Quit Watching the Taxslayer.com Gator Bowl and Enjoy This!

Hello All and Happy 2012:

I would apologize for the late Holiday Blog, but in actuality, I did it on purpose.  Why compete with all the ´standard´ holiday cards and that came last year?  I wanted the beginning of 2012 all to myself, with a captive audience that would actually rather read my holiday card than start doing actual work, or watch more Houston v Penn State.  Research shows that the odds of you reading this rise from 2.9% to 4.6% based on the date received.

Now for those of you who follow my blog, Facebook, Twitter, you know that sarcasm comes first.  Most famously, in 2008, I wrote one of those Holiday Letters, essentially mocking the people who send them.  Perhaps predictably, those who send them did not get the irony.  I consider these yearly missives the equivalent of Facebook Birthday wishes: you have not heard from the person all year, and then they act as if you are the most important thing in the world for that one day.  Worse than Facebook, they choose to share all the intimate details of their latest medical procedure, how their kids are excelling beyond all their peers, and why the yacht had to be repaired.

Unfortunately, this year I may have to become (partly) what I despised.  So what follows is a long, (sorry, while I am a fabulous columnist, I am a terrible editor) semi-serious Holiday Letter, replete with truth, humor and sarcasm.  You decide which is what.  Oh and consider yourself forewarned: should you decide to proceed, it is of or own free will.  No complaints; no money back.

Last year (summer 2010), the G-clan (YesMSG, CPG, RPG I, & RPG II) started what became a rapid decline through Christmas.  It all began with a vacation in Oregon for 4th of July weekend.  We began the trip with a 5 hour drive that became 8; always fun with two kids less than 5 years of age.  This was followed by a Brazil loss to the Netherlands in the World Cup (after leading 1-0).  Then RPG I spent the rest of the weekend getting ill, with his dad acting like Ken Griffey Jr., if you substituted vomit for the baseball.

Subsequently, I was rear ended by a woman who was text messaging, wrecking my car.  I followed this up with two months of pneumonia, rendering me useless (more than normal) in October and November.  And we also lost our beloved dog, UPG, to cancer in November.  (Tissue break L)

So when things got better around Christmas, we decided to seek a more radical change, as if the preceding 4 months had been a cosmic sign to seek enlightenment (or something like that).  The obvious choice was a move to Brazil.  We began our search early in 2011, and CPG landed a job with Unilever in March.  (Here is where the husband brags about how intelligent, successful, educated, talented, charming and beautiful his wife is.  However, considering that Unilever, one of the most recognized consumer packaged goods companies, known for its market research, decided to quickly hire CPG, there is no need to humblebrag*.)

* Subtly letting others now about how fantastic your life is while undercutting it with a bit of self-effacing humor or “woe is me” gloss.  “Uggggh just ate about fifteen piece of chocolate; have to learn to control myself when flying first class or they’ll cancel my modeling contract.  LOL.”

So it was question time???  What do we want from life?  What do we value? Can we do it (temporarily) on one income?  Will I like being Mr. Mom?  Is there Cable TV?  Do they offer Espn International?  Yes to Espn. OK, we are going!!!  Three whirlwind months and one debilitating plane flight later, we were all in Brazil by the end of July.

In September, I left Microsoft after 56 dog years, and started with Buscape (a Digital Commerce company in Brazil in November).  Culturally it has been different.  Not because of the language or Brazilian culture, but because the company’s average age is 25, and even references to movies like the Bourne Identity result in blank looks (forget about American Pie (band camp), A Few Good Men (code red), Pulp Fiction (Zed’s dead), Top Gun (That’s right Ice…man, I am dangerous), Stripes (it’s like Wisconsin), Caddyshack (it’s in the hole), Animal House (Mr. Blutarsky, 0.0), and The Wizard of Oz (We are not in Kansas anymore)).  In the end, I had to give my team a quiz: e.g. who said, “Do you feel lucky punk?”**

** Dirty Harry (Clint Eastwood)

Sometimes I feel like I am in the film, Logan’s Run: “Welcome to the world of total pleasure.  There is just one catch – life must end at 30.” (For you Gen Y, this movie was effectively remade recently and named In Time.)  To compensate for being more “experienced,” I did attempt to blend in by attending the company Christmas party (super hero theme) as Captain Underpants.  Seeing that 1% of the company is married, and 0.1% has kids, I mainly received strange looks, like “why is the new guy in his underwear?” Fortunately, being Brazil, this was not an HR violation, and my badge still worked the following day.

Yet in the end, things have settled into a pattern of normalcy, if you choose to define normal as:

1)      Your kids no longer speak English to you (awesome language humblebrag)

2)      Christmas time temperature is 30…..Celsius! (That is 86 Fahrenheit)

3)      The government bureaucracy is suffocating and completely illogical, but compensated for by the fact that

1. Clothing boutiques provide free cappuccinos
2. Kids’ toy stores have mini cinemas (I don’t want to ruin the end of Kung Fu Panda 2, but…..)

So we feel very fortunate to be in Brazil, characterized by one friend as the only good economy in the world.  People often ask how long we will stay.  We’re ndecided, but at least through the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Rio Olympics.  After that, probably move on to another strong economy, like Greece!

Now, in the interests of brevity (irony alert), I will spare you the details of my medical exams, but will point out that the family has adapted well.

RPG II took about two weeks to start giving orders in Portuguese, and has not stopped.  Bi-lingual, yet somehow missing the word ‘please’ in either language, despite constant reminders from her parents.

RPG I, as if by some osmotic influence, has adopted soccer as his favorite sport and is a savant about teams, players, etc.  He also continues his assault on the Death Star.  He now completes Lego sets for 9-14 year olds (he just turned 6) that come with 1000+ pieces and (seriously) 135 pages of instruction.***  The Clone Turbo Tank took two afternoons.  I predict the Death Star (for 16 year olds and 3000+ pieces) in 2013.

*** A staple of the holiday letter is humblebragging about your kids.

CPG is well, appreciates having family nearby, and is enjoying her new job at Unilever.  Personal Care products are more aligned with her interests than Internet Explorer.  And you cannot overvalue free shampoo, bath gel, lotion and deodorant.  Now if they would just start importing Skippy Reduced Fat Chunky Peanut Butter.

And Me? YesMSG?  Gee, thanks for asking.  I am 50 days into the new job, so after:

• Graduating from Cal Berkeley with a degree in Mechanical Engineering
• Working as an Engineer in London, England
• Working as a Political Consultant in Kiev, Ukraine
• Getting an MBA at Wharton
• Serving as an International Man of Mystery Management Consultant for 4 years
• Working in internet startups
• Working in the World’s Largest Bureaucratic Software Company
• Working in 4 languages on 3 continents
• Winning the 5^th grade spelling bee with ‘wring,’ as in “wring your neck”

I have a tremendous amount of knowledge to impart to my new employers.  Of course, this shall be exhausted by mid-January 2012, and I will have to find something else to do.

In conclusion, thank you for reading this far.  Many of these and other stories are available on my blog, Facebook, Twitter, or you can just wait for the insufferable yearly summary.

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