Ask CosmoLady anything, she has lived on 6 continents!

[HarveySuits]

My adopted parents were killed in a robbery when I was very young.

Their young adult daughter became my guardian, my adoptive mother.

Months later she found and adopted my twin sister as well. (we were separated at birth)

Several months after that, she married my stepfather, the one who came from a wealthy family.

And they died as well?

He's not a stepfather still. she has to be your biological mother for that.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/...ish/stepfather

[Universe]

Do you have an opinion on South Africa's BRICS membership? Does the BRICS cooperation have any meaningful future?

[Creoda]

Thank you everybody for your questions, I am jet-lagged but I have to take a break now, it has been a pleasure

Sorry about the delay responding, I am trying to be thoughtful.

Next time I can talk about hobbies, interests, books, films, etc, my time in India, and anything else!

See you later, I have to relax now

What are your favourite films? Lethal Weapon 2?

How would you compare colonial architecture and houses (old and new) in South Africa and Australia?

Were you mobbed and stared at by crowds of Indian men?

[Scarface F]

What are main qualities you appreciate in a man/partner?

[Scarface F]

My adopted parents were killed in a robbery when I was very young.

Rest in peace.

[Cybele]

How many languages do you speak?
What is your favorite historical era and why?
Do you have a favorite (or multiple favorite) philosopher/s?

[CosmoLady]

Rio de Janeiro is difficult for any Brazilian too.

What was your experience here and in South America as a whole? In which places have you stayed? Where do you generally stay in Brazil? I hope it's not in Rio de Janeiro.

Thank you for asking, Brazil was my first foreign adventure as an adult, in mid-2010 when I was 18.5 years old!
I travel everywhere with my identical twin sister and my stepbrother, so I will use the pronoun we.

When we were in our later teens, we were living in Miami Beach on-and-off;
while there, we made friends with a Brazilian American teen who was our age (she was white, of Italian ancestry).
She had relatives in Brazil and we wanted to visit Brazil with her, and our family had some business in Brazil as well.

Our stepfather was a partial owner of a cargo charter company (and we are still partial owners today.)
We are able to fly for free on cargo jets, we have flown many times with our family (5 people total).
There is no line at check-in or security, and we arrive at the airport 1 hour before takeoff usually.
The flight is much quieter and there is plenty of leg room, usually we are the only passengers, there are only 6-12 seats.
But there is no flight attendant or food or TV.
Our stepfather, who was formerly a pilot, would walk with us through the cargo compartment sometimes.

So we were four 18-year-olds on a vacation together!
We flew on a cargo jet together to London and stayed there briefly,
and then flew on a cargo jet to Cape Town and stayed there briefly.

Then we flew on a cargo jet from Cape Town to Viracopos International Airport in Campinas, Brazil.

So people can understand, this is an international airport serving Sao Paulo,
yet is in the countryside some 90 km away from Sao Paulo.

We stayed for some time in a gated private community in the countryside some 80 km away from Campinas,
still far outside Sao Paulo.
Our stepfather was also a real estate investor and he had recently completed building a house there,
he had been to Brazil many times without us,
though he had died unexpectedly a few months earlier, so he was never able to enjoy it.

We rented a van and drove there, which was easy and pleasant enough, this was a rural area.
The house was recently completed and unfurnished, so we slept on sleeping bags on the floor.
After we completed our business there, we were ready to go on vacation to Rio de Janeiro.
Her family was in Rio de Janeiro anyway, and we were excited to see the city! We had no idea what awaited us.

We completed our business in the countryside,
and then flew on a domestic commercial flight from Viracopos to Santos Dumont Airport,
which is the domestic airport for Rio de Janeiro, on the waterfront near the central business district.
We would be renting a condominium in the Urca area,
which is at the base of the famous Sugar Loaf, the famous mountain on the bay in Rio de Janeiro.

We rented a van again. We had a paper map,
there seemed to be a short and direct drive between the airport and the apartment.

We drove on the large boulevard along the bay.
The traffic was HORRIBLE, not only because of the many cars and the many lanes,
but because of the driving habits of Brazilians!

The condominium itself was great, there was a wonderful view and a small shallow swimming pool on the roof!

We spent the next 3 or 4 weeks in Rio de Janeiro. We never went to the central business district,
but first we explored Urca and went to the top of the Sugar Loaf and hiked around the peninsula.
We went swimming at Praia Vermelha, visited the mall at Rio Sul,
and then explored and went swimming at Leme, Copacabana, Ipanema, Leblon, and eventually Sao Conrado!
We went to the fort above Leme and Copacabana and visited the malls in Leblon and Sao Conrado too!
And we visited the Botanical Garden and the park at the bottom of Corcovado (the mountain with Christ the Redeemer).

Then we HIKED UP TO THE CHRIST! Not once, but several times! We were physically fit and adventurous.
And we hiked for miles in the hills above Rio.
Every other day, we would be going to the beach or shopping or hiking.

We drove along the coast to Sao Conrado and as far as the mall in Barra de Tijuca!
We went shopping at Zara I think.
This was a fated expedition because we met someone there who became our first Brazilian friend.

When our vacation in Rio was finished, we went back to Viracopos, and then back the way we came.

We enjoyed our time so much, and we were real estate investors,
so the next year, we bought the condo where we stayed, this was much less expensive than anything in Miami!
Our Brazilian American friend lived there, with our new Brazilian friend (they are both young women),
and they went back and forth between Rio de Janeiro and Viracopos when we were away.
We sold the condo in Rio de Janeiro in 2019, we do not have a place in the city anymore.

So we would visit Rio de Janeiro and the countryside outside Sao Paulo (not Sao Paulo itself),
once or twice a year, 2010-2019.
At first we would spend over a month in Brazil at a time,
but gradually we became busier and busier, and now we are only visiting Brazil for 1 or 2 weeks a year.

We do not speak Portuguese but our close friends help us a lot, we hired them as our first employees.

We also wanted to explore Sao Paulo, but we were dissuaded from doing so,
because we heard that Sao Paulo is MUCH more crowded and crazy than Rio de Janeiro (which was bad enough).
And Sao Paulo is also naturally boring, while Rio de Janeiro is naturally one of the most scenic cities in the world.

We wanted to visit Guaruja but we were dissuaded from doing so, we did not want to cross Sao Paulo by car.
We also wanted to visit Florianopolis but we were never able to.

We enjoyed rural Brazil very much as well, and in 2014 I think we first flew to Itamar Franco Airport near Juiz de Fora,
and we drove some 160 km south and rented a house in Itaipava,
which is a town in the very scenic mountains north of Rio de Janeiro.

(The international airport in Rio de Janeiro is much closer than Itamar Franco,
but the cargo plane takes us for free to Itamar Franco, and we avoid the city entirely.)

By now, we had a few Brazilian friends and Latin American friends who enjoyed travelling with us to Brazil.
We hired them to work for us in Brazil.
We are real estate investors in the US, and properties in Brazil are much less expensive by comparison!
We bought a house in Itaipava for a fraction of the price of something similar in the US.
And the natural environment is truly spectacular, scenic, unique,
one of my favourite natural environments on earth, without exaggeration.

Finally, when we sold the condo in Rio de Janeiro, we bought a home on the beach near Paraty,
which is on the coast about halfway between Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.
We just spent New Year's Eve on the beach there!
We are able to fly to Paraty directly because we are now flying cargo to Sao Jose dos Campos,
which is about 200 km from Paraty, which is closer than Rio de Janeiro with much less traffic.

I am still amazed how vast the distances are in Brazil, and how terrible the traffic congestion is in the cities.
I find Brazil to be "worse" than the United States in these areas.
And of course crime is terrible as well, though my girlfriends are Bolsonaristas and they bought firearms recently.
And of course the current president is a Marxoid.

Yet Brazil is an amazingly beautiful and fascinating country! I love visiting Brazil, I wish that I had more time.

I definitely prefer the rural areas of Brazil: the rural areas outside Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.

We would love to explore more of Brazil but we do not have time unfortunately.
So we are currently spending 1 or 2 weeks of the year in Paraty and outside Sao Paulo.

Now that I have mentioned Brazil and Lebanon, I will mention India next, I promise! Sorry for the long post!

[CosmoLady]

...is your appetite commensurately petite

or do you consciously limit your meals to child-size portions

Haha!

Our parents were followers of the paleo diet before it existed,
they had braai everyday (grilled meat and vegetables and potatoes),
no bread or processed carbs or fats or sweets.
They taught me and my sister and my stepbrother to be very disciplined,
and we also learned how to prepare European-style vegetable stews.

Our favourite food is grilled or boiled shrimp, we can eat a few hundred grams of shrimp every day, if available.
Sometimes we eat other seafood like clams, mussels, oysters, squid, octopus, and regular fish, but this is less common.
We do not want to eat mammals or birds. And we like the taste of shrimp most of all.
If there is no shrimp, then we eat a few fried eggs every day.
We make omelettes sometimes, but it is faster to simply make scrambled eggs. We use a very small amount of olive oil.

But this is only a few hundred grams of food, which is not much.

For all of our vitamins and minerals, we eat some 5kg of fruit every day, EACH.
This is the equivalent of one watermelon daily for each of us.
We like to eat 5kg of melons, oranges, or tropical fruit, or some combination.
Often we process the oranges in a blender to make fresh juice.

[CosmoLady]

And they died as well?

He's not a stepfather still. she has to be your biological mother for that.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/...ish/stepfather

I consider my adoptive mother (the daughter of my original adoptive parents) to be my mother.

And she married a widower months later, who already had a son.
I consider him to be my stepfather, I consider his son to be my stepbrother.

He can't be my adoptive father because I was already adopted. So what should I call him exactly? LOL, you are very petty

Moreover, you're very annoying, you were annoying from the start, please leave me alone

[CosmoLady]

Do you have an opinion on South Africa's BRICS membership? Does the BRICS cooperation have any meaningful future?

I love the idea of BRICS, which is multipolar and nonaligned,

which is rapidly expanding to counteract the unipolar liberal world order.

South Africa itself is the sick man of Africa, a shamelessly corrupt failed state, so I do not much care what South Africa does.