Rio de Janeiro

On July 7, 2007, Rio de Janeiro became even more exciting by winning one of the new 7 world wonders: Christ Redeemer statue. I was sitting in my office, staring at the photo and said to myself: Geez, I've got to see that place. On July 17 I shot an email to Lily, asking her to meet in Rio de Janeiro for Christmas.

2 weeks later I went for an job interview in Germany and received the offer. According to the Germany law, the new hires are not allowed to take personal holidays within the first 6 months of employment, which put me in deep doubt of the feasibility of my Christmas holiday. 2 months later after I joined the company, I found out the new company works a lot and parties even more, in fact the company Christmas party has been arranged to take place in Austria, although they "claim" the attendence is not mandatory, I think I'd better be there...

So I was a little disappointed that I wouldn't have a chance to see the statue this year, but not for very long. During my first week in the new company I was informed that I need to go to Brazil for a training, this time they said my attendence is mandatory. However, the training would be in Sao Paulo from Mon to Fri and they've booked the ticket for me to come back on Sat evening. Seemed that it's impossible to visit Rio since Rio is an hour flight away from Sao Paulo and it takes a long time to get to the airports due to traffic plus the flights are almost always delayed.

But it turned out during the training one of the colleagues is from the Rio office and he talked us into going to Rio with him. So a colleague from my office, and a colleauge from the Delhi office and myself rushed to the airport and jumped on a plane and landed in Rio! I saw the statue even before the planed landed, it is so prominent and it can be seen from everywhere!

The city has a stunningly spectacular landscape. I loved it so much for the great food, blue ocean, passion and heat. If only I could spend a year on the beach and get a nice tan as the local people...

My New Home

My first month on the new job has been very leisure. Everyday it was either training or nothing to do. Some of my colleagues who are also new went golfing during office hour whereas I devoted most of my time doing yoga. My goal is to be able to bend backwards with my both hands on the floor within the next year... (sitll a long way to go and hopefully it's not next 10 years) :P I'm staying in the company accomodation at the moment but will need to move into my own apartment next month. I had been working with the company relocation agent but it had not been very fruitful. When we made appointment to see an apartment and the landlord would call and cancel it because it was rented out already.. and it happened to us 4 times! So much frustration.

There was one apartment that is everything I ever dream of: old-styled building (built in 1900), high ceiling, it even has a winter garden and a private garden outside of the winter garden. It was so hard to get an appointment and we had to wait for a week before we could go have a look. When we finally went there I fell in love with it immediately: it has a beautiful chandelier in the living room, fully equipped kitchen with washer and dryer.. etc. The ceiling of the bedroom is made of wood.. and the house is in mint condition.

The landlord was not there so we only met the tenant. We called the landlord as soon as we got into our car, but it was only his voicemail! All we could do was to leave him a message.. and wait anxiously because we were not sure whether someone had decided to take it or not. My agent called back an hour later and found out actually many people have decided to take the apartment! The landlord said he would decide the next day. We waited till the end of the next day and nothing happened.. (I'd been telling my colleagues about this apartment and they joked that if I didn't get this apartment, I would get furious.. and in fact I believe I would!)

So I kind of felt that it's not very likely that I'd get the apartment and I started looking for new ones on the web.. but nothing was nearly half as good as this one. Just when I was about to get furious my agent called and told me I got it!!! Oh thank you dear God! I probably felt more excited than the moment I knew I was accepted to graduate school, or my new job...

my new home: