Chapter two of my adventure in Brazil is us securing the 3 floor Airbnb in Copacabana neighborhood in Rio. The airbnb is a penthouse on the 10th floor of a big apartment building. H arrived and met with us at the og Fogo de chao a couple night before the air bnb was ready. He is the one who secured the air b n b for us to set up a Hackerhouse in.
Highlander is a blockchain coder and is currently obsessed with how you can use AI to help you code. he has been showing me come interesting methods of creating software using AI assistants. The main thing i have been messing with is Cursor.
Anyways, back to the story:
I havent lived with roomates in a long time and kind of forgot what its like. It's alright lol. It's fun but its non-stop, you know?
The airbnb is positioned very close to the beach. We decided to take a walk over to the beach. Walking outside of the house to the street was kind of a breathtaking view in and of itself with the tropical trees creating a shaded canopy on the street.
Upon seeing the ocean i was really stoked on our location.
there was a hidden bowl built in the early 2000's on a clif by the beach we found. I didnt have my board with me but 
it was a saturday when i took these photos so the beach was kinda packed.
Here is a photo of it on a monday:
You can give a guy $2 and he will give you some lawn chairs and an umbrella. I have been going hard on the Beef Tallow sunblock so i haven't really gotten sunburnt at all which is tight. I cant say the same for highlander.
Theres a cool weightlifting station with its own little beach. this is my favorite beach because its small.
dudes selling coconut water all over. you can drink beer anywhere so theres also people selling Caipirinha everywhere too. Caipirinha is a brazilian cocktail made of muddled limes, sugar, and a brazilian liquor called cachaça. Cachasa is a hard liquor made from the whole plant of the sugar cane, wheras rum is just made from the sugar resin.
We walked around the beach a lot and im going to make a whole post dedicated to the bodybuilding and morning beach routines we have been trying to get into.
| statue of tom jobin, a bossanova legend. | statue of Dorival Caymmi, a samba legend |
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Bossanova is like a more sophisticated version of Samba. Both of them use a weird time signature in their drum beat which sounds like a broken 4/4. Ive seen some pretty cool live samba bands on the streets of like hardcore african musican dudes which was cool, during carnival.
Something i have never seen before are Orchids growing outside on the street. In the US they are hard to grow. they only grow attached to other trees and in 100% shade or with little direct sunlight. I thought these were wild orchids which would have been really impressive but they are potted orchids attached to the trunk of the tree by a person, still though, pretty sick.
Most of the buildings here were built in the 60's so they definitely have their own vibe. the photo above really shows how it feels to just walk down the sidewalk here.
The rooftop of the airbnb has a crazy view of the ghetto behind us. I didnt know what a favela was before i got here, so when we were looking at the airbnb i was pretty stoked on the view. but since its a favela, its kinda weird. I dont see many people sticking thier heads out of thier windows, i dont even know if they have windows. Still, visually, its pretty surreal.
| rooftop | view |
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Basically think trailer park. except made of out of cinder blocks and bricks. No roads inside that mess of housing. All traffic is by foot. If the favela crime bosses don't pay off the cops on a scheduled time, the cops will come into the favelas and start fucking with people. The crime bosses make all their money selling shitty drugs to the people of rio. I think the normal people who live in the favelas do most of the manual labor jobs in rio, which makes all those jobs impossible for normal rio citizens to get, because the favela people will work for much less.
There is this little mechanical trolly thing that goes up into the favela. it goes really slow but i was impressed that they even have that considering all of the electricity that the favela uses, is illegally stolen from the main city power grid.
Theres no pool on the roof but there is a shower.
Vlad invited a gal he knows to come over and cut the hackerhouse's hair. she skates and is amazing at cutting hair. probably one of the best haircuts ive ever had, in the comfort of our own home. she works at a barbershop but says she started doing the private haircuts during the covid time.
shes part of our squad now because she shreds on a skateboard. "vamos Caralho" which means lets fucking go. There is no time like the present and its important to stay excited about life, so i am happy for vlad that he has found a new love.
There are various ways to get in touch with one's higher self, and as you go progress in life, you realize thats the only point of life. It's everyones purpose. Life is hard and people have thier own ways of dealing with it. The pressure of carnival built up and has had adverse effects on my mental health. Thankfully i met a woman who talked to me about Jesus Christ and the importance of connecting with him to insure the demons don't try to cause havoc in our emotional and physical life.
My journey is that of the wolf and I will go on that path alone. The woman Liz Beth explained to me that I am never alone and that the spiritual master Jesus Christ's job is to help people like me all of the time or any time that I want him to. So I will learn to pray because I have heard a lot about Christianity and i think it might be one of the most efficient religions to use.
I need to remember that my purpose is to shine light into this world and in order to do so i need to learn some spiritual techniques such as putting on the full armor of god. I was given some interesting books by that woman from germany who spent some time with me after the skate video premier to do a prayer for me. It really helped. Rio is a lonely place when everyone is only looking out for themselves. I guess the same can be said about any other big city. It was cool that "the universe" or god synchronized a meeting with me and that Lizbeth person so that she could help heal me.
Chapter 3 of the hackerhouse has begun today, a post of which i will write soon, as 
