Off the record

• I was an Olympic athlete.
  Of the mind.

  I played Go for Brazil at the 2012 World Mind Sports Games in Lille. Finished 37th out of 38. Won one game and saved my honor.

• I was a reserve on Brazil's inline hockey national team.

  I trained so hard I ended up with a thrombosis and a seat on the bench. Push yourselves, but don't force it: rest counts as much as training.

• I snuck into a publishing house at 12 to walk out with a PlayStation 2.

  It was a magazine contest at Editora Abril, Brazil's biggest publisher. I made a plan to take that PlayStation 2 home and, to be safe, I executed it.

• I sold horse drawings in restaurants.

  As a kid, while my parents talked, I drew horses in pencil and sold them at the neighboring tables.

• I danced a Brazilian pop classic on stage.

  A three-person choreography to "Vermelho" by Fafá de Belém, showing Brazil to an international audience of a thousand people, in Spain.

• I built a temple garden in Spain.

  Two months with twenty other teenagers, assembling a mosaic piece by piece for a temple garden in Jerez de la Frontera.

• I played harmonica on the street for money.

  I learned "Fascination" on the harmonica to get by while traveling. It was the only tune I played well.

• My nickname is
  Malinha.

  Eleven years of capoeira, starting at age two. I couldn't sit still, so the nickname — "little troublemaker" in Portuguese — came fast.

• I went to my first rock festival at 8, without my parents.

  I miss the nineties, when you could send a kid to Ouro Preto with someone you trusted.

• I drink a liter of milk a day.

  And as a kid it was worse: two. I can't live without my milk.

• I did a muay thai camp in Thailand.

  An MMA fan, I spent 45 days in Thailand learning muay thai. And working remotely from there.

• I've shaken hands with King Charles.

  That one I owe to my mother, who held an exhibition and invited me. Come to think of it, I owe her all the others too, one way or another. Love you, mom.

• I pick up other people's litter.

  Off the street and into the bin. It costs nothing and the street thanks you.

• I swam with a shark.
  By accident.

  Mid-snorkel, towed by a boat on my little styrofoam board. I was admiring a huge ray on the seafloor, which turned out to be hiding a shark underneath. I froze. Stopped breathing altogether.