Back on line

I’m BAAACKKK!    

Thanks to my brilliant computer booster friend (with a degree in computer engineering) my laptop was stripped down to the bone and then reconfigured with brighter and shinier guts.  All seems well, although she has warned me to move on buying a new computer.

But for now I will taunt the computer gods and move forward with what I have. (But I will begin my shopping.  Any tips on good brands and must have guts are welcome…  I am ignorant beyond how to type and check my email.

Over the past three years I have been frustrated by how browsers know that I am in Brazil so they are forever converting things to Portuguese.  I want my Google results in English, thank you very much.  And when I search YouTube I want English language results, not Brazilian/Portuguese.  But the computer has tried hundreds of time to be “helpful” and convert things on its own.

Not to mention that Windows really, really wants me to use Bing and not Google.  (You kids stop fighting. Don’t make me pull this car over.)

Now with my new Windows software – it’s all Portuguese, until I convert it myself.

Oh well Jim – you do live in Brazil after all.  Time to step up my language game.

Now it’s on to catch up with lost time on the blog…

Living in the quiet zone

OK, so maybe my world is not all that quiet, per se, but I don’t really engage with the ambient noise around me. I do not “overhear” others’ conversations. You could say I’m living in my own private Idaho.

Since I’m not quite there yet with the language, having people chatting near me on the bus is not really a distraction. Although if someone is using their outside voice while on a cell phone I get annoyed all the same.

I don’t listen in while the person in front of me chats with the grocery store checkout worker. I rarely have to engage (beyond a sympathetic smile) in the frustration expressed by others in a slow bank line. And I can always plead ignorance when a party conversation turns boring and I start to drift. 

I am grateful for this reality on days like today when the television is chatting endlessly about very provocative news events.  It all passes me by, unless I choose to engage.

I’ve really had to get comfortable with the sound of my own inner voice. I am with whom I converse most. When not ruminating on my own I usually have a pair of ear buds in my ears and am listening to an American liberal news podcast of some sort.

I’m pretty much on my own.

Sure I could listen to Portuguese lesson podcasts, or carry my Portuguese dictionary and try to decipher what is going on around me. Been there. Done that. Exhausted.

No thanks – I enjoy my own company, and I enjoy not having to be a part of (if only clandestinely) every conversation around me.

There are definitely days when I overhear a conversation and think – “Wait, I understood that.” But then I usually turn up my iPod.

Brazilian Blogs and others I follow

I’ve been listed as a favorite blog by another blogger (thanks Rachel) and the request is that I now list ten blogs which I find particularly entertaining, useful, beautiful, politically satisfying, etc. This post will be a quick tour through my online blog community world.

Dare I admit that I spend about the first 2 hours of my day flipping through a battery of blogs I keep and eye on. Some for the gossip, some to stay current with the buzz on LGBT political wires, several to keep up with my expat blogger friends mostly in Brazil, a couple local blogs to stay current with Rio and Niterói goings on and one back in the Bay Area while we wait for Brooke and Raph to have their baby (she’s at the hospital as I type!)

Here’s where I might visit on any given morning:

1) Keeping up with the expats, their joys, discoveries, gripes and growing children I visit: Adventures of A Gringa In Brazil, Blood Pearls, Corin in Exile, Danielle in Brazil, Expat American Living in Brazil, Eyes on Brazil, Flowers and More, Living on the Road Less Traveled, Musings on the Move, O Mangue, Our Crazy Happy Life, Paper Plains, Post Cards from Brazil, Rachel’s Rantings in Rio, The Salty Cod, The Tao of Me – among others

2) For Brazilian cultural insights, current pop culture/fashion, musical celebrations and cooking/cocktail discoveries I visit: Brazil Phenomenon, Cachaçagora, Caipirinha Appreciation Society (music), Deep Brazil, Life in Rocinha, Flavors of Brazil, Made in Brazil, Murder is Everywhere (Monday posts by L. Gage), Nossa! Brazilian Music and Culture, rio etc., and The Good Blood – among others.

3) For my daily dose of LGBT news and progressive politics back in the states I visit: Crooks and Liars, Pam’s House Blend, Planet Money, The Conscience of a Liberal, The Huffington Post, The Rachel Maddow Blog, Towleroad, and Truthdig – among others.

4) Living locally requires keeping my ear to the rail. For this I check here: Blog de Niterói, The Rio Times (not a blog, but I go there), plus various newspaper websites and each month I check out Rio’s official guide. If you know of cool blogs (can be in Portuguese as well) please let me know.

5) Then for my daily dose of Portuguese language instruction I check out: English this Way (for a reverse lesson), Portuguese Blog, Sonia Portuguese Word of the Week, StreetSmartBrazil Blog – among others.

Yikes – that’s a few more than ten blogs… but if anyone asks in the future I can just point them back to this post.

As you know the internet is a big place – by all means please remind of the blogs I forgot and comment on blogs you enjoy or websites that I might find interesting to visit. Most mornings I do not have to race off to work, so if I need to spend 3 hours online… so be it.