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Brazil – Paradise, Nazi Villas, and Kill Bill Wedding

Yes, that is a sex shop, and next to a restaurant. Yes it is right in the middle of the jungle, along some random highway through the Eastern side of Brazil. And no, there was no little village off to the side. Those two buildings was pretty much it for quite a few kilometres in either direction. Welcome to Brazil.

As soon as the plane touched down in São Paolo I got the feeling I would like Brazil. It is not unusual for me to get a sense of a place pretty much as the plane lands. São Paolo reminded me of a chaotic, warm, and more intimate version of Moscow. I had the same sense of “Yeah…I’m going to enjoy this place” as when I landed there, but I have to say, with Brazil it runs deeper.

We all have ideas of how a place might be and usually I have an “ideal”, (comic-book version of cool), a realistic version, which is most often correct, and a this is how it will probably be, just to prevent myself from having rough surprises.

Brazil has so far exceeded all expectations. I feel as if I was meant to live here. São Paolo is of course a huge metropolis of probably over 20 million people. It makes London look like a village. And the types of people and vistas and neighbourhoods change so drastically in short spaces of distance and time that it’s almost feels like a really large version of the Mos Eisley cantina in the Star Wars film.

Redhead Girl’s parents are great too. Her mom gets shy with my total lack of Portuguese, but her dad and I have great conversations. We might not actually be talking about the same thing, one can’t be sure, but we have long chats anyways.

Her parrot is actually an attack parrot, and it tries to savage me on a regular basis. I feed it apple seeds in order to try and assuage its blood lust, but to little avail. With Redhead Girl he sings a little song about killing a cat, or at least he does the chorus with her “Ga-to-to” while bobbing up and down.

Her whole extended family was very welcoming and warm and they all talk at once. And loudly. It’s great.

There are many things about Brazilian culture I like so far. One of them, believe it or not is the telenovelas (Soap Operas). The overacting of terrible actors in a language that is foreign is hilarious. The food is great and very varied, and I find the Brazilians to be somewhat similar to the Greeks. Very humane and relaxed.

Here is a picture for you of a tiny section of São Paolo late at night from the 14th floor; the place of a friend of Redhead Girl’s who is also coming to our wedding later this month.

In other news, it seems my book on Systema (www.systemabook.com) has pissed off the top Ryabko Systema gurus, and you can basically read more on that if you care at the promotion site, where a pop-up opens up if you click on the link. You have to make sure the link is right at the top of your browser when you click it, otherwise the pop-up is partially occluded by the YouTube video preview image. (IT guy is working on this but not sure when he will fix it). Anyway, it’s mostly for commercial reasons from what I can tell. Basically I think they are a bit upset they didn’t issue a similar book first. It’s a bit silly on their part, since I really only say good things about their ability as practitioners, but sadly, the reaction is not exactly a surprise to me, as I have noticed the trend for a while, and is actually why I had clearly separated myself from being part of their extended affiliation/approval group. Systema to me is ultimately about increasing human freedom, and I could not reconcile my own conscience and philosophy with some of the practices I became aware of with regard to Ryabko Systema.

I do Systema because I enjoy it and it improves my life, but it’s not a business to me, and it never will be. But they seem to think I should get their approval before putting my thoughts or experiences with Systema to paper and making them available to others, which I find absurd. And is what I politely told them, after they sent me a strangely authoritarian and somewhat rude e-mail basically telling me to stop publication. Bizarre.

If this means I will have a Kill-Bill style wedding remains to be seen, but if this blog goes silent, you will know some Systema ninjas may have got the best of me.

In discussing Brazil with a friend, she mentioned that I should just take over some old Nazi’s villa in the jungles if I like it so much here. She felt it would be the cheap alternative to buying a property. I think she knows me a little too well. Envisioning a Hellboy type of major battle with Russian ninjas, a wedding and cadaverous octogenarian Nazis in the Jungles of Brazil I burst out laughing. At this point she said:

“Hey. At least you know the locals in those places are used to not asking questions!”

Which means I would also get to build my secret rocket-ship laboratory. Maybe staffed by intelligent, radio-controlled Monkeys.

I may have just found Paradise.

    10 Responses to “Brazil – Paradise, Nazi Villas, and Kill Bill Wedding”

    1. Vicola says:

      Brazil sounds fantastic. I didn’t know Redhead Girl was Brazilian, don’t think you’d mentioned it, or at least not in what I’ve read. That’s ace because it means lots of cheap holidays in a cool place. Sadly Ipswich and Kent aren’t that exciting so I don’t have the same opportunties, although Helsinki is pretty great and I get to go there. Not as exotic as Brazil though. I only know one word of Portugese and that’s the word for thank you. Enjoy the rest of your stay, furnish us with more pics and don’t be defeated by psycho-parrot….

      • G says:

        Thanks V!
        I have quite a lot of pics already but the phone camera is so good it means I have to resize every one of them before I can post them, because at 12Mpixels the pictures are huge. When I get some time I will add an album to the gallery (but then I also have other albums to add from past trips too…) I NEED the intelligent radio-controlled monkey army you see??!!?!

    2. phil says:

      Great site. A lot of useful information here. I’m sending it to some friends!

    3. Tony Hoffart says:

      Did you visit the sex shop? I’m curious on the rationale of having such a place in the middle of nowhere like that? So you’re driving along, and you stop for a bite and then think; “I bet a nice butt plug would make this trip just WAY better…”

      Maybe the whole marriage-tourism thing is already quite popular and so they’ve found the sweet spot to catch all the soon-to-be honeymooners.

      Tash works at a sex shop, so I’m well versed in the contents and politics of such places, and I think it’s safe to say that Canadian hicks must not have the same mindset that Brazilian hicks do… because even in a decent sized town, Tash’s sex shop deals with the stigma of a lot of farm-town ignorance. It’s getting better, but most of my family won’t even set foot in the place to ask us out to dinner.

      I’d love to go to Brazil, but I can’t go with Tash, she hates it. Ever since she saw footage of that fish that swims up a stream of urine to get lodged in your penis, she’s been adamant that the entirety of South America will do fine without her. I’ve tried to explain that because she doesn’t have a penis, she’s safe… but this argument hasn’t seemed to make much of a difference.

      • G says:

        I didn’t stop at that sex shop, and I can’t guess as to the rationale…although my first instinct was to go with…Truckers. It must have something to do with Truckers. And possibly butt-plugs. You may be right….
        As for other sex shops, they are pretty much all over the place, not out of the way in a hidden corner of the seedy part of town, as in most repressed anglo-saxon places I have lived. They tend to be just another shop in the middle of shopping centres etc.
        In fact there is one prominently placed in the town centre where we are now and Redhead Girl asked we go check it out a couple of nights ago, but it was quite late and it was closed already. We’ll go next time we are there, and I’ll be sure to report back on the quality of the merchandise 🙂
        Think of it as personalised commercial espionage really…I will expect to be paid in a variety of flavoured condoms and assorted sex-toys!
        As for the penis fish….
        I really don’t think you need to go swimming in the middle of the amazon as soon as you land….
        Also…maybe consider “not being brainwashed by sensationalist media”. When we lived in Nigeria, we only found out about the coup the country had undergone because relatives from Italy called to say we were obviously in the middle of a war-zone. For us it was just… Tuesday I think.

    4. Anonymous says:

      Thanks for an idea, you sparked at thought from a angle I hadn’t given thoguht to yet. Now lets see if I can do something with it.

    5. PT says:

      Great information! I’ve been looking for something like this for a while now. Thanks!

    6. avr says:

      you really have great tips on travel. Thank you for your posts.

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