Brazil, Flight Test, Caipirinha, and the Fine Art of Saying “Obrigado”
I arrived in Brazil on Saturday, March 21, after the kind of travel day that sounds efficient on paper and feels like a minor act of endurance in real life: DFW to Miami, then overnight to São Paulo. I had chosen first class, thinking I needed to arrive rested, polished, and ready to represent SFTE with dignity. But if you're not going to eat the food, well, maybe premium economy is good enough... I did start watching a great movie, titled "The Life of Chuck." Landing in São Paulo, I stepped out of Terminal 3 at GRU, requested my Uber Comfort as planned, and made my way to Hotel Heritage on Rua Fernando de Albuquerque in Consolação. The airport-to-city transition was easier than expected, which is always a pleasant surprise when arriving in a country where your language skills are mostly limited to hope, pointing, and “Obrigado.” From the airplane window, São Paulo looked endless: towers, neighborhoods, green corridors, haze, density, motion. It was not a city th...