Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Oi Porto Alegre !

After an uneventful 6 hours at Dallas Fort Worth airport and much anticipation about whether my Buenos Aires flight would depart or not, it did. I have to say.. American Airlines is the worst airline ever. Who still operates 767 aircrafts on long haul flights ? American Airlines! The meals were crappy and no individual tv screens on the 10 hour flight left me grumpy and bored. But hey, at least I got there.


We landed in Buenos Aires to a very chilly 2 degrees and I had to make the trip across town to the next airport to catch my connecting flight to the final destination. After sitting around for a few hours (without wifi ) and waiting for the check-ins to open, I was FINALLY on my way to Porto Alegre.


Landed in Porto Alegre around 4:30pm local time and was picked up at the airport and brought to the hotel. First impressions of PA - it reminds me a little bit of Mumbai.. just a cleaner and much colder city. I think its got to do with the look and feel of the buildings here. I didn't get to take any pictures as I got in at dusk and the driver didn't seem to be following the road rules (much like they do in Mumbai) and I was concentrating on holding on.


By the time I got to the hotel, I had already missed out on the days activities which included a tour of the city and team building, but I got to meet and greet everyone before they split up for the day. It was good to finally be able to put faces to the names that I've been talking to for the past three months. After brief introductions and a recap of my exciting round the world trip, we decided to meet up for dinner later in the evening and went down to a local cafe. They had the biggest meals and gigantic beers. I ordered a beer thinking it would it help me sleep better at night ... but, the jet lag still had me up and wired at 3am. Perhaps I ought to drink more beer next time ?


Tomorrow, we go to the IBM offices to kick-off #ibmcsc #brazil team 10 with the NGO's we are working with. Excited !!!

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