Brazilian Corruption and Crime, February 24, 2006

Hi everyone,

Carnival is about to start here in Brazil, and it should be interesting. Although Florianopolis is not a huge carnival destination, it still does have some big partys and celebrations here.

Speaking of parties, a guy who I have been hanging out with a lot (Mike the millionaire from Malibu) was supposed to have a big party at his mansion last week. The house (which he pays $8000 US per month to rent) has an amazing yard with a swimming pool, but the inside looks like shit, the fridge has rust on it, the kitchen is half finished, the furniture is old and ugly, etc. I.E. Mike is getting screwed on his rent.

Back to the party ... There were for DJs, security guards, bartenders, guest list with over 200 people on it, everything was getting set up and the owner came to the house and flipped out on him. The owner was yelling, turned off the electricity and water (which mike turned back on), and started shouting something about George Bush and americans coming here with their dollars and thinking that they can do whatever they want. Mike was not being beligerent, but the owners kept getting more and more excited to the point that they started pushing Mike, at which point the security guards pulled the owner away.

Mike decided to go to the police station to discuss what happened, and the owner had already been there. The police started saying that they had seen 80 people in his yard earlier in the day, and that people were doing drugs in his house (all of these were lies). They also wanted to see his entry visa to make sure that it was valid. I.e. they were out to get him. At this point the girl who was helping him translate suggested that it was probably best to just leave the police station ... welcome to Brazillian corruption.

Speaking of brazilian corruption, I was just riding my bicycle home from the beach about 3 hours ago, and was wearing oakley sun-galasses (which are worth about $250). I was riding on the side of a reasonably busy street, and a motorcycle pulled up beside me and slowed down ... I looked over to see what was going on, and the guy on the back reached over, and literally snatched the sun-glasses right off my face. The first thing that I did was looked at the licence plate to get the number (which I still remember), and started to chase after them, but because they were on a motorcycle, they got away pretty fast ... I started looking around the center of the town to see if I could find them or see their motorcycle parked somewhere (so I could at least kick the shit out of their motorcycle or something), but didn´t have any luck. I contemplated going to the police, but decided that they are too corrupt and lazy to do anything anyway, and that I would probably just be wasting my time.

I also started taking Scuba diving certification here (since we havent had much wind over the past few weeks for kite-surfing I needed another alternate activity). The procedure is supposed to be that you read a chapter, answer questions, and learn the basics in a shallow swimming pool. The reality of it here is that they didnt have the book that I needed in order to fill in the questions, so I just read the chapters from a photocopy of the book without doing the test (although I understood everything I read), the guy takes me out to a 6 meter deep canal (as opposed to a shallow pool), and the training starts from there. I have now done my basics, and will be doing my first ocean dives next week.

-Alex