The time-traveller's rabbi

About a year before the pandemic I began seeing the number 613 everywhere. Usually it was when I looked at the time (occasionally "18:13") or at the stock market. But it would pop up all over the place, from websites to Kindle books to grocery receipts. Never in my life had I noticed those numbers in such an intense way, other than my awareness of them as pertaining to the 613 mitzvot (commandments) forming the foundations of Judaism since Mount Sinai, some 3333 years ago.

Sounds of silence

Ear oh Israel. Shema. Listen to your body. Don't listen. Don't hear that ringing in your head, deep in the pillow. Is God talking to you, like young Samuel. Yisrael. He who struggles with God at night and through the night. Is this a New Age therapy world or testament to old time religion. Or an old-new land. Let me brainstorm this rain storm in my brain stem. The bells, the bells the beliefs. Siren voices. No cause for alarm, no need to suffer unsilence. It's just tinnitus.

Brazillionaires

Published last year. The American author, Alex Cuadros, arrived in Brazil just before me (in July 2010) and his impressions are very much in line with my own. Basically, he also saw through the hype about "booming Brazil" and he questions whether Brazil will ever escape from its deeply dysfunctional roots.

A quick-read version of the book is here and here is the author being interviewed.

Disorder and regress

It is almost five years since I wrote the first entry on this blog, titled "Order and Progress" in what became a very sceptical view of Brazil and it's supposedly booming economy. Going against the grain is always uncomfortable because, after all, why should one individual know more than a vast sea of individuals, all charging in the opposite direction?

A tomb of one's own

I was arrested the other night. Man and woman police officer came to my home, small element of surprise as they snuck into the building without pressing the intercom. No handcuffs, thankfully, after they decided I wasn't a flight risk. Allegations of assault. Domestic. Driven by two other officers to local station. Bureaucracy. Digital fingerprints, palm prints, mug shots, DNA swabs. Belt removed, shoelaces removed, phone removed.

UnReal !

How unlucky was I to be living in Brazil, relying on UK savings, while the Brazilian Real was at its strongest ever ? Almost as soon as I left in August 2011 the currency began falling again, and just look at it today ! To think how much further my money would have gone if I'd had today's exchange rate ...

More Brazil blues

For those who said I was too negative about "booming" Brazil in 2010-11, yet another article showing why I was right not to see a decent future there:

"The stakes are high for an emerging democracy getting rocked by the end of the commodity boom. Not too long ago, the South American exporter of iron, soy, coffee and other goods inspired so much optimism that some analysts boldly predicted it was maturing into a global power. But Brazil’s outlook is unraveling. Chinese demand for its commodities slowed, opening up funding gaps for welfare, credit and construction programs launched in the good times. Brazil now risks losing its investment-grade rating, which could spark a chaotic selloff of its currency, economists say."