I guess I shouldn't have run my mouth

This is me. Its 9:17 am and as you can see, I am not very happy. I have been forced by the powers that be to go to a lottery house. Why?

Because Celesc, our electric company, has nothing better to do than to make us try to figure out each month where we can pay our phone bills.

Normally you pay your bills in a bank. Most of the time you can set them up for automatic deposit. But not in Balneário Camboriú. Each month is a cat and mouse game trying to figure out where you can pay your bill.

Some months you can pay at your bank. Most of the time you can pay at your local grocery store, except for right now, with over a half a million tourists in the city, they've decided that the only place they will allow you to give them money is at a lottery station.

Thankfully I had my Treo in my pocket and was able to take this shot of my view from the end of the line. I counted 17 people ahead of me, all with dreams of hitting the number and making it rich.


To be fair, about half of these people were in the same situation as me. Poor slobs just wanting to make sure their lights stay on, but almost every one took advantage of the situation and decided to play.

Finally, at 9:36 I hold the fruit of my fruitless labor in my hands. My reciept for $277.05 reias (about US$130). The line moved faster than I expected but it was still frustrating.

And I didn't play the lotto. If it had been Powerball I probably would have but the Mega Sena pot is still too small to get me excited enough to play. Plus I keep thinking about that fool and his money thing.

Just to prove a point

This afternoon we had to go to the bank and then pick up a few things downtown. When I saw this, I was thankful that I was carrying my Bushnell Digital Camera with me.

This more than proves my point that these people are addicted to the Lotto. First off it's 3pm on a Monday afternoon and it's about a 100 degrees in the shade, much less standing out in the sun. Second, the drawing isn't until Wednesday night so these people are trying to get an early jump on buying their tickets (don't these people have jobs?)

But most important, someone won last week so the total is only 17 million reias (about $7.5 million US dollars). Now I know that will buy a lot of beans and rice but let's be serious. I ain't standing in that line unless the pot breaks 100 million. And even then I'd only be doing it to make my wife happy.

Can you imagine what would happen if we had Powerball here?

Lotto Mania Brasileira

One thing I have learned since moving to Brazil is that Brazilians love the lottery. Love it may be putting it mild. Obsessed. Yeah that sounds more like it. I mean they like it so much that they had to invent jogo do bicho so that people who could play the lottery not by choosing numbers but by choosing one of 25 different animals.

When we lived up north in Goias, you would see a people standing in line at the licensed lottery houses, called lotericas (the only place where you can legally purchase lottery tickets) waiting to buy their chance at a better future. Sometimes 5 or maybe 10. More than at Charlotte Park Market but really not that many. Some of them weren't even playing the lotto because you can also pay many of your bills there. Occasionally the local governments like to play games with you and make you pay your light or water bill there as well. For only one month. That usually entails an hour or two wait in line -- a pastime that Brazilians seem to love even more than playing the lottery. I'll talk about paying bills in Brazil in another rant soon.
Anyway, after moving even further south to Santa Catarina, we have found that people in this state take the lotto seriously. Very seriously. They have incorporated their two favorite pastimes into an artform. Yesterday the Mega Sena (our version of Powerball) hit 50,000,000 reias (about US$22,000,000). We headed to our local Angeloni Supermarket which also has a lotérica in the store. I was anticipating some serious lines. I wasn't disappointed. Here is the evidence thanks to my Treo. This is the front of the lotérica. You can see about 10 or so in line. Not too unusual.

This is moving around to the front door. It´s Powerball-fever, Brazilian style. No big deal.

Moving around you can see that the line moves out to the front of the store. This is no bigger than your average line at the bank. Still nothing worthy of a post.

Walking out the front door I see the line has snaked out of the building and up the handicap ramp into the store. Now we are talking some serious lottery players. Getting at the end of this line means probably losing your job and needing to hit just to pay rent.

I took this last one from the upper handicap ramp just to show how much the Catarinense (people from Santa Catarina) love to stand in line and believe they are going to win it big.

BTW, somebody in São João da Barra, RJ played 15,17,23,33,39 and 49 and won 52 million reias. Guess he picked the right day to stand in line.