Scott Laronge

I’m now just unemployed, and not a student. I got word that my classes processed at South Carolina and I’m now the proud owner of an International Masters of Business Administration degree.

Part of the fun of buying a house is going through at the end of the process and signing about ten pounds of paperwork in legally transferring property and title. My three favorite documents were:

• The document showing every legal name we have used to establish credit or open a bank account, including an example of the signature used. And of course, a final signature attesting this is the current and final signature.
• The document granting permission to the loan company to verify our employment. For the record, I’m unemployed and Dad’s retired. Hopefully they can verify that.
• The document asking if we were in a in a same-sex relationship (used to protect the domestic partner legally if one dies). The title officer had a bit of a weird look when I told her we are in one. See, I’m his son, and he’s my dad. Plus we’re the same sex. She still didn’t smile at that.

Home photos are up here. You may notice that the house itself is in pretty good condition, but the back yard needs some work.

This is where the fun comes in. I plan on tilling the yard and digging in some trenches to lay down a sprinkler system and a french drain to keep the water from pooling against the house. Add in some fresh topsoil and 18-18-18, then just overseed the heck out of it to have a nice lawn in the back.

Part of the “problem” with the house in almost turnkey status is that I don’t get to have any fun with it. On my first house, the previous owners laid down carpeting on top of beautiful hardwood floors. So I got to crawl around and tear up the carpet, tacking, wood paneling and baseboards. Then hunt for every little nail and staple and pull them out before I got the floor sander in there to restain it. Now that was a good time, destruction and mayhem all in the name of renovation.

Don’t worry, we’ll get to that in a sec.

Been in the States for a little under four weeks now and I’m back to being acclimatized to the American way: hot summers, barbeque and driving everywhere. No big reverse culture shock this time around, perhaps I learned from what happened last year when I got back from Brasil so it wasn’t as pronounced.

To date, my biggest accomplishment has been cleaning out both my parents’ garage and my storage unit. The 800GotJunk guys got a little bit of business out of us, as we got rid of carpet samples from 30 years ago with a hornet’s nest attached. And we found out where the two rats made their home (and burial sight) in the garage. I’ve had the unit since I sold my last house a little over two years ago, and the cost of storage has long surpassed the value of the stuff in there. Just haven’t had the chance to clean it out until now, these last few weeks have been the longest I’ve been home since I left for school.

And even though I’m still gainfully unemployed, I’ve bought a house. Well, entered into contract on a house, won’t close for another three weeks. But since I’ve been back, I’ve found housing prices have just plummeted while I’ve been gone, but rents are still strong. The strategy is to have the renters cover the mortgage and sell in 7-10 years, when foreclosures drop off credit reports. And maybe some of these people that got foreclosed on will have saved up some cash for a 20% down payment.

They say cash is king right now. And even if they don’t say it, I will. So let’s see if the time is right to buy, I’ll take the bet that it is.

Headed back to the States tomorrow, flying Amsterdam to San Francisco via Chicago.  Except I have a 7 hour layover in O’Hare and I live in Sacramento, so tack on another 2 hours for the drive home, I think at that point I’d be in transit for 24 hours.  Not the first time I’ve done that, it was something like 28 hours door to door from Curitiba to Mumbai, but it isn’t the most fun in the world to be sitting around like that.  If the stars are in alignment, Mercury in retrograde and Uranus puckered up, United might be amendable to switching me to a direct flight to SMF, which would save me 3 hours on a layover and 2 in drive time.  If not, perhaps an earlier flight into SFO, which interestingly enough is not actually located in San Francisco. 

I may have used up some of my travel karma recently though.  I booked a bed in a room in a hostel in Tilburg as I needed a place to stay for a night.  The manager though told me there was a problem when I checked in, namely that I was by myself.  As that’s normal for me, I wondered where the problem was when he then told me I had booked a 6-bed room for myself.  There’s a line on the reservation form that reads something like a minimum of 4 people are needed for the 6-bed room, however since that line is in Dutch, it kinda went over my head.  After worrying about this for a quick second, he told me I was fine when I told him I was a member of ESN.  So I got a 6-bed room to myself.  I wanted a slumber party that night, but everyone I knew from Tilburg was either out of town for the weekend or had gone home to their countries.

I’ve been lucky before on travels, including talking my way out of two speeding tickets (though only outside of California), getting one of the last available rooms in New Orleans during JazzFest, a PGA tournament, two reserve weekends and the normal slough of conventions, as well as talking my way into a free room sponsored by Harrah’s in the French Quarter when I was only 19.  Hopefully I get lucky tomorrow, else I should consider sacrificing something tonight before I leave the Netherlands.

I’ll sacrifice some Heineken.  No one likes that here anyway.  

Sometimes it’s nice when a country is able to import another’s cultural heritage, especially when there is a former colonial aspect of it. Kind of like when you beat your Dad at golf for the first time or something. NBC took over The Office and tried with Coupling, both of which are British imports. England loses out to its Commonwealth in cricket.

But what does Portugal decide to import from Brazil?

A greve-the strike…

I’m (hopefully) headed down to the Algarve tomorrow. But the Portuguese decided they’d rather take a page out of the Brazilian handbook and go on strike. So I may be looking for a mule train to get me to Lagos. Mules are stubborn, quite right, but at least they’ll keep on heading to the destination.

International MBA, three years experience as a broker. Speak three languages passably well. And this is what hotjobs has available to me:

I can still speak Portuguese decently well while I’m drunk. Well, perhaps not when drunk, but perhaps in that nice zone of being buzzed. I’ve also learned the word for buzzed in Portuguese is estar alegre, or to be happy. Great language this.

The people here think I’m Brazilian. And the Brazilians think so too. I speak with a Brazilian accent and use Brazilian words, and when I was telling my friends that I was headed to Lisbon they told me the languages were quite different. I haven’t found any great differences, the grammar and structure are pretty much the same. And the Portuguese legislature just passed a law approving spelling changes to the European version to conform to the Brazilian version. The differences I have noticed are more along the lines of British vs American English, where subtle spelling differences and local synonyms are used.

For example (and I’ll use the Brazilian word first, and then the Portuguese one) otimo vs. optimo. The word means the same-great or excellent, but it’s somewhat like the color vs colour difference.

One reason I’ve found the people think I’m Brazilian is that I use Brazilian words. Kinda like if an english speaking person asked you for a torch to get to the lift, as the lights were out. Some examples:

• Train-trên vs comboio
• Bus-ônibus vs autocarro
• Beer-chop vs imperial. A chop in Portugal is actually a shot glass. So if I order a chop here, I’d get a shot glass of beer.
• Shirt-camisa vs camisolo. And a camisolo in Brazilian is pajamas.
• To meet-encontrar vs combinar. One thing I do like about the Portuguese language is one way to translate from English is to think of a more formal synonym (usually with a Latin base) and almost transliterate it from there. This is one example, as meeting someone could be said as encountering them or combining up with them. Another example is transfigurar is the translation for “to warp,” or to transfigure it.

One thing though, the Portuguese tell me I speak the language pretty well. And I think they say that for the sole reason people don’t go out and learn the language for the hell of it, so anyone that actually does so gets some street cred.

I’m currently in Lisbon. Check out the photos.  And the masthead is a compsite shot of the Rio Tejo and the Alfama/Sé neighborhoods.

I’m headed back to the States at the end of June. The plan was to stick around here until the beginning of September, but the added cost of heading out of the EU to get another 90 day stamp (as well as the risk of not getting back in with bags spread out between Lisbon, Vught and whatever was on my back) altered my plans.

Of course, the next post may also be entitled “So I’m an Unemployed Graduate Living at Home With My Parents.” But heck, wouldn’t be the first time.

It was pretty sporting, and seemed pretty even. Until the lancers wound the bull. Then it didn’t seem as cricket as before.