Business as Usual and Sangita's birthday

Working with the client has been great.  It is just so different from what I am used to.  First of all, my team is composed of 2 technical people (myself and Michael) and 2 HR people (Vinod and John).  It is really interesting to see how different people in different organizations at IBM resolve problems.  We could not be more different, which is great because I feel we can all learn a lot from each other.  From a technical perspective, the approach is usually "you see a problem, you think about it for a minute then you do your first attempt for a solution.  It doesn't work, you make another iteration, and so on...".  The HR guys have a different process: "You see a problem, you analyze it, you think about all possibilities, compare them against each other, make sure you have all the information you need and then write up a solution".  I have been in development my whole career, so this is really out of my comfort zone, and I love it :)

Pudin (Flan).  Vinod has tried that at every single kilo we have gone to :)

Team walking back from lunch

Team pic :)

Busted :)

Hard at work

Hard at work

Meeting with Breno and Mauro, from the project management office

John's favorite time of the day! Macchiato time!

After talking to a few people, we have a much better understanding on how the company functions and what is being asked from us. The work day went by really fast and before we know it, it was time for dinner.
Today is Sangita's birthday so we decided  to surprise her with cake.  Inderpal, who was our team facilitator for the 3 pre-work month joined in on skype.  It was really sweet of him to do that, specially that it was already pretty late for him in London.
We also learned the words to "Happy birthday" in portugese :) The weird part is that for the Portuguese version, you don't just repeat "happy birthday" 4 times.. It is 4 different sentences.

The team waiting for Sangita to come to the lobby

Surprise!!!

Cakes!

In Brazil, it's tradition for the birthday girl to cut the first piece of cake and give it to someone else, which is a little different from the Lebanese tradition where there birthday girl has to have the first piece

Talking to Inderpal!

With the birthday girl

Team birthday picture

Sangita's birthday dinner was one of the best nights so far.  We went to a nice restaurant for some food and caipirinha.  Did I mention I love caipirinhas??? It is a traditional brazilian drink made with cachaca (Sugar cane rum), and lime (they usually add sugar too but I order mine sem açúcar).  We had such an amazing time! I this we were the loudest table, not only in the restaurant, but on the whole block :)

They gave us an ipad with the menu, which is a terrible idea, because the connection was slow and it took forever to load :) But the good thing about this is that there were food pictures, and since this was our first time going out without Daniel to translate the menu for us, it worked out pretty well

This was so good: Chicken wrapped in bacon with Mole sauce :)

Me and my twin :) We were born on the same day, same year! 

Really fun night! :)

Friday was our first checkpoint meeting.  We decided to have a checkpoint meeting every friday with the client to make sure we are working on what they need us to work one and that our deliverables are on point (using the lean / agile techniques here :))
We spent all morning putting the presentation together, in Portugese and English! The meeting went well.  John did a great job presenting.

John presenting.. Ficaci? Ficala?

Guilherme translating for us

It got serious, with charts and drawings...

After the meeting, we went for some pao de quiejo and mango juice.

After work, Guilherme took Mike, John, Vinod and I out for drinks.  We went to this really nice bar by the hotel called: Dalva Botequim Musical.  it's a very small place and all the tables are on the sidewalk.  They also had a live band playing slow samba.  It was really nice.  I tried the "passion fruit" caipirhinia (Maracouja)(Only one).  I think it's my favorite flavor so far.

At the bar

At the bar

This was so good! Beef with yuka just soaking in butter.  My body is saying "what are you doing to me!!!"

:)

The band playing samba

On the way back, we stopped by the mall to check out a jacket for Vinod.  And wow, am i glad I overpacked! Clothes prices are RIDICULOUS! We might have been looking in the wrong place but the stores we went to were extreemly expensive. I guess I won't be doing any shopping here!

We saw this on our walk home from the bar.  They had some metal pieces on a string.  And when you put a light on it, the shadow looks like Michael Jackson  (Or at least we think it's Michael Jackson).  I wish we had a picture of the actual metal part, because it looks nothing like the shadow.

Nada

#ibmcsc Brazil