TLDR: Hard work pays. The USA still is the land of opportunity. Never stop dreaming of a better future.
Gentlefolks
Some of you may have heard the stories I've shared ever since I moved to the USA a little over 10 years ago.
That happened tangentially as it was in the mid 2014 that I bought my I/S@1999 as a self gift for Father's day and ever since I have posted in this forum, many times asking for help and advice and whenever possible sharing things that I thought would be helpful to the club members.
One of my oldest memories I have of the USA as a place/idea was back in 1984 when I was a little kid watching the Los Angeles Olympic games and I really liked (as a kid) the mascot of the games: Sam the Eagle.
It may sound silly, but in the eyes of a young child, Sam the mascot was pretty cool and I enjoyed that the 'Team USA' was winning many of the gold medals.
But a 4 years old child doesn't quite have the concept of countries or geography, I would only start to realize better the concept of countries when I learned to read and write at 6 years of age and started reading a geography/history book of my older brother who was at middle school.
In Brazil the USA is featured quite frequently on the TV in these days, but I was growing up when Brazil was still under a military dictatorship, as a result, there was heavy censorship on both TV and newspapers.
Books had to be approved by the Federal government to be published. The same thing with pretty much everything, even music was censored by the government to ensure 'a moral society'.
Only 'government approved' content was ever made public to the people and books and magazines that were illegally imported could be confiscated by the police.
The dictatorship was only over in 1989 when there were finally free elections for President.
As a result, starting on late 1989 to 1990, there was an explosion of new books, newspapers and magazines being published.
I grew up in a small and poor countryside town that had a public library, that I would visit after school. I would spend the afternoon on the kid's library and leave around 5PM and then ride my bicycle back home.
It took a couple months but I managed to read everything they had in their 'kids section' and naturally moved to the 'grown up section' of the library.
The first non-State approved book I read was a biography of Martin Luther King Jr. I was 10 year old and was really hooked by the ideas of equality, justice and freedom that were spread by Dr King.
Of course, when I read that he was shot that broke my kid's heart.
I moved to other subjects like Science and History and never thought about the subject for many years.
In the High school, History and Geography teachers would teach the difference between countries that were occupied as an exploitation colony (e.g. Brazil, Jamaica, etc) versus an occupation colony (e.g. USA, Australia, etc).
Lots of the problems in modern day Brazil can be traced back to how the country started and who ruled it in the first centuries of colonization.
So the idea of joining the 'Team USA' started maturing... why play on the side of the losers when you could join the winners team?
I started to self learn English, reading basic books, listening to English songs and watching movies.
When I was admitted in one of Brazil's elite universities (something that even close relatives said to me that 'It isn't for poor people' and 'It was a silly dream' and 'Even if you are admitted, there is no way you can graduate'), I was one of the few students in my class that spoke decent English and could read technical articles and books.
The English language was the key to allow me to enroll in trainee programs that were led by University researchers that had their PhDs done in the USA.
In those programs I could develop technical skills and learn good work ethics from Brazilian Engineers that had studied and worked in the USA. And most importantly, those professors believed that I had what takes to be successful and they helped me a lot.
Fast forward a few years and I would visit San Francisco for the first time in 2008 to attend a technical conference sponsored by my employer.
I really enjoyed the city and was really impressed to see the headquarters of so many iconic companies: Apple, Intel, EA (Electronic Arts), Google, HP, etc.
I would then start building up the technical skills that were in high demand and would eventually lead me to a company that would sponsor my move with my wife and daughter to the USA in 2014.
I moved to the USA with only US$ 9,000 in my pocket a little over 10 years ago.
And then I look at where I'm today: I bought (but still paying) a home in the SF Bay Area, I fully paid for my daughter's undergrad in the University of California, all my vehicles in the garage are fully paid, got enough savings to weather a bad economy and a happy family that supports me in my crazy endeavors.
I was able to travel the whole world and get to meet with really brilliant people who are luminaries on their respective fields.
In my specific area of expertise, I managed to build some small degree of notoriety and success (i.e. if you are reading this in a computer or cellphone, you are probably running under the hood some code that I wrote).
Thanks to being paid in dollars, I was able to save the life of my mother (I may write a post about the subject in the future) by paying out of the pocket for an open heart surgery that she desperately needed last month in Brazil.
And since last month, I finally became a United States Citizen.
Not too bad for an orphan of father who grew up in a poor town in the third-world, hum?
ps: no ugly politics in this thread. This is a celebratory post.
