Brazil Diary - Day One
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 subscription being 3000R$(reas). They also have IVC like our ABC and use Heidelberg machine for printing. He gave us a gift bag which looked very useful along with a tie, notepad, diary, desk calendar and a pen at the time of leaving this 'edificio' (means office in English).
Then from there we went to SESCON-SP which is an association of Chartered Accountants. We met the President of the association and had lunch with the top brass. The Association publishes their own magazines and the President is a very popular man in Brazil as he is fighting with the Government to reduce the taxes. The taxes - people feel are on the higher side with the Municipality, State and the Federal imposing taxes at every level. Here I tasted Tuna fish, Garunas(not alcohol) which is specialty drink of Brazil. The water used in making this drink is from the Amazon and it tasted so good.
One interesting thing I read on a sticker pasted on a van while travelling-``Nao Beba Dirigindo, Voce Pode Derramer a Bebida´´. Don´t worry I will tell you the meaning. It means ``Don´t drink while driving, you could drop the drink´´. I hope you got the message that the sticker wants to give the tipplers.
After the lunch we proceeded to the office of the largest circulated newspaper in Sao Paulo- O Estado de Sao Paulo. It belongs to the Mesquita family and the interesting thing is, it is almost similar to THE HINDU in several aspects. it is 126 years old, the owners do not have any other businesses, they are neutral. The group publishes two dailies namely O esatdo de Sao Paulo and Jornal da Tarde. The former is priced at 2.50 R$ and the later at 1.50 R$ on all days. The
newsrooms are massive. They have editorial meetings in the mornings at around 10.30 am and in the evening at 5.30 pm to decide which story goes on the front page. They enjoy a circulation of 280,000 on week days and 320,000 on Sundays(Estado). The JTD has a circulation of 120,000 copies. We had hell a lot of problem because the people did not know to speak in English. We moved on to the press room and met Mr.Pedro who is Director of Operations. The machine used is Colorman from Germany and is similar to the machine used at The Hindu, Hyderabad. The maximum capacity being 75000 copies/hr. They however run it at 60,000 with 6 persons/shift. One very interesting observation here is, there are women working in the press and they work even during the night shift. The copies are distributed through external agencies with which the Company has a contract. The copies are usually home-delivered by boys on motor cycles and cars as it is a very unsafe city.
Later in the evening we met at a club meeting where the Governor Mr. Sergio Del Fiol Modolo spoke very well. Unlike at our place the speeches are heard with rapt attention and nobody makes a noise. I had a small peg of Passport scotch and finished with some rice and aghalinha(chicken). My host’s colleague Mr.Emerson dropped me at home.
It was a great first day. By the way, we did not get our check-in baggage on the day we landed. It came by yesterday’s flight and KLM had delivered at the respective homes of each one of us in the night.
I wrote this piece in one single sitting starting from 4.45 pm to 6.17 pm. Typing is so tough and several reporters do it well. On this first day, I have been named as 'Hare' as in Hare Krishna Hare Rama as they could not spell Krishna and associated me with Hare Krishna which is known across the Globe due to ISKCON.
Then from there we went to SESCON-SP which is an association of Chartered Accountants. We met the President of the association and had lunch with the top brass. The Association publishes their own magazines and the President is a very popular man in Brazil as he is fighting with the Government to reduce the taxes. The taxes - people feel are on the higher side with the Municipality, State and the Federal imposing taxes at every level. Here I tasted Tuna fish, Garunas(not alcohol) which is specialty drink of Brazil. The water used in making this drink is from the Amazon and it tasted so good.
One interesting thing I read on a sticker pasted on a van while travelling-``Nao Beba Dirigindo, Voce Pode Derramer a Bebida´´. Don´t worry I will tell you the meaning. It means ``Don´t drink while driving, you could drop the drink´´. I hope you got the message that the sticker wants to give the tipplers.
After the lunch we proceeded to the office of the largest circulated newspaper in Sao Paulo- O Estado de Sao Paulo. It belongs to the Mesquita family and the interesting thing is, it is almost similar to THE HINDU in several aspects. it is 126 years old, the owners do not have any other businesses, they are neutral. The group publishes two dailies namely O esatdo de Sao Paulo and Jornal da Tarde. The former is priced at 2.50 R$ and the later at 1.50 R$ on all days. The
newsrooms are massive. They have editorial meetings in the mornings at around 10.30 am and in the evening at 5.30 pm to decide which story goes on the front page. They enjoy a circulation of 280,000 on week days and 320,000 on Sundays(Estado). The JTD has a circulation of 120,000 copies. We had hell a lot of problem because the people did not know to speak in English. We moved on to the press room and met Mr.Pedro who is Director of Operations. The machine used is Colorman from Germany and is similar to the machine used at The Hindu, Hyderabad. The maximum capacity being 75000 copies/hr. They however run it at 60,000 with 6 persons/shift. One very interesting observation here is, there are women working in the press and they work even during the night shift. The copies are distributed through external agencies with which the Company has a contract. The copies are usually home-delivered by boys on motor cycles and cars as it is a very unsafe city.
Later in the evening we met at a club meeting where the Governor Mr. Sergio Del Fiol Modolo spoke very well. Unlike at our place the speeches are heard with rapt attention and nobody makes a noise. I had a small peg of Passport scotch and finished with some rice and aghalinha(chicken). My host’s colleague Mr.Emerson dropped me at home.
It was a great first day. By the way, we did not get our check-in baggage on the day we landed. It came by yesterday’s flight and KLM had delivered at the respective homes of each one of us in the night.
I wrote this piece in one single sitting starting from 4.45 pm to 6.17 pm. Typing is so tough and several reporters do it well. On this first day, I have been named as 'Hare' as in Hare Krishna Hare Rama as they could not spell Krishna and associated me with Hare Krishna which is known across the Globe due to ISKCON.
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