Day 3 in the office (escritorio)

Today was spent in reviewing the discussion we had with Laerte, updating the kick-off presentation pack as a record of agreement with some minor changes and developing a work plan for the next 10 days. We accomplished quite a lot but I won't bore you with the details - needless to say the plan got shot to ribbons the next day but I am leaping ahead of myself.

Time for some initial impressions.  The weather is great - blue sunny skies every day, temperature in the upper 20s.  Pity I forgot my shorts, swimming togs, and didn't take enough casual shirts!  To be remedied at the mall on Saturday. The city (apart from parts of downtown and the odd high-rise like our hotel) is generally low-lying and spread out - reminds me of another city beginning with A.  Having said that there does seem to be a reasonable number of high rises under construction so the skyline might look quite different in a few years.  The roads seem to run in parallel, reasonably wide, dual carriageways in one direction, interconnected with small side roads. Driving is interesting but also very polite - they pull over if there is a faster car coming up behind (even if they are over the limit) - try doing that in Auckland! It's obligatory to talk on your cell-phone and drive - you can change gear easily (most cars seem to be manual) by taking your remaining one hand off the steering wheel long enough to change.  Cars are predominantly small hatchbacks (mostly European brands or Honda) and silver seems to be the favourite colour.

The houses (our office is one and here's the team standing outside of it) are surrounded by tall walls of 3-4 metres which are either topped with spikes or an electric fence - I am not sure if the fence is enough to kill (and so far have avoided trying them out) but a local said it was enough to deter!  Windows, particularly those facing out onto the street (although that is unusual) tend to be shuttered and barred.  The overall sense is of security.  Often, as in the case of our office, you have to go through a locked gate to get access to the front door.

Interestingly the foot path outside is the householders responsibility both in creation and maintenance.  So if you walk past a fairly upmarket house you can be walking on some very attractive and very clean paving whilst lesser residences make do with good old concrete.  Cobbles are very popular too.

And whilst I am at it I think I've so far forgotten to introduce our team.  Time to remedy that now.  My fellow team members are Cecilia, Chi and another Michael and we all hail from very different parts of the world - Germany, Viet Nam, China and New Zealand. I think we have a good set of complementary skills and we seem to be able to work together quite well. Time will tell!

In the evening our local "minder" Larissa organised a dance class for us with her Samba teacher.  It was great fun though as usual my two left legs and erratic sense of timing probably challenged my unlucky partners. We learned the basic steps for an individual "samba" and for the Forro (pronounced Forho) which, the story goes, was named when they were organising dances for American soldiers and sailors and the invitation was "to all", which apparently sound s like Forro in Portuguese - a nice story anyway!  The version we learned was very simple and I even managed to string it together for a few steps at a time before I lost count.  The count, as a matter of interest, is 1 - 2; 1 - 2; 1 - doh!

Here's some of the class before the lesson; some of the class watching the experts; and the experts in full flow - very impressive!

#ibmcsc brazil