AltSci Blog

It's amazing. I actually made it to São Paulo, Brasil. I can't speak Brasilian Portuguese (of course I can't) despite having a ton of confidence before I left. I'll make a lot of progress everyday. What's more interesting is that I am writing this blog hours after arriving. If you recall, I didn't post my first blog in Tokyo, Japan or Berlin, Germany until over 48 hours after. The reason for that is easy access to what a person needs. Information is key to speed sometimes and boy did it work. The taxi stand had a database that took a street name and listed hotels, hostels, and other points of interest. 88 Real got me to the hostel in 45 minutes. Had I been smart I would have taken the bus. I wasn't able to figure out which bus to take so that would have been a bad idea. The hostel was happy to put me up despite having my reservation be for tomorrow. The hostel has 110V power (same as US) and WPA wifi, so it was really easy to get online. After my adventure, I hopped on and posted this. No photos yet but just wait.

Today I got lost. Similar to my adventure in Tokyo and Berlin, I simply walked in one direction until I needed to turn and didn't keep track of where I turned. After a while I found a landmark and followed my way home. For a while though it was a bit difficult to find my way. São Paulo doesn't have long straight streets. That's why a street name can get you a list of hotels and hostels. The street I'm on can't be more than 5 blocks long. I'll post the actual length in another post.

São Paulo is wonderful. There are so many shops in my area that I am in awe. The streets are dangerous and the sidewalks are uneven as possible. The heat is wonderful and the mood is good. There is so much graffiti everywhere that I actually wonder if the graffiti artists have the same values as other cities around the world. Maybe not. The largest building I can see from the 7th story here has graffiti at the top. São Paulo is 2 hours ahead of US Eastern Time (BRST), so this is being posted at 2:20pm rather than 9:20am. The time difference is quite a kick especially since flight was 19 or so hours. I'm pretty sleepy having not been able to sleep on the flight.

I've talked with two Brazilians (Brasiliero) today and both encourage me to visit the Northeast. While my original plan was to just visit São Paulo I am now thinking that I'll find the easiest way to visit as much of the country as I can. Since Brasil is nearly the same size as the continental US, I suspect that there is a lot of diversity among Brasil's many areas. I think I will not plan travel within Brasil until I get there. I currently have bigger things to be concerned about and I have little mind to waste if I want to learn every word I'll need in Brasil.

A look at Brasil's history (Wikipedia is great, isn't it?) today shows just how unstable their country has been since its inception. Though I think that is a good thing, I also think about how short a time the US has been a constitutional democracy. It's really a matter of time before we change dramatically. The industrial revolution that made the US wealthy is changing dramatically and our political system is honestly strained by the inherent weakness of representative democracy. Without strong checks and balances, the systems of governance and justice are as tyrannical as lesser systems of government. What does this have to do with Brasil? Brasil's young democracy has had serious problems in the recent past. Corruption and economic injustice are problems both countries are continuously fighting. As we learn to combat these problems we can improve our societies by sharing our ideas.

Since this is my first post I want to keep it short. I'm learning a ton of Brazilian Portuguese with Busuu and I intend to finish the B2 training before I leave in 1 week. That will make me an intermediate Portuguese speaker in about 3 months of learning over 1 year. The podcasts help and the PDFs should come in handy at some point, but of course the two things that really made learning fun for me was talking to native speakers and the writing exercises which are corrected by native speakers. Amazing really. I enjoy learning but this makes my day every time I go on Busuu someone new is making me work hard for my conversation. Brazilians are so friendly.

I am a hacker, a self-employed programmer, an open-source advocate, a scientist, and an independent security researcher.

During January 2-10, I only had to work a few hours and the rest of the time I could spend on my own interests. I worked on a few new projects and looked around the city a bit more.