Clonado no orkut!!! (impersonified!!!)

(no version in English this time...)

Gurizada, essa é de rir pra não chorar... dilemas da vida cibernética-pós-moderna. Fui clonado. Minha identidade usada de forma ilegal, crime de falsa identidade, nessa vida virtual. E o pior, já é a terceira vez em que isso me acontece!!

Alguém criou um perfil do Orkut usando uma(s) foto(s) minha(s)... confira aqui! Como já pedi pra Google cancelar o perfil, ele desaparacerá em breve, por isso gostaria de copiar aqui a introdução do rapaz - sugestivamente chamado "Henrique Raniere"...

Sou romântico, quase um amante a moda antiga, como diz a música do Rei... "do tipo q ainda manda flores"...
Sou do tipo q se apega facilmente as pessoas.
Sou calmo, tranquilo,fiel, não sou muito ciumento, só cuido daquilo q amo e q me é importante.
Sou um pouco tímido, mas estou aberto a novas amizades.
No momento, estou solteiro, e a procura da mulher q vai me conquistar e preencher minha vida por completo. Sei q é difícil, mas sou paciente e sei q ela está por perto. Estou muito carente... alguém se habilita??? (risos)
Sou muito ligado a minha familia e acho q isso é a base de tudo, e tudo q tenho e sou eu devo inteiramente a eles.
Tenho bom humor... mas sem exageros.
Trabalho muito, mas sempre arrumo tempo para me dedicar a pessoa q estiver do meu lado, aos meus amigos, e aos meus passatempos prediletos.
Acho q é isso!
Vlw

É brincadeira, né? Coisa de pentelho cheio de espinhas na cara. O pior é saber que ele tinha mais de 100 "amigos" e uns 40 e tantos FÃS!!! E eu!??

Ainda em 2006 minha amiga Licia encontrou um "Henrique Paulo Vedana", que foi desmascarado antes de poder fazer muitas amizades (embora ele tivesse até testemunhos!). Há um ano atrás, foi a vez do "Sr. Vedana", denunciado por um internauta Baiano "detetive particular", que também me advertiu sobre um sujeito do Acre estar usando a minha foto para seduzir gurias num desses sites de namoro online... sujeito bacana, né? (O Baiano, claro!)

Dessa vez foi minha futura hóspede pelo couchsurfing, que apesar de ser uma guria inteligente e interessante, deixou-se levar pelas palavras doces do solteiro Henrique... reconheceu as semelhanças, pensou que Raniere era meu nome do meio, me avisou, e ainda deve estar em dúvida sobre quem roubou as fotos de quem! ;-)

A foto maldita...


Essa foto foi tirada pela Laura, no inverno gaúcho de 2005. Eu estava gripado tomando um chimas em Santa Maria (dá pra ver a Roberta ao fundo) com velhos amigos. Dois meses depois eu estava embarcando pra Holanda e criei esse blog veds.nomadlife.org para documentar a experiência no exterior... e dei upload dessa foto como teste >>>

E não é que o Google Images "tagueou" a minha cara de doente, e todas as pessoas procurando por fotos de chimarrão passaram a ver a minha lata. Algumas pessoas, que hoje acabaram sendo amigas minhas, me adicionaram no MSN ou mandaram e-mail. Outras pessoas usaram minha foto em PPTs, sites de namoro, Orkut e outras coisas mais... até sobrinho da Mãe Elô eu virei!!!

Não quero assustar ninguém, mas é fato... caiu na rede, é peixe. Botou coisa na Internet, é imprevisível o que pode acontecer. Pra bom e pra ruim. Muitas coisas boas já me sucederam por ter um perfil no Orkut, no Couchsurfing, no Linked-in, no Flickr, além dos blogs no nomadlife.org... mas tudo faz parte dessa nova era e dos seus dilemas...


E ae, já deixou recado pro Henrique Raniere? Vai lá, pode sacanear a vontade... :D

Chinese New-Years... the year of the RAT!

Last Wednesday evening we celebrated Chinese New-Years, as part of the Spring Holidays in China. I didn't know much what to expect, after spending New-Years eve in 5 different countries in my life.

First of all, Spring Holidays is "THE" holidays in China. For two weeks, over 300.000.000 (yes, 3 hundred million) people go back home to see their families. As people work a lot in China and many of them live far away from home, this is the only opportunity in the year to see family. For that reason as well the snow storms last weeks were so devastating, because it made most trains and airports slow down or close while millions were on their trips.

New-Years eve seems to be like Christmas eve in Brazil, a moment for the family-at-large get together and eat a lot. In our case here in Shanghai, we also had a fantastic dinner, but with bunches of internationals and expatriates who didn't go home or didn't spend time with Chinese friends (which is also something not very common, but I will write about that later when I figure out more on that).

After dinner we went to a local club for the party, and at around mid-night we went outside to see the fireworks and firecrackers. I must admit that I prefer the Brazilian version, it's noisier and more beautiful, usually. What called my attention was the risks involved with setting up fireworks and firecrackers in the streets, by local Chinese people, while taxis try to go around and people cover their ears for the noise and try to protect themselves against possible accidents. The whole street looked like a war zone with bombs, smoke, fire and people running all around... peaceful, happy but still not very safe, at all...

Later on after a couple of hours I got tired of the music and expensive drinks and together with some colleagues we found a private party, someone met someone and there we went, partying at this amazing flat in a rich building, rented by a French guy who is the marketing manager for another famous top club in town. We left his home at 7 in the morning when the sun was rising, and the year of the rat was just starting...

Last night I was trying to go to sleep, and I was surprised by the fireworks and firecrackers outside... really noisy, actually it seemed even more than during new-years eve... today we asked and indeed it was more noisy. The logic behind is that Chinese people celebrate the 5th day of the new-year (as part of the spring holidays) as much as new-years eve, and by setting up fireworks they "welcome the new to arrive"... so now I can say the year has started!! Or maybe I misunderstood the whole point, which by the way might be very possible :P

Anybody have seen the film Lost in Translation...?? Yeah, that's me!

The Danish Secret Revealed: The Jante's Law

This is one of the first posts I write about Danish culture in my blog. There are many reasons and excuses for that, which I might comment later. After over one year living here, and trying to understand the complexity of the simple way of life of the Danes, I might now be able to "guess" something.

Everybody who comes here can easily see how Danish people are open to other people, lovers of individual freedom, rich and egalitarian (social welfare system, for example), having a high standard of ethics. Especially when I compare with the country I come from.

Under the surface, someone ask her/himself: how come this country can be so liberal, so capitalistic, so individualistic, and at the same time to egalitarian, so socialistic??

Well, under the water there is a huge iceberg of cultural assumptions and truths that even the Danes themselves deny! Or they try to deny...

A long time ago, in 1933, a Danish-Norwegian author wrote a novel about a little village in Denmark called Jante, a typical small town where nobody is anonymous. The 10 rules that define life there are:

1. Don't think that you are special.
2. Don't think that you are of the same standing as us.
3. Don't think that you are smarter than us.
4. Don't fancy yourself as being better than us.
5. Don't think that you know more than us.
6. Don't think that you are more important than us.
7. Don't think that you are good at anything.
8. Don't laugh at us.
9. Don't think that anyone cares about you.
10. Don't think that you can teach us anything.

The law is meant to preserve social stability and uniformity, and the Janters who break the "unwritten" law are treated with suspicion or even hostility.

The movie Dogville was filmed in Sweden and directed by Lars von Trier, a Dane. Although it's a clear critics on the American culture, some might speculate saying that it has many elements of the Law of Jante: Grace (Nicole Kidman) arrives and people accept her as long as she seems inferior to them, and as soon as she becomes too special, too important for the eyes of the people around her, the negative attitude starts: "who does she think she is...?"

Being here has taught me a lot and living "with" the Jante's Law is very difficult sometimes. But you got to admit that it brings a lot of benefits as well...

For another article on Jante's Law, I recommend this one written by a Turkish journalist:
Janteloven: Egalitarianism or restrictiveness?