Touched down at Uberlandia yesterday along with 8 others from my team. Three
taxicabs are waiting to ferry us to our hotel - and confusion
ensues. How do we stuff all of our month’s worth of luggage for three people into
the car's tiny trunk ? We solve the puzzle eventually and head to our
hotel. I use the cab ride to practice my Portuguese, impressing my cab-mates -
little did they know that I was telling the driver that "I have no
money". That has now become my catch phrase.
The ride to the hotel takes us through the main stretch and a university, and my first impression is positive. When you are used to India as your baseline, development standards elsewhere are a nice surprise (I’m not sure this applies to Africa, but I’m sure it applies to most of the other “emerging economies” that are clumped together as one).
The hotel is quite nice – I was expecting bare-bones, but we have Wi-Fi, on-premise gym, pool and squash courts ! Vanessa, the program coordinator, is there to receive us and hand us our goody bags with a local cellphone. We plan to meet at 7 PM for dinner.
The restaurant is across the road from the hotel, and is quite empty when we make our entrance. By this time, our group had grown to over a dozen. All the TVs in that place are turned on to a football game (soccer for Americanos) – no surprises there. We get busy getting to know each other over caipirinhas and beers. Bruno, the IBM Corporate Citizenship person, suggests a “cook your own dinner” meal. Grills are brought to the table, we get a bunch of condiments and we get busy grilling picanha. Quite delicious. The place fills up by 10 PM, and when we leave around midnight, it is jam-packed. Looking forward to the team lunch and neighborhood tour followed by a visit to the local rodeo on Saturday !
#ibmcsc brazil
The ride to the hotel takes us through the main stretch and a university, and my first impression is positive. When you are used to India as your baseline, development standards elsewhere are a nice surprise (I’m not sure this applies to Africa, but I’m sure it applies to most of the other “emerging economies” that are clumped together as one).
The hotel is quite nice – I was expecting bare-bones, but we have Wi-Fi, on-premise gym, pool and squash courts ! Vanessa, the program coordinator, is there to receive us and hand us our goody bags with a local cellphone. We plan to meet at 7 PM for dinner.
The restaurant is across the road from the hotel, and is quite empty when we make our entrance. By this time, our group had grown to over a dozen. All the TVs in that place are turned on to a football game (soccer for Americanos) – no surprises there. We get busy getting to know each other over caipirinhas and beers. Bruno, the IBM Corporate Citizenship person, suggests a “cook your own dinner” meal. Grills are brought to the table, we get a bunch of condiments and we get busy grilling picanha. Quite delicious. The place fills up by 10 PM, and when we leave around midnight, it is jam-packed. Looking forward to the team lunch and neighborhood tour followed by a visit to the local rodeo on Saturday !
#ibmcsc brazil
I'm sure you'll be the life of the project, Radhesh :) Too bad we couldn't have 'grill your own' (vegetables, in my case) at Shire!
ReplyDeleteSounds like you had an "easy" few days... Proud to see you out there (not an easy thing to do from both a family and work perspective) and curious to hear about the project you guys will be working on. Oh, and good to see that your kids seem to have their priorities straight!
ReplyDeleteGood luck! Looking forward to an update!