December 2011

I admit I’m probably one of the biggest procrastinators out there.  I have a bunch of new projects on my plate that I know will make me plenty of money but I’m doing everything I can to avoid starting them.

However, with time, I realized that I was only procrastinating starting a project, the procrastination does not apply to working or finishing the project.  

Typically, the hardest part of getting things done is the initial part — getting over the initial friction — no matter how minuscule it can be.  After the initial hurdle your brain switches to work mode and each incremental work unit markedly decreases in effort.

Here’s some of the principles that work for me from starting a brand new project to finishing a never-ending one.

Put the major ideas in writing
I begin by writing down an outline of the major projects that need to be done in Google Docs.  Instead of just keeping a faint idea in your head, writing things down re-enforces you to mentally commit.

For instance, after some brainstorming I have a list of ten ideas that are worth perusing.
Every time I login to Google Docs (where I do all my writing), these projects are usually the first thing I see and so it’s hard to ignore them at or away from the computer.

Another important benefit is that even while I’m away from the computer, seeing those projects written down forces my subconscious to think about even while I’m doing completely unrelated things. 

Just make sure these are major projects that you know you must do.  Do not write down some wishy-washy ideas that you are not sure about.  If you’re uncertain about something you will be less likely to do it regardless if you write it down or not.

Start little by little
The important thing here is to start working on something and get over that initial hurdle.  
It can be as little as writing a rough outline of a spec document.  Maybe some rough sketches of that iPhone game you want to do.  Perhaps a rough draft, let’s say with 5 bullet points, of that information e-book you’ve been thinking of doing.

Every time I have an idea, I open Google Docs and write it down regardless what I’m doing at that time.  It can be a new idea or an addendum to something I was already doing. 

Keep adding those layers and over time you suddenly realize you have a complete spec for a project with all the details fleshed out.  

Work in small chunks interlaced with breaks
I typically work in small (30-60) minute chunks which I found greatly reinforces my focus on the task at hand.

For instance this blog post you’re reading now was spread over about five non-consecutive days.  In the meantime I was working on other things, but slowly and surely finished each task.

Unless I have a strict deadline (which is rare) for a specific project, I like to work in layers.  Some nights I feel extra creative and go on for few hours; other nights I’m tired and would rather pass out.

After each task, it’s important to take a break.  Get up and walk around the room.  Make tea.  Go for a run or a walk.  Run a couple of errands.

Physically doing something “resets” your brain and makes it easier to refocus on the task at a later time.  It’s also healthier than sitting in your chair all day.

Make consistent progress daily
Before the end of the day, I like to go over the all the progress and write it down. 

For instance, If I was working on a book I’d write down the total word count at the end of the every day. 

This serves two important purposes.  First, this forces me to make some progress during the day regardless of how minor it can be.  It’s encouraging to see the word count go up everyday.  Secondly, and most importantly, it gives me a realistic view on how long something took to finish.

Humans usually underestimate how long something will take.  I have a project that I’ve recently finished.  Once I started tracking it, I realized that it took me about two weeks from start to finish while initially thinking it’ll only take me five days.  Now, armed with this information I know that I would need two weeks full time to finish a project with similar complexity.  If I have a bunch of things on my plate, I might hire someone do it for me and pay them accordingly.

Finish It
I don’t care if you religiously apply every one of those principles, you still have to actually finish the damn thing.

First, realize that it can never be perfect.  Realize what your notion of version 1.0 would be and accept its limitations. 

Set a specific date in the future that should give you enough buffer time to finish and aim for that date. 

Since I love to travel, I might book a weekend trip somewhere few weeks in advance thus forcing me to finish the project beforehand. The trip becomes my reward for giving my 200% and getting the thing out the door.  It won’t be much fun being somewhere exotic but feeling guilty of not being done with something and knowing it’ll be waiting for you when you get back, now would it?

Eliminate wasteful activities
I won’t talk much about completely eliminating time wasting activities such as mindless surfing, Facebook, Twitter, etc, since that’s majorly a personal choice.  Personally I have no problem eliminating them if I consider them to be an obstruction to my goals.  On the other hand, if you’re hopelessly addicted and find yourself refreshing the news feed every minute, then maybe it’s time you make a pact with yourself.  One example would be that you cannot use Facebook at least until you reach an important milestone of your project. 

Regardless of which one these (or all) points you’ll find useful to implement, the bottom line is that action is procrastination’s worst enemy, so the sooner you make that first step — no matter how small it maybe — the sooner you can turn that worthless idea on paper into a finished, polished money-making product

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‘The world is run by one million evil men, ten million stupid men, and a hundred million cowards,’ Abdul Ghani pronounced in his best Oxford English accent, licking the sweet honey cake from his short, thick fingers. ‘The evil men are the power–the rich men, and the politicians, and the fanatics of religion–whose decisions rule the world, and set it on its course of greed and destruction.’

‘There are only one million of them, the truly evil men, in the whole world. The very rich and the very powerful, whose decisions really count–they only number one million. The stupid men, who number ten million, are the soldiers and policemen who enforce the rule of the evil men. They are the standing armies of twelve key countries, and the police forces of those and twenty more. In total, there are only ten million of them with any real power or consequence. They are often brave, I’m sure, but they are stupid, too, because they give their lives for governments and causes that use their flesh and blood as mere chess pieces. Those governments always betray them or let them down or abandon them, in the long run. Nations neglect no men more shamefully than the heroes of their wars.’

‘And the hundred million cowards,’ Abdul Ghani continued, pinching the handle of the teacup between his plump fingers, ‘they are the bureaucrats and paper shufflers and pen-pushers who permit the rule of the evil men, and look the other way. They are the head of this department, and the secretary of that committee, and the president of the other association. They are managers, and officials, and mayors, and officers of the court. They always defend themselves by saying that they are just following orders, or just doing their job, and it’s nothing personal, and if they don’t do it, someone else surely will. They are the hundred million cowards who know what is going on, but say nothing, while they sign the paper that puts one man before a firing squad, or condemns one million men to the slower death of a famine.’

‘So, that’s it,’ he concluded. ‘The world is run by one million evil men, ten million stupid men, and a hundred million cowards. The rest of us, all six billion of us, do pretty much what we are told!’

‘This formula–the one million, the ten million, the hundred million–this is the real truth of all politics. Marx was wrong. It is not a question of classes, you see, because all the classes are in the hands of this tiny few. This set of numbers is the cause of empire and rebellion. This is the formula that has generated our civilizations for the last ten thousand years. This built the pyramids. This launched your Crusades. This put the world at war, and this formula has the power to impose the peace.’

One of my favorite quotes from Shantaram, and in general a good summary of how things really function in this world.

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Shantaram

Verdict:  strong recommendation

Shantaram is about an Australian guy, Lin, who escapes prison in his homeland and on his way to Germany, makes a stopover in India where he ends up spending ten years of his life.
In that timeframe, Lin achieves more than many of us do in their lifetimes.

He works at a Mumbai slums as a doctor tending to the poor and helpless.  He joins the Indian mafia to deal with drug and weapon smuggling.  Later on he befriends one of the major figures in India’s underworld, a smart and shrewd Afghani and goes to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets with the rest of the mujahideen.  Not bad for a complete outsider in a tight Indian culture.

While, the almost 1000-page book was an absolute page turner, I have to admit that many passages were just so on the extreme that made you wonder if what you’re reading actually happened or a figment of Lin’s wild imagination.

Nevertheless, it’s an amazing book of someone that actually lived life instead of sleepwalking through it.

“It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured…”

“Happiness is a myth, which was invented to make us buy things.”

“The size of our happiness is inversely proportional to the size of our house.”

“The biggest problem with corruption as a form of government, is that it works so well.”

“You can never tell what people have inside them, until you start taking it away”

Steve Jobs (Biography)

Verdict: recommended

I don’t read biographies often (in fact I don’t remember the last biography I read) but after reading this one, I think that will change. It doesn’t really matter whether you have a Mac or a PC, an Apple fanboy or a hater, you should still give respect where it’s due and recognize Steve’s accomplishments.

Steve Jobs is an interesting insight into Steve’s life from the time he was put up for a closed adoption by his biological parents to his death after long battle from cancer.

Steve was a truly emotional man.  One moment he was fully ecstatic and calling something, “insanely great” while the next second he was angry or even crying and calling something a “piece of shit”.

Despite being a bit less than 600 pages, the book is broken up in short series focusing on a certain part of Steve’s life from the iMac to the iPad.  It was written well and was a fast and engaging read.

“My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.”

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”

 

How to Break a Terrorist

Verdict: recommended

In many ways, the Second Iraq War really only began after it was invaded by American troops.  Thanks to a power vacuum, there was sporadic guerrilla activity, and even al-Queda was flourishing after their arch-nemesis, Saddam Hussein, was removed from power.  It was no longer a physical war characterized by tanks and airplanes, but a more intelligence gathering approach to find and flush out the insurgents and their armies of suicide bombers.

While the more cruel interrogation techniques (waterboarding, Abu Ghraib scandal, etc) are highly publicized, few know that it was mostly normal conversations, albeit with a psychological twist, with the prisoners that yielded real results such as the successful raid on Zarqawi’s (al Quada’s top leader) safe house.

It’s a faced paced read as the interrogators try to figure out what made the insurgents tick.  In fact, the book reads more like a psychological thriller than a war memoir.
This book will surely change the way you view insurgents and their ideologies.

Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

Verdict: recommended

Did you know that a women is far more likely to conceive through an affair rather than with her boyfriend or husband? Or that how most of a man’s sperm is actually created to battle other sperm? What about that a female is more likely to use the condom much less with a lover than her own partner and much more likely to conceive with her lover?

Reading this book is like taking the blue pill: rest assured, you will never think about sex the same.

It’s an easy and engaging read about human sexology written in a form of thirty three short stories about various sexual activities followed by a thorough explanation of why it happened the way it did.

“Initially, she can simply watch him in competition with other males. … But finally, the only real test a woman can set is whether a man can negotiate and overcome her own defenses. To test this, she has to resist first verbally, then physically. The stronger and more realistic her resistance, the better the test.”

"Less than 1% of sperm is capable of fertilizing an egg. The rest is warrior sperm, there to block any rival’s sperm."

“The shape of the penis is designed in such a way that, it can remove the semen of the rival from the vagina during intercourse. “

Killing Pablo

Verdict: recommended

I read this book because I wanted to understand Colombia in anticipation of my move earlier this year.  This book did not disappoint.

It was an interesting and a quick read about Pablo’s humble beginnings as a car thief in Medellin before slowly rising to the top of the drug cartel.

I found it interesting that Pablo always began a meeting by referring to his subordinates as “caballeros” (gentlemen in Spanish).  He was an extremely smart and capable man, and capturing him required the country’s full resources and more.

Each page felt like they were an inch closer to capture only to have him escape at the last minute.  I finished this medium-sized book in two sittings.

“I prefer to be in a grave in Colombia than in a jail cell in the United States.”

“Everyone has a price, the important thing is to find out what it is.”

“There are two hundred million idiots, manipulated by a million intelligent men.”

“All empires are created of blood and fire."

The Upgrade

Verdict: not recommended

Being somewhat of a flash-packer (backpacker with money) myself, I had high hopes for this book, which was recommended by a jet-setter friend who flies to a new destination every weekend and stays in expensive five star hotels.

Instead, I got a story about a binge drinking Englishman who first attempted to travel around US by train.  Most night outs usually ended up the same: after heavy drinking, the author barely remembered what happened and tried to retrace his steps back.  Instead of trying to weave an interesting plot from the same old storyline, the book seemed like it was repeating itself many times over.

Even the traveling was hard a bit hard to follow.  It started with traveling by train in US, followed by a few flights to California, only to again continue with traveling by train.  Then the author went to London for a bit and somehow ended up in Spain shortly after.

The traveling had no goal, no inspiration and was written in a sloppy style that one would expect to find in a blog instead of a well written book with an interesting plot.

Maybe it’s because I’m not English, don’t understand English humor, and not a heavy drinker, a lot of things in this book (actually most of it) seemed rather ridiculous, dumb, and as an Englishman would say, rubbish.

Pass.

 

 
To Travel Hopelessly

Verdict: buy it if you’re bored

Tales of an English teacher traveling the world teaching English, experiencing foreign lands and, occasionally trying to get laid.

Although I’ve never considered teaching English (a friend did offer it to me in Brazil), I can still relate to the author’s experiences and was nodding my head in agreement in certain situations.

His time in Russia was quite interesting.

I found the writing style a bit too informal and terse; something that’d you expect to see in a diary written by a teenage girl instead of an e-book.  However, I took a liking in the author’s humility and ego-less delivery to overlook the juvenile writing style.

It was a fun and enjoyable read, and for $2.99, I couldn’t have asked for more.

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It first happened in Copenhagen when I was meeting a young Lithuanian girl whom I originally got to know few days before.  We made plans to meet up near the train station at exactly eight o’clock.  As usual, I was running fifteen minutes late and didn’t think that was much of a big deal.  I knew I was late but didn’t mention it, instead opting to judge her mood first and go from there.  Of course she was upset to have waited there fifteen minutes and not being shy at all quickly confronted me.  I felt bad and assured her I’d try to make it on time next time.

Days before I was due to arrive in Prague, I made separate plans to meet up with several Czech girls to do some sightseeing and perhaps to grab a drink.  I was due to arrive Monday night, so we arranged to meet on Tuesday afternoon; while the other was free Thursday at 9pm.  Since I wasn’t even in Czech Republic at the time I made plans, I vaguely remembered having to do something on those dates but thanks to past experiences, knew the likelihood of us actually meeting up was small.  About an hour or two before each appointment, both girls confirmed if we were still on.  I ended meeting both of them at exactly the specified time.

When I was in Dubrovnik, I had a very interesting conversation with a Croatian girl who couldn’t have been over twenty-one years old.  I needed an opening so I spoke to her in Russian and asked her if she understood what I’d just say.

“Not all of it, but the languages are similar, so I can pick up a word every now and then,” she countered.

“Great, so Serbo-Croatian and Russian are similar?” I remembered Serbo-Croatian as the standard language on Couchsurfing.org website and didn’t realize the possible implications.

“No, it’s not Serbo-Croatian, it’s Croatian!”

“Oh, I didn’t realize the languages were that different, I thought they were quite similar”

“No, we’re different people with different traditions”

“So you guys still don’t get along with Serbs?”

“Why would we, they heavily bombed us, and wanted to takeover our lands.”

“What about the Russians, do you hate them also?” She obviously knew I was Russian

“Well, they supported the Serbs during the War, but we’re kinda neutral to them now”

“Come on, you were probably less than three years old, if you were even born when this happened!” I countered, waiting for her reaction.

“Yes, but my father remembers this very well.”

I was astonished.  Here, a random twenty-one (maybe twenty-four at the most) girl was telling me things that I only expected to hear from someone her father’s generation.  Not only did she know the whole story (even the Russian side of things), but she had a very strong opinion about the conflict herself.

Kiev is a gloomy place in late fall and winter.  People on the streets don’t smile and ignore eye contact at any cost.  The metro might as well be in a state of daily mourning; sporting exclusively black jackets and coats, the people stay quiet without any eye contact.  But make plans with a girl to do something, and she would show up on time and give you her undivided attention without looking at her phone every five minutes.  The guys are cold, but should you break through that and make friends with one, you’ve got a friend for life.  It helps to have real friends in this part of the world.  It can make a difference of finding your next job, or even getting out of a jam with the cops.

In Colombia, I couldn’t for the life of me create any kind of lasting connection with a guy or a girl, so I spent all my time hanging out with gringos.  Girls were spoiled and would cancel dates on a whim, so double-booking or triple-booking was the norm.

In Brazil, you learn the art of flaking.  It’s as tightly ingrained into life’s fabric as samba or coconut juice.  If someone says they’ll show up at 10pm, you can expect to see them at 11:30pm, or might as well head out yourself, they might be at the club anyway.  A typical ‘let’s meet 1pm on Posto 9’ means ‘I’ll be there anytime between 1pm and before the sun starts to set’.  Somehow even with the lack of commitments, things end up working out in Brazil because of the ease of meeting new people.

It was finally in Central and Eastern Europe that I started to see values I can appreciate.

Makes sense in many ways.  People are much less spoiled.  People aren’t as rich.  They actually have to work for a living.  I rarely saw people glued to their smart phones like you see on the streets of New York or Los Angeles.

Family traditions run supreme.  Families sit down together at dinnertime and discuss the day’s events.  It’s not unusual for children to live with their parents until marriage helping out with whatever is needed.

Wars helped to enforce what really mattered.  From Germany and eastward, countries were effectively trying to destroy each other for much of the last century and beyond.  Overtime people developed values and appreciation for what really matters.

When I flew from Italy to Croatia, I was beaming with excitement.  I was excited that I was leaving a laid back Latin commitment-less country and going to a more grounded Balkan country.  I had high expectation for a region that I wanted to explore for so long.  I would not be disappointed with the hospitality and straightforwardness of the locals.

My friend in LA complains that it’s impossible to find people to commit to anything.  People make arbitrary plans but rarely follow through.

Well, what do you expect from a place where people make a living of entertaining and of being someone they’re not (acting)?

Where it’s sunny all year long and people never really need to “suffer” to rain or less than 50F (10C) degree weather?

Where superficiality and plastic surgeries are as common as the $5 latte?

Who would think such conditions wouldn’t attract people that are “too free”?

I told him he’s crazy to think it should be any other way.  People get spoiled and adapt to their environment quickly, so if everyone around them doesn’t take commitments seriously, then soon they won’t either.

That Croatian girl I met doesn’t exist in America.  At least with her Croatian values intact.  If she ever did move, I’d give her a few years at most before she becomes a spoiled, robotic human completely disconnected with her the values of her parents or grandparents.  Instead of us actually having interesting human conversation, I’d probably see her glued to her iPhone 4S on a subway car in Manhattan.  She might tell you that she’s Croatian, but you’d have a hard time differentiating her from the run of the mill native-born American.

Last week, a girl who I used to know in California moved to New York for school.  Since I was back in the big apple, I asked her on Monday if she was free to grab a drink.  She agreed and we planned for Friday evening at ten.  Fifteen minutes to ten, I received a text saying that she couldn’t make it.  Already in my pajamas, I quickly glanced at the phone, and without ever replying, slowly put it back on the table fully relieved that I won’t miss another second of this interesting movie.

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I could write about how “enlightening” it is to travel through other countries, how the cultural immersion somehow “changed me” as a man for the better, how the people are “mysteriously” nicer and friendlier compared to America, or how being outside my comfort zone somehow changed me for the better and made me a stronger man, but I won’t.

Instead, here’s a dedication to all things that I hate about Latin America. 

Central America
The only words that come to mind when thinking back about my travels through this region: an authentically true third-world shit hole. Even looking back on my years of traveling, I have yet to find to find another place that rivals the region’s ability to showcase how bad things can get.

The big cities like Guatemala City and Tegucigalpa, the capitals of Guatemala and Honduras, respectively, are beyond seedy and dangerous and it’s best not wonder around after the sun sets.

Nicaragua is a bit better thanks to two decent towns, Leon and Granada, but just make sure to not stop for too long in the capital of Managua, when going from one town to the other.  If you’re a food buff, you will love stuffing yourself with Nicaragua’s culinary gift to the world: the deep fried whatever-you-call-it diabetes-in-a-bun oily goodness.

Panama City, thanks to the canal, is the only shining star city with its tall skyscrapers and a Miami-esque waterfront area, the nightlife on Calle Uruguay is always on full gear and secure thanks armed private guards, but wonder outside to the poorer neighborhoods of El Chorillo, which was burned down during the ‘89 US invasion, or the historical old town of Casco Viejo, worlds away from the secure wealthier districts, and you better watch your belongings.

Venezuela
Venezuela, the undisputed shining star of civilization in an uncivilized world. 

You haven’t seen the pinnacle of civilization until you’ve witnessed an unruly hoard of angry airplane customers storm an airplane check-in counter after a standby flight was cancelled because of unruly hoard of angry airplane customers demanding to be put on the aforementioned standby flight.

Everyone knows that Caracas is one of the most dangerous cities in the world.  It’s also a dirty, polluted city, whose only allure is the constant bearable weather of 75F (25C) thanks its slight altitude near the Caribbean.  Thanks to Hugo Chavez’s successful propaganda, they hate Americans with a passion, although the taxi driver brimmed with joy when I mentioned being from California and asked if Arnold (ex-Governor) would ever run for president. 

Looking for price bargains?  Forget it.  Unless you exchange your money on a black market, it’s a very expensive country thanks to a stupidly retarded overvalued exchange rate. Exchange on the black market and risk going to jail.  
Chances are you won’t hear this from your travel agent or see it on your local billboards.

Peru
Lima, Peru’s capital, is a hard city to like.  If the constant overcast-bordering-on-fog-and-rain weather doesn’t get you down psychologically, the constant pollution from exhausts surely will affect you physically.  From the shitty, run-down downtown, with it’s crumpling cathedrals covered in bird shit, it’s not a place you’d see yourself spending a honeymoon anytime soon. 

The affluent area of Miraflores offers some redemption if you love seeing McDonald’s on every block and shopping in traditional, American-inspired, mega malls. 

Peru does have excellent food delicacies, however.  If you love fried guinea pigs, then you will surely love the country’s main dish: the cuy.  It’s a fried guinea pig, that tastes like chicken.  Just kidding — it tastes exactly like a guinea pig.

Ecuador
Off all the travelers who I know that passed through Ecuador, a small number came away completely unscathed. 

To a common traveler, getting away from the gritty rat-race of the first world, a trip to Ecuador offers a unique cultural experience. One way is to get mugged either during broad daylight or while staggering home from bars in Quito, the country’s capital.  Another, more sinister method is when someone cuts a large hole in your bag and empties it on one of those long bus rides.

It’s a small, crime-infested, uninteresting country that offers absolutely nothing else to the visitor that can’t be found in the surrounding big crime infested countries. 

Colombia
It wasn’t Colombia that broke the camel’s back, but it sure happened in Colombia.  After spending four months in Colombia early this year, I remember feeling the exact moment that I started to despise Latin culture.  I was sick and tired of the gold digging women, the constant flakiness (from both sexes), and the general pretentiousness and arrogance of the people.  It seems that the overall unwillingness to be honest to your face, just to screw you over behind your back is ingrained in the culture’s DNA.

The country has tons to offer to a prospective visitor.  Take Medellin for instance, Colombia’s darling city.  The home of the late Pablo Escobar, it’s a city without any charm or soul, that was, in all likelihood, built on drug money.  It’s as authentic as the silicon breasts or the Americanized malls that you see everywhere you look.

One would think the capital, Bogotá, would be better, but the unending construction (that almost paralyzed half the city when I was there), dirt and pollution do not win the city, nor the country, many points.

Argentina
If you are new to the English language and want to know what the word ‘arrogance’ means, look no further and just head to Buenos Aires.  The city and their residents pretty much personify the word.  Somehow the locals, called porteños, never learned geography in high school, and think they’re part of Europe, not South America. 

The city is cool though, with a certain flair that reminds you of Rome or Paris, just watch out for the constant shit on the sidewalks thanks to tons of dog walkers with five, six, or fifteen dogs each parading the streets. 

The language they speak is up for debate.  A tale has is that it’s an indigenous language first spoken by the local tribes after they came in contact with the Spanish conquistadors.  I beg to differ.  It sounds more like a drunk Italian tourist trying to speak a beginner level Spanish, but eventually stumbles and fails because of too much malbec.

Argentinian food revolves around three things: overhyped steak, crappy pizza, and edible pasta.  Anything else and you’re out of luck.  Want to stumble an Argentinian?  Ask them where you can get a bowl of soup.  Try it, it’s fun.

Chile
When God made a deal with Chile and promised to give them the most advanced and resilient economy of Latin America, but asked for their soul in return, Chile didn’t blink and promptly agreed.  If you’re airdropped into Santiago, the capital, you dare not to confuse it for any American city with its countless McDonald’s and Burger Kings, not to mention other quality American exports.

Chile’s culinary gift to the world is the “completo”: a big, fat hotdog stuffed to the gills with other fattening crap.  There’s more stuff, right? Nope. The “completo” pretty much highlights Chile’s culinary accomplishments. 

Chilean girls are the most generic creatures on the planet, even rivaling their American counterparts.  When I lived in Brazil, my friends and I hanged around hostels in Rio, my Mexican friend who would pretty much chase any tail, would refuse to pursue Chilean women.  “They have no soul,” he would shrug and move onto a more interesting target.  I couldn’t come up with a better metaphor for the whole country if I tried.

Brazil
Last and definitely not least, it’s the biggest and baddest country of them all: Brazil.  In many ways it’s worlds apart from other Latin American with its different language, different history and different traditions.  The previous sentence is not even meant to be taken figuratively — to most Brazilians the concept that there are other surrounding, albeit inferior, countries that, God forbid may speak an inferior Portuguese dialect, aka Spanish, is simply ludicrous. 

To Brazilians their country is the only one that really matters.  In fact why remember all those pesky non-Brazilian nationalities.  Makes it ten times easier to just categorize someone as a Brazilian or a mere gringo (foreigner).

They have the world’s best beaches, the world’s best parties, the world’s most beautiful women.  In fact they don’t even make you pay a fine for overstaying tourist visa because they know you will come back!  But why stop there: they also have the world’s best favelas (shanty towns), best poverty, and best racial segregation.

Brazilian Portuguese sounds exactly like Portuguese but only when mumbled by a lazy drunk, completely wasted after a long night of cachaça and non-stop weed.

It’s no surprise that with such a big country, comes even a bigger ego.  Last summer, in Lisbon, Portugal, I saw a bus full of Brazilians proudly displaying Brazilian flags everywhere they went.  Right — otherwise I would never have guessed those were Brazilians.  One of the world’s greatest challenges is to pickup the sophistication, elegance and humility of Brazilians abroad.

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