Back To The Northern Hemisphere

Florida Street

Spent my last afternoon in BA visiting clients in the Financial district. This wasn't too bad since we only had two clients and got to walk between them. This picture (left) was taken on Florida Street, the most famous shopping street in Buenos Aires. It's packed at lunchtime on Fridays -- especially because Monday is Labor Day in Argentina.

We also got to peek inside one of the upscale malls downtown. Nothing to earthshaking here (they've got the normal complement of stores, just slightly different from our Gaps) but they did have some pretty cool architecture and paintings on the ceiling.

Pacific Mall

While Argentina has been great, I was more than ready to get back home. After spending two days getting to South America, then spending a whirlwind 12 hours in Brazil and meeting 7 clients in Argentina, I am pooped. I was certainly not looking forward to the 11 hour flight back to DFW (in economy since all my frequent flyer priviledges have expired), it's still nice to be home.

Vaca

Buenos Aires Cow
Originally uploaded by /k.

Best. Painted. Cow. Ever.

In stylish traditional Argentinan blacket motif and blood red color, this is my favorite painted cow on display in Buenos Aires Parade de Vaca. A close second was the cow painted half sky-clouds and half wheat plains.

My old friend Brahma

My old friend Brahma
Originally uploaded by /k.

Mi viejo amigo Brahma. Bebemos otra vez. En Aeropuerta del Sao Paulo.

Street Tango

Street Tango
Originally uploaded by /k.

Apparently the tango is not only the national dance of Argentina, but also popular Friday afternoon street entertainment.

Buenos Aires (Day 1)

So I survived my 12 hours in Brazil, caught my flight to Argentina and made
it to my hotel. Argentina is totally different from what I thought. Where I thought Brazil was supposed to be a lovely, trendy city and Argentina a kinda drab out of the way stop, it is completely the opposite. Argentina looks like the part of Europe has been dropped into South America. My hotel is in the Puerto Madera district in Buenos Aires, which is the former docklands. The Google Earth satellite photo doesn't do it very good justice, but the architecture is classical, the restaurants are open late and the bars are packed.

12 Hours Of Brazil

After my unintended stopover in Dallas yesterday, I spent the night (10 hours) flying over the Gulf of Mexico and then the Amazon before I arrived in Sao Paulo, Brazil this morning. Sao Paulo is Brazil's largest city with over 15M residents but morning rush hour traffic wasn't bad at all. I got to see a bit of the city (airport is north and my office is south), but since I now only have 12 hours or so in Brazil (I leave tonight for Buenos Aires), it was a little disappointing. Maybe I'll see more at lunch or the drive back to the airport tonight.

I did see a lot of my office this morning. Since I couldn't sleep at all on my flight, my first order of business was finding some strong coffee. Which I did; An automatic expresso machine is installed on every floor of our office. Unfortunately, my portugese is incredibly poor and it took me five attempts to get a latte without two inches of sugar in the bottom (for future reference, "sem amacor" appears to mean "without sugar"). It will be nice to get to Argentina tonight where I can at least stumble through some Spanglish.

Latin America (interrupted)

Latin America (interrupted)
Originally uploaded by /k.

My Latin America trip is off to a rough start. My flight out of SFO was delayed 2 hours which caused me to miss my connection in Dallas - which was the last flight of the day to Saõ Paulo, Brazil. Fortunately, my dad lives here in Dallas, so I am spending the day here at his house with Sunny, his 12 year old Lab.

Getting Ready

So I am in a conundrum today. The beta version of Ubuntu 06.06 (Dapper Drake) was released this morning (which has several upgrades that I need), but I am really trying to finish the last two chapters of the second edition of my book (which are now really late) and I leave for South America next week. When I used to work in Asia, I wouldn't even contemplate doing an upgrade to my laptop when I was a getting towards a trip -- it's just to easy to hose something up and then be left in Olangapo City without a working system or a way to repair it. But I am feeling pretty confident about this upgrade (I've been using the live CD on every release) and I am only going to talk to a few people . . . . Maybe I will upgrade if I get writing done. By the way, they have already started planning the next version of Ubuntu: Edgy Eft (Planning Dapper+1)