Today was a tremendously frustrating day.
I did finish the book, at last - I wrapped it up today, some things were missing. Then I got a call asking how it was going. "It is done, packed, and ready to ship!", I said. "Oh, great, impressive! You sure are good! But there is another little problem..."
Thing is, since I am not Lorneau Corp., nor Lorneau - Self-employed under registry number NNN, I cannot provide the publisher with the paperwork needed for me to get paid. Therefore, it was arranged for me to use the papers from a friend. And here it begins: I have to call him, figure out where he lives, find a way to go all the way there, and get the stupid papers; I will have to pay him for this, since there is some tax over it (and it can get as high as 15%); and I will make quite a bit less than I imagined for this work, even not counting the tax. Maybe it is fair, in a twisted logic, given I originally had ten days to finish it, but did it in three: "You get paid by the hour: do it quick, receive less!" But I am paid by pages...
Onward. Out of curiosity, I went around looking for prices of things. Problem is, I know too well where to look for prices, both here and in the US. And I was devastated when I realized the Playstation 2 costs R$1,500 here, and U$200 there. That was after noticing the PS1 still costs up to R$500 here. And a damn Genesis can go for R$300! What do these people have in their heads? Maybe they imagine gamers always start on NES, then Genesis, SNES, PSX, N64, and then Dreamcast, XBox, Gamecube, PS2. Associated to that, they think the first two or three are gifts from the gamers' parents; then the gamers start working and buy the next one; then they get promoted and buy another one; so another promotion, and they buy something else! And when they are CEO in their companies they finally purchase a PS2 with TWO controllers, wow! Therefore, they keep the prices untouched for ten years, because that is the ladder every gamer in the universe climbs, no matter when they were born.
So I went looking on that import business. It would be funny if not horrid. To ship an item of U$199,95 to Brazil, they charge U$75. "No, you got me wrong, I just want the product shipped, no need for the gold plate gift box." But now it gets far more interesting.
Here we have a tax over "services and manufactured goods". So I buy something from a store in the US (manufactured good), pay an American company for shipping (service), and then I pay 2-11% of the sum of those values to the Brazilian government. But that is not all!
There is also an import tax, which applies to everything but books and medicines for personal use. And this cute little thing charges... 60%. "60% over product value?", you ask. No. 60% of manufactured good plus shipping plus the tax mentioned above. Yes, I pay the Brazilian government taxes twice for the service of an American company; I pay a tax over another tax, too. Fun, no?
Now we add the last bit of spice: exchange rate of 3.45, today. Anyone care to figure out how much that would be? Do not forget one tax goes on top of the other.
I said too much about this one topic, so I will make the other frustrating things very brief:
A friend was very unkind to me and a bunch of morons with no life are going around taking decisions that affect me without asking me (as is written they must) and I reached a game over screen in all three SNES RPGs I tried to play today.
Okay, that covers it. Now, something good:
I openly declare I have entire ISO images of Playstation games in my hard disk. When you consider the same game costs R$200 here and U$20 there, it is not even such a big crime. When you consider, too, the vast majority of these games is not sold here except by smugglers and/or professional pirates in flea markets, it is almost excusable. And when you, finally, consider three out of four of my attempts at importing anything ended in the endless abyss of customs, where the officials have no shame in saying they make many expensive things "disappear", I feel completely in the blasted flying disgraced right to download these ISO images! Especially seeing as I pay for this stupid DSL of 256k four times more than any American kid pays for a connection of 2 Mb!
Apologies, I said it was something good. Yes. I finally got a PSX emulator to work well enough, and even figured a reasonable keyboard layout (no, I have no joypad, joystick, controller, etc) that allows me to press all of its ten keys without much thinking - but, of course, this game is turn based.
...and it has kept me up until 3h AM. I must be up early tomorrow. Good night, all readers who take pity; and all those responsible for this ridiculous overpricing, may you all freeze in Hell.
Posted by Etienne at January 22, 2003 03:10 AM