June 21, 2013

  • Brazil

    My last entry was three months ago. I've got what they call "writer's block" and it's something that I've been struggling with for several years. It's tough now because I'm in the process of gathering ideas for a book that I'll eventually be writing and the ideas are all in my head but when I write it all down on paper, I can't do it. Sometimes I just write a couple pages and I end up throwing it away because I can't find a good pace to bring all my ideas out into a book. Writing a book is really fucking complicated and it's something that helps you appreciate a good book or author because it's not as easy as it looks. I can't imagine what J.K. Rowling was doing as she wrote the books because to put everything together into something beautiful like that is a concept that I may never be able to grasp. Of course, I don't plan on writing several books in a series but I plan on writing one really powerful book and seeing where it takes me. However, it's been difficult because, like previously mentioned, I've been suffering with immense writer's block. With a dash of laziness. But you know...the show must go on, and I'm going to provide a little update about what's been going on the past several months since I wrote a entry last semester.

    I'm glad the last entry was short and sweet because it helped me understand kind of how I felt at the time and what was going on; of course, it had everything to do with school. I was really afraid that I was going to fail Computer Science because it was one of the classes that I didn't quite understand. A lot of the people in that class had prior experience in different programming so I really felt out of place. I guess that Computer Science is something that you have to enjoy so much that you're willing to experiment outside of class but I really was interested in seeing what it was all about. It was much different than I anticipated but I did the best I could in that class and landed a C. When I found out, I didn't really give a crap because I expected worse. The thing is that I hardly even studied for the exam because I had...something lined up but it turns out that my plan went absolutely horrible. Some of the multiple choice I guessed, and I left some of the short answer blank. I thought I was doomed but it turns out that I wasn't so bad off.

    I was really happy that the semester ended but kind of scared because I've had a lot to worry about. My financial aid is about to get cut off because I'm about to reach the maximum hours...which is funny because I don't even have an Associate's degree. As we all know, I've been in a really fucked up situation with school and it's something that I'm slowly dealing with because it's all just too much for me to grasp. The thing about me is that if I'm stressed about something, I give up...but if someone else is stressed, they might step outside and smoke a cigarette. I've been too overwhelmed and my instant reaction is to duck and cover, but that's mostly because I have no idea what the hell I'm doing. So I've been major procrastinating on really important stuff, and you can bet your ass that it's going to eventually bite me and there's not a damn thing I can do about it.

    I've probably mentioned that on May 16th, I was supposed to go to Brazil with my girlfriend...if not, now you know. Um...yeah...I had pretty much everything planned out but I was starting to run into some complications with work.

    I didn't think there was going to be a problem because I had a week vacation and two personal days. I want to say that my dad told me that I could use my week vacation and personal days spread out so that I could take unpaid vacation in addition to prevent myself from getting knocked out of the system. For instance...I could use my paid vacation in the middle, use my personal days, and come back June with a job. It turns out that my store manager wouldn't allow that because according to her, the company policy has to abide by union regulations as well as their own. I don't particularly like my store manager; she's what my co-worker refers to as a "devious bitch." She called me into her room for a little talk and she started going on about favoritism, un-fairness, etc. Basically, she couldn't approve of that long of vacation because corporate wouldn't like it. She originally told me that I needed to request off at by sending a piece of paper into corporate and I went all out on that paper: I provided all my documentation, reasoning, nice letter, etc. Denied. To make matters worse is that I went a couple weeks without a response because someone responsible for sending those papers in didn't get around to it, so I didn't find out that I got denied till about a week before I was planning on going to Brazil.

    Of course, they told me that I didn't have to spend all month there, that I could pay the penalty for coming back early but this has been something that I've been planning for a while. No matter what, I was going to Brazil because it was an opportunity of a lifetime. I needed to meet her mom, and I needed to be there for my girlfriend for whatever she was going to go through. The last time she went to Brazil, her face got bit by a dog and it left a scar near her mouth. I wasn't gonna let that happen again. I wasn't gonna be there for a couple weeks and somehow find a way to travel back to the airport without knowing ANY portugese and spend tons of money to change my plane ticket to an earlier date just to keep my almost minimum wage job. 

    Ultimately, I was given two options: get terminated, or quit. If I didn't send in my two weeks notice, I'd eventually get terminated because I have to work a certain amount of hours per week. After a couple weeks or so, I get kicked out of the system and I pretty much don't get to re-apply because it wasn't on good-standing. But the benefit to it is that I get unemployment benefits or something along those lines. However, if I quit...I don't get unemployment benefits, but I get a chance to re-apply due to quitting on good standing. At the end of the day, I really could've disappointed my girlfriend by going back to America early (somehow), but I really dislike Kroger. I dislike working in grocery stores in general because I've been working in them since I was 18 years old and I'm going nowhere with my life. I need to move up, you know? I can't do that as a meat department associate. So I guess one of the main reasons why I quit was because I really wanted to quit, and this was a good opportunity to come up with an excuse. Well...that's partially true. Still...I hate working there. I hate pretending that I like working there because I really don't. So I sent in my two week's notice and started packing up for Brazil without giving a fuck.

    Prior to leaving for Brazil, we bought a lot of clothes. It's ridiculous how much clothes I bought; I brought way too many boxers but not near enough socks. I probably would've been okay with two pairs of jeans but brought four just in case. That luggage was just around the weight limit (of 70 pounds).

    As you can imagine, I had a lot to be nervous about; after all, I was heading towards a country where I didn't speak their primary language AT ALL, I wanted to make a good impression on her mom, and I was gonna come back to a shitstorm. I didn't know what to expect but it's something that had to be done. I was really excited about the flight because I've never been in a flight for more than a couple hours. Our flight was going to be 8 hours and it was over-night so I didn't know what to expect on how well I was going to sleep. I thought I was going to sleep pretty good but it turns out that sleeping in an airplane is fucking miserable. It's like trying to sleep on a tile floor; it's uncomfortable and no matter how tired you get, you will never get close to falling asleep. I remember that I wore my Walking Dead t-shirt because a TSA employee told one of his employees about my shirt and talked to me for a second about it while I was going through security. I think I also wore shorts but I can't remember.

    After we reached Brazil, we got picked up by her mom's current boyfriend. Of course, he couldn't speak much English so I spent most of my time looking out the window and noticing the world around me being so different than what I'm used to instead of listening to my girlfriend talk to her mom's boyfriend in Portuguese. The first things I noticed was the amount of motorcycles on the road compared to America. It seems like the motorcycles outnumbered other vehicles 4:1 because there were motorcycles all over the place. The motorcycles usually weaved through traffic and disobeying speed laws. Also, most of the cars were manual transmission. I saw a ton of old school beetles and to this day I'm not exactly sure why the old ones are popular.

    It was kind of scary at first because we were supposedly in a really bad city, and there's nothing better than a Caucasian tourist carrying a big ass travel sized luggage and 500 bucks in his pocket. That was just a disaster waiting to happen. Prior to going to Brazil, Kathleen told me what to do and what not to do in bad cities like that, so we ended up getting on the bus without a problem. I did my best to look like everyone else, and I'm just glad that I had my girlfriend to do the talking; otherwise, I would've been a lost puppy.

    The buses were really nice. Of course it was about a 25 dollar bus ride, but it was considered an "executive" bus because it had air conditioning and all that stuff; Kathleen and I sat in the back next to the bathroom which was a pretty dumb idea. Every time the door would open it would smell like straight up ass. When we stopped by a food place, I got a can of Coke and it tasted distinctively different than American coke. My girlfriend told me a while back that their Coke was made with "real sugar" and all that stuff so I anticipated it to be different but not that different. It took me about 3 Cokes for me to get used to the taste; even still, there's been some Cokes that I thoroughly enjoyed, and some Cokes I didn't enjoy but drank it anyway because I knew I was addicted. I also saw model cars there at the shop but some were over 150 dollars. A lot of shit is imported there so I eventually realized why everything was so much more expensive and made me regret not packing an extra suitcase with all kinds of shit in it. If I really wanted to, I could've doubled (maybe even tripled) my money but I was ignorant.

    When we got to her mom's house 5 hours later, I found out that the apartments are usually surrounded by electric fences. I'm all about that security so I thought it was a pretty awesome thing. Also, the place didn't look that good but I didn't want to say anything to my girlfriend because I thought that it'd upset her. As it turns out, that's kind of the point. The city wants to build crappy looking exteriors because they don't want thieves knowing the nice apartments. The apartments look really good on the inside and a pretty good amount of space.

    For the month, I'm gonna pretty much summarize what all happened because I'm starting to get tired and this entry is entirely too long.

    Going to Brazil was nothing like I expected. We spent a lot of our time in the apartment reading books, watching movies, eating, etc rather than venturing out and seeing Brazil. Brazil is a huge place so it's not like I can just go to the beach without spending 25 dollars and 5 hours on a bus ticket. Everything that I wanted to do was at least an hour away, but we've done a couple of things. Her mom's best friend had barbeques every now and then; the meat that they used was the cow hump. It contains a lot of fat, but it's a meat that they usually have. I've never had cow hump before and I was excited because I like trying different kinds of meat and I've been used to strip steaks, ribeyes, filet mignon, etc. We don't really have the cow hump at grocery stores like Kroger. I also spent a lot of time drinking tons of Coke because there was a lot of awkward moments. It's not fun listening to a conversation and not being able to respond because you don't know what the hell they're talking about. So it's like you just sit there looking at someone without saying a word. No matter how hard I tried, I still couldn't understand what they were saying even though Portuguese is like the "drunk version of Spanish."

    Despite soccer being the most played sport in Brazil, I only got the chance to play twice with a group of people and it was fun as hell. The only problem was that I was on the team that had to take my shirt off and I thought it was extremely awkward that I was the only dude who was not only fat but hairy as fuck. Also, there was a girl who was my defense who didn't understand a God damn word of English so she was probably feeling just as awkward as I was. I was the goalie for a team and apparently I was really good.  My girlfriend's cousin told me that they thought I was a very brave goalie because I ran in front of the ball to pick it up and someone kicked that ball into my face. I got a bloody nose from it and didn't even know till later. I was more concerned about my contact falling out because I can get over a nose bleed but can't get over losing a clear contact in dirt.

    We also celebrated a couple birthday parties as well as went to a couple of weddings. On both occasions, bad things happen and I guess it's because I anticipate bad things to happen when alcohol is involved around me and I get uptight about it. The first occasion I ended up having to drive a manual transmission and I was already pretty fucking pissed off about something. I didn't know how to drive manual and I was scared as shit because I didn't know the road signs one bit. The second time, my girlfriend and I got into another argument and it took a while for us to be able to sit down and eat something. What ended up happening was that we had a nice long conversation. We're okay now but my mom didn't like that. My girlfriend's mom is usually on my side, and she doesn't like it one bit. We came to a compromise, and now I know how I can prevent arguments from happening...it's just really difficult to do. Also, it was disappointing that I didn't get the chance to see the night sky without a lot of clouds because it's supposedly really nice where we were (the country side). We were there for about a week and it was cloudy until like..the day after we left. So I never got the chance to see a REAL nice sky; I saw a nice sky a couple times, but it wasn't totally dark and I didn't see everything. But it was nice.

    The farm was cool though; a lot of land, hummingbirds flying around, dogs running around, fruit trees all over the place, etc. I found out that I like Mishitika...which is a type of fruit, supposedly family of the tangerine, grown in Brazil. I really enjoyed that fruit that I actually brought back some of the seeds to try and plant them.

    We spent a lot of time looking for gifts and shit like that. I found Coca-cola glasses for my collection along with some other cool stuff to fill up in my collection cabinet so I'm very pleased with the things I've purchased. I even came back with 115+ dollars so I didn't spend all my money.

    We didn't go to the beach or waterfall, but I got to spend time with her family and that's pretty much what I was hoping for. I'm sure I could go into more depth about Brazil but it's time for me to go to sleep.

    When I came back to Georgia, my dad thought that I still had a job with Kroger; a part of me was hoping that I could get back in the game and start making a little bit of money again, but another part of me was hoping that I was off the schedule because I really needed incentive to look for jobs elsewhere. I really don't want to go back to Kroger despite how long I've been there. I need to move up in the world, and Kroger isn't that opportunity. Yesterday I had to drop something off at the UPS store (my ex-kindle that I thought was broken), and I went to talk to a Kroger employee about my potential return and she said that I'd just need the store manager's approval and I'm pretty much good to go. I told her that I'm not ready to go back to Kroger because I'm hoping to find something better. My sister is gonna try and hook me up tomorrow, and I'm also going to be sending more resumes into different places with desk jobs. If I had a desk job...that'd be amazing. I'd rather make minimum wage sitting on my fat ass than standing up all day. Working in the meat department is hard work...you ever try cutting a 50 pound Ribeye roast into 1 inch slices with a dull knife? That shit wears you out.

    But that's enough of that. I'm tired, so it's bed time. Let's just hope that everything works out soon because I need a miracle.