AltSci Blog

Jan 17, 2013

I'm in Brasil now. I already posted a blog on my Brasil blog.

Short story time. Twitter doesn't work in the subway and I didn't want to write interesting stuff to Twitter after it ate a message, so here are a few notes about Tuesday night in New York.

Customs in Brasil is way easy. They confused me for a moment speaking too quickly but switched to English when I failed to respond. They weren't impressed by my clif bars. The bus to Paulista is hourly and 30 real. A cab would have been sixty in comparison. The bus would have held my bike, I'm regretting leaving it in Seattle now.

It's warm and wet in São Paulo now and the forecast is wet too. I need a plastic bag to put my stuff in because my bag isn't waterproof.

I'm glad to be back, but I must say that I'm wondering why I'm here. To learn, to make friends and to improve my life by using my vacation wisely.

I'm headed back to São Paulo, Brasil for a month starting on January 16, 2013. See you there! If you're reading this, please visit my new website AI3 Javantea out.

I want to go back to Brasil next month for H2HC which is a simultaneous bilingual security conference. I've heard good things. It seems unlikely that I'll make it. I have a lot to do this fall and that would eat a month. It seems more reasonable for me to spend a month in January. You know what that means.

A month in Brasil! I am looking forward to it so much. I'm listening to Brazilian Portuguese everyday and I hope to learn enough to understand when I listen to a fast conversation. How do you do that? It's difficult. My plan is to immerse myself before I go. I'm going to read 1 paragraph per day and I'm going to listen to 2 hours of Brazilian Portuguese per day. That might not sound like a lot, but when you're working and your brain feels like it's stretching to soak up more information, 3 hours is going to be really difficult.