Today, I learned that:

Exactly 36 years ago to the day, I set foot for the first time on Brazilian soil, more exactly at the Galeão airport in Rio de Janeiro. Cumbica airport in São Paulo did not exist yet, so I had to disembark there and switch planes. And it was worth it, because in the following flight I got a window seat on the right side of the aircraft and could see the whole Bay of Guanabara in all its beauty.

The whole week before I had been in Lisbon, where I improved my Portuguese skills and enjoyed enormously the visit to Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian with all its artifacts and objects of sheer art. The last day there, Sunday, was a perfect day to visit the medieval Sintra castle in the outskirts of Lisbon. And when it was finally time for departure from Lisbon airport, who did I meet there? The famous Swedish artist Lasse Åberg, who was bringing the whole film set to Rio de Janeiro to shoot the final scene of the comic movie Sällskapsresan (“The Charter Trip”). That scene is only a few minutes long, so I am sure that the whole film crew enjoyed their trip to Rio to get some vacation as well. See photo and reference #1 below.

“I filmens slutbilder fångar kameran in en båt utanför Copacabana i Rio, där Stig-Helmer, Majsan, Ole och Siv uppklädda sitter och läppjar på drinkar medan en orkester spelar endast för dem.”

As I said before, living in Brazil has its advantages, the (meteorological) climate and the (human) climate are of course two great benefits, and since we are in back water to the rest of the world, why would anyone ever want to perform a terrorist attack here? But I must admit that the economic and political situation right now is the worst I have ever seen during the three decades I have lived here, and there is no silver lining in view.

Enough with complaining for today, instead today was announced the highest rate of data transmission ever on our earth, a whopping 57 Gbits/s of sustained rate, with no errors! Once more, it was researchers at the University of Illinois who accomplished that feat, see more in reference #2 below.

… That’s what I learned in school !

Refs.:

1: Sällskapsresan eller Finns det svenskt kaffe på grisfesten (1980)

2: Record-speed data transmission could make big data more accessible

+: What did you learn in school today ?