After staying in for days and enjoying activities like staring at walls, ‘reading,’ watching old movies and forcing myself to eat fruit, I shoved myself into a social situation last night (crazy idea, I know) and immediately started adding wine and grappa to the mix. Needless to say, by the time I got to Suzie Wong (don’t worry, it’s still a shithole) I’d morphed into a dancing machine. Later, we stumbled next door to Pink, my neglected favorite club child that I hadn’t frequented since the opening of Kiss & Fly. Brace yourselves because this is going to sound wrong: but frequenting Pink after such a lengthy time away felt fantastic. Like putting on those comfy worn and torn pair of old sneakers that everyone says you should throw away because they have holes in them and smell up the wahzoo, but you’re just too attached to them and your nicer new sneakers just aren’t the same dammit! That was Pink for me last night. Smelly and grimly and unparalleled in it’s unique douchey-ness.

The place was filled with the usual suspects (do we even have to name them? Cough, Rocco, cough) and they charitably let me in even though I’d forgotten my ID at home. Then I started to desperately wish that I was truly underage because that would’ve given the whole ‘talking my way in’ an added thrill. Cursed adulthood.

Just like the obsession with a favorite restaurant, club or bar, some emotional patterns never change. Like my way of dealing with problems = running away to a foreign country or stalking trip packages on Expedia. This time it’s Brazil. Clearly, there’s a lot of prep work involved in a trip like this: visas, hair removal (a key to femininity as we learned yesterday), manicure, pedicure, starvation in order to shed a few pounds and most importantly, making sure AT&T and iPhone don’t take turns financially screwing me over with whacky international roaming charges. That’s where this super helpful article came in handy, which I wanted to share with all iPhone and potential iPhone owners. In a nutshell:

So what’s the best way of taking an iPhone abroad? If you’re really scared about running up data bills – and you should be – then one way of ensuring that can’t happen is to phone up AT&T just before you leave, on 800-335-4685, and ask them to disable your data plan. Then phone them again on your return, and get them to turn it back on. You can still use the phone to surf the web and check your emails when you’re in a wifi zone, but you won’t get a massive bill for doing the same thing over the cellular network.

The other thing you can do is switch your phone to airplane mode most of the time. That turns off everything: both voice and wifi. When you’re in a wifi zone, or when you want to make a phone call, come out of airplane mode and do whatever you need to do, then turn airplane mode back on again.

On my trip to Uruguay and Argentina, I didn’t even bring my iPhone, just left it locked in my desk drawer in New York as part of an ‘I’m tired of using technology’ (thanks for singing it, Justin Timberlake) experiment. On this trip, while I don’t plan on bringing the iPhone out and about with me, I do want it in the airport for coordination and safety purposes (how it will aid me in a car jacking after it’s already been stolen is confusing to me, but hey…it’s an illusion of security.)

Making life additionally crazy, I’ve heard a lot of contradicting information about Sao Paulo – from those who’ve recommended I try to get a driver with a bullet proof car to others who’ve said taxis are perfectly safe. The overwhelming advice seems to be to dress down, never wear jewelry and never carry a purse with valuables. So I’m thinking hoodie, baseball hat and carrying money in one of those gross and geeky pouches that you strap to your body (yuck!). Fortunately, we’ll only be in the city two days (and how many bad things can happen in two days? We’ll find out!) and with locals who ‘know the ropes.’ Then we’re off to these lakes that I know very little about, but are supposedly part of some rainforest. Like Punta, I plan to remain as oblivious and happy as a child in a car seat along for the ride.