Brazil 14 - You Might be Brazillian If...

All anecdotal...

• The "sweet biscuits" section in your local supermarket is larger than the tinned / processed vegetable section and the pasta section put together, and you think this is normal.
• If you are trying to get to sleep, and there is a loud and not-especially efficient fan in the room, you would turn it on.
• You think that an acceptable way of reserving your parking space on the pavement is surrounding it with ankle-high black chains, ready for some unsuspecting numpty (me, for example) to trip over them while walking at night.
• You think that a postal service which might deliver to your house / flat every 10 days or so is normal.
• You are surprised if anyone maintains the building they live in.
• Most people you know have both black and white recent ancestry (Brazil has almost total mixing, in large part because it was founded on mixed marriages).
• Given that, you do not remark on the fact that most people on Brazillian TV programs are whiter than average, and most people in the slums are blacker than average.
• You see lots of skyscrapers every day, but have never seen a crane that builds them. (The Brazillians seem to do without, and don't seem to have the big girders in theirs. My guess is that makes them much harder to maintain, and it's much harder to tell how safe they are.)
• Faced with a choice between doing something the labour intensive way and using a machine to do it, you employ people to do it the labour-intensive way. Labour here is very cheap.
• You think that cheap plastic garden furniture is completely normal for use indoors.
• You think that the main function of canals is to dump "used water" into.
• You think that the Falklands War is really interesting, and you aren't British. (My guess - it's because Argentina lost, and the Brazillians like that).
• On entering a shared dormitory where people are already asleep, you carry on talking in a loud voice.
• Regardless of physical and financial conditions, you stay cheerful.
• You think the main purpose of fire escapes is storage.