible to find toilet paper in any of the houses I visited. For those few times where a house did have T.P., it was in a room that was inexplicably nowhere near the bathroom. Does it make sense to keep toilet paper in your bedroom while the bathroom has nothing?

- SOAP: Speaking of bathroom necessities, I was hard-pressed to find hand soap in half of the places I visited. I’ll admit that I may not have looked hard enough in some situations, but seriously, if you want your guests to wash their hands, are you really gonna wanna tempt fate by hiding the hand soap like it's Round One of an anti-bacterial scavenger hunt?

- TOWELS: Both the paper and cloth variety were in scarce supply and I have no idea why. Go to my bathroom and, at any given time, you’ll find anywhere from two to three available towels that you can use to dry your hands after washing them. In Brazil (...and with hands sopping wet), I’d ask, “Hey, do you happen to have any towels around here?” Then, whoever I asked would look around the house and pull out a towel from some secret hiding spot. And you can forget about paper towels. Apparently, that is a luxury that few can afford, so if you spill your drink, you’re pretty much f**ked if you have to use your one house towel to mop it up.

- INTERNET: In Part 1, I spoke of how very few people in my wife’s family have internet access, but on this trip, even the few stand-bys that I knew of were of no help. One girl’s computer monitor was burnt out. Another family member’s internet was disconnected and even the Internet shop at the mall had shut down temporarily due to some weird reason. Once the Internet shop got their system back online, there was like a 90 minute wait to use it. Suffice it to say, I settled for waiting until after I got home to mess with the net.

E.) NOCTURNAL NOISES: I mentioned the annoying dogs in Part 2, but it’s an even worse problem now. Not only are the same damn dogs still barking away, but apparently the neighborhood picked up like eight new ones to join the debate. Of course, none of them are leashed and one night, I could swear I heard a battle royal of dogs barking (and fighting) louder than a Friday night in Michael Vick's garage. But the startling noise I heard on that same night was a couple of guys feverishly arguing with each other from a few streets away.

My Portuguese is fairly strong now, so I was able to pick up the basic theme of the argument; that being that some guy slept with another guy’s wife. After about maybe thirty seconds of yelling, I heard a gunshot go off and then dead silence. “Well, he’s done.” I thought as I attempted to go back to sleep. Apparently, I’ve lost the will to be shocked because within five minutes, I was in dreamland again. Sure, it’s not the ideal neighborhood to raise a baby, but she wasn’t even sleeping at the house that night. She was sleeping a city away in a much safer house with a security gate.

F.) DEAD CHICKENS: Our time in Brazil is usually hectic as we’re usually prepping for a big event. This time, it was the birthday party. Earlier this year, it was the baptism and my brother-in-law’s wedding. In 2004, it was my wedding. Always something… and we’re always running around like headless chickens, which is ironic because I actually saw headless chickens on this trip. I swear, my wife, her cousin and I were walking with Sabrina in the stroller when I came upon two small buckets. Inside both buckets were white feathered blobs with chicken feet sticking out. I asked my wife, “Is this what I think it is?” She said, “Yes... and please stay away from there. You don’t want to get too close to those.”

Hey, no arm-twisting necessary. I’m gone.

CATEGORY 3: THE PARTY AND THE PARTING

In this last part, I’ll end with just a few comments about the birthday party and the pain involved with leaving my family behind.

A.) THE PARTY: What can I say? This party was fantastic. We might have spent a lot of money on stuff, but it was great to see it all go to good use. We had a puppet show, a hair and make-up table, a table for designer nails, a mini-ferris wheel, a monorail, ball pools, a couple of slides, crawling tubes, bridges to cross, nets to climb, ropes to swing from, a mini amusement park-style pirate ship, a basketball game, foosball table, remote controlled cars on a 15 foot race track, open bar and barbecued buffet food, not to mention the goodie bags we made, the retrospective video I rendered and the Disney characters that dropped by for a surprise visit. The funny part is that with all I just mentioned, I’m positive I’m forgetting something. We just had so much for the kids to do and my daughter’s party has been the talk of the town ever since.

B.) FAULTY DVD PLAYERS: What really burned my butt was the part about the DVD videos I burned. I took video clips from this past year, spent months putting together the best clips and rendered what, in my humble opinion, was a kick-ass video. I burned back-up copies and tested each one of them out prior to my trip. I even played one on my brother-in-law’s DVD player and it worked fine. Yet, that next day, it not only didn’t work, but didn’t even recognize that a DVD was in the machine.

Other DVDs were tested and they worked, but I asked my wife to test my DVD when she arrived at the party (…she was getting there early to set up some stuff). The player played my video, but skipped and stuttered a bit at the beginning. My back-up video did likewise, though in slightly different spots which led me to believe that their DVD player might be ready for a replacement. Most of the video played smoothly, but it just got me mad that 100% of it didn’t play perfectly, since 100% of it played perfectly at home and I'd spent so much time ensuring that we'd have the perfect video.

C.) SABRINA THE POOH: Probably my favorite part of the party came at the end of the puppet show. My wife was asked to bring Sabrina behind the platform where the puppets were doing their thing. The hostess opened a door in the front to reveal an area of black velvet. She closed it, said a few “magic” words and when she opened the door once more, there was Sabrina wearing a Winnie the Pooh outfit. The effect really went over big with the kids and I just thought it was the most endearing thing. Naturally, she looked bewildered, but I’m sure she’ll appreciate the cuteness of it all when she’s old enough to watch the video and understand what it is she’s seeing.

D.) THE RICH GET RICHER: My wife told me a story of a certain boy on her side of the family who comes from a poor home and is, by and large, a pretty annoying kid. He certainly doesn’t mean to be annoying – he just is. But regardless of his behavior, he still deserves to have nice birthdays, right? For his most recent birthday, his mom invited a bunch of people over for a humble party. Roughly 25 people showed up… and only one of them brought a present for him. They’re poor as it is. Shouldn’t the invitees have compensated by bringing at least a few presents? That’s my opinion at least.

As for our daughter, she’s not necessarily a rich girl, but compared to this boy and most of my wife’s side of the family, she’s a privileged kid. I personally bought Sabrina a small number of very good toys, saving the others for Christmas. For this party, my daughter received something in the neighborhood of thirty toys! If anybody should have received a bunch of toys, it’s the downtrodden boy; not the privileged girl. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the gifts and am thankful that she has plenty of toys to play with, but c’mon! She really didn’t need so many gifts. It just doesn’t seem fair to the underprivileged children of the family when the one who needs the toys the least gets the most.

E.) SAYING GOOD-BYE: This was probably the saddest I’ve ever been to leave Brazil and go back home because I was doing it alone, leaving my wife and daughter behind. When you become a father, there’s a chance you can get attached to your child(ren) and at this age she’s in right now, she’s just learning so much stuff so fast. You almost hate seeing her do the new things she learned in your absence because you feel like the next time you see her, she’ll be starting college and you will have missed her entire childhood. This obviously isn’t the case, but who said that love was rational?

Anyway, it was all I could do to keep from getting teary-eyed as I held her to say good-bye. I insisted on saying my good-byes to Sabrina privately and before we left for the airport because I just didn’t think I could bear seeing her directly before I had to get in line to have my carry-on bags x-rayed. It was heart-wrenching enough when I waved good-bye to her after getting in the car because she learned how to do that baby wave where she just holds out her arm and moves the four fingers of her right hand up and down. It’s so cute and so sad because she’s got that little baby pout thing happening, too. I miss her to death and I'm counting the days until I can see her again.

Anyway, they’re slated to return on Christmas Day, so here’s hoping there are no delays or snowstorms to prevent me from spending quality time with my family on the most important holiday of the year. <")))><

The Quiet Car

With all of the kind and wonderful people there are in this world, I have to wonder why I keep running into all of the a**holes.

On March 9^th, I took a cramped Greyhound bus from Boston to New York to meet up with my mother-in-law (...herein referred to as Dalva) who was flying in from Brazil to stay with us for a while and help care for our daughter.

Not a problem. Happy to do it.

Plus, since she was scheduled to arrive so early that next morning (6:45am), I figured I’d get to NYC the night before, roam around a bit, maybe bang out a dinner at the Red Lobster and check into a hotel for the night.

So, I picked her up, we traipsed around NYC for a few hours, then headed over to Penn Station for our 3:00pm ride home. Dalva had just endured a ten hour flight, so I decided to treat her to a nice, comfortable ride to South Station on one of Amtrak’s smooth and comfy Acela Express trains. I even paid a little extra for Business Class so that we’d get the slightly bigger and roomier seats to stretch out on and enjoy the view going home. But this is me, so I should have known that something was gonna turn the evening sour... and it started right from the first boarding call.

First off, for a train that leaves at exactly 3:00pm, does it make sense to start boarding at 2:55? Or for that matter, does it make sense to have only one ass-clown manning one small turnstile devoted to examining, scanning and ripping the tickets of about 1,000 sweaty travelers, huddled together like penguins in the Antarctic? Needless to say, seats filled up fast, so when Dalva and I got to the Business Class, there was only one car remaining that had empty seats. All of the window seats had been taken, so Dalva grabbed an aisle seat and I grabbed the aisle seat directly behind hers.

After I’d settled in and thrown my crap in the storage bin above me, I saw several small, blue signs on the train car ceiling that read:

“Quiet Car - Please refrain from loud talking or using cell phones in this car.”

My first thought was, “Uhh… okay. Cool I guess.” Frankly, I didn't know what to think. I'd never even heard of a train company devoting an entire train car to total silence, but whatever. The train had pulled out of Penn Station at precisely 3:00pm and, right off the bat, my ass knew that this was gonna feel like a silky smooth ride. Sadly, my brain would wind up begging to differ.

The spectacled woman seated at the window to my left had already settled in and opened her laptop to watch an episode of “24” with headphones when I heard an announcement throughout the cabin, explaining the rules of the Quiet Car. In addition to the ban on loud chatter and cell phone usage, we were also warned that if we planned on using electronic equipment of any kind, it must be audible only to the user.

Now, generally speaking, I’m not much of a whining, nagging b*tch (…provided I’m on US soil), so when the not-so-quiet rantings of Keifer Sutherland resonated through the headphones of the laptop-toting neighbor to my left, I said nothing. About ten minutes into it, she shut everything down, closed the window curtain and fell asleep. I thought, “Thanks for consulting me on that move, Miss Think-For-Yourselfer!” My hopes for enjoying the view out of our window were dashed in an instant.

Again, I chose to say nothing and, instead, whipped out my Creative Zen media player (...glorified iPod knock off), keeping the volume low even though I had a pretty decent set of headphones. Then, Window B*tch fell asleep and started snoring. Not incredibly loudly, mind you, but loud enough that her honkings managed to penetrate my Death Cab and Nickelback solo concert, held in the comfort of my own ears.

Here again though, I said nothing.

What I found to be humorous was that about five minutes after Window B*tch started snoring, the guy with the window seat directly behind her began snoring even louder! This woke up WB with a start and by his next snort, she gave this disgusted, exasperated sigh as if she hadn’t just been snoring like a bear herself. Admittedly, the man behind us was ridiculously loud – so loud, in fact, that I’m surprised that his snores didn’t wake himself up.

What did wake him up (...and scare the bejeepers out of me) was another train coming the other way. Both trains were going so fast that when they crossed paths, you could feel the vacuum that the two trains created. So strong was this vacuum that you could actually feel a thump as it pulled us slightly inward.

The result?

Gasps and shrieks were heard throughout the Quiet Car, Snoring Bull woke up and WB pulled back our curtain to see what had caused our little disturbance. I was all psyched because the sun had slowly started settling to the point where the clouds and the sky were turning awesome shades of red and lavender. Then, almost as quickly as she opened the curtain, WB closed it again, fell asleep again… and started f**king snoring again!

“Oh yeah, cuz this is much better! Thanks a lot, Daffy! I much prefer staring at a twill-woven curtain than sweeping Thomas Kinkade vistas while you honk me yet another nostril melody!”

Yet, I said nothing. Not a word. And why? Because I’m not a b*tch and I don’t suck, that’s why! I mean, who the f**k is that tired in the early evening hours that they can’t wait a few more hours before going to sleep in a bed?

So anyway, our “Express” train made a few stops en route to South Station in Boston. Kinda defeats the purpose of catching an Express train, but whatever, right? Nobody around me seemed to want to get off at the first two stops, but on the third, Larry the Snoring Ass-Clown disembarked. Since nobody had been sitting next to him (...can't imagine why), I decided to let Dalva know that I was moving one seat back. This way, she wouldn’t look back, see an empty seat and freak out, thinking that our stop had already come and I’d gotten off. So, Dalva took this opportunity to move into the seat next to me, which of course was fine with me. After all, she is family, right?

With about fifteen minutes left before arriving at South Station, I get hit with the coup de grâce. I’d quite literally had my mouth shut for over three hours in the Quiet Car and had my cell phone turned off (...much to the dismay of my wife who, unbeknownst to me, had tried calling me about twenty times to no avail). Now, while I respected the rules of the Quiet Car, I wasn’t about to ignore my mother-in-law’s questions about where we were supposed to go once we arrived at South Station.

As Dalva started with her third question, Window B*tch turns around, looks at me and, with a smile of condescension, says, “Um, this is a Quiet Car.” With my mouth slightly agape, I said, “Okayyyy” in the same tone that people use when they really want to say, “And your point is?” She honed her inner Bill Lumbergh and said, “Yeah, there’s not supposed to be any loud talking in here.” Then just as she turned back around in her seat, she added “Sorry.”

With the many things I wanted to say to her in response, I replied simply with, “Yeah, doubtful.” I got no response. Had I been travelling alone, I would have most certainly said something more caustic, but not wanting to cause a scene in front of my wife's mother and be forever branded as a rude American, I chose a more civil response.

As a final “F**k you,” she opened her curtain with about four minutes left before arriving at South Station. "Yeah, thanks. You’re all heart." What pissed me off more than anything was that, during this three and a half hour ride, virtually everybody in the Quiet Car had been noisier than me; especially Window B*tch. Sure, she says nothing when the guy behind us practices his Sleeping Beauty mating call, but when I have the audacity to respond to my mother-in-law, I catch hell for it. Sorry to have interfered with your twilight snooze.

Here’s a small list of the things that I would have loved to say to her, if not for little Mr. Id in my brain, responsible for holding back my profanities in public settings:

1.) “Well, if it’s a Quiet Car, why don’t you lead the charge by shutting the f**k up?”

2.) “I’ll be sure to turn myself in to the authorities as soon as we disembark.”

3.) “So, what you’re saying is that idle chit-chat’s a no-no, but snoring like a Polar Bear is perfectly acceptable?”

4.) “Go f**k yourself.”

There were others on my mind, of course, but you get the idea. Frankly, I think the whole Quiet Car concept is kinda stupid. I can understand refraining from engaging in shouting matches, either with another person or over the phone, but to completely prohibit cell calls of any kind or quiet chit-chat with the person next to you is just ludicrous.

I mean, those tickets didn’t come cheap. I dropped almost $250.00 for the pair, I got no in-flight meal or movie, I got the entire cast of Snorers Anonymous sitting all around me with no window view and I can’t f**king talk? What's up with that?

And that was only the Business Class. I shudder to think of what I would have had to deal with in First Class. Probably no cognitive thoughts, breathing or bowel movements whatsoever. The best part of this whole trip was that Dalva (...who can't speak a lick of English to save her life and is accustomed to horrific modes of public transportation) had nothing but wonderful things to say about our ride in the Quiet Car.

Maybe ignorance really is bliss.

Luxuries I Missed While in Brazil - Part 2

It’s so tough to write something like this without sounding b*tchy or otherwise ungrateful for all of the good things that I experienced in my most recent trip to Brazil. So, as I did in Part One , I’ll start off with a disclaimer:

My wife’s family is still awesome and seemingly still dedicated to making my stay as pleasurable as possible. For this, I am extremely and sincerely grateful. I truly am. In hindsight, I’ll admit that the problem was almost definitely with ME and not them. I grew up in the greatest country in the world (…at least in my opinion) and I've enjoyed all of the spoils that go along with it. So yeah, thirty days in Brazil kinda took a toll on me. Everybody’s got their threshold and everybody hits their limit at some point.

Regrettably, when this happens to me, it gets tougher for me to remain a gracious guest. So each day, I kept having to remind myself that I was, in fact, a guest in another country. Who knows? Maybe in a way, writing this out is therapeutic because it allows me to summarize the various frustrations that I don't feel at liberty to vent while I'm there. And before my ranting begins, this isn't so much a list of "Luxuries Missed" as the title would imply.

No, Part Two is more like, "Here's me whining again like a little b*tch." I admit it.

Having said that, let's proceed, shall we?

HEAT: Not only did this trip mark my longest stay in Brazil to date (30 days), but we (wife, daughter and I) went down there during some of the hottest months that Brazil has to offer. Thirty days of blistering heat wound up being just a bit too much for my system to endure without cracking the veneer in a few spots. As stated above, even the many well-meaning gestures of magnanimity doled out for my benefit started to wear me down a bit when my polite refusals weren’t immediately acknowledged. I'll expatiate.

KNOWING WHEN TO QUIT: Here’s one difference between your average American and the majority of my in-lawed Brazilian family members. When an American offers you something to eat and you respond by saying, “No thanks, I’m fine,” That’s usually the end of the conversation. The aforementioned American might put the offer back on the table at a later time, but that’s about as far as he'll go.

When somebody down in Brazil offered me something that I didn’t want, I usually had to turn them down about five or six times and even then, they didn’t completely give up. My five or six “no” responses to various offers of food or other services generally convinced the one making the offer that I either didn’t understand the offer or that I would accept it if offered by someone else.

Here’s a sample conversation to drive the point home. In this example, the magnanimous Brazilian family member is A and I’m B:

A: “Bill, would you like some pizza?”

B: “Oh, thank you, but I’m not really hungry right now.”

A: “Do you want some?”

B: “No, but thank you anyway. I really don’t have any room for pizza. But thank you.”

A: “We got you some pizza. Why don’t you come into the kitchen and have some?”

B: “I appreciate your offer, but here again, I really, really don’t have any room for pizza, so I can’t have a piece. But again, thank you.”

A: “It doesn't have any onions on it.”

B: “Oh, no. It's not an onion issue. I'm just stuffed. Thank you though.”

A: “I’ll get you a plate and put a couple of pieces on there for you.”

B: “And I do appreciate that. However I really, really, TRULY can’t imagine fitting as much as a grape in here right now, so thank you, but I just can’t eat anything right now.”

A: “Tati, tell him that we got pizza for him. I don’t think he understands what I’m saying.”

When it happens once or twice, it’s actually kind of funny. When it happens several times a day for thirty straight days, blood starts trickling from my ears. On the plus side of things, I actually heard two Brazilians engage in a conversation just like this in Week 3, so apparently, it’s not just me anymore.

I suppose that if I want to drive home the message in under five questions, I just have to say, “Obrigado, mas não quero.” Which means, “Thanks, but I don’t want any.” By saying that you don’t WANT it as opposed to you can’t fit it or can’t see yourself possibly eating another bite, you’ll probably knock down the rate of questions to two or three before the message is clear. My favorite is my mother-in-law, who seems to require a profound answer to every spoken question, thought or observation in order to not wind up repeating herself several times.

Quick Side Story: My wife’s driving one day, I’m in the passenger side and my mother-in-law’s in the backseat holding my daughter (car seats aren’t required in Brazil – more on that later). She pointed out my wife’s old college (something she does at least once every time I’m down there). So, I kinda grunted my acknowledgment because I was tired. Though slightly different words were used each subsequent time, she managed to say the same thing two more times before I found myself forced to remind her that she points this college out to me every time I’m in Brazil and, at this point, I could probably find my wife's alma mater faster than I could find my own bathroom.

EVERYTHING’S A F**KING CONVERSATION: The meaning of the term “double-standard” was never so accurately illustrated than it was during my time in Brazil. My wife, God bless her heart, sees nothing strange about waking me up at 8:00am and expecting me to be dressed and ready to go out the door at 8:01am to do whatever it is that we need to do. So, I’ve gotten accustomed to being ready in like three minutes and by that third minute, I’m literally out the door and ready to roll.

The problem is that I’m the only one held to this three minute blitz.

For everybody else, they can’t seem to drive from one end of the street to the other without having a 15 minute conversation. It seems like every simple move requires a f**king committee to gather on the street and discuss things that won’t even come close to happening for weeks. I get my ass kicked out of bed as if the place were on fire, then I’m roasting out in the hot sun, waiting for everybody else to have their say so that we can go.

And I love how everybody’s always late for everything. Before I married my wife, she told me that Brazilians are infamous for being late, which is why her urgency to get me out of bed kinda puzzles me sometimes. What good does it do for me to turbo charge my engine if I'm racing a bunch of turtles?

The logic eludes me.

EVERYBODY’S GOT LOUD-ASS BARKING DOGS: Every morning in Brazil, I woke to the sounds of five dogs in a barking war. I went out to somebody’s house and if they didn’t have a barking dog, their neighbor did. There are leashless dogs walking the streets during the day and as I tried to sleep at night, I had to endure feverish arguments by dogs who really should have been off the streets and, you know, in school or something.

I'd been staying in a city called São Bernardo do Campo during my vacation in Brazil, but for my brother-in-law’s wedding, we had to take a ten hour bus ride out to the other side of the state in a hick town called Pacaembu (...pronounced: puck-KAIM-boo). I figured, “Well, at least I’ll get a break from the f**king dogs.”

No such luck.

Dogs are everywhere there, too! And damn it, they got something to say…. loudly. But believe it or not, the dogs weren't the things that bugged me the most in Pacaembu.

INSECTS AND REPTILES: Ever see “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom?” Remember that scene where Indy and Shortround are trapped inside of that cave with the spiked walls that were closing in on them, all the while that whiny blonde was freakin’ out about the creepy crawlies all around her? Well, there weren’t any moving, spiked walls to deal with, but I sure got the lion’s share of creepy crawlies.

My poor mother-in-law lives in a small house that's just full of little insects, harmless though they may be. The bathroom’s a haven for various types of flies and spiders. The kitchen, TV room and bedroom all have ants f**king everywhere, which really puts a damper on things like, you know, dinner and sleeping.

One evening, I had a small Dixie cup with some Coke in it. I drank the Coke and left the cup on the computer table (in the bedroom). Since I don’t regularly lick Dixie cups clean of all liquid, there were a couple of drops of Coke left in the cup. Next morning, there were about 4,000 ants crawling all over, inside and around the damn thing. My mother-in-law is operating under the delusion that, had I not left “something sweet” out, there’d be no ants in the room, as if the existence of a drop of Coke was enough to perpetuate the magical spawning of these ant infantries.

I could drop a f**king cake on my kitchen floor and get nothing for days.
I leave a drop of Coke in an elevated spot of her bedroom and I’m the Pied freakin' Piper of the ant world.

And it only got worse when we went out of town for my brother-in-law’s wedding in Pacaembu, São Paulo. Unfortunately, the dog and insect population’s just booming down there, the ants are practically on steroids… and oh yeah, they got f**king reptiles and amphibians, too.

Fortunately, we managed to score a bassinet with a nylon-type net that draped over it to keep the creepy crawly population from carrying our daughter off into the sunset. One night as I was shooing flies away from me by the dozen, I spotted a small frog climbing the wall of our room. After a few failed attempts, I managed to trap it on the wall with a glass cup. I took the frog outside, discarded him and figured that was the end of that.

I get back to the room and there’s a small lizard on the opposite wall, closest to the bedpost. This time, I didn’t bother catching it. I just killed the motherf**ker with a rolled up magazine and carried the debris to the garbage pail in the kitchen. I didn’t even make it to the pail before I saw another lizard of about the same size climbing the kitchen wall. This one was a bit craftier and eluded about four swat attempts before the fifth one basically severed the little bastard in half.

So, I cleaned up the crime scene, grabbed a soda can from the fridge and headed into the other room for a Coke and a smile. About two minutes later, I went back into the kitchen and I saw what I can only presume was the dead lizards’ father on the same kitchen wall, creeping me the f**k out. I say “father” because this one was roughly the size of a twenty ounce bottle of Pepsi that no magazine at my disposal was ever gonna come close to killing. So, by that time, I was just like, “Aw, f**k this,” headed for the bedroom, rolled up a bath towel, shoved it under the crack at the bottom of the door and went to bed, praying that I wouldn't wake up with a damn tarantula on my face.

DAMN BRAZILIAN BEDS: In Part One, I talked about a bed that I unintentionally broke with my big, fat ass. Because of that fateful incident a couple of years ago, I always climb gingerly into whatever bed I happen to be using during my time in Brazil. I can only assume that the bed I slept in during my stay in Pacaembu was glued together with pieces of Hubba Bubba because it only took my wife a second to climb in on the opposite side and cause the damn thing to collapse. I just couldn’t wait to get to my bed back in America.

You could drop a f**king piano on my American bed and the biggest problem you’d have would be dusting off the sheets.

I toss loose change on a Brazilian bed and it's in toothpicks.

ONIONS IN EVERYTHING: I’ll be b*tching about food for a while now, primarily because I haven’t really had a thoroughly satisfying meal in a month.

Here’s a concession: I’m a picky-ass eater; always have been. So, if I starved for part of my time in Brazil, it was my own damn fault. I acknowledge that. And I can’t stand the taste of onions and garlic. I hate them with a passion and though garlic isn’t as much of a problem, virtually everything has f**king onions in it. The dilemma presents itself when people invite us to dinner and cook food that’s action-packed with onions.

And I can’t be polite in these situations either, because I hate onions that much. I don’t recoil in terror or anything, but I’ll just wind up picking at whatever’s on my plate as I do my utmost to avoid the little white bastards, which are usually finely chopped and well-mixed into whatever I’m trying to dissect.

Again, I’m the b*tch in this scenario and I’ll always be first to admit that. I should just learn to stomach the f**kers, but I’m 32, set in my ways and a finicky-ass eater. If you want me to change my ways at this point, stick me on a deserted island with onion trees. Twenty bucks says I'll be eating grubworm salads and sandcastles before I even think about trying an onion.

McDONALD’S AND PIZZA SUCK: So, with the onion dilemma, what’s a guy to do? Well, there are the stand-bys of Mickey D’s and a few slices of the Za, except for the fact that they suck, too. The McDonald’s burgers aren’t made with the same type of meat and, believe it or not, they actually taste more like dried up sausage-flavored hockey pucks than burgers. And they can NOT do sodas. They just can’t pull it off. Their Diet Coke tastes exactly like bland grape juice and their ice cream tastes like lukewarm ass. It just ain’t cool when that’s what you taste when you’re expecting something crazy like, oh I don’t know, Diet Coke and ice cream.

What sucks is that you can’t even mask the horrible "burger" flavor with ketchup because they don’t have ketchup. Oh, they SAY it’s ketchup, but since when has red sugary water ever passed for ketchup? I missed my Heinz. The other thing you’d think would work in a food crisis is their pizza, but you’d be wrong…. again. The cheese sucks, they use absolutely no discernable tomato sauce whatsoever and they insist on packing the crusts with a “cheese” called catupiry. For those of you who have never tried catupiry, just imagine cheesy gnocchi, blended into a thick paste and crammed into the crust of your pizza.

Every variation of pizza they have is either fraught with onions, catupiry or other such fun nuggets of food, the very thought of which twist my stomach into braids. Again, "picky eater" b*tches about food. Fine, I accept that, but please don’t throw ten pounds of cheese on a circle of dough with whole green olives and four slices of half-ripened tomatoes and call it a pizza.

It’s a circle-shaped coronary with no sauce, folks.

NO VARIETY: Americans are really spoiled when it comes to food. I mean, we have every conceivable kind of food that exists, so our options are virtually limitless. Go to a foreign country, however, and variety in the cuisine seems to depend directly on how many foreign-born folks live there. Countries like the US and England have variety because a variety of people live there, so supply has to meet demand.

Brazil is made up of, wait for it......... Brazilians. There are very few foreign-born folks living there, so variety’s not exactly abundant. Regardless of what part of Brazil you go to, you pretty much find yourself looking at the same f**king menu. Rice and beans are a given, so you gotta deal. You’ll also find a significant number of “lanchonetes” which are like fried snack places. Same snacks; same drinks. Restaurants that aren’t either rodizio-style or restaurant slash pizzerias seem to be rare. And here again, you get pretty much the same types of food.

BRAZILIAN WOMEN HAVE INCREDIBLE BODIES: So, what is this? A complaint? Is the Guileless Vituperator gay or something? Nope. Just married... and yes, faithful to my wife. It’d just be nice if I could shut my "hot chick" radar off or, you know, throw it in the garbage or something. Instead, I’m in Brazil and gorgeous women (or images of them) are all over the place. Hot chicks can be seen on billboards, on display at magazine stands, on television shows and out walking the streets with belly shirts and short shorts on. And my wife will occasionally point out attributes of certain females that I’m doing my damndest to avoid looking at.

I love being married, I love my wife and I love being faithful to her... and I've got absolutely no problem with my diet or the salad I got in front of me. Just don’t make me eat it in Willy Wonka’s f**king Chocolate Factory. That's all I'm sayin.'

NO CAR-SEATS REQUIRED: Now, maybe this is the spoiled American in me, but I can’t believe that infants aren’t required to ride in car-seats in Brazil. We actually brought our car-seat with us, but we only used it when I insisted upon it. If you read Part One, you may recall the section on cars and how automatics are virtually non-existent. Couple that with the horrendous condition of like 70% of the roads in this country and I’m actually amazed that my little girl isn’t in traction by now.

I couldn’t even tell you the amount of times my daughter’s neck snapped forward, backward and from side-to-side with the herky-jerky cars on these ridiculous roads. It's all legal though.

I could have tied my girl to the bumper like a bunch of “Just Married” cans on strings and we’d have sooner been pulled over for the tinted windows than for the reckless infant neglect.

DRESSED TO THE NINES.... FOR T.G.I. FRIDAYS?: Apparently so. Reason? I’ve got a couple of hypotheses. For starters, and I don’t mean this to be an insult in the least, but the line between the well-to-do and the poor is sharper in the part of Brazil that I stayed for the past thirty days. My wife’s side of the family’s never been affluent, which is one of the reasons why I like them so much. They’re authentic people who work very hard for what they have; not like these bratty teens who are partying off of Daddy’s money, flashing their digital cameras, using their cell phones and dressing for success.

Friday’s maintains their rate from American dollars to Brazilian Reais, so for the majority of Brazilians, a dinner at Friday’s is a bit too much of a blow to the monthly budget. You’ll rarely see slum kids dining there, but you do see the priviledged kids hanging out there, trying so hard to show everyone else that they belong where the money is by dressing like champs. I’m not rich, but my American dollar goes farther here, so a dinner at Friday’s doesn’t exactly put a bullet hole in my budget. I just don't see the need to be a poser while I'm knocking back some flavor.

A REAL BRAZILIAN SOCCER GAME: I had expressed an interest in going to an authentic Brazilian soccer game, so a few members of my wife's family took me to see Santo André hosting their team, Santos. Members of my wife's family either cheer for Santos or Corinthians. But here's where it gets weird. Most oftentimes, women and children who may never even watch soccer will always tell you what team they "cheer" for. And, near as I can tell, it's hereditary. If your folks are "Santistas," odds are you'll be one, too. Americans like myself might be nuts about football, but we're not psychotic about it. Brazilians, on the other hand, are damn near homicidal when it comes to soccer.

One More Quick Side Story: My brother-in-law had just come back from his honeymoon and managed just enough energy to drive us to someone's birthday party. By the time he arrived, he crashed on the bed. As a goof, this Santos fan was draped with Corinthians paraphrenalia so that photos could be snapped. It'd be like people draping Indianapolis Colts' sh*t on me, knowing full well that I hate Peyton Manning with a passion. Yet, I'd see the humor in it and have a good laugh. My brother-in-law could have CLINICALLY KILLED everybody in the room when he woke up. He was that pissed. In fact, I think he's still fuming over it. It's that serious in Brazil.

Anyway, the stadium in Santo André has one side that's covered with a roof and the other side is in the open air. Now get this. They separate home team fans from visiting fans. No bullsh*t. Home team gets the covered part (naturally), so the visitors had to endure the rain in cheap ass parkas that outdoor vendors sold them for less than a buck a pop. The family members who were kind enough to take me to this game were Santos fans.... who'd decided to sit on the dry, Santo André side.

And all of them warned me not to let on that we were backing Santos (who actually won 2-1 that night). For those few fans who dared to bear the colors of the opposing team, they literally had half of an entire stadium berating the f**k out of them until military police escorted them out.

I swear I'm not making any of this stuff up. They even made an announcement about two minutes before the game ended to tell the fans which exits they should take, depending on what team they were rooting for. I once asked the family if Santos ever played Corinthians. They said yes. I asked if I could go to one of those games sometime and everybody looked at me as if I'd just shoved the barrel of a gun in my mouth. Apparently with the multitude of die-hard fans supporting both teams, I'd be safer walking into Compton with a white hood on my head than going to one of these games.

So anyway, I'm back home again and feeling good, now that I've had a couple of enjoyable onionless meals and a few good nights of sleep that didn't involve crispy critters crawling into collapsing beds. It's still freakin' cold where I live, but it's better than losing seven hundred gallons of water in thirty days through my sunburned pores.

I'd tell you whether or not the grass is greener over here, but first I'll need to wait for the snow and ice to melt. Until then, my kvetching is complete.