Usually when people think of living in a developing country like Brazil they think that the cost of living is cheap. While it's true that labor and basic necessities here are cheap, anything imported, electronic or "luxury" costs many times more than it does in "developed" countries like the USA.

A few examples of things that cost much more in Brazil than they would at home. A friend's laptop broke and she started shopping for a new one here. The same basic Dell laptop that costs $400 in the USA costs $1000 here. Because of the lack of English books here, I've been thinking about getting the new Kindle. Cost in the USA $260. Cost in Brazil: $530 ($260 + $266 in import taxes). For comparison, the import taxes to Japan and Europe are $14 and $56 respectively. Finally, our car (a 2005 Honda Civic) cost as much as buying a new Honda Civic would in the USA.

Coupled with the fact that salaries here are much lower than in the US, the costs of these "luxury" items are simply too prohibitive for most people. The main reason for the elevated prices is because of the high taxes which is even more depressing because the government services here are so bad...

So, there was a big blackout here in Brazil the other day. It effected more than one third of the country for almost three hours, but at our house the lights only flickered briefly. Brazil has a history of blackouts including a really big one in 1999 that affected 70% of the country.

Anyway, the headlines in the paper have been filled with the word "blacaute" which at first I didn't understand until I realized that if you read "blacaute" with a Portuguese accent it comes out like the English word "blackout." What a weird mangling of the English word. I got into a discussion with my Brazilian friend about the proper way to borrow or use words from a foreign language, and here's my philosophy. I'll start with an example.

I once met a French guy who asked me why all Americans mispronounce the word "Paris". I said because for us when it's spelled that way we say Paris making the sound for the "s". To make Americans say Paris the French way (without the "s" sound) you would have to spell it "Pari", but then it would be spelled "wrong". So you have a choice, spell it the original way and have English speakers mispronounce it or adjust the spelling.

Anyway, my personal preference is not to adjust the spelling, for a couple reasons. First, it's not always clear how the spelling should be adjusted. For example, maybe Paris should be "spelled" Pahri to make it pronounced closer to French. Second, once you change the spelling you lose the connection to the original word. For example, with do we call the capitol of Portugal Lisbon when the original word in Portuguese is Lisboa? Finally, if you change all the
spellings of foreign words like the Japanese do, when you read something in the foreign language you don't recognize the word even though you know it.

That's my philosophy, but I think yYou can also make good arguments for changing the spelling and keeping the pronunciation too and in the end I don't think it really matters because you can't "control" a language.

There was an interesting article on the front page of the paper this morning. The headline was that in Brazil among the rich, women earn more. According to the survey, in the highest group of earners (more than $7,000 per month) men earned an average of $7,150 whereas women earned an average of $8,050. Overall, the average salary for was $440 for women and $605 for men.

I find this result kind of surprising as I don't think I've ever seen a salary survey that showed women earning more than men. Secondly, I wouldn't expect Brazil to be first country to have this result. In the highest salary bracket there were 52 men and 13 women, so the headline could have said "High earners four times more likely to be men". I also wonder if the small sample size is really enough to be statically valid.

I'm entering a Japanese speech contest and thought it would be fun to post a copy of my speech here in English. Enjoy!

Good morning everyone. Today I would like to speak about an experience that I had recently in Japan. The experience I had was something called ningen doku. For those of you who don't know ningen doku means ningen doctor which means doctor's checkup. When I first heard the word, I thought it was ningen dogu which sounded kind of scary. Anyway, this was nothing like any doctor's checkup I'd ever had before. In the past my doctor's checkups at home had been simple and quick. I would give a blood sample, the doctor would measure my blood pressure and ask a few quick questions and I would be out of the office in less than an hour. The ningen doku is much more involved. There was a complete morning of investigations including scary sounded things like stomach camera and echo scan. There are even a series of options that you can add to your checkup for additional money like the “cancer course” etc. There is even an overnight option if you want to spend the night in the hospital. It seemed more like a spa treatment at a fancy hotel than a doctor's checkup.

My wife's job requires that she and I get a physical every year. That might sound like a nice benefit, but I like to avoid doctor's and hospitals as much as possible so I was happy my previous simple physicals. As soon as I started to see the list of examinations we would be doing, I started to get nervous. I like to believe in blissful ignorance; what you don't know can't hurt you. Apparently, the Japanese don't believe in this—we had to wait several weeks before we could get an appointment at the hospital.

When we arrived at the hospital, everyone changed into hospital gowns. As usual, being a large foreigner I had to pick the XL size which still wasn't really big enough. Then everyone sat in large room waiting for their name to be called for various tests. I was probably the first foreigner that had ever done the test because each doctor called out my name slowly in katakana. The worst part about the tests was that my wife and I were separated so she couldn't explain to me what was going to happen. I'm not very good with medical words, so when the doctor called me, I really didn't know what was going to happen. Every part of me was measured, prodded and poked. I was tested for weight, height, blood pressure, blood tests, waist size (where I was told that my stomach size was above average), hearing, eyesight, breath, stomach echo, but the worst part was the valium. I had to drink this awful concoction and then roll and flip around on the x-ray machine so the valium would distribute in my body. The X-ray technician couldn't enter the X-ray room and would give directions from his booth, but I couldn't always understanding what he was saying (roll left, lean forward, etc.) so it took a long time.

Well, I finally got the results from the hospital and it looks just like a report card with grades from A to F. I'm happy to report that I didn't fail any tests, but I didn't get a lot of Cs. In the end, I guess it's better to know more about the state of your health than live in blissful ignorance. I just wish there was a more comfortable way to do it.

So, I'm leaving for Alaska this afternoon for a ten day camping trip with my family. I'll be visiting Austin after the 4th of July and would love to see everyone when I'm there...

I've noticed recently that I sometimes make simple mistakes when I write in Engish. I switch words with the same pronunciation, but different spellings, for example "scene" and "seen" or "do" and "due". I make obvious gramatical mistakes that are not typos, for example "I've been to the USA last year". What's strange is that these are all mistakes that non-native speakers make when learning English. Although It's been three years since I lived in the USA, I still read and write a lot of English--more than I read or write Portuguese or Japanese. When I re-read what I've written, I usually notice my mistakes, but it's strange that I'm making them at all.

Stupid things you hear at the airport: 'the plane is departing 45 minutes late, but you'll still arrive on time' and ' boarding will begin in 25 minutes' repeated every 5 minutes for half an hour.

When foreigners plan on taking a trip to Brazil they probably think of beaches, Rio de Janeiro's Carnival and the Amazon jungle. For Brazilians, the most popular holiday destination is also the beach. The highways are jammed on every holiday weekend with families heading to the coast.

The Amazon, on the other hand, is not a popular destination for locals. Part of the reason is probably cost and distance. The Amazon is a long plane flight from where most people live and the only way to see the jungle is on an expensive packaged tour. The most popular guide book here for Brazilians describes the jungle hotels in the Amazon as over-priced and for foreign tourists. More Brazilians probably visit Europe than the Amazon, because the cost is not much more.

Brazil was a land of immigrants and there are sizable populations of Germans, Italians, Polish, Ukranians and Japanese especially in the south. Dotted throughout the country are cities founded by these immigrants that have become tourist attractions. For example, there is a German town south of us that has some Bavarian-style buildings, German restaurants, breweries and a famous Oktoberfest festival. For those of you from Texas, you might compare it to Fredricksburg.

These "European towns" are quite popular with the locals here. Perhaps it's because they are something of a novelty being in the middle of a tropical country, but I also think that it's because Brazilians often value imported European things more highly than those from their own country. The Amazon is an undeveloped and primitive place and perhaps even a little embarrassing. Because of this, decades of government policy attempted to modernize and develop the area. Only recently has the idea of environmental protection become popular. For this same reason, some Brazilians dislike the famous Carnival in Rio because they think it portrays their country as an uneducated and "primitive".

Anyway, my recommendation for the foreign tourist is not to bother visiting these "European towns". Although they are mildly amusing, they are rarely worth going out of your way to see. If you want to see Europe, go to Europe. If you come to Brazil, go to the beaches and Carnival and the Amazon jungle, even if the locals don't.

I don't know why I haven't written an updated in a long time. Anywhere, here is where I will be for the next few months:

May 20-June 11 Rome, Italy
June 17-June 24 Albany, Oregon
June 24-July 4, Alaska
July 4-July 14, Austin, Texas
Aug 3-Sep 4, Japan

If you happen to be in any one of these places at these times, let me know. :)

Last year I took a Japanese language class on Saturday mornings. My goals were: (1) learn Japanese (2) make some friends. After the class finished, I couldn't say that I had really succeeded at either goal. The teacher was nice, but not very effective and had developed a technique to stretch out the smallest amount of material to fill the longest amount of time. The other students in the class were friendly, but I never really "clicked" with any of them.

The same class class started again last week and the same teacher has been leaving me messages to remind me to enroll. I'm in a bit of a dilemma about what to do. I don't have any reason to believe the class will be any better than last time and I think it will be mostly the same students. I'm sure that if I spend four hours every weekend studying on my own I'll learn more Japanese than if I went to class. On the other hand, it's not like I'm really that busy, the class isn't that expensive and maybe there will be more interesting students. Also, will I really study Japanese on my own without a class....