Not a good time to be sick..

Nope, it's not the brown bottle flu, trust me.  But it's not terrible either.  I have a bit of a cold which I felt coming on Tuesday night and kicked in on Wednesday.  I'm alive and don't feel TOO bad, but I'm taking it easy today trying to get over this cold before the Carnival festivities happen this weekend.

Wednesday my friend Rangel was supposed to pick me up early in the morning and we were going to head out on the Rio Negro in his friend's boat. Well, the weather was not the best for boating yesterday.  It rained pretty much nonstop all day. I am in the middle of the rain forest and it is the rainy season, this is what I keep telling myself.  So Rangel picked me up around noon and we headed over to his parents house for lunch. 

After lunch we headed to another house, one of Rangel's friends, to drink some beer, eat some BBQ and watch the Brasil vs England friendly. Ah, but according to Rangel, I shouldn't call it a friendly.  Any soccer game that the Brasil national team plays is not a friendly, even if it doesn't count for anything. Yes, soccer / futebol is extremely important to Brasilians.

But to get back to talking about the BBQ. We had one of my favorite meats here in Brasil, Picanha. The Wiki link doesn't have a picture, so here's what it looks like.

I'm pretty sure it's what us Americans call Brisket, but the way it's cooked here over an open flame BBQ with just a basic salt rub gives it a different flavor compared to what you would taste, say in Austin Texas. And to tell you the truth, I think the Brasilian style is MUCH better. It's cooked over the fire on a spit for about 30 minutes, turning every 10-15 minutes. Then you cut off the outside inch or so that has finished cooking, serving it up to eat, then put it back over the fire to cook some more. You keep repeating this until the last few inches of meat at the center has finished cooking. This meat, with a simple bread roll and no BBQ sauce to take the flavor away, is pure heaven to eat.

As for the futebol game, Brasil lost to England 2-1. Brasil's back line could hardly get the ball out of the backfield without lobbing it to their forwards.  Brasil looked lost most of the time and England did a good job pressuring them on all fronts to make sure they stayed lost. Maybe it was the cold, they were playing in England.  But I recognized a 1/4 of the Brasilian players from English Premier League, they play in the cold all the time so that shouldn't be much of an excuse. At least Brasil doesn't have to worry about qualifying this World Cup since they are hosting the event, but they better pick their game up by the big games in 2014 otherwise there are going to be some not very happy people here in Brasil.

By the way, the U.S. did not do much better today against Honduras and it was NOT a friendly, but a qualifying match for the 2014 World Cup. That doesn't make me too happy since they are now crawling out of the bottom of the bracket to start off.

Well, I'm going to go back to taking a nap.  My head is stuffed up and I could use another aspirin or two.  No worries, I'll be well soon enough.  At least I better be, there's a little party starting this Friday called Carnival!

Back in Manaus

After 5 years away, I’m finally back in Manaus Amazonas, Brasil. The last time I was here I was helping start up a factory to build Intel motherboards. Now I’m back to visit friends and enjoy Carnival.
After around 22 hours of travel time, I arrived in Manaus on Friday.  My friend Moises, who still manages the quality group at the factory I helped start up, picked me up from the airport.  I had maybe 2 or 3 hours of sleep while traveling.  As usual, I couldn’t really sleep on the plane. I tried on the red eye flight from Atlanta to Brasilia, but mostly I sort of doze, wake up then doze again.  Moises had to get back to work, so he gave me a choice: go back to his house to rest or go to the factory for a few hours until he finished his work.  I figured I better just to go the factory because if I went to his house, I was going to pass out.  It was way too early to be sleeping if I were to quickly adjust to the 4 hour time difference. So we went to the factory and it felt like I was back in my second home. A lot of the people I had worked with before had left over the years, but there were still a few around and we picked up where we left off so long ago chatting, making jokes and whatnot.
As I inferred before, Moises and his wife, Herika have been gracious enough to let me stay at their house in the heart of Manaus. So that you can put a face to the name, here’s a picture I took last night while we were out at a block party.



Moises and Herika also have a beautiful daughter named Maria.

 

Thursday was Herika’s birthday, so on Saturday there was a birthday party for her at Moises’ mother’s house. A fair amount of  people showed up, most of who I didn’t know along with some of the old guys from my factory days and their wives / kids.  We sat around talking and eating one of Brasil’s favorite dish, Feijoada and of course we had a few beers to wash it all down.

Later that night UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) was on and everyone headed over to Moises’ house to watch the fights.  The main event was Aldo vs Edger and all my friends were excited to see the fight.  Aldo was born and raised in Manaus, so you can understand why my friends were excited. Spoiler alert!  Aldo won by decision.  It was a heck of a fight and Edger came on strong in the last couple rounds but couldn’t overcome the strong start by Aldo.

Sunday I slept in LATE since I was still recovering from being up over 36 hours during my travel and then the late night Saturday. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t more to do. There was a Carnival block party Sunday night which was happening right in front of Moises’ mother’s house. When we arrived it was raining hard.  There weren’t many people but there were street vendors sitting around waiting for the crowds that might not show due to the rain.

 

But, the band started playing, the hard rain turned to a drizzle then stopped and the people started coming to drink and dance in the street.



It was a fun night.  I mostly chilled and listened to the bands play all sorts of Brazilian music. Then the people watching, you see some characters in Brasil, that’s for sure.













There are more photos on my flickr web site if you want to see them here: http://flic.kr/s/aHsjDShcaB

I also captured a bit of video while standing in the middle of the street.



Today is a day of rest and catching up on archiving, sorting and editing photos and of course writing this blog.  When I say it’s a full time job writing this, I’m almost being serious.  I’m always amazed at how slow I am at writing.  Actually, I think it’s the time it takes to figure out what photos to include and how to bring it all together that takes times.  Good thing I’m an engineer instead of an editor. :)

Upcoming plans are to go explore Manaus and the surrounding area with a buddy of mine, Rangel.  He is lucky and gets a few days off before Carnival starts.  I’ll try to keep this blog updated, but between all my friends here I don’t know if I’ll have much time. That’s a good thing in my book, not sure about yours. Tchau!