Brazil

Following on from previous entries on 'business travel', this one was also quite good fun. i have a team in South America`who are based in Sao Paulo, Brazil, so it was high time i went to see them. Now Sao Paulo conjours up a few things for me, Brazilian football teams, and the famous/infamous 'favelas', which i studied in school...lord knows what essays i used to write about them, or on what basis...however, on the plane over, i realised that i had never ventured south of the equator...yes singapore is basically on the equator, but ive never been that far south, and i had never been to south america, so it was with a sense of excitement that i boarded the plane for the mammoth 15 hour journey...(15 hours + 2 hours while we sat on the tarmac in Amsterdams Schipol airport, while they tried to find out why one of the engines was leaking oil...not a good sign...)

Anyway, i was going for a week, which is about the bare minimum that could justify that length of time on a plane. i went on the friday so that i could have a weekend free there, to a) see the sights and b) not be jetlagged the whole time i was there. i met the manager of my south american team on the saturday and with his colleague Elvis (yes, named after him), we went exploring Sau Paulo (from now on, not to be capitalised)

In terms of layout, sao paulo (i did warn you) is a weird set up...most if not all europrean cities are based around a central square, so that you get some kind of perspective on where you are, sao paulo seems a bit igglety pigglety (6th favourite word) there is no real centre to speak of...the road in these pictures is as central as it gets. i am debating as to whether or not this park in the centre of sau paulo justifies ticking the box of seeing a brazillian rainforest or not...i guess not.

Unfortunately, visiting places like brazil for work has only one drawback, you end up actually working for most of the time, i had saturday and sunday, but apart from that, the long long hours during the week meant that i didnt really see as much of sau paulo as i would have liked. my hotel was out in an affluent area, as sau paulo is a pretty dangerous place, i wasnt allowed to get a taxi on my own, i had to have a specific driver, and i was staying outside of the city as the city was not safe enough for a foreigner, i would either be mugged or kidnapped...so i couldnt really go exploring. i was/am pretty ill this week as well, a virus i think picked up on the plane meant that i felt like death for most of the week and was pretty exhausted the whole time...regardless, as i sit at home in oslo, wondering when my head will catch up my body and make it over the atlantic, it was a really good week, having met some wonderful people.

brazillains as a race are extremely friendly, something that is painfully obviously missing in norway. at oslo airport i was again amazed at how rude and inconsiderate norwegians are...anyway, it was refreshing to be around such warm friendly people...you know, im not sure how correct it is to say this, and i may be lambasted for it...but in my humble experience, the poorer a country is, the friendlier the people are...im sure there is an essay just in that...but thats my hypothesis...take it or leave it