Well Friends I've been to some really interesting places during our conferences, I made airport connections everywhere since getting tickets from frequent flyer reward program has a rule that you will connect at least your age divided divided by three.
And mind you that I an a mid age Brazilian and this has potential illegal immigrant written all over it. Once I was entering the U.S. thru Miami and the C/I officer tried to talk to me in spanish, I replied in english that I did not speak spanish but that I could do a pretty passable english. She still insisted on spanish, I said that in Brazil we speak portuguese which is different from spanish and kept english going. She kept on spanish and we moved back and forth this insanity till she told me that: "when visiting a country, try to speak it's language!!!" and at that very moment I could hear the twilight zone theme song in my head and wondered what happened and where I was but I was in Miami and the restaurant had a sign "English spoken here". Another funny time in the U.S. was when I was trying to leave the country and they made me strip, I will not enter in any detail and will deny everything but the very fine comments they made on my macbook. In malta there was no security line and the C/I officer was sleeping, I woke him up and said: "I want to enter your country legally." he gave me a bad xerox of a form and it was all set, next time, I will take on the goverment there. In the U.K. after like 10 minutes explaining the name of my dog, my birth chart and what on hell I was doing in london, I asked the officer: "will it help if I show you my ticket back home, it's just 20 days from now." and he smiled and I was free. But nothing beats BRAZIL!!! yes, brazilian customs is like lottery, for example, you bought three flasks of perfume and after customs you'll have 3 - random() flasks of perfume. Other things might be confiscated too. Some weeks ago they closed a shop in Ipanema whose the owner was a C/I officer and all the products on sale were stuff he "confiscated" (goverments confiscate, people rob). There's no green or red line, there's a single line and there's a thing like a traffic light that will shine green or red for you depending on your aura (or your poker face). They quit having two lines since all brazilians think they can get on with anything and would always try the green line. Once I tried paying tax for a laptop (tax is fixed 60%) and the officer requested a bribe and did not allow me to pay the tax even if I wanted it, he kept saying: "thats to high, let us keep it just for us at 30%"). I always put funny cards with messages for the custom agents like: "you steal anything, I am coming back to you!" or "my perfumes, your karma". -- http://www.andregarzia.com All We Do Is Code. _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
