Published on 12, July, 2020
I always had a preference for finding out how things work. As a child I would carry home a broken clock or kitchen appliance of some sort, found in a bin on rubbish collection day, It would get disassembled but rarely got repaired to function again. That bit of achieving functionality came much later after training. I attended a trade High School in automotive technology which covers many skills in electrics, mechanics with engines,gearboxes, rear drive axles, welding, diagnostics, body work---I could go on. These skills were transferable which allowed me to diversify to other industries, so I was able to step into another job easily. Finally working for myself baby sitting a tree stump grinding machine. Ironically, I never worked within the automotive industry. Never a team player, I was fortunate to have found suitable solitary positions.
Give yourself a bit of a push. Have a go --- what have you got to lose?
NAS86592 said:I kicked off in property renovation with a partner who ended up being a wrong choice. Between us we purchased an old empty grammar school to knock into luxury flats. My partner went into great debt during a period of high interest rates (%15)
That looks like an awesome project - a huge one mind you.
I was caught out by high interest rates back in 1988 when I bought a house which proceded to drop in value by more than a third in a year. Interest rates were about 15% for a while back then but luckily I was working for a building society and had an empoyee 5% mortgage rate that saved my bacon.
My foucs at the moment is modernist (1950s) buidings by famous architects (Niemeyer etc) which are really solid bones and there are plenty of ones that are quite derelict and suitable for restoration (the apartments, not the buildings).
We are looking at bigger things along the size of the one you had then, or bigger as there are plenty of abandoned buildings in the old city center. The right project will cost probably £5-10 million but we have backers for this thankfully.
Makiing a mix of affordable and mid range accommodation should help the neighbourhood with quality accomodation, jobs with the renovation, less places for squatters to hijack and an improvement in trade for the neighbourhood shops / services.
NAS86592 said:Is English or Brazilian (Portuguese) your mother tongue.
English - born and raised in Scotland so perhaps that is debatable LoL.
I met my wife in Sao Paulo when I was working for an American bank who just bought a Brazilian bank and I was sent out to get the interoperability of the back office systems working.
Oddly enough when I got here I spoke no Portuguese at all and being single I was looking for some company - but the locals spoke almost no English so communication was challenging. It's surprising what you can achieve with a shared vocabulary of around 2 dozen words mind you...
I missed having intelligent conversations so managed to get a work colleagues partner to set me up on a blind date with her German language teacher who also spoke English - 9 months later we were married.
Most of the 25 years was spent in England and Germany where I worked but we did manage to try to work in Brazil for 3 years where I still struggled to learn the language.
I've been back for a year now and have gone total immersion which has helped but my brain constantly struggles with the composition of sentences as they have so much complexity compared to English for basic grammar.
Thank you for trying to help me I appreciate that. A colleague told me last night I needed to try and find a niche market, a group who would enjoy my work. It’s hard. I like being isolated, it’s hard to connect. I feel too unique and like there’s nobody like me so I can’t be bothered. But yes maybe I need to try.
Is English or Brazilian (Portuguese) your mother tongue.
My first wife twisted my arm to emmigrate from NYC to the UK. Did you emmigrate to Sao Palo?
Yes, the diagnostic protocall for troubleshooting is broad spectrum.
I kicked off in property renovation with a partner who ended up being a wrong choice. Between us we purchased an old empty grammar school to knock into luxury flats. My partner went into great debt during a period of high interest rates (%15). This was unacceptable for me. I took employment in Saudi Arabia to finance the project in a joint business account. Doing so upset my partner who reneged on aggrements we previously made. He had to buy me out. That was my best decision. My ex-partner eventually went bankrupt.
Is there any chance by joining a craft forum you may possibly engage with people who may be willing to trade with you, or direct you to appropriate websites where you could sell?
Sculpture, ceramics, clay. When I was a child I had lots of collections of things. Trolls, McDonald’s happy meals toys, badges, marbles. Now I make collections of sculptures. I have an Architecture collection, music collection , nature collection etc. But I don’t get any income from it so I don’t think it’s a trade. If I could, I would though. Objects are life to me and always have been I think.
I have always had an affinity for fixing stuff much like yourself but I have always been self taught.
It started off with motorbikes, cars to a degree, computers (user support then hardware and peripherals) and in the last 5 years house renovations / restorations.
The techniques for troubleshooting are very interoperable in the things I do and having a good toolkit means I can work on most stuff. My autism helps in my understanding of the logic of working out how stuff works too,
I've gone from 32 years working in IT support at all levels to working full time on renovating 1950s apartments here in Sao Paulo for a living (well semi-retirement).
I also buy old designer furniture and restore that in the quiet times between projects but I really fancy getting myself a place with a garage and going back to tinkering with motorbikes again. It is a real shame there are few interesting old bikes in this country but I'm working on a plan to ship out a container load of old bikes from the UK.