"how much did your laptop cost?" - the customs officer at the Guarulhos Airport (São Paulo - Brazil), approaches me in a tone that suggests I'm coming into the country willing to sell or offer my laptop to someone...
This reminds me that my adventures with customs world wide would be more than enough to fill up a blog by themselves... Don't get me wrong, I understand countries need to protect themselves from parallel imports and smugglers, and in fact this has happened to me before and I was never harmed or arrested in the process... But after flying for 10 hours and waiting for another 2 before seeing my suitcase coming out of the carpet, the last thing someone needs is to have to explain something so obvious as why he's bringing a laptop into the country... Anyway, after 10 minutes of questioning and checking my passport stamps one by one, they let me go...

I know I should be writing about Brazil and what brings me to this place, but there's something else I need to mention before we talk about "Tropical Beaches and Caipirinhas"... I have a simple question that crosses my mind most times I enter and airplane: "Why do people assume that paying for a plane ticket gives them the freedom to lower they chair and crush the knees of the person behind them?"...

One does not need to be a master in biology and math in order to figure that the leg room in standard economy class areas is not comfortable for most people, due to this I never lower my chair in airplanes if I have someone behind me, and if I'd ever need to I'd ask first... This sounds like common sense to me, but what I perceive from my experiences is that I'm wrong... The correct procedure seams to be something like: lower the chair until you touch the knees of the person behind you... Then push harder until you've lowered the chair completely... If the person complains, stay silent and pretend you don't understand whatever language the person's using...