Burgmann Brewery

 Sorocaba has its own brewery.We took the Emerson guys there for a big feed involving ribs, fritos (like chips) with cheese and garlic, and fried mandioca (best guess is a root veg like turnip....), and of course, a bit of tasting of the local liquids. The 'bar' is actually the warehouse floor of the brewery with the big stainless tanks all around you; talk about straight out of the pumps.Appart from lager, Burgmann do a tasty red ale, a really good 7%, and a Black Beer, very sweet - a bit like  Mackeson's. We had a good time - these guys, although young, are a good bunch of people and easy to get on with. We had a bit of trouble getting our heads around portion sizes again and the Brazilian way of sharing meals, but when the supply of ribs ran out we simply order another round...and beer as well. 

Green Stuff

Being sub tropical there is plenty of green stuff around here. Chris is forever stopping to pick up a leaf or bit of strange grass to add to his 'collection' of vegetation from around the world. Not far from the hotel is a small man made park. Its very popular with people 'speed walking' or jogging later in the day when the temperatures dropped a bit. Its full of interesting vegetation, has water running through it (always muddy from the heavy rains and flash floods) and quite a few fruit trees with things resembling apples and small dark 'plum' type things. You quite often see the odd pensioner with a long stick knocking the 'apples' off but nothing (birds included) seems interested in the plums. They smell sweet enough but nobody is going to put the taste to the test. Palm trees are dotted around everywhere, lining roads and streests and forming the center pieces of ornate garden sections out side places.

 For some strange reason we have hardly seen any birds; I cant imagine they have flown anywhere as its summer here; I would have expected the trees to be full of them with all the fruit but no. 

Jean Sizes

Impossible Jean Sizes (by Chris Haines)

At Espresso we renewed our acquaintance with our new best bosom-buddies, the waiters. As it was raining most heavily we sat inside this time, and got a somewhat different impression of the place - it was even better. As usual there was plenty of attractive scenery - no zips this time, but a series of spray-on jeans in impossible sizes.....24 waist, 34 legs....... they can only be made in Brazil. I won't bore you with a description of the endless procession of pulchritude that entered the place, but it was major distraction from beer drinking. The band were the same crew who played last Saturday, called Codigo Cinco, and they were again superb. 

At one point one of them played a 10 string guitar (five pairs with open tuning), and they had the tambourine miked up. Anyone who thinks a tambourine is girly should have seen this guy play it... anyway they worked through a collection of Brazilian rock and forro music with the odd Bob Marley tune thrown in, with the whole place dancing away to it. We enjoyed it so much it was 3 am before we knew it.

On Sunday we wandered down to the Columbia Burger Bar for a late lunch of 'proper' burgers, chips & onion rings before another siesta...... this could be habit-forming. Then I read the Sunday paper - thanks to my Kindle I could download the Independent. Cool.

Siestas

(by Chris Haines)

The Guy Who Invented Siestas..........should get a Nobel prize. On Saturday we started at 6 am to suit the Emerson guys: this required the amazing brain-kick-starting, neuron-turbo-charging properties of Brazilian coffee...... I am measuring up the coffee machine here. I am sure I could get it on the plane somehow. This early start also meant an early finish at 1:30, so we headed off for a large late lunch at a churrascaria (ie Brazilian grill joint). No menus, just waiters wandering round with skewered grilled dead animals. As usual we severely over-estimated the capacity of our digestive system, and shortly afterwards, we staggered forth, clutching our straining distended stomachs, shirt buttons popping. ..........................



(Simon:- One each table is a small 'sign' of sorts with which you turn to tell them if you want 'feeding' again. Big problem is if you forget to turn it while your tucking in you can end up with 2 or more of them at the table at once forcing all sorts of wonderful things at you. Strange - but practical thing in the toilets..big bottle of mouth wash in a holder with little cups and a dental floss dispenser next to it.....bits of dead cow stuck in your teeth must be very common in here.)
We had phoned the Emerson driver, but after 20+ mins, no-one had turned up, and so, assuming a misunderstanding, we asked the restaurant to get a taxi. Needless to say, the Emerson taxi guy turned up just as we were getting in the taxi. My food-befuddled wits were trying to muster enough pidgin Portugese to explain this, when Reginaldo (the Emerson taxi man), sorted it all out a few choice phrases. He is (and certainly would like to be thought of as) a cool dude: always in a smart, well-cut black suit. crisp white shirt, and Aviator sunglasses.
          The hotel lift had an extra hard job carting our bloated bodies up to our rooms, and a swift siesta ensued.  Nearly three hours in my case.......a bit of a backlog to work off. But it was most refreshing, and set us up for a planned short visit to Espresso Sorocabano for the Saturday night band . 

Cheeky Rosie

To avoid getting in a rut, (as Chris put it) when we were told about a different type of place that was good on a Friday night that catered for more of Sean's 'X plop' type of music, we decided to give it a go; and to keep Sean happy if nothing else. Looking at the map we decide it was going to be a taxi job so when we piled into one outside the hotel and asked for the place as the Emerson guys had called it we were starting to get a bit suspicious when the taxi driver didn't seem to have a clue were we were on about. Turned out it was (as always) the accent problem and its pronounced Sheeko Hozer in Brazilian. 
       The place is a modern, plastic and glass bar / restaurant, with a private parking lot next to it with people on the gates ready to take R$10 (~£3) off you quicker that look at you ; the sort you see in Ibiza and other similar parts. It had very uncomfortable plastic chairs, glass topped tables and large screen tv's on the walls. Despite all the bouncers milling around the entrance, we strolled right in and took up a suitable vantage point (with our backs to the wall) down by the front of the main open area.  First contact with the waiters was quick enough and beer and 'snacks' were ordered in favor of a full blown meal and we settled in for a few hours. 
3 things very quickly became apparent :- 
1.The music was crap.
(Chris).... endless house/garage/moron dumshee dumshee stuff . They were playing a DVD of some rave in Holland, where a load of people crowded into a large shed to watch a guy play his records. The needle seemed to have stuck on most of them. This stuff is awful, mostly fabricated by pasty-faced onanists on a laptop, in between drooling and fiddling with their X-box......I have one rule with music: if they can't be bothered to give it a tune, I can't be bothered to listen. So there!
      I of course had the same opinion but knew it was going to be like this and had gone along for the ride. Sean on the other hand loved it.


2. If you weren't female the waiters didn't want to know. In all the bars, the bottles of beer are served in a bucket of ice with the tops on till you need it. Most waiters will open a fresh bottle for you and top it up as he walks past even if your not one of his table. The don't give you a bottle opener so this is how it works. These snotty little gits didn't even want to know when you waved and finally managed to call them over. Very annoying. 


3. Toilets. These were not far from us which was good. Inside was a communal wash basin and only 2 toilets which was bad. There must have been a couple of hundred people in the place (and it was early) and only 2 toilets. Plus when it did start to get busy you couldn't get to either of them cos the place was crowded with woman engrossed in the usual woman's toilet past time of talking to each other via the mirrors. Its no fun queuing for a toilet with 6 bottles of beer inside you. 


Things did get a bit better when they changed all the screens to show various Red Bull Sporting events from around the world. This stopped the music, and of course there was now an increasing flow of young very well-turned out Beautiful Brazilian Babes, (as Chris puts it) coming through the door, but we had to be up at 5am next day for a 6am start, so come close to midnight we dragged Sean out; past the ques of people waiting to get in and taxi'd back to the hotel and bed.  

Air Con Wars

(...by Chris Haines)

Tami and her 'blanky' to keep warm!

We are doing the testing in an area separated with a glass wall from the main controller assembly workshop. This has enclosed one of the building aircon units, thus ensuring a 60 mph gale in our little area if it's on full blast. 
     Some hardy soul sets it at 19C, and this results in Arctic clothing test conditions ( I am sure the thermostat is not right): I have had to resort to using a T shirt as a vest and wearing a jumper....while outside it is a delicious 25-30C. Tami and I prefer it warmer and gradually nudge      
the setting up to 25 ..........but someone keeps turning it down......


(Simon) Tried to down load a infra red remote control program for the IR port on my laptop to try and 'take control' when nobody was looking but I couldn't get the air con unit to recognize the commands it was sending out. Have resorted to the age old trick of hiding the remote - next time I'll have the batteries out of it. 

Work progress

Progress has been slow since we got here...the systems have either not been up to the job or not ready for testing. The only way to change this is to change what the project itself is suppose to do; and that's not an option so we just have to plod on. 
   We had a first attempt at running 'the whole plant' (almost) in simulation with every bit talking to each other. It was all going well until all the little boxes went red on the screen. A swift get together of the Emerson people told us why; the system cant handle more than 11 parts of the plant running at once ......something they should have knew and be prepared for. They are working on it, and as no-one has topped himself yet, we are hoping it can be fixed. This is the big job for this week.
    Things didn't get any better after this. Progress got slower, with more and more errors and parts of the code not even ready to test. Then, on Monday a power cut to the whole site. This resulted in loss of a lot of code that had been entered that day and over 200 controllers having to be reprogrammed. The back up from Saturday took almost 2 hours to reload and most people put the power cut down to the storms that they get at this time of year - another one would really fcuk us up. They do not have a  Uninteruptible Power Supply (UPS) to keep the computers running when the power goes off  which seems crazy as they are not all that expensive. They have asked for one for over a year now but the money seems to have been spent on rather large nice big Volvo's parked outside in the spaces marked Diretores - or am I just being bitchy? Either way we have had to extend our stay. 
         The 10 or 11 hour days are starting to get to us. The chairs are not the best in the world and despite getting up and walking about, sitting on your arse for so long at this altitude seems to have the effect of making your ankles swell. I've started wearing the flight socks you get on the planes and its helping. As for the screens them selves we are starting to see programming code in our sleep and quite often you can see us walking round the car park with a blank mindless expression on our faces.