So, to take a peek at some of my favorites, click on over to the Photos. I will still occasionally post photos in the main post, but these will mainly be photos that are decent and that I am OK with eventually disappearing.

Enjoy.

GOBAMA!!!

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The day started out interesting. Ever since I arrived one thing that stood out to me was how close people parallel parked their cars. I had a suspicion that people left their cars in neutral and simply pushed them into place. Today I got my confirmation. That is indeed exactly what happens. It’s crazy. And of course, I had to snap a video. After all, how often do you see someone parallel park their car by pushing it? Enjoy.

After watching the Flinstone powered parking, we ventured back to one of my favorite places in Brazil; Ipanema Beach. Today was different though. Not only was it more crowded than it had been on any other day since my arrival, there were also superheroes on the beach playing soccer … no futbol .. err volleyball. Well, I’m not sure exactly what they were playing, but it sure was entertaining (and simply amazing). I could describe it in words, but that wouldn’t do this sport justice. You have to watch this video. Seriously. This was by far the most impressive thing I saw my entire trip. I was absolutely dumbfounded by the talent/conditioning of some of these people.

After spending a few hours on the beach watching fulleyball (that’s what I’m calling it … back off!), it was time to go pack and get ready for the long trek home. Sad.

Before we boarded our bus however, I was treated to a nice little cake with candles (yeah, I’m still young enough to blow out candles … what?). A birthday in Brazil … now there is something I never thought would happen. I can say this though, I sure am grateful that it did happen and I couldn’t think of a better way to start another year.

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Photos:

Later that night we took a quick bus ride to Lapa. In short, Lapa is absolutely crazy. Imagine a club. Scratch that, imagine 40 clubs, half of which feature live bands and garage door size openings. Add a few thousand people walking around from one club to another, a few handfuls of beer (per person), and that’s what Lapa is like. Only bigger.

The only bad part of Lapa was that I forgot my camera at home so I couldn’t snap any photos. If you really want to see some more, check out the steps Snoop Dogg is sitting on in his Beautiful video.

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Photos:

Again, we weren’t supposed to take photos in the Favelas. I asked one gentleman (I hate to sterotype, but he was probably part of the trafico. He was just way to clean cut. And, he was sitting in front of a storage room filled with gas.) to take a photo, but he gave me the no-no wag. Oh well. I managed to snap a few photos in the Favela. I especially like the one of the bricks (these are the bricks a lot of the houses are made of). Interesting.

Once out of the Favela, we ventured to an occupation. The story goes something like this. The government left a few buildings abandoned when they moved the capital. Some lower-class citizens noticed the building was abandoned, and decided that they should live there. It’s a big building, with electricity, water, but no elevator.

The residents pay a monthly fee to the community for food, but everything else is free (water, electricity, rent, etc.). I felt bad for the residents. That was, until we got a tour of a few apartments (they’re basically offices that people sleep in). They had new refrigerators, new dishwashers, new TVs, and computers. The place is not luxury by any means, but the residents are living a decently comfortable life.

To live in the building residents have to make less than a certain salary. However, I couldn’t help but look at a shiny new 36″ flat screen TV and think to myself that some of the residents could move out if they wanted too. But, if I could live rent/mortgage free with free electricity and water, I’d probably do it too.

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Anyway, to get to the top of the mountain you have to take a cable car (two actually). Nothing like being suspended a thousand feet above the ground by cables. And if traveling up mountains by cable wasn’t exciting enough, the wind was blowing something fierce the day we went. It got so bad they actually stopped running the cable cars for about 15min. Oh lucky me…

Once you’re at the top of the mountain, there’s a few things you can do. Shop, eat, look down, go back down the mountain, go to the theater / museum, or catch a helicopter ride for a closeup view of Christ the Redeemer. Other than that, there’s not much up there.

The helicopter ride costs about $200, so that was not an option, and the theater / museum building was closed, so my options consisted of shopping, eating, and looking down. Fortunately for me, the view is absolutely gorgeous. Even better than the view from Corcovado Mountain (in my opinion). Enjoy the photos.

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Photos:

Photos:

So while I’m standing there, these guys come and block off an entire intersection. I could explain further what they were doing, but I got a video instead. Enjoy:

Yeah, I thought that was crazy too. Wrong. Wrong! That was nothing, because for their next act they pulled out knives. Go figure:

After the little show by the laundry mat, we walked a couple blocks to “Big Rock” on Ipanema Beach. Big Rock is just that, a big rock. Well, several big rocks. It gives you some great view of Ipanema Beach and the city.

Apparently the sunsets are supposed to be amazing from Big Rock, but no luck on seeing one of those today. We have a futebol game to attend. Futebol!!!

We hopped a bus to the game. Buses are an interesting thing in Rio. Most of them are privately held, there is no schedule. A bus simply shows up when it shows up. Fortunately that tends to be about every 15min or so. Another interesting thing is that the bus loads/unloads wherever convenient. So getting off the bus in the middle lane happens, often.

Once we arrived at the stadium, you could see the craziness. There were folks lined up everywhere. The craziest part, is that we went to a small game. The Flamengo’s (the favorite team in the Ipanema area) were playing against some nobody team whose name I don’t remember. Still, people were out in full Flamengo gear ready for the game.

Inside the stadium is even more interesting than the outside. The seats are old concrete looking seats. You can tell comfort was not a priority when they were built. Fortunately, nobody sits down, ever. People are standing, chanting, and waving flags, the entire time. It is absolutely insane. Well, I thought it was insane. Then they scored. Triple-Insane. Wow:

Side Note: No people were harmed during the making of this video. However, a styrofoam box and at least one shirt was destroyed. Crazy!

On the way home, we traded in the bus for a subway. It took us a good 20min to walk to the subway, since someone kept taking photos (me), people kept stopping to buy jerseys, hats, scarfs, etc., and someone else had to buy a bottle of water to wash the mud off her feet. Wonder who that was?

The subway ride was pretty basic. Hop in at one location, get off at another, wait for another train, rinse and repeat. It did give me an opportunity to take some nice photos though, so no complaints from me.

In conclusion, the futebol game was absolutely amazing. If you ever make it to Rio, you have have have to go to a game. You won’t be sorry you did.

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The lunch in Santa Teresa was ok. The food was excellent, but the service was slow. Extremely slow. The restaurant did have a live band playing, so the wait wasn’t too painful. That and we played some intense games of hangman. Because the food took so long, we didn’t get to see much of the City. Sad.

Getting to the top of Corcovado is an adventure. You buy your ticket, hop in a van, and then zip up the windiest roads ever paved to the top. It feels like a roller coaster ride. Once at the top, you venture up the steepest steps ever built until you get to the man. And he’s big. Scratch that. Enormous. Pictures simply can’t do the size of statue justice.

Side note: The trip down the mountain was insane. We hopped in the van with a bunch of drunk Brazilians, who spent the entire trip singing as loudly as they possibly could. And, the driver got into it a bit, so he started speeding down the mountain, taking corners way faster than necessary. I tried to get a video of the ordeal, but the battery died. Dangit!

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Photos:

The trip started out ok, with everyone meeting bright and early. Naturally, everyone was running about 15min too late. Once everyone arrived, phone calls were made to ensure it was safe for us to enter (think City of God), and we loaded into the buses; almost.

Unlike most field trips, everyone who could go on this trip wanted to go on this trip. This meant the buses were jammed-packed and there was not spot for yours truly. Luckily, one of the program directors was able to convince a taxi-man to follow the buses. Apparently Favelas are so dangerous that taxis don’t even enter. Go figure. The damage? 25 Reais (about $15). It would have been 50 Reals but my airport partner (the other Seattle-ite) was signed up for the trip, so me and her split the bill. Niiice.

Once we got close to the Favelas, our tour guide came to give us the necessary warnings: don’t wear sunglasses, don’t point, and don’t take pictures. Most importantly, don’t take pictures. So after the taxi-man removed his glasses and rolled his windows down (I guess you have to roll your windows down so the people know you’re not police. That would be bad), we entered.

There’s a lot one could say about Favelas, but the main that comes to mind with me is third-world. One of the first things you notice is that infrastructure is almost non-existent. Some buildings are made of cement, while others are nothing more than a stack of bricks. Most looked like bricks. Many houses don’t have doors or windows, just cutouts where a door or window would be. Some buildings have electricity and water, some don’t, so giant buckets (they look sort of like a backyard swimming pool for kids) are kept on roofs to provide running water. It is simply unbelievable.

The second thing I noticed is that government is completely non-existent. There is no police force, no schools, no garbage pickup, and no public transportation (they do have buses, but these are privately run). The last government sanctioned presence you see is at the entrance. This is where the police sit and do randoms checks on people entering and leaving the Favela.

About 10min into the Favels, we reached our destination; a community center. The center was nice. Really nice. So much so that it looked out of place. We received a tour, quickly looking at the clinic, dental office, futbol field, and pool. Yes, they had a swimming pool. It is amazing what a few motivated people can accomplish.

After the tour, we had the opportunity to play a quick game of futbol with the local team. I could go into details, but I’m sure you know how that ended. Winners? They weren’t American. I will say this, the level of talent in those kids is ridiculous. Every one of them could easily (very easily) be the star athlete on any high school soccer team in the States. Video time:

Once the match was over, and I was out of breath, we ventured back into the center and up to the second floor for a quick demonstration of Capoeira. Amazing. Next they snagged a few of us off the wall (myself included) and gave us a quick and dirty lesson. Next up? A little show. They paired us with one of the locals, and we performed Capoeira for the audience. Video time (again):

After the demonstration, it was time for a Q&A with the tour guide and center administrators. One interesting tidbit we learned was the lack of government presence means the entire Favela is run by the Trafico de Drogas (drug lords). They are the law, they are the jury, they are the police, they are everything. Oddly enough (well, actually it’s not that odd), we were told that for small crime (theft and such) we were safer inside the Favela than we were outside. The reason is that the trafico hands down some harsh punishments to people caught stealing. How harsh? How about losing a hand harsh. Now that’s a deterrent.

Next on our agenda was a quick walk around the corner to take a look at a huge mural that was being painted. The mural was being painted on a huge staircase and consisted of fish swimming down the stairs. We took a trip to the top of the staircase and shot a quick clip of the view. Amazing:

My words can’t do justice for what these people are trying to accomplish and what they have to deal with to accomplish it. Fortunately the painters have a blog: FavelaPainting.com. Go there, after you read this.

After the mural, it was time for a quick bite to eat a local restaurant just outside of Favela territory before heading up-hill to Santa Maria Maior. It’s a church. A huge church. So huge in fact I saw the darn thing from the window while flying in. It sits atop a huge hill and provides some amazing views of Rio. From the looks of things, the church is no longer active and is only a tourist attraction now. I could be wrong about that though. Go figure.

So after walking up 381 (yes, I counted!) stairs to see the church up close, and then back down 381 stairs to get back to the bus, it was time to head home for quick trip to Ipanema Beach before the sun went down. All in all, a great day.

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I left early in the morning on June 1, 2008. Flew to Atlanta, sat in the airport for 8hrs (my apologies to my family in Atlanta for not calling sooner), flew to Rio, sat in the airport waiting on my luggage, and the taxi’d it to the hotel. Total travel time door-to-door? Just a pinch over 24hrs. Wow.

Of those lovely 24hrs, two experiences are worth mentioning. The Atlanta to Rio plane ride, and the drive to the hotel.

Out of all the plane rides I have had, this one by far was the best. To the left of me I had a window. I typically don’t get to take full advantage of the window seat since I fly mostly at night (hey, it’s cheaper). This time however I touched-down in Rio at roughly 8am. The sun was up, the clouds were non-existent, and Rio at a couple thousand feet is an amazing view. Sorry, no photos.

To my front, I had a nice little screen. I’m guessing it was about 7″ or so. Perfect for watching movies. The best part, it was all on-demand and the movie select was pretty current. You could also listen to music, but blah. I used my 10hrs of airtime instead to watch National Treasuer: Book of Secrets (3 stars), The Bucket List (4 stars), and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2 stars). Not a bad lineup. +1 for Delta.

And to my right, a pretty brazilian local. She had just gotten married to some guy in Atlanta and was heading back home until all the paperwork and such cleared. Oddly enough, she didn’t sound too excited about moving to the States. She liked the States, but she loved Brazil, and it showed. I got the impression that she planned on moving the hubby to Brazil before too long.

Once I arrived in the airport and got my bags it was through immigration and off to the hotel. Immigration is an interesting / nerve-wracking thing. As I sat in line waiting my turn, I wondered what would happen if for some reason they denied me entry. Would I be placed on the very next flight home, or held for two weeks until my purchased departure. These are the odd things I wonder about…

I had the luxury of sharing my taxi with another Seattle-ite. She was coming to visit her husband, who is in the same program as my girlfriend. It made the drive easier as the taxi-man didn’t speak English; Portuguese and Spanish only. I shouldn’t call him a taxi-man though, he was actually a chauffeur. Nothing cooler than arriving somewhere foreign and seeing someone holding a sign with your name. Gotta love it.

The entire ride was pretty interesting. There are lanes on the road, but I would say they are nothing more than recommendations. There were a few stretches of 3-lane road that quickly turned into 4 or 5 lanes. Also, motorcycles are free to ride the white lines. Basically, what I came to understand, is that if you can fit, you can go. Very interesting, and efficient (from what I could tell).

There was also plenty of scenery on the way to the hotel. Unfortunately, I’m not sure what all of it was. Our chauffeur tried his damnedest to explain different parts of the city to us, but mostly to no avail. I have to give him credit though. He was very patient and tried really hard to explain what various buildings were to the stupid Americans who were too lazy to pick up a little Portuguese before visiting. And to think, he was in the car with us for almost an hour. I wish I had patience like that.

Once at the hotel, it was lights-out. I took a few naps during my travels, but sleeping in airports and on airplanes never leaves you feeling refreshed. Time for some serious shut-eye.

. . .

A few hours later and it was time for a quick and dirty introduction to life in Brazil before the sun went down for the day. The hotel (actually it’s a condo, but whatever…) is called Ipanema Sweet and located just a few blocks from the South Atlantic Ocean (click here). Niiiiiice.

The weather was shabby at best, leaving just enough time to grab a bite to eat, snap some photos of the surrounding stores, take a brief trip to the beach, and grab a snack. I think the snack was called a Sugar Apple. It looks weird as can be, but it’s good. Too bad I can’t bring fruit back.

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However, recently I went into Sprint to try and add a line to my plan (for my dear ‘ol mom), only to be informed that I would be required to sign an additional two year agreement. Even if I chose to buy the phone outright I still had to sign a two year agreement. Needless to say I was not impressed, and not about to sign a two year agreement (with Sprint). If I’m going to sign a two year agreement it is going to be for that oh so very very nice iPhone I keep drooling over, not for a $50 emergency phone.

Anyway, it appears that in the next few weeks Sprint will start allowing customers to change their plan without forcing them to extend the contract. Here’s to hoping this holds true…

Sheraton Buckhead: I like the room. It was decent, close to Lenox Square Mall (directly across the street close), and had the basic necessities (comfortable bed, quiet neighbors, iron). The Sheraton seems targeted primarily at business customers and has a free WiFi hotspot in their lobby. Internet access from your room will cost you a few pennies though. They also have a shuttle service that will take you to any destination within ~2 miles. Nice!

Georgia Aquarium: The aquariums website boasts that it is the largest aquarium in the world. Perhaps it is, but I just didn’t see it. It was nice, and it was big, but it didn’t seem like it was biggest in the world big. In fact, it seemed that a good portion of the space was used as a lobby. Admission will cost you a solid $24, and you will get to see some neat species (my personal favorite was the Moon Jellies), but after peaking through about 30 windows, I just felt like there should be more. Maybe my expectations were simply too ‘big’.

The New World of Coca-Cola: The most interesting fact about this place is that you cannot bring competing products labels into the building. You can keep your water, your Pepsi, your Snapple, or whatever else you have, but that label will get ripped off before you enter. I was shocked when it happened, but in retrospect it makes perfect sense. Once inside, you are bombarded with Coke. They have advertisements, commercials, facts, fiction, and everything else about the company dating back to the secret syrups creation. It is all slightly interesting, but the real joy is the “secret ingredient” and “tasting” exhibits. I won’t spoil the fun and say much, but if you get a chance to go make sure you give ‘ol Beverly a taste. One tip, she hangs out in Europe.

Fogo De Chao: This place is it! One giant smorgasbord of all you can eat meat. Yes, I just said “all you can eat.” It’s crazy, absolutely crazy. You walk in, you are seated, and within minutes you are literally attacked from all angles with choices ranging from Ribs to Sausage to Top Sirloin to Filet Mignon. It’s absolutely insane. The price is steep at ~$50 per person for dinner, but of all the things I did on this vacation, eating at Fogo De Chao left me with the most sense of satisfaction and bang-for-buck. And to seal the deal, this place has the best Filet Mignon I have ever had in my life (the girlfriend seconds that motion). Oh, did I mention it was all you can eat?

Phipps Plaza: If you want to get a glimpse of how high-life celebrities shop and live, stop by Phipps Plaza and hang out for a bit. Gucci, Versace, Jimmy Choo, Louis Vuitton, Coach, they all have stores there. They are a bit out of my price range, but it was fun to “window shop” for a few minutes. Oh, and do not be surprised if you see a Bentley or Maybach in the parking lot.

Marta: The Marta is Atlanta’s well designed and cheap to use train/subway system. On our trip we opted to skip the rental car route and bus/walk/taxi/etc it wherever we needed to go. In the end, we only needed the train (and our Hotel shuttle for the Fogo De Chao trip mentioned above). Their light-rail system is just that nice. The trains run every 15 minutes, hit s the major spots (Downtown, Uptown, Touristy, Airport, etc), and will only run you $2 one way regardless of the destination. So when it came time to depart, we hopped the Marta, paid our $2, and traveled the 19mi in about 30min. Now why can’t Seattle have something similar?

One of the first places I looked for keeping my ever-growing list of favorites online was the infamous del.icio.us. This website is the defacto king of bookmarks in the blogosphere, so I figured I would give it a shot. Unfortunately, I was severely disappointed.

While the website is popular and a good amount of people use it, I just did not see it as being very practical for me. The official decision came down to two factors that I just could not live with. The first being that every bookmark is shared with the entire world by default. While browsing their website will quickly show you why they have this feature, I personally do not want to participate. It is interesting to see that a specific web address (URL) has 3,453 people linking to it, but it is not so great to have people scouring my bookmarks in detail.

The second feature was the layout. By default your bookmarks are listed by date, with the most recently added towards the top of your list. In a sidebar you have a list of tags (everything Web 2.0ish must have tags…i guess) that you assign to your bookmarks and clicking on one of these will display the bookmarks saved under that category. However, the bookmarks under that category are still listed by date (or title if you so choose) with the newest one on top. And while this system works for a few bookmarks, I do not see it being easily manageable once you get a few hundred pages bookmarked with 20 or 30 tags.

Maybe I am asking too much, but I want to conveniently find a bookmark from any computer using less mouse-clicks than it would using the traditional browser based bookmarking system. Is that really too much to ask? Apparently!

I tried a few other online managers such as MyWeb by Yahoo, MyBookmarks, Google Bookmarks and just about any other web-based service that will let you mark a page for later viewing and none of them really provide the type of experience I was looking for. So finally, at the point when I was ready to abandon the idea, I found salvation in the most unlikely place; Google Reader.

Google Reader is actually not an online bookmarking system. Instead, it is a news aggregator. Fortunately for me, most of the websites I visit on a daily basis and therefore care to bookmark have feeds that I can subscribe too. In addition, Google Reader allows you to “star” an item (anyone who uses Gmail will know exactly how this works) for later retrieval. This makes browsing a website, coming across an interesting article, and saving it to read later an absolute breeze. As an added bonus, Google Reader is accessible and easy to use from mobile phones.

Now what about those pages with no feeds that you want to save for future reference? Well, given the absolute letdown of the above services, I decided to go with the one I disliked the least; Google Bookmarks. I actually dislike Google Bookmarks because the navigation has the same issues as del.icio.us, but it wins my vote for no reason other than the fact that bookmarks are kept private by default. I understand everyone’s love for sharing, but I simply prefer to have the option of sharing something over the option of keeping something private.

In closing, I think there is serious room for improvement in the world of online bookmarking. While del.icio.us is great for finding interesting sites that other users have come across recently, it, like the others, does not do a great job of managing bookmarks in a way that is convenient for the user. So until that time arrives, I guess I will keep adding pages to the poorly designed Google Bookmarks.

Random Information: I did decide to use my del.icio.us account after all. I use it to keep a running list of “interesting” websites I come across that I want to share but not write about. You can find those in the “Notable Mentions” section in the sidebar.

-: Music :-
Not sure about this one.  50 Cent actually had a record year with The Massacre selling over one million units.  However, as predicted, ever since his album was released you haven’t heard much about/from him.  As for the Thuggish/Gangsta style of rap taking a backseat to the educated, I was wrong.  They did take a bit of a backseat, but it was to the dance heavy South and their “snap” music.  Sure Common, Kanye, Mos Def and the rest of the educated bunch did well, but not nearly as well as I thought they would.

-: Movies :-
It was a bit of hit and miss with movies.  I do not remember how expense movies were a year ago (you would think I would have jotted that down), but with current prices hovering at just over $9, I think I was a bit wrong in suggesting that movies prices would “almost double.”  They definitely increased, but I doubt enough to warrant an almost doubling title.  I was correct with the remake prediction (not sure how many remakes were released in 2006, but memory tells me there was a lot).  So while I was correct in predicting that sales of some big name movies would be less than expected, my predictions were quickly silenced by the likes of Borat (great movie BTW).

-: TV :-
I think I hit this nail on the head.  Reality shows (Survivor, Flavor of Love, Dancing With the Stars, etc.) were a huge hit in 2006.  So huge that Flavor of Love was the most watched non-sports show on TV (for that week).  Crazy, huh?  I have to admit I even tuned in to a few episodes of Flavor of Love.  In addition, television dramas (or epic series) were a major hit.  All of the shows I mentioned in the prediction (24, Prison Break, etc.) did well, and their was even room for some newcomers such as Heroes and Ugly Betty to gain some significant ratings.  And last but definitely not least, people swarmed to iTunes to download television shows.  I have yet to buy one, and I really cannot wrap my head around why people do, but I said they would and I was right.

-: Cars :-
Well let’s see.  Hybrids are not as big of a deal as I thought they would be.  They picked up steam with the introduction of the Prius, Hybrid Civic, Hybrid Accord, Hybrid Camry, etc, etc.  But still sales of Hybrids are far below what I was expecting them to be.  In addition, neither Ford nor GM filed for bankruptcy as I predicted.  Ford did come awfully close however, and just recently issued debt secured by its assets to curb their financial woes.  So in short, I was a bit off on the car predictions.

-: Tech :-
My favorite category, and unfortunately probably my worst.  In December 2005, Apple’s total market share was roughly 4.35%.  I was expecting this number to nearly double.  And while Apple did have a good year due to strong sales, its total market share only increased to about 5.67%, far short of my predictions.  In addition, I predicted that Google’s stock price would crash.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  It did take a bit of a dip in early March, but it has since increased and is back to its over-valued figure.

So overall, I guess I did not do ‘that’ bad.  I would not say I did good, just not ‘that’ bad.