Why you should NEVER live in Brazil

A friend of mine recently asked me about how it is living in Brazil. After I responded, I decided it'd be a good idea to Blog it since it is on my mind.

I can answer this in different ways; some long, some short. I will try to give you the quick, dirty, straight version....

Postive:
1. Family is great! They miss the beach, but at least this city has other attractions. The baby girl will turn 6 months in 6 more days.

2. Work: I love working at Google Brazil. The people are awesome!! BHZ is an all engineering office mostly working on Orkut. Great staff. We speak 60/40 Portuguese/English.

3. Business opportunity here is amazing if you're an American. E.g. They lack many proven technologies here in Brazil as a whole.

4. If you're single... well just call this place icandy-land. Truly breath-taking.

Negative:
1. NEVER LIVE IN BRAZIL! The U.S. is the best damn country in the world, PERIOD! :-D

2. Electronics or anything techie is WAAAY more expensive (they lady wanted to charge me $120 USD for a D-Link wireless router which didn't even have a built-in switch)

3. Brazil is full of a LOT of beauracracy and government corruption way beyond the acceptable level of modern countries like the U.S.

4. Everything here is PAPER, PAPER, and more PAPER! They have no since of a system, only a process filled with paper which needs to be authenticated on top of authentication

5. I just got my furniture last week (God I miss my bed and TV), as Brazilian Customs held it and tried to suck $5000 USD out of me in the meantime.

6. Nothings ever on time so any apointement you have with a bank or hospital or anything is usually delayed by 2 hours and the lines here are way too long for everything

7. Imagine a system where your "credit score" is not linked to a number any business can look up, but linked to a series of signed, original paperwork, co-signers, past-paychecks, past bills, cash money, home and work address/number with contracts, and special identification documents. Anything you do, business-wise you need to present all this EVERY TIME! Even today, I can't even rent a movie without all the above information; I mean ALL of it.

8. The list goes on...

Conclusion:
Vacation here for as long as you want; It's awesome especially close to the beach like in Salvador, Brazil; But the moment you try to live here is the moment your life gets immensley complicated and set back about 100 years.