Krishna Kiran's

24-05-2006 (Wednesday) On this day we started off to go to Collegio Rio Branco at 7.45 am. Incidentally this college/school is the best managed in Brazil and the Director is one Mr.Gunter who looked like a professor out of the novels that we read. He is quite a serious man and he gave us the information about the college. This college was started in 1946 by 20 like-minded Rotarians and now has 5000 students on the rolls and operates from two places namely Granjavienna and Higienopolis. The college offers from KG to High School and also runs ITAE( Institute for Advanced Technical Education) in addition to running a special school for the deaf children. Mr.Gunter whose name sounds like the place Guntur in Andhra Pradesh, India has been in marketing since 1953 and has a keen eye for details. We were informed that the school gets around 1000 titles of magazines for the school library and Estado de Sao Paulo carries two pages of children related articles on every Monday. The contents al...

23-05-2006 (Tuesday) On this day,we were taken to the SETESP which is a 70 year old transporters union with 6000 companies and 40000 employees in the Sao Paulo state. The number of vehicles managed are a stunning 3,00,000. This is the second biggest such union in the world with the biggest being in LA,USA. The main vehicle being the truck. It was learnt that 8 per cent of the goods are transported by trucks in Brazil. The union works to ensure that the system is in place. In Brazil, there are several restrictions and the trucks are not allowed to go off the main road and enter the city limits. The entry tax is also a huge 55 per cent. The union spends 12 per cent of their income on satellite tracking of the vehicles, sending armed escorts and GSM technology. The number one tyre brand in Brazil is Goodyear followed by Michelin, Firestone and Continental. There was a big and gigantic personality here with whom I had a photo just to show how big he is. From here we proceeded to th...

22-05-2006 (Monday) On this day I was picked up by the driver of a taxi engaged for our travel Mr.Benedito. What I noticed was the moment someone meets another on a morning they ask “Did you sleep well last night?” I have experienced this almost with all Brazilians I met and Mr.Benedito was no exception. I felt that it was a good way to start the day in so many ways. We visited Cobram which is a marketing agency for several big multinational brands like Petrobras, Ford and Abor. We were introduced to Mr.Mario who is the Director-Corporate Communications of the company. His job description included Event Management, and TV/Radio productions that promote brands. One of the major achievements of their company was the Sigabem program of Petrobras. Sigabem means "have a nice trip” and the program is aimed at the drivers. The company has been dealing with Petrobras for the last 14 years and there was good synergy between the two. The Sigabem program was advertised in 212 radio stati...

21-05-2006 (Sunday) We started our journey back to the hosts from the place of conference. We passed through the city called Ourofino which is named after a musician. As I mentioned earlier the city had a church at the centre whose dome looked magnificent from the main road. There was the giant statue of Ourofino at the entrance of the city on the main road and we had some pictures with that backdrop. All en route I could notice that there is greenery everywhere, the roads are well laid and most part is hilly terrain. There were plenty of cattle and horses and they looked great with the mix of red soil and the green grass. I could spot a few black vultures flying in the sky. Their flight style showed that they had abundant food in the greenery on the earth below them. Every house in the rural area is tiled and dish antenna is part of the paraphernalia. Thick bamboo is used as electric poles. We stopped at the house of a Rotarian who has 300 hectares of land under coffee plantat...

20-05-2006(Saturday) On this day we went to the city of Monte Siao in the state of Minas Geraes along with Mr.Fabio, Ms.Luciana and the American GSE team. It is interesting to note that every city has a nice arch at the entrance welcoming the visitors and the other side of the arch thanking them for their visit. It is very well done just as you find the main entrance of a rich house in any part of India. Every city, I learnt has a church at the centre and four roads going from that point. The roads are very clean and we had coconut water at a vendor. I was surprised to see how a machine is used to make a hole to place the straw for consumption. The empty coconuts are collected back by the vendor and are safely placed in a bag for disposing off later unlike in India where we just try to throw them on the roads with least concern for others. However the coconut water is not as sweet as ours. This city is popular for knitwear and people from across the state come here to shop exclus...

The day was spent in sight seeing with Ms.Luciana and Mr.Fabio along with the American GSE Team. We went to the Cristo – a replica of statue that we would find in RDJ, the downtown and to a wonderful park which was so well maintained. The sight of Geese in the pond at the centre of the park was so beautiful that it is unforgettable. We had seen some shops in the downtown but the items were very expensive as per our standards. My self and Sultan bought a small table top Brazilian national flag. In the evening, after we returned from sight seeing, we had been to the sauna at the hotel where we stayed and had Old Eight whiskey in the sauna. It was such a thrilling moment for all of us, that is, Sultan, Sumit, Dunga and me. In the night we went to the venue of the conference and were treated to the Opera show by Marcelo Jardim which incidentally is the first opera show I had ever seen in my life. It was a treat to the eyes and ears. The kind of symphony that Marcelo maintained was breat...

18-05-2006 On this day, we went to the annual(final) day celebrations of a school named Ligao Mirim run by the Rotary. It was amazing to note that all the students had the similar sentiments like across India. All of them were from poor families and Rotary has provided them free education and this was the last day for the batch. We sang our national anthem here and it was received very well. In the afternoon, I traveled with Mr.Ricardo and Ms.Diaene to the conference venue in Agua De Lindoi city which is almost 200 kms from Sao Paulo. Ricardo drove at amazing speed with excellent control at the wheel and we reached the place in just 2 hrs. The journey was through the cities of Braganca, Soccoro, Pedra Bela and Pinhel Zinho. Most of the route traveled was a hilly terrain with lot of greenery all around. I found plenty of high rise grass and good number of trees. The roads were 8-lane, four on each side. There were very heavy trucks which I earlier saw only in Hollywood movies trave...