how bland is to be stuck at home when i'm 29. i guess i wouldn't have a hard time following standard societal paths. probably i would have my place by now. if i just accepted my uni. teacher's invitation for participating of contemporaneous sociologic discussions. maybe i would be a teacher. maybe if i didn't quit after a year that marketing university degree my parents obligated me to join but that time i was after to travel without money and without destination. but no. i decided to find a job (and cope with the fact to stay at my parents home, i also had to study something) because some friend decided to go with me and they weren't open on leaving with only R$ 200,00. because that was all i had. never had to work. never had a job. my salary was birthday and Xmas gifts. how could i complain. i never complained. i didn't like receiving clothes tho. my friend never found a job and i was waiting for them to go look for one to tell you the truth. my friend never went away with me. once when i was 14 i asked my parents to work as a minor apprentice on the construction field... my plans of having knowledge on a valuable profession and quitting high-school to work part time and do stuff i want part time never concretized. i came to this world to study and nothing else, said them. what if my parents never moved to this condominium, where freedom had no vigilance. we were 12 boys, almost of the same age. the 1° time i felt part of it was when they were kiting and Luigi taught me the basics of battling. memory fades but i still can see him retrieving the victorious kite in the dark (he managed to cut 2 or 3 kites from people outside the wall), the sun was set already and a bit more of time and we would spot (the kite) only by street's light poles. LED wasn't spread worldwide so the illumination was quite warm back in the days. orange-like to tell you the truth. fast forward there was an adult who went emotional seeing us playing and said that we should be grateful as friendships like this weren't common and we could make it last a lifetime. my doubt was solved. my friends were these guys. after all, that big school i had to study, of 5 classes of 25-35 students per K12 year never got me settled anywhere. as some teacher once said in rage: dealing with luqtas is just like putting your hand on a knife. you can cut stuff but it can cut you. i thought that was an absurd thing to say to a 9 or 10 years old kid. told my mom the same day and she held her laugh. or as some other teacher once said, not in rage this time but he was a bit mad: the problem of luqtas is despite where you place him in the classroom, he'll manage to befriend people nearby and he will talk too much and he will bother the teacher that's trying to teach. i guess he can even befriend a door! once i almost cried listening him explaining cellular processes. life is so beautiful. maybe part of my disguise towards the school was when a math teacher told me i would need an university degree to understand where that specif letter of that formula came. why i had to learn?



waking up early was a terror. and my parents were strict on sleep. 21:00 and i was at bed. if i tried to use my computer after bedtime, i would probably lose its access for days, if not weeks. i never had internet access after school on week days. they knew i would play online video-games all day long and not even eat properly. somehow i was not much interested in offline gaming. i knew how to navigate computers, dad taught me how to install Windows from the scratch when i was 8. they took the internet modem to their work. and for some time i had an interpolated access to the computer, one day with access, the other not. on the weekends i could use it all day. but after moving out of the apartment, the boys of the condominium never allowed me to nerd too much. there wasn't walls, so they could just access my bedroom window, sometimes even invade the house (with proper authorization of parents, or not) and prick the heck of me till i accepted to play some sport or go to the swimming pool or just sit under some tree and talk. that's why i never put an effort on a school friend. i went through various groups. after teenage, a different group each 1-3 years; time the director though it was beneficial to move me to another class. my last year of high-school was harsh. boys of the condominium were split. i had 1 friend left. 2 others after i decided (by turning 18) it was time to experiment cannabis. i used to meditate often and i was curious on how to gain new perspectives. it was a frenetic 2 weeks of grams and grams of weed everyday. sometimes i was a floating spine and some electrical impulses, sometimes i couldn't stop laughing with them. after our parents discovered, they made us split apart. seriously. it was an irresponsible use. although it was school break. i probably would never use that amount again. if wasn't my parents moving here i maybe would firm relationships with the people from my last year of high-school. they returned me to the very first class i went after K5, where we started to study by the morning and not by afternoon. i guess that felt for everyone more or less, a passage rite. we were teens now! i studied there for 2 more years. it was the place i would try to firm long-lasting friendships if i never moved out of the apartment. the condominium was one of the best things that ever happened to me. i still miss those guys. even when they made me play soccer (i hate it) or discuss over rules of baseball with tennis balls and bat-and-ball bats. or those violent skate races that allowed knocking others down mid race on a gentle downhill. the race was done with everyone sitting. i soon came with sponsorship rules, so i could just participate pushing racers to get more speed at the beginning. sometimes it was reasonable to participate and delay my start for some seconds so i could just pass racers trying to get up on their skate after the massacre that happened every time right on the middle of the downhill. one could even use stones to stop skates. there was few physical fights between us. most of the times we intervened after some laugh. some fights were legal as after so much time together some ideas went wild! we split the group into 2 factions and we used the grass field of the playground to fight. if they could throw you at the floor, you were out. sometimes my group (the younger ones) could win by going 3 against 1, while the others tried their best to prevent the other old guys of the other faction to access the fight ring. we even had a bard rapping to boost morale



if wasn't for that place i wouldn't participate on a silent pact of not laughing at 4 am. (the owner of the front yard we were camping was an angry mom (of one of us), really mad after many complains from residents about late noise) and someone trying to break it by pooping on a plastic bag and trying to throw it at the forest siding the great wall that divided our liberty from the rest of the world. most city kids weren't like that. the bag got stuck at the electrical fence and we dismantled in laugh. maybe i would miss Fabio engaging on a serious conversation that dismissed Walter, an older guy who got interested in our multi-week war (had even capture the flag and a day long war against people from outside the wall) of bean shooters. according to Fabio his gun barrel made of cardboard of oat bars wasn't effective like ours made of PVC plastic. Walter argued that the mechanism of propulsion lied at the balloon. Fabio then smartly suggested Walter to shot on his belly, secure of his claim, at point-blank. shame the other boys weren't there. i was already smiling hearing their discussion but i rolled at the floor after Fabio started to cry after the instantaneous bruise. maybe Pedro wouldn't kill the hide-and-seek play with the seeker always using a tampon on his eyes that to catch someone they had to first grab the person, then guess who they were by touching his face, of course we could jump on top to bother and difficult the guess. the mom was also mad. it was way past midnight. probably next to morning time. everyone was warned to slow down when transitioning from the kitchen to the living room on the corridor because the wardrobe that had old Playboys and car magazines could hurt someone as it wasn't embedded at the space but rather an obstacle, specially with all the lights off. he screamed a high pitch noise and after we dragged his crying body to the bathroom, we had to hear another complain from the mom. and when everything was settled, Pedro goes out with a cast/plaster of wet toilet paper around his hand (part he got hurt the most beyond his knees). we couldn't not laugh less, the sleepover was over. the mom said that either we slept or we had to return to our parents house. we played Guitar Hero while we chatted about growing old and thousand of other things till the sunrise. maybe i would turn into a nerd that wasted most of the time playing video-games. i quietly felt sorry for refusing a school friend request to start playing World of Warcraft. by that time i knew how being physical and to do nothing was important. i couldn't allow myself to waste so much time playing video-games, not anymore. WoW is serious business. maybe if it wasn't for that place i wouldn't refuse cannabis very young at age, because at least older guys who smoked from inside the walls were reasonable on preventing us from trying. my school friends weren't. maybe i would still have long term friends if i knew people from inside the walls were there just for a play and not for a stay. but my rant today: how bland i was to take mushrooms and figure out i should live free of violence and competition on entertainment i consume. even after years (almost a decade by now), sometimes i dream and fight against the wish of installing Dungeon Siege for a nostalgia dip. it was one of the 1° games i ever played after Window's Space Cadet pinball. i grew up playing Age of Empires and Battlefield. i had adults sometimes guiding me on what i should play, at least once. i never installed that DRM protected Half Life 2 CD i got from my uncle. dad never told me i had to install the GPU driver to get good performance on modern games (i discovered about that years later after debugging an error i got on an update)... i still blandly fight the wish of opening up the video-game i'm developing to GPL (a permissive license would allow the game to turn into something violent) but my post about Mike helped me with something; going public does help my moral development, as i do mix my public life to who i'm and if i ever regret any position i made (unless backed by science), call me hypocrite and stop reading this blog



and wish me luck because i'll go to my old school if the rain stops, to propose a voluntary lesson on the importance of civil disobedience and of FOSS on modern infrastructure as a primmer to talk about alternative musical tunings and finally a lesson on how to operate Ardour and create counterpoint exercises. because now i'm aware on transfer of learning and the importance of trying to change the world for the better through education. and i also want to immensely thank my family (or part of it) for living a considerable simple life for what they can have. reflecting back now, that was one of the most important cataclysms on my personal development. most of (my family) if not all don't even know about this blog address yet. and how much i wished we indexed the younger generation on our 6 year carnival at the condominium and the spare girls that were probably afraid of our primitive-like behavior. they were nice to me and to Gustavo once everyone was traveling away on a holiday. sometimes i played hide-and-seek with the younger ones and at least once we organized a local ~ 6 players Mario Kart DS event. i was prohibited to play at the streets (can't recall what i did) but at least they could sit at the front yard and play with me via wireless. once a woman payed us pizza in exchange of us (boys) not skating in front of her house after the sunset. the hardest trick i landed was inward heel. a few times. the grind was extensive and i stopped skating and went into cycling after they started to learn how to grind on handrails. i always thought i would fell and break my bones. i never broke anything but once i think i got close. was listening to Tour de France by Kraftwerk. past 60 Km/h for sure. and i decided to make a sharp curve on my parents old apartment street. a steep downhill. i was dragged for like 5 meters till i stopped and someone went check if i was okay. i went to the end of the street. sat at the bench thinking what the heck i was doing with my life. it was close to midnight. i already stopped the courier application. ironic to think at my back, was an open space where i learned to cycle for the first time. i bet this time i would bet Fernanda on a race. she always won. we played Neopets together and she was my only friend on that building. i managed to cycle back the 6 kilometers until my parent's house. around 3 am. mom had to bring me into the hospital, my bones were okay but it was hurting. oh and by the way, house's original design was much better on my opinion but who i'm to opine such a thing against mom's architectural reflections... she has to deal with quirks of the public healthcare system and she would counter-argument that the place looks better now that we reached the year 30 of my calendar. time i would already have 2 kids if i were my parents. some meaningful plants populate the front of the house now. like some of my dead grandma, some of the other living grandma. some of my great-grandmother. last time i went to live away, my mom manage to kill my first plant on the span of 2 weeks i was checking if i actually wanted to spend time in the woods. after a year i had an argument over veganism and not having a driver license with my landlord and i decided to leave the place. it was free. we climbed mountains together. he's friend of my parents. i never diminished anyone for their beliefs on my adulthood. maybe next mountain season i'll visit him. no hard feelings but i hope the message on how important is to do your part for a greater cause was signaled. as Nemo's sharks once said: fish are friends and not food