Textbooks for school

I am in the process of going to school on-line for my MBA with a focus particularly in International Business. This is my second semester taking classes and it has been running pretty smoothly up until this point. Internet connection has had minimal times of not being connected, the electricity in the neighborhood has been really good lately and I was able to get all my books for the first semester on-line as E-Books. I rented two and bought a digital copy of the other. Really cheap, $110 for all 3 books and the VA pays me $250 each semester for books. A little extra in the pocket for myself!

Now, lets talk about this semester. I am in the first day of the 3rd week of both of these courses today. There was 3 required books that I had to find and only one was available digitally. This digital copy I got was off some Russian website and I probably have viruses now or Julian Assange is borrowing my e-mails to use later. Some funky things have been happening to my laptop too, not from the water problems either. I've tried to run antivirus stuff and delete some weird programs to no avail. I will mess with this at a later time.

Ok, the other two books had to be purchased on-line with international shipping. I actually paid more for taxes and shipping then I did for the books. Both books were purchased two weeks before this semester started and I just got the first one today.

Lets start with the Amazon purchase, I bought it and provided the correct address and my Brazilian tax ID (CPF). Without this tax ID customs will hold it forever and send it back eventually, sometimes. I assumed Amazon has had experience with international shipping, so I wasn't too worried about this book actually making it. Five weeks later I have it after the first book got held up in customs and they eventually abandoned it. When I finally got a hold of UPS they told me Amazon told them to throw it away and here is the name of who authorized it from Amazon. I then talked to Amazon and they claimed customs was on strike a few days and that is what caused the book being tossed out. So they reimbursed me and I bought another book through them without any additional cost to ship it to me. I'm happy they resolved it and I finally have this book now.

The other book was purchased through the only website I found it on. Its called Biblio.com and the book shipped from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia with DHL. This should of been a key indicator that this was going to be all messed up. It had a nice journey too, from Malaysia, United Kingdom, Netherlands and finally to São Paulo...where it sat for a few weeks. DHL was very slow to answer any of my E-mails or phone calls and kept saying it processing customs. Even though it was a messed up place to have a English textbook to come from, I had some faith in DHL. They are a well known international shipping company. I would think that they were better than UPS and could find a way to correct problems easily. Well I finally got notified after the book was returned and why. The description on the package of what was inside was a bunch of random letters and numbers that meant nothing. Customs said hell no and kicked it back. I am now in a back and forth where is my replacement book and have no idea when I will get it.

So, for 3 weeks I have been winging it and still getting A's. The one digital book I got from the beginning of the course hasn't been used once. I have been mainly looking for key words in the questions provided by the professors and google searching for some materials to write about. We are supposed to be taken quotes out of the readings from the textbooks to support our ideas and I have somehow used references from what my classmates have posted in the discussions without both professors realizing it. Either I am very good at BSing or just lucky.

I am now laughing at this but I have lost my mind a few times. Hopefully the other book will be here soon. The logistics of living abroad can be a hassle at times.

Trash can...its wild here!

I just lifted up the trash can in the bathroom and about 50 huge ants fell out the bottom of it! A little excitement to say the least. I redneck threw the trash can out the front door into the yard, which was a good idea, because there was more in there. I took the electric bug zapper and started giving the ones on the floor some juice and smashing them. Lots of zaps and the smell of hell yeah, die! These little bastards have large pinchers on the front of them and I have found similar ones on one of my sons soccer uniform after practice. They mean business and do pinch if they get to you. Its wild here folks and stuff like this happens on a normal basis.

Water Problems

The Shower Head Graveyard!

Friction on the concrete floor

Shut-Off valve that blew apart

So I had a little water problem here lately. Not from the rain as one might expect, but from the water pressure coming from the city connection. Yes, in a 3rd world country the pressure can be too much. I know I didn't believe it at first. When the water tank would signal to fill back up, the jolt of water pressure caused one pipe to wear through over a 8 month period and another fitting to destroy itself. With these two events happening it caused it to rain in our office twice in 1 week. Not once, but twice! We found the first problem and fixed it, didn't see the other problem until it was too late for another event.

First episode of rain in the house happened because of the friction on a pipe laying on the concrete floor upstairs wore through. It sprung a leak sometime in the night and slowly filled every crevice in the water tank area until it seeped through the ceiling into the office. Yes, the office with many important electronics, books, documents and other nice to have stuff is directly under two huge water tanks and all the associated pluming. I think I would of rethought this process when designing the house, but at the time I didn't think of it. So, like every week day I get up at 0630 to get the kids ready for school. As I am walking down the hallway I hear the sound of rain...I just walked by a window and noticed there was no rain outside. It was a beautiful sunny morning. I ran as fast as I could to see what was going on. As I rounded the corner I saw water rushing out of the office into the house. I started grabbing everything I could and yelling to the wife for help (big mistake, I will explain later). She comes running out to help. I get what I really thought was important and started to think of what to do. Got to stop this in the house rainfall. Once I feel she can rescue the rest I head out to grab a ladder from the garage and head up on the roof. The water tank area is an enclosed tower on the roof. I get in there and immediately find the tower on the bottom level is about 2 - 3 inches of water. I shut off the incoming water from the street and open the valve to dump both hot tub size water tanks. The tanks dump in a matter of minutes. I come off the roof and run to the street to turn that valve off too...wanted to make sure there was no water at all coming in.

Wow, that's a huge event for so early in the morning! Now, we started the process of cleaning up the water. Buckets, rags, towels and whatever else to sweep and mop the water out the front door. Mind you I'm doing this with my wife...and she is not happy with me. I'm clueless of why she may be mad at me and not the fact we just had a huge rain in our office. A hour later when she returns from dropping kids off at school, she tells me the next time something like this happens to come in the bedroom and wake her up nicely. I tried to explain the extreme circumstances of this event and realized this was a losing battle.

Well glad we were home when this happened and prevent everything from being destroyed. If we were away this would of continued for a long time until we came home to discover it. It was the main line to the house and there is no safety device to realize oh no I am sending a lot of water into this house. I fixed it with the help of the neighbors worker who is repairing her roof. I went and got a new pipe with two fittings and we fixed it. I took up some old rags to put around the pipes where I thought they might rub or chafe. What a mess! Cased closed and what the hell was that!

Nope, it happened again but in a different spot the very next day! This time, it was much more and the video is attached to show you. It was like a waterfall coming out of the ceiling light and splashing all over. We were gone most of the day and I decided to come home instead of staying longer at the in-laws house. My wife sent me a message saying she was coming back to work from home. We were in the house no more that ten minutes and I was preparing the kids a snack and my wife was just walking in the door. This time she heard it first and we both ran to see what was happening. Again rainfall in the office but this was a torrential rainfall. We did the same as last time and started to grab everything important and then I ran first to the street to shut off the water valve. Which was the best decision ever, because the only shutoff valve upstairs was the one the blew up. If I would of went up there first and found out there was no way to stop it. It was like a damn fire hose going off up there. We completed the same process of clean up and this time the wife wasn't mad at me. Maybe its because she found it first and yelled for me to help.

This time we contacted the plummer who did all this work to fix his mess. I am no licensed and certified professional plummer but the fact he had put pipes on the concrete floor and didn't realize the pressure was a bit much tells you he is not very good. Although he did fix his mistakes, it will be a cold day in hell before we call him again and we have also had other water problems before this. I will give a short paragraph at the end of the other problems that could be his fault or maybe just bad luck. After he completed the work I looked everything over and made sure it was all legit. We reduced the pressure by restricting the flow to the house by only opening the shutoff valve upstairs half way and the one on the street halfway. The filling of the tank is much slower but at a decent pressure. Ok, I am now satisfied nothing else will happen!

Two day later I come out of the house to find two garden hose connections spraying water up into the air. The water meter reading guy decided he didn't like the fact we only opened the valve halfway. He opened it all the way causing too much pressure to the outside connections. I can't win! So, I replaced the two outside spigots and hopefully they will hold. Please, I hope this is the end of it!

Now let me tell you briefly of the other water problems. First is the well that was drilled in our front yard. Hasn't worked since day one of moving in the house. I tried to look it over and found out if you touch the electrical box to the pump it will shock you with 220 volts. So, I turned off the power to it and haven't touched it since. Next is the laundry room area, the drain to the sinks was plugged and would cause it to leak into the garage through the ceiling and then next we found out the washing machine drain pipe was also plugged. This caused a hole to develop in the garage ceiling and for the same plummer to come fix it a few months before the rain in the office. Lastly, the bathroom showers in all 4 bathrooms plugged up and exploded except for one. I take a sewing needle and shove it through all the holes where the water comes out of the shower head roughly once a week. Its about 40 holes and takes sometime. The water here seems to be a little hard and develops crusty chunks in these shower heads. I have replaced 3 of them some far with simple showers, but I am trying to save the last one in the master bedroom. It's fancy and has a digital temperature gauge. Its a double shower in there and the other side is just the body of the fancy shower and I am in the process of trying to find where I can just buy the shower head part. Hopefully this week I will figure out the place!

So as you can see, we have had a few problems. Nothing that has questioned my move here, but has made me more aware of future potential problems. Its Brazil, things are more difficult here. Even with a brand new house you can expect some problems. I know, in America it would be very rare to experience anything like this within the first few years of a new build.

Well I hope you enjoyed this and had a few laughs at my expense! Thanks...