Wednesday, June 04, 2008

The Brazil experience- II

No doubt, I didn't lose as much weight as I should have.....

-- We should not forget Brazil's natural beauty, it has great beaches, forests, and some mountains too. Rio is completely different from Sao Paulo, much smaller city with great beaches and party atmosphere. The biggest obstacle in exploring Brazil is language, it can get really tough to find the right places and go beyond Sao Paulo and Rio!
-- I am forgetting an important part of Brazilian culture, in fact, two: Samba and football. Loser I am, I missed both. Carnival ended two weeks before I landed; and there were no major football activities in South America (except for the Ronaldo's 'incident')
-- I should end by saying something about brazilian people. I found them very friendly, open to other cultures, people made an effort to speak in English. They have strong family values and children usually live with parents till they are married. It is Ok to pat on the back and hug. Society shows glimpses of the 'US dream', despite of the fact that relations between the two countries are not very strong. In many ways, it has lot of similarities with the Indian culture.

On a final note (bear with me), the only time I saw Indians in brazil was when the President visited Brazil. She stayed in the same hotel. To be blunt, she lacks any charisma and totally, lacks the 'thing' required when you are the Head of the State. No wonder very few parliamentarians turned up for her speech!

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