My primary purpose in going to São Paulo was to have two interviews required for the MBA program to which I am applying. As an aside, it’s really a new thing for me to publicly talk about something like this. I hope to be admitted to the MBA program at HEC, about 15 miles southeast of Paris, to begin this September. But it’s a very selective admission process, and ordinarily I would never talk about the fact that I was even applying for fear of jinxing my chances of getting in. But I’m throwing caution to the wind in so many ways with this career change, with this South American journey, and with this blog, so I figure I should just run with it. ;-)
Anyway, I submitted the final part of my application for the HEC MBA program from Bogota, partly in an effort to have any potential interview coincide with my arrival in São Paulo. I knew that interviews were required as part of the admission process, and that São Paulo was one of only a couple of cities in South America where it was possible for me to have these interviews. I also knew that if my application were to be selected for interviews, they would probably notify me accordingly about 4 weeks after my application was complete. In reality, they notified me only about 2 weeks after completion of my application that I had been selected for interviews. This was why I wound up skipping Uruguay completely and rushing to São Paulo earlier than planned, so that I could hopefully have the interviews and get a final decision from HEC in this admission cycle.
The interviews required a fair bit of preparation, however. I had no appropriate clothing. And I needed to prepare a Powerpoint presentation to present at each interview. (This also meant I needed to learn how to use Powerpoint, since I had never created a presentation with the software before.) I decided it would be best to situate myself in a rather decent business-type hotel in a nice area of town, ensuring that I would have wi-fi in my room, etc. (Since São Paulo is easily the most expensive city I’ve visited thus far on this trip, this also meant I was really blowing my budget out of the water.) I managed to get a 50% discount off the rack rate at the Golden Tulip Park Plaza in the rather tony Jardim Paulista district, and made that my home for nearly two weeks.
I spent the first few days shopping for an interview outfit (suit, shirt, tie, shoes, belt, etc.), scheduling and preparing for the interviews, and strolling around the city. I think I averaged about 15 miles a day of walking the first few days. São Paulo not only has a population of over 11 million, but covers nearly 600 square miles. That’s huge. I tried to cover as much as I could, but the 90-degree heat, powerful sun, and hilly streets made it quite difficult.
Here I am sitting under the
Museu de Arte de São Paulo (“MASP”) with the northern part of the city behind me.Overall, other than with respect to scale, I found the city to be much less intimidating than I thought it would be. It seemed safer, cleaner and more relaxed than I expected. The biggest problem I faced was the language issue. Frankly, I had no appreciation for just how much Spanish I had learned during my two months in Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador, until I arrived in Brazil and was completely paralyzed because I spoke no Portuguese. And, unlike in Rio de Janeiro where I have been twice before, hardly any Paulistanos speak English. I soon realized that if I spoke Spanish then generally folks would understand most of what I was saying, but I still couldn’t understand a word of what they said back to me. I guess I better buckle down and learn some basic Portuguese if I’m going to be in the country for another few weeks…
One of the first sightseeing-type things I did in São Paulo was check out an exhibit of work by nineteenth century Brazilian photographer Marc Ferrez. It was actually incredible – the most amazing photography exhibit I have ever seen (not that I’ve seen all that many, but alas…). Taking pictures was forbidden in the exhibit, so I cribbed a couple of shots from the internet below. Ferrez apparently innovated a lot of new photographic techniques and was very much ahead of his time. But what most amazed me was seeing the early development of cities and construction of historic landmarks and railways throughout the country, as well as seeing gorgeous panoramic shots of Rio before Christ appeared on Corcovado.
Once I had managed to buy a suit and leave the pants with a tailor to be hemmed (all of which was quite a challenge given the aforementioned language issue) and do some preliminary sightseeing, I felt that it was time to check out the local nightlife. The first thing I noticed was that beverages in Brazil dress differently than those in Colombia. Instead of the typical paper napkin shawl sported by cocktails in Bogota and Medellin, here my drinks generally arrived wearing a stylish neckerchief.
(I hope you folks are buying stock in Smirnoff Ice, by the way – demand has increased ten-fold on account of my arrival in South America…)
I also noticed that some of the names for drinking establishments in São Paulo are downright ridiculous, such as:
São Paulo is also the first city in South America where I noticed that I didn’t really stand out all that much. It’s an incredibly ethnically diverse city, and folks there run the full gamut of skin tone, hair color, facial features, etc. There were suddenly plenty of fair-skinned, blue-eyed people running around so – for good or for ill – it was no longer “all eyes on Rob” everytime I stepped into a bar or a restaurant or whatnot. (Obviously, I kinda miss the attention…)
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