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BrazilGAF |OT| of Samba, Carnaval... and letting GAF have a sample of it all!

Unai

Member
I see.

I live in a city 150 km away from Brasilia. I sure hope I don't need to go there during the WC, specially in days they are playing in Mané Garrincha. I work in a company there but I'm on vacation this month.

To be honest I'm looking forward to E3 more than the WC.
 

Ezalc

Member
Curitiba is going to be a pain in the ass during this time. Lucky for me classes end right before it really starts and I'm currently not working. So I won't have to deal with traffic and etc so much, I hope anyway. But I'm betting things are going to be awful.
 

maouvin

Member
I tried to avoid traveling during the WC, but I'll need to go from Curitiba to Balneario Camboriu on the first weekend of the event (14-15) as it's my lass' birthday.
The first game here is on the 16th, but I fully expect to spent quite some time on the bus travels on those days.
After that I shall be fine since I work 5 min from home by foot and will only travel back to SC after the WC ends.
 

Zeroth

Member
I won't have any problems with the World Cup since I walk to my classes, though I'm more concerned with movements that stop all city.
 

Platy

Member
Less than a week left how do you guys feel?

Anyone on GAF living where the chaos will take place?

I will try to take the day off work .... grab lots of precautions like food and stuffs like that and then ..... watch all the e3 conferences happy at home =3



oh you mean the world cup ?

...maybe I shall get some time off anyway when brazil plays =P
 

maouvin

Member
...maybe I shall get some time off anyway when brazil plays =P

I love how I'll be kicked home from work at 12:00~12:30 when the games all start at 16~17h.
I tried to figure out why so earl-aye, but I quickly gave up and just dealt with it.
 

Zeroth

Member
I love how I'll be kicked home from work at 12:00~12:30 when the games all start at 16~17h.
I tried to figure out why so earl-aye, but I quickly gave up and just dealt with it.

All my classes after noon will be cancelled too (though it doesn't affect me since I only have classes during the morning), so I assume it's a general time so that stuff like traffic isn't affected during the games.
 

bishopp35

Member
I'm on E3 vacation (stole UnaiGamer excellent idea) so the Cup won't affect me much. Here in Brasilia the local Government giving day offs whenever Brazil plays or when we have games in the city.
 
I live in Niterói and study in Rio de Janeiro. So, every day that is Brazil is playing or there is a game on Maracanã is a holiday for us.
 

red13th

Member
I live in São Paulo, eastern part of town (thankfully not close to Itaquerão though) and work in Itaquá. To go to work I must take the road that leads to GRU airport (Ayrton Senna) every day... it's going to suck.
 
What the fuck is this "Mutt Complex" you Brazilians speak of? Can someone explain it thoroughly please rather than linking to a page in Portuguese?
 

Tiu Neo

Member
What the fuck is this "Mutt Complex" you Brazilians speak of? Can someone explain it thoroughly please rather than linking to a page in Portuguese?

In simple terms: Brazilians have big prejudice against Brazil :p Something like "If anything is Brazilian, it's worst than anything from the rest of the world". This applies for products, politics, people, culture and anything Brazilian, in general. :p (One of the few things this doesn't apply to, most of the times, is soccer/football).
 
What the fuck is this "Mutt Complex" you Brazilians speak of? Can someone explain it thoroughly please rather than linking to a page in Portuguese?

We think everything outside Brazil is better. Simply when we compare ourselves to other countries we think we are worse every time.
 

DD

Member
What the fuck is this "Mutt Complex" you Brazilians speak of? Can someone explain it thoroughly please rather than linking to a page in Portuguese?

It's basically this:

The inferiority complex, the mutt complex to which Nelson Rodrigues referred so often, is cultivated by our elites, those who get the fattest slices of the Gross National Product, the best opportunities for work and education, those whose job it is to converse with other countries - our politicians, diplomats, industrialists, bankers, artists, intellectuals...These, who live in contact with the "outside world” blush with shame every time that they are identified as Brazilians and are treated like second-class citizens. These folks - in principle the only ones exempt from the stain of the original sin of poverty - feel the most anguish when they perceive that this does not guarantee them an automatic pass to enter the Paradise of the First World.

"It's something from the First World!" The members of our mongrel elite say this with such pleasure, such envy, such tantalizing torture every time they see something clean, nice, organized, decent, fair, well-made, something that is as it should be. And with such despair they see that they are civilized enough to know what is "good,” but not civilized enough to share fully in it - because they bear in their genes a DNA which is mulato, mestizo, third-world.

Perhaps this explains the death wish which possesses this elite, an elite which is ready to sink Brazil even if it has to drown together.
http://www.brazilmax.com/columnist.cfm/idcolumn/80
 
I wonder what that is due to? Maybe it's because looking at Brasil as a whole it should be a major G8 country, yet it isn't due to corruption and a multitude of other factors.
 

Tiu Neo

Member
I wonder what that is due to? Maybe it's because looking at Brasil as a whole it should be a major G8 country, yet it isn't due to corruption and a multitude of other factors.

There are a lot of factors to that, but what you said is a pretty big reason. A big problem is that the Brazilian culture, in general, doesn't favor quality or a work well done, but more a way to do things the easy way, even if it is not a very honest way to do that.

Of course, that's not exclusive to Brazil, but it is a bit stronger here than on other places I visited. Not everyone is like that, but you ARE kinda "trained" since you are younger to act that way, because a lot of people here act that way and that's the way to "get things done" here.

Nowdays, I see some people are forcing themselves to not act that way, and I think that's a good start.
 

DD

Member
There are a lot of factors to that, but what you said is a pretty big reason. A big problem is that the Brazilian culture, in general, doesn't favor quality or a work well done, but more a way to do things the easy way, even if it is not a very honest way to do that.

Of course, that's not exclusive to Brazil, but it is a bit stronger here than on other places I visited. Not everyone is like that, but you ARE kinda "trained" since you are younger to act that way, because a lot of people here act that way and that's the way to "get things done" here.

Nowdays, I see some people are forcing themselves to not act that way, and I think that's a good start.

It goes deeper than that. The answer is in the begining of our history. In the United States, for example, the brits went there to build a new home, while in Brazil the portuguese came to explore. Nobody wanted to live here in the beggining, but they needed people here. So they sent the worst kind of people, took people out of jail, and sent them to Brazil. The first explorers literally explored this land and the natives, the indians. They tryed to make them slaves, to convert them to the Catholicism, make them civilized and tried to force 'em to work. That didn't worked out, so they started to import slaves from Africa. This place existed only to provide things for Europe. Everything that was good (gold, fine wood, etc.) was sent to Europe, and Europe brought more slaves, more repression and more criminals.

This country only became important for Portugal when Napoleon pushed his troups against them. So the Imperial Court moved to Brazil. After the abolishing of slavery, the black people were freed, but became marginalized (and that's why until today the black people is the biggest slice of the poorer classes. The same phenomenon happened in the US. The Black people never had a chance). Rich farmers needed new workforce, and that's when the germans, italians, japanese and other people came. They were all poor too, and wanted to start a new life in a distant place. Life was har for them too.

EDIT: there's even an expression called "santo do pau oco", which means "hollow wood saint" to depict a person that looks like a saint, but it's corrupt inside. In the past, people used to hide gold inside wooden statues of saints to avoid paying the abusive taxes imposed by the portuguese crown. Even today our taxes are absurdly high, and the system works to help the rich to get richer, while the poor... well, you know...

So basically this country and it's people grew with a sense of being explored, scammed, every man for himself, you gotta do what you can to survive, and that this place is a shithole, that life in other places is better. This is where comes the "mutt complex" we speak about. Is a sense of shame and mutual though that everything is better in other places.
 
Very interesting. However there is one bone for me to pick with your argument.
It goes deeper than that. The answer is in the begining of our history. In the United States, for example, the brits went there to build a new home, while in Brazil the portuguese came to explore. Nobody wanted to live here in the beggining, but they needed people here. So they sent the worst kind of people, took people out of jail, and sent them to Brazil.

The problem with this is that the same thing happened to Australia yet it contains the highest quality of life amongst almost anywhere in the world.

Anyway I find it odd that Brazilians are embarrassed by their country. I think it's fascinating. I really want to visit their one day. As an American it seems like one of the few countries with history, culture, and diversity that matches my own.
 

mantidor

Member
The problem with this is that the same thing happened to Australia yet it contains the highest quality of life amongst almost anywhere in the world.

Australia's colonization didn't have much slave trade, did it? Also I always thought the continent was mostly empty except for some small tribes.

America is different, people, even in the continent itself, really underestimate just how big were the native empires, and how many africans were brought as slaves. The history here is a lot more violent and terrifying. The kind of history that has repercusions even now, 500 years later. Australia on the other hand is basically an England outpost, the queen is in their bills, the british flag in their flag :p
 

Kansoku

Member
Anyway I find it odd that Brazilians are embarrassed by their country. I think it's fascinating. I really want to visit their one day. As an American it seems like one of the few countries with history, culture, and diversity that matches my own.

For me, Brazil is a great place for tourism, especially because there are many places full with untouched nature that are beautiful. The problem is actually living here.
 
What was Brasil like under that dictatorship? Was the country really some super free market banana republic?

Australia's colonization didn't have much slave trade, did it? Also I always thought the continent was mostly empty except for some small tribes.

America is different, people, even in the continent itself, really underestimate just how big were the native empires, and how many africans were brought as slaves. The history here is a lot more violent and terrifying. The kind of history that has repercusions even now, 500 years later. Australia on the other hand is basically an England outpost, the queen is in their bills, the british flag in their flag :p
I was referring to is "the white people here are very lazy and apathetic because their ancestors were prisoners.

For me, Brazil is a great place for tourism, especially because there are many places full with untouched nature that are beautiful. The problem is actually living here.
What's wrong with living in Brasil? It can't be as bad as Venezuela (pretty much the only Latin American country where I am familiar with daily life).
 

Platy

Member
Very interesting. However there is one bone for me to pick with your argument.

The problem with this is that the same thing happened to Australia yet it contains the highest quality of life amongst almost anywhere in the world.

We have a ridiculously large country with incredibly diverse changes in climate, population density and acessibility ....

We have like the highest rate of helicopters per person in São Paulo while there are some cities in the north living in borderline medieval states =/

The money is REALLY badly distributed.
 

Kansoku

Member
What's wrong with living in Brasil? It can't be as bad as Venezuela (pretty much the only Latin American country where I am familiar with daily life).

It's not, but the political situation is different, so there's that. We have overall low income with moderately high life cost, and there's the culture of taking advantage of people everywhere you go. Education is mostly bad, or VERY expensive for good quality (Usually one month in a good private school costs more (50% to 100% more) than the minimum wage). Public health-care is AWFUL, there is shortage of material and shortage of doctors (and the ones that are there have to work absurd amount of hours so that people won't die in the hospitals floor, because there is no one else to see them). We pay a LOT of taxes and don't get almost ANY return for it since the government is corrupt (See the world cup). I don't think I need to mention the amount of poverty, and the favelas. And some other minor stuff like amount of trash in the streets, the amount of cars on the streets (since public transportation is poorly taken care of, people want cars instead) making transit awful, etc.

It's not the worst place in the world, but it's really annoying that we are in this situation since Brazil should be close to a developed country given it's importance in South America..
 

Platy

Member
Also, should be noticed that the media, SPECIALY Globo paints a VERY poor vision of the country to the brazilians


[edit] yeah ... the "one drop" rule don't exist here ..... it is a mix of self identification with "you have to be this black" =P

Which is kinda ironic, that even a sunless pale person like me would totaly be read as a "mexican" AT BEST if I go to the USA and open my mouth ...[/edit]
 
It's the same reason few identify as "white".

As those DNA tests showed at the end, latinamericans can be only certain of one thing, we aren't 100% anything.
Nearly half of Brazilians identify as white. But I agree that latin americans don't like white or black. You can have Cameron Diaz and Zoe Salada identify as "hispanic" and nobody would bat an eye.
 

Unai

Member
My plan of getting vacation during E3 failed miserably.

I'm not working and neither is my internet connection. Damn it!
 

Zeroth

Member
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