Mini Biography - Places I've Lived In and some Things I've Done

I was born in Brasília, the capital of Brazil, 3 days past the middle of the month of June in the late Seventies...


My son LF, the little Samurai (the kid has seven names while I only have five), was born here as well, a month and two weeks before I was. 

Ah yes, I remember it was a World Cup year and we lived in 307 South.

Mom, a Law graduate, worked as an archivist for the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Itamaraty) and her boss at the time was sent overseas to actually inaugurate our local Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia.

The Eighties were my Golden Years, for sure.

So, I grew up living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Damansara Heights, Jalan Setiah Kassih Satu, to be more precise.

This is essentially where my perception of Life and WORLD and self came into being.
I am extremely proud to say that in a far away land which I came to know as my first home, at the age of 3, I was put by my father into Judo instruction under MahaGuru Goh Thon Mong at the YMCA Club and was able to witness the creation of JAFT.
The first school of which I recall is called Calvary Kindergarten. After that I wen to the Kuala Lumpur Alice Smith School where I gave the headmaster Mr. Eals a hard time until my regress to Brazil.

I also started having my very first piano lessons there at the PianoForte Music School. How I became interested in music is an actually interesting one, mother asked me one day when I was six or seven right after coming out of the movies theater having watched the play turned film Amadeus directed by Milos Forman, written by Peter Shaffer: "Do you want to know how to play the piano?"

In the early Nineties, my parent's time in the Brazilian Embassy there was due and we came back to live in Brasília, actually to an outskirt town known as Valparaíso right on the border with the neighbor state of Goiás. The Nineties were also Golden Years, in a different way from the 80s, let's say the 80s were Solid Gold and the 90s were Gold Plated...

...so, no difference to eyes and the maturing mind of an adapting kid.
The Nineties were still shining bright like the Eighties shone, something about the sparkle was very different though:

I met both my parents' families: Uncles and Aunts, and lots and lots of cousins.

I studied at a school named CASEB in the mornings and took up on some extra curricular activities in the afternoons in different places like DEFER (Swimming, Basketball and Judo), IBI (English), CIL (English and French), and Brasília Music School - EMB (Piano, Musical Theory and Saxophone). 

Kuwait City. Along with my father, and sister Dr. Jaene, I visited mom there during her two and a half year stay there in the mid Nineties when she worked for two years organizing the Brazilian Embassy files which had been deliberately mixed up when the Gulf War occurred earlier. This is where I lived for 8 months in Kuwait, The Holiday Inn Crown Plaza Hotel. This is where the last of the gleaming light of gold shone bright...

The mid-late nineties did kind of close in on many of us.

1996 was a dark year in the life of my Family Members.

March saw the loss of my Grandfather to a cancer. Even though everyone saw it coming during the whole month he was hospitaled, we were all taken and heavy-hearted. Only to get it worse, five months later and just a few days away from Father's Day (here in Brazil, the second Sunday of August) it was my own dad's loss to a cardiopulmonary arrest. His mom, my Grandad's wife who I kindly call Bibi [Bee-bee] 'cause she's my kids' great-grandmother, just celebrated her 89th birthday some 20 days ago, on September 1st. Those sky-blue eyes are as sweet as honey!

Back to my continuing trajectory...

I spent the late 90s / early 2000s in Foz do Iguaçú, a city in the Brazilian State Paraná, quite an interesting place to visit and take some pictures, only visit and take pictures... just joking. You see, as a matter of fact, I lived in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay where I managed some jobs, but since I also worked and spent most of my time over the Brazilian side of the border, which is clearly marked by the Ponte Internacional da Amizade, I do consider myself as someone who has actually lived in both places: Foz do Iguaçú as well as Ciudad del Este.

My nephew Ed spent his first years there. At school, they taught the kid to speak some Guarani in kindergarten.

Anyone who has already been there knows what the place can boil down to, in many, many different ways.

Incredible as it may seem, it was during those years that I quit smoking cigarettes. At that time in Foz was the best gym ever. It simply ran 24hours a day, no I lie, it shut down for cleaning on Sundays at 6AM and reopened on the same day at 5PM.

I made some good friends down there like Juan Ramirez, a crazy old fellow who sold Pohã-Ronsã, a mix of roots and herbs they use with lemon in a tipical drink called Tererê (a type of tea, very similar to our Gaúcho's Chimarão, only Chimarão is hot while Tererê is cold). Another good friend was the Korean Sa-Bom Nim who taught me Hapkido principles among other Taekwondo techniques and self-defense awareness exercises.

Back to Brasília to live again for a couple of years before taking off and hitch-hiking my way to the Island of Florianópolis, the capital of Santa Catarina, where I'd spend the next 2 years with my daughter's mom.

While my office was downtown and at times at the Praia Mole Hotel, where I would be immersed acquiring some more Teaching Experience from the lengthy Immersion Course Sessions, my home was between Campeche Beach and Morro do Lampião, in the South of the Island. The picture below was taken from the top of Morro do Lampião (Lampião Hill) and you can get a glimpse of a typical view: Campeche Island, a touristic attraction.

Campeche is a beautiful, peaceful and tranquil place compared to the other beaches spread around the island. We often had lunch at restaurants in Rio Tavares and dinner in either one of two neighborhoods called Lagoa da Conceição or in Barra da Lagoa.

Good friends were aldo made down in Floripa. In Campehce I met and worked for Charlie and Stephanie at English for All, a wonderful school for young kids to develop the necessary skills in the English Language. I met and befriended the North-American actor O'Neil Compton when he arrived to live there. I met Sifu Li Hon Ki, whose guidance and instruction in Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture I have the honor to have been under for nearly two years. I met Judoi Sensei Jairo whose Judo knowledge expanded my own and who also became a close friend. How to forget hermano  Oscar, a 'Dolêro' down on Rua Felipe Schimidt who looked a lot more like a Peruvian Shaman gone astray than the the funny Argentinian he really was.

Of course, Florianópolis is where my first daughter Ananda (Padme) was born!

Which, believe it or not, kind of brought me right back to my hometown Brasília once again

Back in Brasília, only this time living in Águas Claras (a fairly new and expanding neighborhood), with our baby daughter was quite a shock, considering where we were before that. Instead of the melody of ocean kissing the beach what we heard was the annoying noise of drilling machines and trucks while we witnessed building emerging almost overnight, overtaking each other in height, luxury and price, as well as outplacing trees and water tables.

It took us a little over two years to get over Águas Claras, by that time we had made almost no friends, but the curious thing was when I started finding out tha many of our relatives and old time friends lived there or were about to move there in this two-year span. When that happened we were also out of Brasília (once again).


Could as well say that 'Adventure' is my middle name while 'Danger' is the one right after it.

All the way into the countryside of the State of São Paulo we drove. Our hope was to be able to live in the whereabouts of an Eco-Village (near Porangaba, a lost town in the countryside of São Paulo State) where we had stayed at, on previous opportunities) during the BioPsychology courses we took there. Things didn't work out as we had planned and we wound up in another nearby place, Hell's Kitchen. Nah, worse. Just kidding.

Botucatu (another lost São Paulo Countryside town) was where my Family and I would spend the following two years. There, I was able to expand my knowledge and acquire experience in Consultancy. My wife and I also got better acquainted to the Waldorf Methodology since our daughter studied in Aitiara School during her first year there. Down in Botucatu some important contacts regarding eco-sustainability and eco-products were established.

Now, once again back in Brasilia. Living at 312 North.

IMHO, the best Quadra in town!

Once again looking into the Future with an eye in the Past to make the best of the Present.
This is where my second daughter Ananda (Lakshmi) will be born.