Ten Days in Rio: days 2-5

My apologies for not keeping up the daily journal. While I've had much to say various reasons kept me for recording these thoughts. As I sit in the Lubavitch Barra courtyard, enjoying the waning afternoon, I figured I'd take a few minutes and update the readers with how my week has been.
First, about Rio itself.
You know those futuristic cities that we've read about that describe enormously large cities, with tens of millions of people crawling in and out of every space possible, where overcrowding is rampant, all classes of society seem to live together on top of one another, and the highway infrastructure is enormous and incredible? That's Rio. The city is massive and that's an understatement. Massive Beijing like apartment buildings riddle the city. Hills and mountains are often covered in colorful square houses built one on top of another, tightly packed in, with little breathing room. Across the street from said houses could be a modern enormous mall. One block down, graffiti infested walls littered under a hornets nest of electricity wires, connected to leaning electric poles. Tall buildings, small ones, old ones, new ones. It's like every city I've been to, but on a much much larger scale. The true character of the city though lies not in its artificial architecture, but in its natural one. Jagged, spiking mountains surround and break through the city all over it. If you drive from borough to borough you will likely pass through tunnels, bridges or out of the way routes. The beautiful mountains are often covered in clouds, but not all at the same time. Some there, some here. The weather is a stunning 70-80 degrees everyday. To go from one place to another is a challenge. As I mentioned in a previous post driving is a lesson in merging. There is no too close or too fast, there is simply going.  Plan for traffic jams, no matter your distance.  It's hard to describe the drive from where I'm staying to closer to "town". I took a drive there on Tuesday. Much of the drive was spent, fighting traffic in a four lane highway built on the side of a cliff, covered in tropical trees and plants. When you walk along the beach, there's a refreshment stand about every 300 meters that sells coconuts. And people are sitting there with a straw sipping out of a raw coconut.  It was during this outing that I had my first glance of the large statue hanging from the top of the mountain. A symbol of the city. It's a pretty big statue. My coworker and I had taken a trip into town (40 min cab ride, over 60 Real in cost) since our network was down and we had no work to do. We hoped to catch some lunch at the Jewish school, but the network came back up and alas, we had work to do.
And that's basically all its been. On Tuesday we ventured out and I spent the rest of the day in my room. On Wednesday, I decided to do my work in the lobby since I was sick of sitting in my room all day. Wednesday afternoon I had finished what I needed to do so I went into the office, picked up some stuff Omer left for me and then went to the New York Shopping Center mall where I found a Starbucks, another huge shopping mall and a movie theater. I wasn't in the mood for a movie so I hopped in a cab and went back to the hotel.

Thursday I worked mostly in my room and by 7pm I had had enough so I went to the mall next door to my hotel, saw a movie (made sure it was subtitled and not dubbed) and came back.

When I go out, especially shopping at the mall (feels like it's all I do) I turn on my Google translate app, which had saved the following phrase in Portuguese : "im sorry, I do not speak Portuguese." everyone is nice about it. They smile. One person tried a few words in English. Others speak to me, but use pointing and body language to make their point. It's fascinating to converse with people when neither of you are speaking the same language. Google translate is an a so amazing piece of technology.

Sunday is gonna be partly day off for me. I want to see the city a little. I'll do some work in the morning but then around two I hope to go take a tour. I have a choice of cable car rides up to the famous Rio peaks, sugar mountain and the Corcovado (that the one with the Big Cheeses). Or I can take a jeep ride through the forest and then the botanical gardens. Sunday night I hope to go eat at the kosher restaurant there also, and maybe walk around copacabana a little (the neighborhood not the nighclub).
I am  now sitting at chabad of Barra DE tujica, a quaint little courtyarded building with a shul and a house and a guest room. The guestroom leaves a lot to be desired, and I get the top bunk, I have to give the bottom one to about seven mattresses piled up there.  I do hope i am comfortable there, it's a tiny room. But Baruch HaShem for free and beautiful chessed.
Have a great shabbos everyone. Please excuse my typos, I typed all this on my phone and I'm uploading without proof reading.

Ten Days in Rio: Day 1

My past experiences with Lufthansa were not positive.  They were the flight I took when I first moved to Israel in September 2003.  The plane was old and I had a middle seat.  Wasn't very pleasant.  Well, this flight has changed all that.  I had a feeling that the flight would be fine. And while the first flight was lacking in entertainment, the next flight made up for it all.  A brand new 747-8 received last February the plane still had that brand new smell.  It was nice, clean and a pleasure to board.  But forget all of that, I want to talk about feeling human again.  As I mentioned earlier, flying more than 5 hours allows me the honor to sit in a "Premium Economy" seat.  And let me tell you, having some room to breath, really changes life from hell to completely enjoyable.  The seat itself was bigger.  The armrest was double, the legs came up from the bottom, and the seat reclined back further.  A special surprise was the kosher meal.  I expected standard plane food but apparently getting premium seating gets premium kosher.  The taste was the same, but it was all real dishes, with extra rolls and larger servings.  The entertainment hardware was top notch with easy to use screens and good quality programming.  (Ahh Ant Man, I've been wanted to watch you!). I managed to sleep 6 hours, which was pretty good and I got in 2 movies.  Then we landed.
Brazilians remind me a lot of spanish people.  The airport and the driving and the people.  There's a shared culture reminds me of my days in Miami and Queens.  The roads are havoc.  If the cars are moving at all, they seem to be always merging into each other.  Its pretty scary.  I prefer not to watch it.
The city is fascinating. There's sections that are run down and covered in graffiti.  Then there are beautiful malls and shopping complexes.  My friend described it similar to Tel Aviv, where some areas are poorer than others.  I understand that, but it also seems more scattered here.  The geology of the city adds very much to it's culture and feel.  It seems to be completely surrounded by small jagged mountains that are covered in trees.  Often many of them are covered in clouds, while the ones next to them are not.  Its very science fictiony, and I would love to get a chance to hike around some of them.  It bizarre to be driving through these mountains and hills, and then go to large shopping malls.  By the way, these malls, one of which is directly next to my hotel, is just like an American mall.  Large, overpriced, tons of clothing stores and miscellaneous cell phone and toy stores scattered throughout.
On another note, few people here speak English, which is interesting because most signs are translated into English.  Gets complicated when people ask you a question and you just look at them like you fell from the moon.  English?  Then they look at you like you just fell from the moon.  Time to learn some Portuguese.
I spent most of today in my hotel room trying to run tests.  I have here about 7 iphones, 1 laptop and an android phone.  Everything was going fine until the network shutdown.  So currently Em on shutdown mode, with nothing to do.  That's ok, because im jet lagged exhausted so maybe I'll go for a swim or just enjoy some quiet.

Today was an experience.  I look forward to see what tomorrow brings.

Ten Days in Rio: Day 0

This blog which was originally designed to be an update blog from my son Shlomo, has laid stagnant for the last several months (or year?) as Thank Gd everything has been going well with Shlomo.  In an effort to make this blog more interesting, I've decided to start blogging about my current experiences, and that is a business trip to Rio De Janeiro.  The intention is to journal the process and the culture and how it effects me, a very big fish out of water in Brazil, I expect.  So let's get started!

The reason for the business trip, which is expected to take about ten days, is to test a new feature for the cell phone company located there.  The company, named Vivo, is owned by Telefonica, and they are using our product from the Israel office to team up with Apple for a new feature.  The feature is dependent on the provider's network service in Brazil, so testers and developers have been going for several weeks in order to certify the product is working.  Now its my turn.

Today was the first day of travel.  It started off with a little excitement when I attempted to do a self checkin from home.  The website insisted I needed a VISA.  Uh Oh.  I don't have a VISA.  The guys in my office told me I didn't one.  Lo and behold I discovered that it doesn't always pay to be American.  "Brazil maintains a fully reciprocal visa policy" says wikipedia, which means America (BOO!) who doesn't allow people in to their country without a visa, doesn't get free passage in Brazil.  However, Israeli which does have an open policy with Brazil (YAY!) does allow israelis to visit without a visa (for up to 90 days).  My ticket was booked with my US passport number.  So i tried several times, i called the Lufthansa office, no luck.  I figured Ill wait till i get to the airport and find out what will happen.  On the way to the airport my friend pointed out to me that Lufthansa is located downstairs, so I asked my cab driver to please drop me off at arrivals.  He was very confused.  "I've never gone that way before."  OK, i said, can you now?  "If you really want to I can..." and then he mumbled: "it will cost you more money."  "Why?" I asked.  He then started to explain how its a balagan, and how he needs to find parking and get out quickly.  Apparently, the 15 minute free rule is too difficult for him.  Fine, i said, drop me off on top and ill go down myself.  He pointed out how that was better for me, cause I can take the "electric stairs".  Thanks.  So i get dropped off, and head through towards ticketing.  One win for today!  Premium passengers (that's me!) get the same security line as First Class and Business.  But that's as far as it gets for us peasent premium passengers.  Even at the ticketing desk, we don't get.
Luckily for me the ticketing agent fixed the passport problem and allowed me to go on my way.  The flight from Tel Aviv was so shocking, I didn't know what to do with myself.  There were no TVs!!  None!  none in the seats, none in the ceiling!  I had to check my calender to make sure i didn't go back in time to 1997!  So, i pulled out my book and did the best i could.  I moved myself to the back so I could have an aisle seat, but the reviews were right, a lot of people line up for the bathroom there.  Eh, no biggy.
I am now at Frankfurt waiting to board a 11 hour and 45 minute flight across the world.  Certainly the farthest I've ever traveled, and the first time for me in the Southern Hemisphere.  Work provided me with premium seating, as company policy allows us to get premium (economy plus) for flights over 5 hours.  I'm fine with this.  Many people have asked me why we can't have business, which is a valid question, but I'm not a begging chooser.  Ill take what I can get.
I'm tired now, time to go stand in another line.

Tomorrow morning... RIO!