Krishna Kiran's

The third day´s (13-05-06)visit was to `´Corpo de Bombeiros policia Militar´´ which is an emergency service like 191 in USA or 180 in India. The number in Brazil is 193. We met Mr.Monel here who is the Asst commandent of the forces. It was astounding to note that they receive 8000 calls per day at the 4 bases that they have in Sao Paulo. There are 25 percent fake calls made by children, 10 percent fire and 60 percent road accidents. The Bombeiros, as they are called here have 13 choppers to man the entire state. The response time is 10 minutes in most of the cases. The maximum number of years of service is 30 years and the entry age is 18. If one completes 30 years, he/she is to retire. The men were so tough that I had the best hand-shake of my life from one guy who is the toughest I ever met. The hand felt like iron. This is not a joke that we usually play with tough acting guys. They were actually on high alert as the criminals were on the rampage in Sao Paulo that day. The men g...

The second day( 12-05-2006) started off with a visit to a crematorium by name Crematorio de Sao Paulo Dr.James Augusto Lopes.It was one of the most enriching visits of my life. ``Until death do us apart´´goes the saying but can you imagine a lady who embraces death as her greatest friend? Lady!!!!!no, you cannot imagine. I will talk about her later. The crematorium is the oldest in Sao Paulo and existed since 1974. It is the home of the dead and is a much safer place than the real world. The place is maintained so neatly that even the best of the house-keeping departments of the biggest hotels in the world will be put to shame. The crematorium is spread in a lush green area of almost 15 acres in the city of Sao Paulo with the cremation hall in the centre. It has a cathedral on the ground floor and the icinerators in the basement. The bodies of the dead are cremated for free for those who cannot afford to pay and at a fee ranging from $40 to $1500 for the rich. It is the Buddhists an...

Sumit and I were taken to a publishing house by name Aduaneiras. The group publishes monthly magazines on Accounting and Finance (CENO-FISCO), legal (LEX)(like our All India Reporter for lawyers). We met the Vice-President-Marketing Mr.Carlos who is a young man and also the son of the publisher. It is interesting to note that they do their marketing only through direct-mailers and they are second largest users of Brazilian post. The VP doesn’t know who the first is anyway. (Don’t ask me just as I have asked this VP). Their office is very posh and it occupies 10 floors in a building opposite the city library. They also do not advertise. They have 60 correspondents across the globe on free-lance basis and a total of 300 employees who are mostly editorial driven. They use Adobe Page Maker for making the pages and they have a good team of pagination making good number of pages with very few mistakes. The VP claimed that the company was growing at an astounding rate of 50% with the annual s...

We reached Sao Paulo on 10th evening at 5 p.m. It was a fantastic journey for me as this is the first time I have taken the international flight. The flight from AMS to GRS was really good. There are no proper GSM phone connections here. That is what is gathered as of now. I am staying with a family, a young couple who are living together and planning to get married on 25th July at Paris. They have a palatial flat which makes even the 7 star hotels feel small. They have a fantastic taste. When I said 7 stars I meant it. He has three cars- two Volkswagon and one Honda for his fiancee. He sells life insurance and his fiancee sells health insurance. There are 70 people working under him and by the way his name is Ricardo Tarantello and her name is Diaene. Both are pretty smart. I had red wine and mushroom porridge for dinner. You know the city of Sao Paulo is a big place with 20 million population and Ricardo has lost 5 cars due to theft and he is so cool when he mentions that ``that ...

In May 2006, I visited Brazil as a member of GSE team of five and I flew by KLM 0874 flight to Amsterdam from Hyderabad. One thing that gave me great pleasure was that the entire flight was almost full with Telugu speaking people (naturally it has to be as it is from HYD. What has to be noted is that Indians are feeding the international airlines like never before. India is great. There were people of all ages, young and old, people in dhotis and people in suits, ladies in sarees and in jeans. There is a good mix of our people. People wanting to break away from traditions and others wanting to embrace more to their beliefs but all are on board, on the road to financial freedom and in the race to make it big in the global arena. There were kids who were at ease in the aircraft and moving around confidently. If this continues our country will no doubt be the economic super power in the world in the years to come. We flew over Karachi, Tehran, Yeravan, Istanbul, Budapest and Vienna. ...