Heh, I don't particularly enjoy walking across the street carrying money. At least there is a small police 'base' nearby.
These days someone is paying with fake R$ bills over there, the other day the parking garage attendant at the market received a fake 100 Reais note (~60 USD) and the bank had called us because we had deposited two fake 20R$ bills. Now we have to check each note. And we don't take credit cards in our store (I get to say "profit margin" again lol).
> Sounds like the "wild west" compared to where I live (rural Australia). Then again, > the "wild west" sure does have its attractions.
For sure.
> Where I live you cannot even fart without filling out forms in triplicate and getting > stamps of approval from a dozen government departments. The rediculous and every > growing list of rules and regulations are strangling me. > > "Man is born free but is everywhere in chains !" sure applies to a lot of Australia > now. > > I dream of buying my own island and telling the morons who spend their lives making > more and more rules and regulations to f^&k off !! > > EDIT: I actually put an offer in on my own island about 3 years ago. Didn't work out, > but stay tuned.
We did that! Except it's not an island - we bought ~2000m land in a small town not far from the city, a half hour drive. There's nothing out there, dirt roads, cows, cell phone barely works. But there's some activity and construction spread around in the area, apparently we made a really good deal because they are telling us that it's worth 50% more than we paid for it. It's our private wild west.
Don't mention filling out forms...it turned out that the previous owner had not registered the land (don't get me started), even though the zone is now labeled as urban. We had to track down the original owner, from when it was farmland, who parted out his land to sell and get his signature on some stupid form from the prefecture. We've been through paper hell with this but it's all done now and we have started cleaning it up.