Cristo Redentor - Rio

I was at the top of Corcovado seeing the Cristo Redentor at the end of my 12-hour tour. It was, believe it or not, really cold at the top of the mountain (we were at 700m above sea level/Rio). The fog was blowing over the mountain really fast. This is before we got to the top as were climbing the stairs behind the Cristo. We got there right as the sun was going down, so most of my pictures are in the dark, but some of them came out. It is really cool how you can see the Cristo from almost anywhere in Rio; it's too bad since this is one of the biggest centers of sin come Carnaval time. Anyways, Rio was awesome and check out the other pictures at http://photos.brandonandmegan.org/sao-paulo/

Palmeiras 4 Santos 2

This is a picture of me at the game. Bruno lent me a jersey to wear and then I bought a new one for R$25 outside the stadium. It was an awesome game since there were so many goals. My second game of futebol in Brazil and so far my team's are 2-0!

Camargo Correa - 7/10

We left a little after 7am for Americana. Leonardo drove his black Chevy Corsa for about an hour until we stopped at a large truck stop. We got pão de queijo and they got some coffee. We left there about 8:30am and drove to the CSC (Centro de Soluções Compartilhadas) arriving at about 9:30am. I got set up for my conference call and had the conference call until about 11am.

I went down to find Álvaro, but I couldn’t find him (he had left me in a room upstairs and only explained how to get to where he was). I walked around for a second and asked someone where RH (Recursos Humanos or HR) was and they told me I was in the right place. I found Eduardo and Leonardo and waited with them until Álvaro came back. He introduced me to Francielle and we talked about how good my Portuguese was. Álvaro gave me some spreadsheets to look at and told me he would give me something to do after lunch. It’s very similar to my first day in the US. Look at this first and familiarize yourself with it and then I’ll give you something to do. Also, both clients I’ve worked on we’ve done the internal and DT does the external.

Álvaro told me today that he thinks people here with KPMG Brazil work a lot more than in the states. Osmar worked from 8:30 to 7 on Tuesday and I think that’s normal for the audit team. I looked through the spreadsheets and tried to figure out some of the abbreviations. I’ve got some of them, but there’s more I don’t recognize than do. I’ll ask Álvaro when he comes to show me what I’m doing. Álvaro came to get me a little before 12:30 and he explained some more things along the way. He’s been really helpful explaining how things work and answering any questions I have. He told me to try to always quantify a risk (contract said 4%, system has 5% so over 6 months this results in a loss of $100k, etc.)

We had lunch at 12:30 at the onsite cafeteria. The cafeteria is run by GranSparo (I need to doublecheck the spelling). The food was pretty good. I don’t know who paid, but I didn’t have to =). After lunch they had a pile of fruit cups so we could take one back to our desk (our fruit for the day). We took a walk around the building per Leonardo’s request (let lunch settle a little bit). On the way, Álvaro commented to Eduardo that Eduardo is probably the heaviest smoker he knows (which is true, if he’s not doing something, he’s smoking).

2nd Day at the office - 7/8

I got to work about 8:30am, but there are only two fairly small elevators for 19 floors. Lines start to form as people wait for the elevators to come. When you enter the building you are supposed to enter from the back door, otherwise they think that you’re a client coming to visit (they even have their own client parking spots out front). I was able to respond to some emails from the OC office (Sid) and read the OC Buzz Newsletter. I got my US email to forward to my BR email automatically and talked to Chiappa (qui – appa) about traveling by bus to Americana (a city where CC has a Shared Service Center). They are doing some review of the HR processes there.

For lunch I went out with Emerson and Mariana again. We ran into Marcelo from the day before and Fernanda who I hadn’t met yet. I activated my SecurID by calling ITS.

More to come...

City Tour and Unraveling the Mystery - 7/6

I'm watching this show on Globo that says the new law in Brazil is a BAC of .02! That's a lot less than .08 of the US. If they have over .06 they can get thrown in jail. Today we went on our city tour. We found out that the panificadoras close here on Sundays (I didn't realize that before since I never bought anything on Sunday before). Our driver, Robert, met us at the hotel (the Tryp Jesuina Arruda) at about 9am like we had planned. He took us to the Praca de Sa where one of the oldest cathedrals in SP exists. There was also at that point the zero marker - the point from which all addresses are measured.

After that we drove past the oldest standing residence in Sao Paulo. We also drove past the Bovespa (the Brazilian stock market). There was a sign that showed how many dollars of taxes the Brazilians were paying. The numbers were going up so fast it was amazing. I’d like to see one of those for the States too =)

After the city tour we went back to use the internet and check our email. I got to talk to Meg for a bit before she had to go to church and teach Sunbeams. We were both happy to talk since we didn’t get to talk the night before.

Osmar, Kathryn, and I also tried to figure out where we were really supposed to be staying. Kathryn got the email from Isabel off her KPMG email (which Osmar and I never got) and we walked over to the address. We asked them to look up our names for checking in on Monday (which we thought might be the case since Simon Kho had said that sometimes you would stay in a hotel until Monday and then move into your housing (in hindsight what we should have done was look up our reservation for Saturday, but they told us that if it had already past 6pm on the day of check-in then the reservation was forfeited, but that isn’t true either since we found out on Monday that they did have our reservation =). After giving up on our search for the right place, we walked over to the office and took pictures in front of the big KPMG sign (which we later learned used to be at the top of the building, but they had to take it down because SP passed a visual pollution law which means you can’t have the name of the company on the top of the building).

On our way back we stopped in at a pizza place called the Forgalia and ordered a pepperoni pizza for R$35. That’s a lot more expensive than Curitiba, but it was also the best pepperoni pizza I’ve ever had in Brazil. Megan called me later that evening and we were able to talk for awhile and read scriptures together.

Smoking Dragon - 7/6

We went to Embu (to the south of SP on the way to Curitiba) where they had a feira (or market day). We were walking around and walked right past these dragons as a girl was lighting them so they could breathe smoke. Check it out!

Arrival in Brazil - 7/5

I finally got to sleep with about 4 hours left in the flight. We arrived at the airport a few minutes late, but we were able to get out of there quickly. I decided to not declare anything since I'm going to use all of it anyways. They made me take out the video camera and my laptop to show them, but never said anything about the food. Osmar was out waiting for me with the driver. We went up to his car which happened to be the same car that Miled had driven us around in a couple of weeks ago (except this was an automatic). I talked to the driver in Portuguese. I asked him about the different landmarks we should see, where the CTM was from where we were, how to get to the rodoviario and which cities we should visit. Kathryn had arrived earlier since she left Dallas at 5:30. We learned on the ride to the hotel that her reservations weren't there.

When we got there we filled out information forms and then went up to our room. We're just a few doors down from Kathryn. She had left us a note to visit her as soon as we got there, but we waited a bit before going over there (letting her sleep a little longer). She had a sweet queen size bed while we are stuck with two mini-twin beds. So much for our own rooms, but we think we're getting a different place on Monday since we also don’t have a kitchen.

We were supposed to meet up with our driver Robert at 1pm for a city-tour. Simon Fishley from the SP office had also set up to meet us at the hotel at 1pm to go out for lunch. We ended up rescheduling our city-tour for Sunday at 9am right when I was planning on going to church. I'm hoping there's a couple of ward houses that have 3 wards and that someone starts at 1pm or later.

We took a walk to Otavio's Café for a quick bite before we went to the Samba place, Traco de Uniao. I had a really good roast beef sandwhich with some super-sized Chex- looking potato chips and a natural juice made of green apple with lime and ginger and honey. Simon was very generous and picked up the check for our lunch (it was a pretty chique place). We headed for the HSBC Bank before we went to the cash-only Samba house. I took out some reais and we went on our way to find a taxi. We got a taxi, but Simon wasn't exactly sure where he was going. We made a couple of wrong turns before we just got out and started to walk. We ended up circling back until we found the place.

The entrance fee for the Samba party was R$35. They give you a card that you have to have to leave. Anything you order gets marked on the card and you pay for it right before you leave. After you get in you still get overcharged for food and water (R$3 / bottle). Luckily, there was some leftover food from the other Americans that we met up with and we just ate that. We had feijoada and some mini-pasteis de queijo. Everyone that was there was getting drunk. I had my one bottle of water and called it a day =) Kathryn and Osmar shared a bottle or two of beer.



We mostly just hung out at the table, but Simon got me at one point to talk to Daniela who works in the SP office and just got back from Chicago 4 months ago. She was fun to talk to since she's had the same experience that we're having. At another point Osmar and Kathryn went to the middle to dance and I was left alone at the table. A woman named Elise came up and started to talk to me. She invited me to samba and I knew I wouldn't be able to get rid of her until I danced. We danced for a little bit and then she discovered that I was American and started telling that to her friends. Then they wanted to take pictures and they didn't stop at one, they took like 8. I was able to get them off of me by calling over Simon and jumping ship. Osmar and Kathryn came back and we decided it was time to leave. We paid big cards off and got a taxi home. I'm waiting for Megan to call, but I'm not sure she'll be able to get it to work. We've been watching CNN World in English, but I think it’s time for me to go to bed.