Come fly with me, let’s fly, let’s fly away….

Hi all,

Sorry I’m late on this installment!

I come to you this time from TAM flight JJ3332 after leaving the city of Curitibia in the South of Brazil.  I am on my way to Sao Paulo (also in Brazil), then connecting to Buenos Aires in Argentina.  It’s 8:11pm Brazilian time, 7:11pm BA time, 11:11pm Madrid time; 5:11pm NY time and 9:11am Melbourne time, but who cares about official time, my body has no idea!  The one thing for sure is that my body is telling me it’s food time.  I’m absolutely starving.  As the flight time between Curitibia and BA is less than 5 hours, I have had to suffer through economy class – oh the pain!  It’s not the fact that I am managing to precariously balance my laptop on the tiny table next to a drink and then type whilst not elbowing the poor passenger next to me, or the fact that there’s a big silver box under the seat in front of me and my legs are so crammed I’m scared they’re not going to uncramp; no, it’s the fact that I am so hungry and they have just handed me the meal for a flight – a little silver and yellow packet of “Truinfo Minuto”.  Now I don’t know any Portuguese, but using my skills of logic (which at times I know is questionable) I am taking the stab that Minuto means small…It is literally a pack of 3 cracker biscuits which I have managed to devour in less than a minute.  Not an easy task when they’re just like saladas (any of you that have taken the 1 minute salada challenge know what I’m talking about!). 

Enough of my ‘woe is me’ tale…. let’s go through the journey of the last week and a half. 

What can I say but it’s been an absolute experience.  If you recall I was in Madrid last week, returned to NY on Friday night, and then flew out to Brazil on Saturday night.  So, Madrid was a great experience.  Work wise I was with the global learning team and got great perspective on the global world of learning.  I struggled horribly with the language, but I was lucky that I had my trusty colleague Nadia from Brazil, who although her first language is Portuguese and claims to speak ‘bad Spanish’, was an absolute godsend.  She navigated us to the office and back to the hotel each day – no easy feat!  On Tuesday night there was a group dinner at a traditional Spanish restaurant, and based on this experience I have no idea how the Spaniards stay so skinny or don’t suffer from scurvy.  First came the beautiful Jamon (it’s so sad, I can’t even think of the Australian word for it, but it’s like a cured ham, really good on fancy pizza…it’s on the tip of my tongue… Procciuto – phew, I’m worrying because not only can I not speak Spanish, but because I’m not talking to any native English speakers at work, I’m also losing my English!), served with fresh crusty bread, cheese and of course the staple in the Spanish diet, olive oil.  Then came the second serve (personally my favourite), fried potatoes and egg – who knew such a combination would be so awesome ... mmmm.  Finally the main meal came out, which for me was a lovely piece of steak – but where were the vegetables?  Oh they are a healthy bunch, the veges were French fries, just what we needed after a plate of fried potato and eggs.  On Thursday night I went with Nadia to San Miguel market.  This place was cool – think a square building with glass walls, lots of different market stalls (like the food hall at the Vic Market) selling all sorts of Tapas.  In amongst the Tapas stalls there were wine stalls and the idea is to grab a glass of wine, actually served in glass and it doesn’t matter if you walk around the market with it, and then grab some tapas.  It was a truly Spanish experience.

So, after the joys of Madrid, I flew back to NY, tired as hell because by the time I arrived it was 9pm NY time, but 3am Madrid time.  But given I had to fly out the next night I had to do my washing and given I’m in an apartment, that does not simply mean turn on the washing machine and leave it.  This involves multiple trips up and down the elevator to put the washing one, take it out, put in the dryer, pick up the washing…. Oh yeah, making sure there’s enough cash on the washing machine card – who knew these even existed - to make sure you can do the washing (and of course there was not).  Saturday was great back in NYC – it was a very fresh day (5 degrees), but I managed to do everything I needed to do (Christmas shopping, ordering groceries, getting supplies, re-packing etc. etc.), plus I had an afternoon with the broker to look at more places in New Jersey.  This was a successful journey, because although we were only looking at two places, I found a really great one.  It’s a house, with 5 bedrooms (!!!) and although this sounds big, it’s a traditional US tudor house with four levels, so we can easily close the top and bottom off and feel like we’re in a smaller house.  It’s recently renovated inside with some cool features, it also has a small backyard for Jack the dog to enjoy, and it is close to a big park with a lake as well (sorta, kinda like a mini Central Park) .  It’s only a 25 minute commute to NYC which is very good, but it’s also just off the river so you still get the view of the big apple without living constantly in the hustle and bustle of it.  Now we’re struggling through the lease process, but hopefully all will be okay for a February move in!  I will be very grateful for moving out of my little box of an apartment, and glad that I don’t need to move to Stepford Wives country – for some reason I just don’t think I’d fit in (a female working – god forbid!)

Then I was off to Brazil…. This was a great experience.  Three of my colleagues in my department live in Brazil, so they kindly organized a BBQ for me on Sunday afternoon.  As Brazil is in the Southern Hemisphere, they are also enjoying a beautiful summer, so Sunday was really nice and it felt like being back in Australia (but the meat was served on giant skewers!).   It has been 32 degrees for the last three days – so fabulous.  I am well and truly defrosted and looking forward to more heath in Buenos Aires.  Brazil is an interesting country – they too are booming because of their rich resources, but the government just isn’t investing in the infrastructure, so it is still a very poor country.  It’s sad really when you think about how much money is being pumped out of the ground here.   There are really bad slum areas here, and if you want to live in a nice house you need to live in a compound (i.e. a community with a tall electric fence around it), because you are likely to be the target for robberies.  How lucky we are in Australia.

What else can I tell you about Brazil???  The Brazillian’s are extremely supersticious.  They were telling me on NYE they wear head to toe one colour to represent what they want the next year – for example, if you want love you wear red; if you want money, I think it was yellow that you wear etc. etc.  Head to toe includes underwear as well!  A colleague from work told me that although she wore a dress and shoes in white last year – representing peace and the most popular colour for the NYE celebrations – she wore colourful underwear and the year was disastrous – clearly because of wearing bright underwear.  Needless to say she is reverting back to head to toe white this year.  Also for Christmas, they go to a ‘special santa’ to receive a blessing.  Although they’re not all religious, again it is the superstition that drives them do this, and they are going as a work group later this week to get their blessings.  They were also telling me that as Brazilian women, they are under extreme pressure to look good – it’s all about appearances.  I went out in the field with a sales rep today with Nadia and we visited a shopping centre.  In the shopping centre there was the biggest salon that I had ever seen – it was basically the size of a Coles Supermarket!  Nadia told me this was nothing, somewhere in town there was a nail salon with 300 nail artists and it was constantly full!  This gives you an idea of how much they invest in looking good.  Not so good for the ego standing next to these women ;).  Work wise, Brazil was also excellent – giving me again a completely different perspective.  I’m getting so many perspectives that I’m having to write them down everyday so I don’t lose them!

Well, as usual, I have managed to blabber on for longer than planned, so rather sitting on the flight to San Paolo now, I am now sitting on the flight to Buenos Aires.  Only one and a half flights left until I arrive back in NYC on Saturday.  I’ll be glad not to fly again for a while!  It doesn’t yet feel like Christmas for me, but I’m sure that will all change when I do get back.  By the way, what type of idiot plans business trips the week of Christmas???  Silly mistake, you don’t want to be in an airport this week unless it involves flying yourself off to a tropical island and lying by the beach with a pina colada in your hand…. (or more importantly to visit your daughter in NY!)

Anyways, this is Bogan in the (many a) City signing off for this week.  I wish everyone a fabulous Christmas with lots of love, joy and magic!  Enjoy the hot weather, and I hope those of you having a break (all of you I hope) have a fabulous time.

Until next time, Merry Christmas everyone, Michele

… BTW, next time it will be the 2 Bogans in the City (sorry mum if you find that offensive!)