I’m all set to go to Brasilia and hang out with two friends, and then to Rio for Natal, and then Bahia to party, then São Luiz to see it, then Belém for the Forum. But I can’t go anywhere until my new bank card arrives! International shipping is the pits.

I still need to write a post about life, which has been full of reflection recently. Suffice it for now that I’m working a lot; I’m inspired that my moon sign is Taurus and my ascendant sign is Leo; I love LiveMocha; I miss my friends; I’m considering going back to school in Geopolitics; and I’m the captivated owner of a beautiful new all-wire-strung black acoustic guitar.

I got a room in an a perfect part of Porto Alegre!

Brazil just had its Daylight Savings Time, so I lost an hour :(. But it got me thinking—it’s always so gratifying when you move west, because you get more hours, and life is so short. But the most you can get that way is 23 hours, if you were lucky enough to be born at the edge of the Siberia. But this daylight savings thing gave me an idea! If you keep switching between the northern and southern hemispheres, you could pick up both daylight savings every year, which amounts to a whole day every 12 years. THEN, if you can just do 182 of those cycles, plus the day you got from moving to Alaska, you’ll get a whole extra YEAR. What’s more, in that same time, every 12 years you get 3 days for free, from leap years (minus the ones on century-changes). That’s 1.5 MORE years. And by then, all told, you’ll be 1 Alaska day + 182 cycles * 12 years-per-cycle + 1 year + 529 leap days = 2186.5 years old!

I’m in water-logged island paradise state capital Florianopolis. I searched around for an apartment here, but all my threads frayed, so I’m headed to Porto Alegre today. Last night, we went to a sweet-if-corporate club. It had about six suited guards at every door, an incredible light, sound, and fog system, a pay-by-scan-code system, and a crummy second DJ. And we had an ESFP from Montreal with us, so it was bound to be fun.

Today was the first day I’ve seen the sun here, so I headed to the lake in the middle of the island—Lagoa da Conceição, the Lake of Making Babies. The main nightlife-centered village there is built on a sandbar that extends across the middle of the lake (are you getting the picture-perfectness of all this?). Needing to get away from the glamor, I headed out on the mountainous sandbar, and before long the only tracks in the sand were mine and those of some clawed jaguar-sized beast. It was very Sahara.

Just checking in, and doing some work on the site.

This last week in Rio has been a blast. I’ve been staying with my cousin’s girlfriend, Purebreed, pretending to understand Portuguese, and hanging out with two couchsurfers from Belem, Rabbit and Late Period, who came here to pursue their respective intimate interests and have their birthdays.

For Late Period’s birthday, we went hang-gliding over Rio—awesome. We flew across Floresta Tijuca, in the middle of Rio, past a favela and high-class homes, and out over the ocean briefly before a soft landing on the beach. Sadly, they don’t let you glide your own hang. You help take off—by running off a cliff, wheee—and you help land, and otherwise you just hang around.

On Wednesday, I participated in a small “Free Hugs” campaign, in the middle of Rio. We took over a spot between a metro station and a busy intersection, all with “Abraços Grátis” signs, and hugged away. A local magazine seller advertised us as a side benefit to buying his merchandise. At our most, we had five people, which was fun for the energy, but the time I was doing it just with the organizer was fun for the challenge.

And Friday night, I went partying in Lapa, an region known for its Bohemian nightlife. An area about three city blocks on a side was absolutely swimming with partiers, sizzling meat, drink stands, tequila pushers, hippie artisans, and dancing to loud music that never left-off before the next began. We bobbed to Samba under a bridge, shifted under strobe lights to electronic, and danced Salsa right below—everywhere was packed, but never so much that you couldn’t move. Purebreed turns out to be a fantastic learn-by-doing teacher of Salsa, and I learned a bunch.

My Belém friends left this morning, and I just want to see Copacabana’s gay pride parade today before heading down to Curitiba!

I’m in Belém, the heart of Brazil, the land of mangoes, conjoined twin of the Amazon!