After a 15-hour flight from Hong Kong, which mercifully had no crying babies but did have yammering, annoying Christian youth returning from a mission trip, I'm back in the United States for my first Christmas home in three years. I almost didn't make it due to an ear infection and the perfectly rational fear that with my luck, my eardrum would rupture on the plane. It didn't, and here I am, in lovely Staten Island, staying with the in-laws and watching "Leprechaun 5: Leprechaun in the Hood" with them.
I'll write more about my trip later, but until then, here's a video that embodies the Christmas spirit of my Brooklyn-born mother-in-law:
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
2008 Asia Game Show
"Despite the global economic downturn, we congratulate and appreciate you for supporting the game industry. Your presence at Asia Game Show reinforces our belief that gaming is 'recession-neutral' and that gaming offers psychological pleasure without spending much money." -- Official pamphlet for the show
Lured by a cosplay competition and demos of upcoming PS3 games, my husband and I made the trek to the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai for the 2008 Asia Game Show.
The theme of the show was, "We know we're entering tough economic times and people around the world are reevaluating their priorities in light of massive layoffs and restructuring, but instead of looking at the overa
ll cost of a game, think of the high rate of entertainment return provided by 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand. Also: Hot Asian chicks holding PSPs."The crowd seemed to be split 50/50 between gamers wanting to play the latest or upcoming releases and pervy photograph
ers wanting to add to their cosplay collection. I was there for both, but if you're a female, it's slightly less skeevy to take photos of young girls in revealing anime costumes. Slightly.Asian photographers scare me, though. I don't know what it is about combining women and technology, but you'd think Angelina Jolie herself was hawking an inexpensive Korean-made memory card
in front of an electric cherry blossom tree.If I worked in the marketing department of a video game developer and wanted to expand my fan base, I'd create a campaign geared toward the underserved market of 30-something women whose biological clocks are ticking but who are disappointed at the quality of men in the dating pool who won't give them a second glance because they're starting to get crow's feet and a non-procreative bulge in the tummy.
The commercial opens with an average-looking woman of average weight in average clothing walking down a nondescript Main Street, staring longingly at every baby that passes by in a stroller. Men pass by as well but don't look at her at all. She stops in front of a generic video game store, shrugs her shoulders and goes in, intent on buying a portable console to fill her free time, of which she has scads as she is without a husband to provide her with a passel of adoring children.
After she makes her purchase but before leaving the store, she removes the console from its packaging and puts in a game. As she exits the store with the console in her hands, suddenly she's transported to a bustling street in NYC or San Francisco and as she passes and makes eye contact with a lovably nerdy-but-hip guy who thinks his passive-aggressive manipulation makes him a nice guy, it switches to his viewpoint.
Now she's transformed into a gorgeous model with huge tits and the latest style of clothing, and as she makes her way toward home, the nerdy guy and other men start following her. The commercial ends with a crowd of horny men shuffling after her zombie-style, shouting, "Booooooooooobies," and fades to: "XYZ Developer: We'll put a baby in your belly."
Although I realized that the guys weren't staring at me -- even though I was looking fab
ulous, of course -- but at my entry-level DSLR and they were undoubtedly silently judging me. "Look at that XTi. She doesn't even have an external flash. How does she plan on taking good photos without one? God, I bet she's got her ISO set to 400. And what's with the 50mm prime? Jesus." They had a point.
The place was crawling with these camera commandos, the amateur photographers who come dressed and equipped like they're about to raid a terrorist enclave. They've sporting cargo pants and carrying step stools so they can better use their $3,000 lenses to zoom in for colposcopy-level close-ups. Or to take photos of congratulatory flower arrangements. If I didn't think one already existed, I'd start a blog called, "Why The Fuck Are You Photographing That?"
Because of these, I couldn't get close to most of the girls/women dressed up for the cosplay competition, nor did I stick around for the Miss AGS 2008 contest (in which Charrmy, Easter and Kiddie were contestants), so I had to content myself with taking photos of the neglected male cosplayers. Woe is the man who loves to dress up but who gets no love from the masses. Because, you know, it is a little creepy. And not hot. So, here's my brief tribute to this unsung hero and his sword:
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for the PS3 or were already out for the system but I hadn't played yet.Microsoft didn't have a presence at the show, which wasn't that disappointing because I no longer own an Xbox, mostly because I like hardware that doesn't frequently commit suicide and I'm not that into online gaming.
Now that Sony has unveiled PlayStation Home, though, should the urge ever hit me to have a harem of sad, lonely men wanting to hump my avatar, I have that option. Sony had an area decorated as a living room devoted to this abortion of a "community-based service," but they wouldn't
give me the rubber ducky consolation prize if I didn't stand in line to play around with Home.So I moved onto the 18-and-over room hidden behind a black curtain. I'm not sure why the 50 Cent game was out for anyone to play, but Resident Evil 5, Silent Hill: Homecoming, Killzone 2, Fallout 3, and Resistance 2 weren't. I didn't get a chance to play any of the games in there because it was so crowded and the Sony people were ov
erly generous in the time allotted to each person (including the guy who spent about 5 minutes breaking apart crates in RE5), but I've already beaten Fallout 3 and only care about the release of Resident Evil 5.After I left the adults-only section and was preparing to leave, I played a few other titles, most notably WipeoutHD (which made me not want it after contemplating downloading it when it finally became available on PSN Asia), Crash Commando (which spurred my husband to download it, so he could go online and insult
teenage opponents to vent his daily frustrations), Soul Calibur IV (playable Darth Vader was lame but I hate all things Star Wars because I'm empty on the inside), and Street Fighter IV (yes, of course, the American character is obese).The day ended with us having dinner at Thai Hut and walking toward the subway to go home, along the way passing by the numerous clubs with mamasans and prostitutes trying to solicit clients to go inside. A woman in front of what might have been a club and what might have actually been a new restaurant called out to us, "Want some Thai food?" And I answered, "No, thanks, I've already eaten." I'm still not sure which one of us was serious and which one was trying to be funny.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
American Gringa Gweilo: Domestic helpers
[This is the first part in a series of articles examining cultural differences between the United States, Brazil and Hong Kong, the three countries in which I've lived.]
In the 1920s, my great-grandmother was a maid at a boarding house in New Jersey. She ended up marrying the owner's son, but her mother-in-law never accepted her because she was "just the help."
At that time, before most Americans were considered part of the middle classes, the large gap between those with money and those without encouraged a deep cultural divide of labor and identity. Middle-class women felt entitled to domestic help because to do the mundane tasks of maintaining a household were largely beneath them, but once more and more Americans moved into the middle-class and there was a smaller (native-born) base from which to hire helpers, having domestic servants was in many ways considered a form of exploitation.
These days, how many Americans can afford a housekeeper? A nanny? A driver? How many Americans would feel completely comfortable even having one or admitting to it in mixed company without expecting a little criticism thrown their way?
But in many countries, if you indeed have a pot to piss in and a window to throw it out of, it's expected that you'll hire workers to take care of the drudgery of your existence.
When I visited friends in Brazil for the first time, before making the move there, their domestic helper spent an average of 8 hours/day, 3 days/week making their small apartment spotless. She washed the bathroom before and after I took a shower. She made my bed. She made lunch for me, usually rice and beans, steak and a tomato salad.
It made me uncomfortable because I know how poorly my great-grandmother was treated but that in the hierarchy of the time, she was expected to do everything with a smile and to act as if she were grateful to be in the presence of her "betters," who had deigned to throw the poor wretch some scraps.
After moving to Brazil and in with a roommate, I had a housekeeper, and I hated it. It wasn't my choice, she came with the apartment. She'd clean for 7 hours/day, twice a week, doing everything from bleaching the hell out of the kitchen to washing, ironing and folding my underwear. None of that Merry Maids, sweep-the-dust-under-your-media-stand, in-and-out-in-2-hours bullshit. And she earned, from us, about US$50.
On an intellectual level, I understood that Brazil is a developing nation with a mostly un/undereducated, unskilled population and that with few opportunities to rise to the middle-class and to take on more professional work, there are only a handful of avenues of legitimate employment for a Brazilian in the lower classes to pursue.
On a personal level, it made my skin crawl to witness firsthand the kind of hierarchy that my great-grandmother was forced to live under, with everyone knowing their "place" and not fighting it.
So, it was, as you can imagine, with great enthusiasm I learned that housekeepers are cheap and plentiful in Hong Kong, perhaps even more so than in Brazil, and I was getting one whether I liked it or not because my husband wanted one.
But most part-time maids work illegally and if we employed a full-time foreign housekeeper, due to laws in Hong Kong to protect domestic servants, we'd have to let her live with us, provide vacation and medical, etc. While I'm more on the slovenly end of the spectrum, not so much that I need someone following me around all and cleaning up my messes.
In our neighborhood, there are a few housekeeping businesses advertising their services. They place photos of the women in the storefront, along with statistics on their skills: cooking, cleaning, childcare. Kind of like Final Fantasy rankings for maids.
Instead of choosing one of them, though, my husband's Chinese co-worker offered his maid as a loaner to clean our apartment every two weeks. For five hours of work, excluding laundry and cooking, she supplements her full-time salary with about US$40. The average monthly salary for a live-in maid, who is expected to take care of every aspect of running a household including picking up the kids from school, is about US$450.
Much like my intellectual rationalization of hiring domestic help in Brazil, I know there are few ways that an Indonesian or Filipina woman can legitimately earn that much money, but I can't help but feel guilty that this woman is spending her Saturday afternoon cleaning out my cat's shit from his litterbox instead of being at home in the Philippines playing with her kids. We try to sneak in a few extra dollars when we pay her, but she always gives it back.
At least in Brazil, I came away with the impression that most Brazilians treat their domestic helper as a part of the family. Maybe the poor relations of the family, but unlike in the United States, it didn't seem a strictly business arrangement. In Asian countries, though, foreign maids are all-too-often treated inhumanely -- forced to sleep on the kitchen floor, deprived of food, beaten, raped or even killed. While Hong Kong does offer more protection for helpers, I've seen employers berating their helpers in supermarkets for getting the wrong brand of toilet paper, and the country even banned a famous singer from hiring maids.
In the 1920s, my great-grandmother was a maid at a boarding house in New Jersey. She ended up marrying the owner's son, but her mother-in-law never accepted her because she was "just the help."
At that time, before most Americans were considered part of the middle classes, the large gap between those with money and those without encouraged a deep cultural divide of labor and identity. Middle-class women felt entitled to domestic help because to do the mundane tasks of maintaining a household were largely beneath them, but once more and more Americans moved into the middle-class and there was a smaller (native-born) base from which to hire helpers, having domestic servants was in many ways considered a form of exploitation.
These days, how many Americans can afford a housekeeper? A nanny? A driver? How many Americans would feel completely comfortable even having one or admitting to it in mixed company without expecting a little criticism thrown their way?
But in many countries, if you indeed have a pot to piss in and a window to throw it out of, it's expected that you'll hire workers to take care of the drudgery of your existence.
When I visited friends in Brazil for the first time, before making the move there, their domestic helper spent an average of 8 hours/day, 3 days/week making their small apartment spotless. She washed the bathroom before and after I took a shower. She made my bed. She made lunch for me, usually rice and beans, steak and a tomato salad.
It made me uncomfortable because I know how poorly my great-grandmother was treated but that in the hierarchy of the time, she was expected to do everything with a smile and to act as if she were grateful to be in the presence of her "betters," who had deigned to throw the poor wretch some scraps.
After moving to Brazil and in with a roommate, I had a housekeeper, and I hated it. It wasn't my choice, she came with the apartment. She'd clean for 7 hours/day, twice a week, doing everything from bleaching the hell out of the kitchen to washing, ironing and folding my underwear. None of that Merry Maids, sweep-the-dust-under-your-media-stand, in-and-out-in-2-hours bullshit. And she earned, from us, about US$50.
On an intellectual level, I understood that Brazil is a developing nation with a mostly un/undereducated, unskilled population and that with few opportunities to rise to the middle-class and to take on more professional work, there are only a handful of avenues of legitimate employment for a Brazilian in the lower classes to pursue.
On a personal level, it made my skin crawl to witness firsthand the kind of hierarchy that my great-grandmother was forced to live under, with everyone knowing their "place" and not fighting it.
So, it was, as you can imagine, with great enthusiasm I learned that housekeepers are cheap and plentiful in Hong Kong, perhaps even more so than in Brazil, and I was getting one whether I liked it or not because my husband wanted one.
But most part-time maids work illegally and if we employed a full-time foreign housekeeper, due to laws in Hong Kong to protect domestic servants, we'd have to let her live with us, provide vacation and medical, etc. While I'm more on the slovenly end of the spectrum, not so much that I need someone following me around all and cleaning up my messes.
In our neighborhood, there are a few housekeeping businesses advertising their services. They place photos of the women in the storefront, along with statistics on their skills: cooking, cleaning, childcare. Kind of like Final Fantasy rankings for maids.
Instead of choosing one of them, though, my husband's Chinese co-worker offered his maid as a loaner to clean our apartment every two weeks. For five hours of work, excluding laundry and cooking, she supplements her full-time salary with about US$40. The average monthly salary for a live-in maid, who is expected to take care of every aspect of running a household including picking up the kids from school, is about US$450.
Much like my intellectual rationalization of hiring domestic help in Brazil, I know there are few ways that an Indonesian or Filipina woman can legitimately earn that much money, but I can't help but feel guilty that this woman is spending her Saturday afternoon cleaning out my cat's shit from his litterbox instead of being at home in the Philippines playing with her kids. We try to sneak in a few extra dollars when we pay her, but she always gives it back.
At least in Brazil, I came away with the impression that most Brazilians treat their domestic helper as a part of the family. Maybe the poor relations of the family, but unlike in the United States, it didn't seem a strictly business arrangement. In Asian countries, though, foreign maids are all-too-often treated inhumanely -- forced to sleep on the kitchen floor, deprived of food, beaten, raped or even killed. While Hong Kong does offer more protection for helpers, I've seen employers berating their helpers in supermarkets for getting the wrong brand of toilet paper, and the country even banned a famous singer from hiring maids.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Damn you to hell, capitalist swine
When I'm walking through Hong Kong on a mission -- in today's case, to catch a bus -- and engrossed in the iPod-playlist-influenced, Mittyesque world in my head, I rarely take notice of my surroundings. But on Des Voeux Road, I accidentally bumped into a guy who was part of a small protest against Citibank. Most of the signs were in Chinese, but there were two in English that seemed to capture the spirit:
Protesting is a national hobby here and, unlike in the US, I don't get the impression police are just itching to crack skulls. One night, I might encounter members of the banned-in-China group Falun Gong setting up elaborate demonstrations in the high-traffic shopping area of Causeway Bay against alleged organ harvesting by the Chinese government. Or I might come across a guy with needles in his chest protesting against the Beijing Olympics:
I'm saying this as an outsider who doesn't come close to understanding Hong Kong's political culture, but it's strange when a special administrative region of a communist country appears to allow more freedom for citizen protest than in the US.
Protesting is a national hobby here and, unlike in the US, I don't get the impression police are just itching to crack skulls. One night, I might encounter members of the banned-in-China group Falun Gong setting up elaborate demonstrations in the high-traffic shopping area of Causeway Bay against alleged organ harvesting by the Chinese government. Or I might come across a guy with needles in his chest protesting against the Beijing Olympics:
I'm saying this as an outsider who doesn't come close to understanding Hong Kong's political culture, but it's strange when a special administrative region of a communist country appears to allow more freedom for citizen protest than in the US.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Knowing Portuguese means I'd end up in Angola, huh?
For the second time, I've applied to take the US State Department's Foreign Service Written Exam/Officer Test, which is a test that requires takers to tap into the immense wealth of random knowledge they should have been storing in their head since birth.
Find Guinea-Bissau on a map. Name who wrote "Native Son" and who coined the term "military industrial complex." Choose the best definition for "opportunity cost of production" and "inferential statistics." And the worst of all: DO MATH. Or, if you're a math person, the worst of all: WRITE AN ESSAY.
It's an arduous exam that should qualify someone to appear on "Jeopardy." I took it in 2003, while still working for a defense contractor, and was one of the 30% or so that passed and was invited to take the oral exam in Washington, DC. Of those who make it to that stage, only 20-30% pass and are assigned to an embassy. The process has changed somewhat since then, though, with applicants needing to detail their professional and educational background, which will be considered along with the written exam results.
While I made the trip to DC, I never made it to the oral assessment. After a day of sightseeing and watching the ants scurry about in their business suits, I asked myself if I could be a drone for someone like George W. Bush -- and the answer was "no." I couldn't put my life at risk or help support the policies of someone as despicable as that.
Now that Obama is the president-elect, I've reconsidered. Not that I think he'll change much, but it's a start, and I guess I've grown accustomed to having my housing paid for as a benefit and want to continue suckling from that teat.
The only problem is, it seems that Obama's team wants to know every minute detail of every government worker, including the URL of their blog(s), to prevent anything embarrassing from popping up -- and I'm thinking the photos of girl's asses and telling stories about my great-grandmother being a prostitute in a Trenton brothel (oh, I didn't mention that yet?) might present a problem. Damn.
Find Guinea-Bissau on a map. Name who wrote "Native Son" and who coined the term "military industrial complex." Choose the best definition for "opportunity cost of production" and "inferential statistics." And the worst of all: DO MATH. Or, if you're a math person, the worst of all: WRITE AN ESSAY.
It's an arduous exam that should qualify someone to appear on "Jeopardy." I took it in 2003, while still working for a defense contractor, and was one of the 30% or so that passed and was invited to take the oral exam in Washington, DC. Of those who make it to that stage, only 20-30% pass and are assigned to an embassy. The process has changed somewhat since then, though, with applicants needing to detail their professional and educational background, which will be considered along with the written exam results.
While I made the trip to DC, I never made it to the oral assessment. After a day of sightseeing and watching the ants scurry about in their business suits, I asked myself if I could be a drone for someone like George W. Bush -- and the answer was "no." I couldn't put my life at risk or help support the policies of someone as despicable as that.
Now that Obama is the president-elect, I've reconsidered. Not that I think he'll change much, but it's a start, and I guess I've grown accustomed to having my housing paid for as a benefit and want to continue suckling from that teat.
The only problem is, it seems that Obama's team wants to know every minute detail of every government worker, including the URL of their blog(s), to prevent anything embarrassing from popping up -- and I'm thinking the photos of girl's asses and telling stories about my great-grandmother being a prostitute in a Trenton brothel (oh, I didn't mention that yet?) might present a problem. Damn.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
How to piss off a Brazilian in one easy list
I've started to feel like I'm co-opting Rachel's blog with my replies, so I'm going to expand on one of her recent entries about aspects of Brazilian life that can be frustrating, confusing or strange for Americans, at least ones that were for me.
1) The Brazilian deference to authority figures and the established hierarchy. Americans, in theory, are taught to to question authority and to engage in independent thought. But Brazil has a thread of insecurity running through its culture, with Brazilians often thinking they're not as talented, as smart or as good as someone with perceived power -- a professor, a parent, a politician or a powerhouse like the United States -- and not as willing to stand up for themselves or to break away from the herd.
During a conversation about Christmas, a friend explained that her English teacher claimed "gift" and "present" cannot be used interchangeably. I said her teacher was wrong and that in most cases, the words have the same meaning.
"But," she argued, "my... teacher... told... me... that."
Yes, that's nice, I replied, but your teacher was born and raised in Taubate and learned English 5 years ago in a Wizard school. I've been speaking English my entire life, and I think I'm far more skilled in the nuances of the language.
"Maybe," she said, "but that's what my teacher told me."
To this day, I'm sure she's convinced that you can't use gift and present as synonyms in any instance because of what her teacher said.
Another friend, a very talented budding filmmaker who had directed a music video that appeared on MTV Brazil, wanted to continue his studies in the United States. His father told him that if he left the country and "abandoned" his family, he'd disown him. Rather than argue, my friend stayed where he was because he didn't want to disappoint or anger his family. Brazilians give much more allegiance to their families than Americans do and families have much more sway, even when they don't deserve such deference.
I often found myself in an infinite loop with friends about the concept of family that went something like this, with my beginning the conversation: I don't talk to my dad unless absolutely necessary because he's an asshole. "But he's your DAD!" And an asshole. "But you wouldn't BE HERE without him!" Yes, even assholes can reproduce. "I don't understand you." I don't understand you. "Want to go to a boteco?" Please.
2) Chester. Seriously, what the fuck is a Chester?
Go to Christmas dinner with a Brazilian family, and you'll find Chester on the menu. It's an inexpensive super-chicken (or alleged to be a chicken) that has been genetically modified in a secret lab and 90% of them are sold during the holiday. Here's a mutant bird that comes out of hiding only at a certain time of the year and is cheaper than the poultry alternatives, and no one finds this odd?
GENTE, CHESTER IS PEOPLE.
3) The Brazilian inability to be honest due to an irrational fear of appearing impolite, offending the other person and losing face, which frequently leads to Americans never knowing in both personal and business interactions if someone's response is the truth or a sweet lie.
When an American friend invites me to a party or a dinner and I have other plans or I'm not interested, I say, "Sorry, my American friend, but I have other plans and/or I am not interested." The other person answers, "Oh, that's too bad, but thanks for letting me know you can't make it. Let's make plans for another time." And we go on our merry way, secure in the knowledge that my refusal in no way reflects on my feelings about our friendship or their abilities as a host.
In Brazil, if someone invites you to a party or a dinner and you have other plans or you're not interested, you enthusiastically agree to go and then spend the next week trying to invent a convincing excuse for why you ended up missing the engagement. And it can't be a little white lie. Oh, no. It has to be one of those outrageous lies that only 5-year-olds tell and genuinely think sound believable.
"Oh, Paulo, I'm so sorry that I missed your party! But I was driving down Marginal Tietê when a bright light came out of nowhere, time stopped and aliens abducted me! They took me to their spaceship to perform experiments, and by the time they brought me back, your party was over! And, man, did my ass hurt!"
The more ridiculous and obvious the lie, the better I think the other person feels, like, wow, look at how much effort they put into deceiving me.
4) Pronouncing foreign words the Brazilian way. "Do you have Or-koo-chee?" What is Or-koo-chee? "You know, OR-KOO-CHEE." I'm sorry, I have no idea what OR-KOO-CHEE is. "Come on, the social networking site for Brazilians. Like MySpace." OH, Orkut. "Yes, OR-KOO-CHEE!"
I couldn't bring myself to pronounce English words in the Brazilian way. It's like when someone from Alabama moves to New York City or New Jersey and is confronted with words that are pronounced "moozarell" (mozzarella), "gabagool" (capicola), "manigott" (manicotti) and "proschoot" (prosciutto). It goes against every fiber of your being to pronounce words that you know, from a smug cultural-absolutist viewpoint, are being pronounced wrong.
And this is saying a lot because Americans rarely meet a word they don't want to sex up with an exotic pronunciation, even if it's painfully inaccurate.
5) Inefficiency, inefficiency, inefficiency. Living in Hong Kong has given me a new perspective on how inefficient the United States is in many ways, but Brazil reigns supreme in making an art form out of not getting shit done in a logical, uncomplicated way. They even have a name for it: jeito. If something can be accomplished in one step but a step that might be more difficult in the short term, better to do it in five less-difficult steps but steps that will cause more headaches in the long term.
This trickles down to even the most mundane of transactions and interactions. At a McDonald's not far from my apartment in Sao Paulo, the drive-through involved pulling up to a guy standing next to the entrance who gave you a menu and wrote down your order on a piece of paper, then driving up to a window to hand the order to a cashier who would place it into the system, then driving up to a window to pay, and then finally to a window to pick up your food.
I understood the rationale behind this system -- to provide jobs to as many people as possible in a largely un/undereducated country with major government barriers to business -- but it was incredibly frustrating because it was symptomatic of a much larger problem. Like the university I attended for Portuguese classes was so mismanaged and so inefficient in keeping track of students that they never realized I didn't pay for the course and they never sent a bill, and when I wrote to them about it, no one emailed me back. Shhh, no one tell.
6) The weird infatuation with corn. In the form of high-fructose corn syrup, corn makes it into most products that Americans consume, but I've never noticed us to be huge consumers of it in its original form. In Brazil, I ate corn ice cream to cool off from the heat, and on the way to the beach to cool off even more, stopped off at roadside stands to drink corn juice, and while cooling off at the beach, ate corn on the cob.
Then there's using corn as a topping. On pizza. On hot dogs. On hamburgers. But not just corn, no. When a friend's father went on a hamburger run, he asked me if I wanted onions on mine. Sure. He came back with a hamburger that had onions and other normal toppings but also mashed potatoes and corn. The onions are questionable but not the mashed potatoes and corn?
7) Brazilians might be incapable of speaking the hard truth in many instances, but when it comes to physical appearances, they're brutally honest. Americans tend to be judgmental and to look down on those who don't fit the social mold (too fat, too ugly, whatever), but it's largely considered rude to publicly criticize the appearance or to point out the flaws or differences of friends and family.
Not so much in Brazil. While plastic surgery and Brazil are indelibly linked in the mind of many Americans, Brazil isn't as superficial as the US. That's the good part. Obese women wear tiny bikinis to the beach without a hint of shame, while many obese American women would rather hide out at home or cover up in a muumuu than face the disapproving looks and hushed comments.
So, Brazilians feel free to comment on your physical appearance because there's generally no malice behind it. You are who you are, and it is what it is. Differences are irrelevant.
Because of this, they love creating nicknames and terms of endearment based on physical appearance, something Americans tend to associate with the Mafia (Paulie "One-Eye") or 1970s sitcoms about the working class ("Stretch" Cunningham). You'll find Brazilians who are nicknamed "Gordinha" (Little Fatty), "Japinha" (Little Japanese Girl), and "Neguinha" (Little Black Girl). Or in my case, Gasparzinha.
This can be uncomfortable or painfully awkward for an American not used to a friend saying to them, "Oh, my God! Look at the size of that zit on your forehead! It's like a third eye!" and then crafting a nickname based on it.
8) The electric shower. You know what, it's more fun when you discover that for yourself, preferably one that looks like it was thrown together based on schematics drafted by a 5-year-old.
1) The Brazilian deference to authority figures and the established hierarchy. Americans, in theory, are taught to to question authority and to engage in independent thought. But Brazil has a thread of insecurity running through its culture, with Brazilians often thinking they're not as talented, as smart or as good as someone with perceived power -- a professor, a parent, a politician or a powerhouse like the United States -- and not as willing to stand up for themselves or to break away from the herd.
During a conversation about Christmas, a friend explained that her English teacher claimed "gift" and "present" cannot be used interchangeably. I said her teacher was wrong and that in most cases, the words have the same meaning.
"But," she argued, "my... teacher... told... me... that."
Yes, that's nice, I replied, but your teacher was born and raised in Taubate and learned English 5 years ago in a Wizard school. I've been speaking English my entire life, and I think I'm far more skilled in the nuances of the language.
"Maybe," she said, "but that's what my teacher told me."
To this day, I'm sure she's convinced that you can't use gift and present as synonyms in any instance because of what her teacher said.
Another friend, a very talented budding filmmaker who had directed a music video that appeared on MTV Brazil, wanted to continue his studies in the United States. His father told him that if he left the country and "abandoned" his family, he'd disown him. Rather than argue, my friend stayed where he was because he didn't want to disappoint or anger his family. Brazilians give much more allegiance to their families than Americans do and families have much more sway, even when they don't deserve such deference.
I often found myself in an infinite loop with friends about the concept of family that went something like this, with my beginning the conversation: I don't talk to my dad unless absolutely necessary because he's an asshole. "But he's your DAD!" And an asshole. "But you wouldn't BE HERE without him!" Yes, even assholes can reproduce. "I don't understand you." I don't understand you. "Want to go to a boteco?" Please.
2) Chester. Seriously, what the fuck is a Chester?
Go to Christmas dinner with a Brazilian family, and you'll find Chester on the menu. It's an inexpensive super-chicken (or alleged to be a chicken) that has been genetically modified in a secret lab and 90% of them are sold during the holiday. Here's a mutant bird that comes out of hiding only at a certain time of the year and is cheaper than the poultry alternatives, and no one finds this odd?
GENTE, CHESTER IS PEOPLE.
3) The Brazilian inability to be honest due to an irrational fear of appearing impolite, offending the other person and losing face, which frequently leads to Americans never knowing in both personal and business interactions if someone's response is the truth or a sweet lie.
When an American friend invites me to a party or a dinner and I have other plans or I'm not interested, I say, "Sorry, my American friend, but I have other plans and/or I am not interested." The other person answers, "Oh, that's too bad, but thanks for letting me know you can't make it. Let's make plans for another time." And we go on our merry way, secure in the knowledge that my refusal in no way reflects on my feelings about our friendship or their abilities as a host.
In Brazil, if someone invites you to a party or a dinner and you have other plans or you're not interested, you enthusiastically agree to go and then spend the next week trying to invent a convincing excuse for why you ended up missing the engagement. And it can't be a little white lie. Oh, no. It has to be one of those outrageous lies that only 5-year-olds tell and genuinely think sound believable.
"Oh, Paulo, I'm so sorry that I missed your party! But I was driving down Marginal Tietê when a bright light came out of nowhere, time stopped and aliens abducted me! They took me to their spaceship to perform experiments, and by the time they brought me back, your party was over! And, man, did my ass hurt!"
The more ridiculous and obvious the lie, the better I think the other person feels, like, wow, look at how much effort they put into deceiving me.
4) Pronouncing foreign words the Brazilian way. "Do you have Or-koo-chee?" What is Or-koo-chee? "You know, OR-KOO-CHEE." I'm sorry, I have no idea what OR-KOO-CHEE is. "Come on, the social networking site for Brazilians. Like MySpace." OH, Orkut. "Yes, OR-KOO-CHEE!"
I couldn't bring myself to pronounce English words in the Brazilian way. It's like when someone from Alabama moves to New York City or New Jersey and is confronted with words that are pronounced "moozarell" (mozzarella), "gabagool" (capicola), "manigott" (manicotti) and "proschoot" (prosciutto). It goes against every fiber of your being to pronounce words that you know, from a smug cultural-absolutist viewpoint, are being pronounced wrong.
And this is saying a lot because Americans rarely meet a word they don't want to sex up with an exotic pronunciation, even if it's painfully inaccurate.
5) Inefficiency, inefficiency, inefficiency. Living in Hong Kong has given me a new perspective on how inefficient the United States is in many ways, but Brazil reigns supreme in making an art form out of not getting shit done in a logical, uncomplicated way. They even have a name for it: jeito. If something can be accomplished in one step but a step that might be more difficult in the short term, better to do it in five less-difficult steps but steps that will cause more headaches in the long term.
This trickles down to even the most mundane of transactions and interactions. At a McDonald's not far from my apartment in Sao Paulo, the drive-through involved pulling up to a guy standing next to the entrance who gave you a menu and wrote down your order on a piece of paper, then driving up to a window to hand the order to a cashier who would place it into the system, then driving up to a window to pay, and then finally to a window to pick up your food.
I understood the rationale behind this system -- to provide jobs to as many people as possible in a largely un/undereducated country with major government barriers to business -- but it was incredibly frustrating because it was symptomatic of a much larger problem. Like the university I attended for Portuguese classes was so mismanaged and so inefficient in keeping track of students that they never realized I didn't pay for the course and they never sent a bill, and when I wrote to them about it, no one emailed me back. Shhh, no one tell.
6) The weird infatuation with corn. In the form of high-fructose corn syrup, corn makes it into most products that Americans consume, but I've never noticed us to be huge consumers of it in its original form. In Brazil, I ate corn ice cream to cool off from the heat, and on the way to the beach to cool off even more, stopped off at roadside stands to drink corn juice, and while cooling off at the beach, ate corn on the cob.
Then there's using corn as a topping. On pizza. On hot dogs. On hamburgers. But not just corn, no. When a friend's father went on a hamburger run, he asked me if I wanted onions on mine. Sure. He came back with a hamburger that had onions and other normal toppings but also mashed potatoes and corn. The onions are questionable but not the mashed potatoes and corn?
7) Brazilians might be incapable of speaking the hard truth in many instances, but when it comes to physical appearances, they're brutally honest. Americans tend to be judgmental and to look down on those who don't fit the social mold (too fat, too ugly, whatever), but it's largely considered rude to publicly criticize the appearance or to point out the flaws or differences of friends and family.
Not so much in Brazil. While plastic surgery and Brazil are indelibly linked in the mind of many Americans, Brazil isn't as superficial as the US. That's the good part. Obese women wear tiny bikinis to the beach without a hint of shame, while many obese American women would rather hide out at home or cover up in a muumuu than face the disapproving looks and hushed comments.
So, Brazilians feel free to comment on your physical appearance because there's generally no malice behind it. You are who you are, and it is what it is. Differences are irrelevant.
Because of this, they love creating nicknames and terms of endearment based on physical appearance, something Americans tend to associate with the Mafia (Paulie "One-Eye") or 1970s sitcoms about the working class ("Stretch" Cunningham). You'll find Brazilians who are nicknamed "Gordinha" (Little Fatty), "Japinha" (Little Japanese Girl), and "Neguinha" (Little Black Girl). Or in my case, Gasparzinha.
This can be uncomfortable or painfully awkward for an American not used to a friend saying to them, "Oh, my God! Look at the size of that zit on your forehead! It's like a third eye!" and then crafting a nickname based on it.
8) The electric shower. You know what, it's more fun when you discover that for yourself, preferably one that looks like it was thrown together based on schematics drafted by a 5-year-old.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Mr. Pickles Fun-Time Abortion Clinic: We'll bring out the kid in you
It's no big secret that I don't want kids, as one might be able to deduce from my Ted Kaczynski-esque manifesto aimed at people who are not my husband but who still feel compelled to be all up in my vagina. I suppose it can be boiled down to: I DO NOT LIKE PEOPLE AND KIDS ARE PEOPLE TOO.
Babies are cute, sure, but eventually they turn into that 40-year-old balding, unemployed guy who thinks he's chatting to a 13-year-old hottie online but who ends up on Dateline NBC instead and tries to claim he showed up for the free brownies and lemonade.
Not that I'm completely asocial. I like some people. In small doses. Preferably with contact mostly through an electronic box I can turn on and off at my convenience.
When I look around me and see terrorists hopped up on coke taking out hundreds of hotel guests and travelers, small-town Americans going into apocalyptic mode because a negro is their new president, and adult men who wear pink Crocs and speedos to the beach, the last thought I have is, "My God, we need more of this."
If you told me that you discovered through intense therapy that you're an apotemnophiliac and the only way to put your mind at rest is to go to an illegal basement clinic in Queens and have your leg chopped off, that would make more sense to me than the desire to have kids.
But I'm not a nun, so there's always the risk of pregnancy should my womb cease being inhospitable to foreign invaders, and for that, I'm grateful that abortion is available to me as a legal option. A child should be wanted, not a punishment.
For women in countries like Brazil, though, even if they escape the punishment of an unwanted pregnancy by seeking illegal abortions, some are finding themselves being punished by the legal system for taking control of their bodies and their futures.
In the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, justice officials have indicted 150 women for the crime of having an abortion, while 37 were found guilty and 26 were sentenced to "alternative punishments" (which is better than the 1-3 years in prison they could have faced). The case came to light after officials searched through a clinic's medical records.
In total, 1,500 women (down from the initial 10,000) who went to the clinic in the city of Campo Grande are being investigated based on medical evidence, such as ultrasounds that confirmed their pregnancies.
The judge in the case said an invasion of privacy, including interviewing husbands and ex-boyfriends, is necessary in order to examine the sexual lives of the women and to, I assume, prove they're nothing but baby-killing whores who nonchalantly fit in an abortion before their mani-pedi and to shame them for this trespass. To aid the shaming process, the names of the women were briefly available to the public.
When Sarah Palin was announced as the GOP vice presidential candidate, women shrugged their shoulders at her radical pro-life stance because for a large number of us, abortion has always been accessible and we can't imagine what an America without it would look like. But Mato Grosso do Sul is showing us the natural conclusion to the American pro-life movement, and I don't think most Americans want a return to inquisitions of the Middle Ages.
Babies are cute, sure, but eventually they turn into that 40-year-old balding, unemployed guy who thinks he's chatting to a 13-year-old hottie online but who ends up on Dateline NBC instead and tries to claim he showed up for the free brownies and lemonade.
Not that I'm completely asocial. I like some people. In small doses. Preferably with contact mostly through an electronic box I can turn on and off at my convenience.
When I look around me and see terrorists hopped up on coke taking out hundreds of hotel guests and travelers, small-town Americans going into apocalyptic mode because a negro is their new president, and adult men who wear pink Crocs and speedos to the beach, the last thought I have is, "My God, we need more of this."
If you told me that you discovered through intense therapy that you're an apotemnophiliac and the only way to put your mind at rest is to go to an illegal basement clinic in Queens and have your leg chopped off, that would make more sense to me than the desire to have kids.
But I'm not a nun, so there's always the risk of pregnancy should my womb cease being inhospitable to foreign invaders, and for that, I'm grateful that abortion is available to me as a legal option. A child should be wanted, not a punishment.
For women in countries like Brazil, though, even if they escape the punishment of an unwanted pregnancy by seeking illegal abortions, some are finding themselves being punished by the legal system for taking control of their bodies and their futures.
In the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, justice officials have indicted 150 women for the crime of having an abortion, while 37 were found guilty and 26 were sentenced to "alternative punishments" (which is better than the 1-3 years in prison they could have faced). The case came to light after officials searched through a clinic's medical records.
In total, 1,500 women (down from the initial 10,000) who went to the clinic in the city of Campo Grande are being investigated based on medical evidence, such as ultrasounds that confirmed their pregnancies.
The judge in the case said an invasion of privacy, including interviewing husbands and ex-boyfriends, is necessary in order to examine the sexual lives of the women and to, I assume, prove they're nothing but baby-killing whores who nonchalantly fit in an abortion before their mani-pedi and to shame them for this trespass. To aid the shaming process, the names of the women were briefly available to the public.
When Sarah Palin was announced as the GOP vice presidential candidate, women shrugged their shoulders at her radical pro-life stance because for a large number of us, abortion has always been accessible and we can't imagine what an America without it would look like. But Mato Grosso do Sul is showing us the natural conclusion to the American pro-life movement, and I don't think most Americans want a return to inquisitions of the Middle Ages.
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