Well, if that
wasn't a blog hiatus, then I don't know what is. It's funny how life sometimes just consumes you with meaningless little things. I can't count how many times I have wanted to sit down and start writing about what's going on only to end up spending two hours on Facebook perusing all of the incredible nonsense that is out there. I read awhile back how most people are now finding it useless to go to high school or college reunions these days because with Facebook, Twitter, and any other social media outlet, everyone is constantly in touch with each other anyway. So what's the point of an uncomfortable reunion when you can just Facebook stalk anyone you want anyway in the comfort of your own home? I live thousands of miles away from most of my good friends and I can tell you where a large majority went this weekend, who they went with and even who they hooked up with (and I've probably already seen the profiles of these poor innocent girls). It's truly amazing but it can be wildly distracting. I don't know how in the hell kids find the focus to study these days. Social studies? No thanks. I think I'll spend the next hour watching videos of dudes lighting themselves on fire. And porn? Forget about it. Teenagers must be going absolutely apeshit these days. Back in my day if I caught a nipple in a Victoria Secrets magazine I'd be pretty pumped up and you might not have seen me for a few days. But these days I can't search for "massage on the beach" on Google without wondering if I just accidentally typed "Thailand hooker." I don't know what kind of algorithms they've got running over there in Mountain View but it's some twisted shit. I'm thankful as hell that I didn't grow up with all of this stuff. I don't think I would have ever gotten anything done. Anyway, I'm digressing but you get my point. The online distractions are far and wide, but it's time to let them go and start blogging again. Just keep me away from Google please....What keeps me very busy these days is Cactus. Since my last post a few lifetimes ago, we've opened two franchise stores. I certainly wasn't expecting opening a franchise store to be a cake walk but like everything I find in this country, the openings were much more difficult than expected. I look back on opening our first Cactus store and I always said that I never wanted to go through that again. However, because of the franchise model, every time we open a store it's like we're opening our own store again. Therefore, it seems that I have committed myself up to doing something many times over that I swore to never do again. But, such is life. It's an adventure and you've got to roll with it. The two new franchise stores are located in Blumenau and Florianópolis at another mall about 10 minutes from our own store. Currently, we are in the construction process of two new stores, one in Blumenau and one in São José. There is so much work to be done and so many improvements to be made that each day is a huge challenge. I wake up each day wondering if my work days at Merrill Lynch were less stressful than my days now. The responsibilities are so great on both sides that it's hard to compare. It's an amazing thing to have someone invest in your idea but with that comes a tremendous amount of responsibility, and that is something that doesn't disappear. If anything, I'm thankful that my experience at Merrill Lynch gave me the tools to be prepared for what is happening now. All in all, we've got some things to work out but we're heading in the right direction, and I guess that's all you can ask for giving what we've gone through. The next goal is getting a Cactus open in São Paulo and Rio and if I can make that happen, I'll be a happy, happy man....
Outside of Cactus, life continues to be great. This is an absolutely crazy time of year for me. As Florianópolis is a city heavily based on tourism, it's very important for the stores to focus on maximizing the high season so there is lots of work to be done. Meanwhile, I rent my house quite a bit during this period so I'm constantly moving in and out of my house and this year with a girlfriend and a cat, it's even more cumbersome. Add all of this to the fact that for basically three months there are friends or friends of friends who are in town and want to go out for drinks or whatever every single night or need tips on doing this and doing that. It can get tiring to say the least. I swear one day when I have the time I'm going to set up a travel/consulting company but for now, it's a constant stream of answering questions. The upside to all of this is that I get to meet some really cool, interesting people. I can't even begin to describe the different people I've had the pleasure of spending time with here in Brazil. It's a pretty wild list. I remember awhile back I was at El Divino having dinner with a group from San Francisco. The group included Sean Parker (for those who don't know him he was portrayed by Justin Timberlake in the Social Network), who was still flabbergasted by what he saw at a party at my house the night before, but what I remember most from the night was having a conversation with one of the other dudes at the table. It went like this:
Dude: So, what do you do in Floripa?
Me: Well, I own a sushi lounge but I'm starting a fast food mexican restaurant (I'm not sure why but I thought that this sounded interesting). And you, what do you do?
Dude: I build spaceships....
I had already had a few cocktails by this point but it wasn't the alcohol that made me pause for a response. I mean, how do you respond to that? "Spaceships huh? Yeah, I wanted to do that but I thought MIT would be too cold in the winter time." It was a pretty classic conversation, and with it came one more great experience meeting someone really effing interesting in Floripa. So if you ever make your way down here, look me up. We can sit on the beach, have a few caipirinhas, and I'll fill you in on what happens to a NASA engineer, who has probably spent 99% of his life in a library, is suddenly surrounded by hundreds of hot, young gyrating Brazilians (hint: Google search "spaceship premature malfunction").....
