Life is always absurd, you just have to look

Today I walked over a historic monument into a 700 year old institution and paid to contribute to the deaths of thousands.

You don’t believe me, do you? Oh ye of little faith. It’s true! Everyday life is a surrealist experience if you stop to examine it. 

This morning I left my apartment, turned right and walked down to the street. A block later I descended one of four pedestrian staircases of this overpass:
  

 
Built in 1926, it is apparently an engineering feat that required the removal of a hill.  I happen to be very fond of this overpass, but I frequently question sanity of the multitude of tourists who come to Porto Alegre and stand on this overpass to take pictures of themselves just standing there.   I watch them and think that they probably get excited about warm milk…  It is a historic monument in the city of Porto Alegre, which is not saying much about historic monuments in Porto Alegre.  And so this morning I walked down one of its staircases.

I walked three blocks and turned left and into an institution that dates back to 1305.  On January 15, 1305 Dinis I, the 6th king of Portugal, instituted a system of ‘cartórios’ , or registry offices.
 These are outdated, useless institutions that have remained mostly unchanged for 700 years. All of the work is paper based and labor intensive.  I'm not exaggerating when I say that computers are only used as bona fide typewriters to generate more documents. The main function of cartórios in Brazil is to perpetuate the quagmire of bureaucracy  that stagnates that country and deprives of oxygen any hint of progress. And so I walked into the belly of this paper pushing dinosaur and had my signature notarized on a piece of paper.

The piece of paper was a sworn translation I did the day before. Only the few, the proud, the stoopid are allowed to do sworn translations in Brazil – you have to take a test that is only offered once every 30 years and receive official credentials.  In fact, these sorts of sworn translations only exist in Brazil and are only required by Jurassic governmental institutions.  And there I was in the belly of the dinosaur notarizing my signature on the fossilized remains of what was once a promising economy. The paper allowed a South American equivalent of Phillip Morris to import 15 kg of tobacco from well fed Fiji farmers, who exploit malnourished Fiji peasants, to produce cigarettes that will destroy the health of thousands of smokers, who are fully cognizant of the risks!  And this morning there was I, wallowing in the quagmire of Jurassic bureaucracy, paying for a service that will perpetuate this absurdity for future generations and inadvertently, or advertently as the case may be, contributing to the death of thousands of smokers. 

Everyday life is always absurd, you just have to look.