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...