Rio de Janeiro, the city that everybody in the world has heard off, known for its natural beauty, beaches and mountains, beach bodies, the carnival, and off course the giant Jesus Christ statue on the top of the Corcovado mountain blessing the whole city. City of deep contrasts where the rich and the poor are never far from each other, where the entertainment and fun is EVERYWHERE and where is the best Carnival show in the world; Literally the carnival in Rio is a parade of epic proportions! But all of that is well known for everybody so here is my point of view of the city, and being from São Paulo I will do my best to be fair. Rio de Janeiro is one of the most interesting cities in Brazil, no, I do not like everything in Rio, that is why Rio is city number 10 in my list, but I do love the overall efect that the city has on its visitors. Rio is a city made for people that like to entertain and being entertained, you can walk down ANY street in Rio and you are going to find at least one bar per block with a fair amount of people, music and a nice vibe no matter what time of the day it is, you will ALWAYS see beautiful gym sculpted bodies walking at the coastal line which is by the way on of the best things that Rio have, the shore, but the best thing in this particular city is that fact that you have everything that you could look for without going too far, mountains to hike and beaches to chill, hardcore developed city financial district and lay back bars in the same block, international metropolitan culture and neighborhood costumes, gigantic world known events and some local music only yards away and best of all, along with São Paulo one of the world's biggest cities!!!
For me being in Rio means being close to places that I love, places that definitely deserves a visit, and definitely held a special place in my heart, on the south places like Ilha Grande, Paraty and Trindade, on the north, places like Búzios, Cabo Frio and if you are a diver, definitely Arraial do Cabo.
Rio just like, Barcelona, Madrid, São Paulo, London and New York is a city where being there makes you happy, no particular reason for it! Visit and let me know your point of view!


I was there for Carnival only so there is not much I can say about the city itself but one thing is definitely true, they know how to make a good party but I believe that that is true for the whole northeast of Brazil. The Carnival that usually happens in 2 days in other regions of the country takes 2 weeks to a month on the northeast, some people said that they are the soul of the carnival, some says that they are too lay back to stop the excitement, some says that they don't have better things to do. The truth is that the northeast of Brazil is well known by the natural beauty and the tourism industry so making huge parties like this brings more revenue, more jobs, more tourists and with all that more joy.
My experience is in Salvador, but I know that all the big cities of the northeast have similar giant parties that start somewhere in February and only ends somewhere in March, for those that haven't experience it imagine a New Years party on Time Square or on Av. Paulista, now imagine that for a bunch of days in a row nonstop, now imagine all that moving throughout the city!!!! That is as close as you can get from what is the Carnival in cities like Salvador, Olinda, Recife e Fortaleza.
Salvador is one of the oldest cities in Brazil, has a lot of history but most of the people that visit it goes for the sightseeing and the shore. 
If you are going during Carnival, make sure you get your "Abada" in advance, I am talking about 11 months in advance, "Abada" is usually a t-shirt that allows you to get in to the area around the "trio-elétrico", a giant sound trucks with the band on the top, "protected" or "surrounded" by a rope that keeps who does not have an "Abada" from getting in, this rope is held by a bunch of people that works for the Band that is playing, the people outside that rope that is following one of the trucks are called popcorn. The "trio-elétricos", (trucks with stage on the truck's platform) pass through three different official circuits in Salvador, like floating boats in a river, among a crowd of people dancing and singing to the music from the artist on "stage" (on the truck). Behind the trucks, more than 2 million merrymakers follow over 25 km of streets and avenues. The Osmar Circuit: goes from Campo Grande to Castro Alves square, The Downtown Circuit, in downtown & Pelourinho, and The Dodô Circuit; goes from Farol da Barra to Ondina, along the coast.The Osmar circuit is the oldest circuit. It is also where the event's most traditional groups parades. In Dodô, where the artist box seats are located, the party becomes lively toward the end of the afternoon and it continues until morning.
Now if you are going some other time of the year I am not sure what to say because that was the only time I was there, and If I say anything is going to be out of search websites, so I will live here my message, go experience Salvador or any of the big cities of the Northeast of Brazil during Carnival you will LOVE!

Comparing to the (rigid, stiff) chain, the (soft, flexible) timing belt has 1 very important but relatively hard to explain attribute which makes it much better than the chain in doing the timing job.
During normal operation, the timing chain's movement itself is actually not a smoothly continuous action; this is owing to the fact that the chain is composed of a lot of "segments" that are connected together, rather than being a single piece of pulling media like the belt or cable.
The slackness (or tightness) of the forcing side of the chain changes periodically as each single segment of the chain is rotating by. It works in a rhythm of "tight-slack-tight-slack-tight-slack....." with the peak force existing somewhere during each of the tight-slack cycle.
The peak force periodically appears but exists only for a very short time interval as the driving shaft is asserting force to the cam-shaft.
Mathematically, this kind of stimulus (driving force) is modeled as the well-known "delta function". Delta function is very special: It is the only kind of stimulus that can stimulate the full-range-spectrum of frequency of the system which is being excited by it. A college boy/girl of the electrical engineering school more likely need to deal with the delta function in circuit classes during the last 3 years of his/her school days.
To put it in a simple way, a short pulse of electrical driving voltage and a quick hit/knock of mechanical force are both qualified as "delta function stimulus inputs".
Most people have at least once heard the bell ringing in a church or chapel, but few would realize that it is a very good example of the "delta-function stimulus" system.
No matter what sound a specific bell will generate, the sound is generated by a hammer hitting/knocking the bell in a "very short time interval". Because this "very short time interval" of acting duration, this kind of stimulus matches very well to the "delta function" definition. And for the same reason, there is no way that the generated sound frequency of the knocked bell could ever be some how controlled/instilled by the hammer's action (the hammer just does not "have time" to do the instillation). Rather, the pitch of the sound is exclusively decided by the character of the bell itself.
The hammer's "delta function style" force stimulates the full range of frequency, but since the bell was designed to have a very special and narrow resonant frequency (also called the nature frequency, characteristic frequency), only this specific frequency get resonant (kind of amplified) and emit the corresponding sound, the other part/frequency-range of stimulus force just get damped out. That is why the dozen of different size bells hanging up in the chapel's tower, each gets hits by a hammer in the same way, yet, they generate sounds of pitches different from each other's.
If the other way is true (that the knock of the hammer does not cover full-range-spectrum of frequency, rather, one specific hammer will only offer knocking force of a specific frequency), then using the same hammer to knock several different bells, there shall be only 1 or 2 bell that is/are ringing, all the other bells will be dumb after being hit by this same hammer; which is of course not the case.
Off track long enough, let's go back to the timing chain issue.
When a car is equipped with the timing chain, another source of jerking force will further enhance the delta-function effect: The internal combustion engine by itself is not a continuous force source, which is obvious. Hence, the driving force of the crankshaft itself is also a delta function. The net effect is that a delta-function mounting on top of another delta-function.
What will this mean to an engine? Whenever the engine is running, the timing chain will tirelessly stimulate the engine block through the sprockets bearings with delta-function force that cover full-frequency-range. Sooner or later, any fixture, frame, block of the engine that has its nature/resonant frequency covered by the delta-function will be exuberantly vibrated (also known as resonant) to loose, especially those parts that is located close to the timing chain. For example, if a water pump has been designed to reside around the timing chain, very likely this water pump will get leak much earlier than it would do with a timing belt design --- and not because the failure of the pump itself that causes the leak, but that the good pump has been shaken loose from the engine body. Nissan Altima V6 has long been suffered from the coolant and oil leaking/dripping problem; it happens that the Altima uses timing chain since the very first version.
Shaking-until-loose by the chronic knockings of delta-function force is more severe if the engine body is made of cast iron instead of aluminum alloy. This is because the aluminum is not as stiff, rigid as the cast iron; more or less the jerking force is absorbed better (because the distance between the sprockets axis are not that strictly constant) in an aluminum engine block than it would be in the cast iron one. Decades ago, when cast iron was the only choice in making engine block and timing chain was the only player in the town, Dodge car had been laughed as vehicle of "Drop Oil Drop Grease Everywhere".
Contrastingly, belt is flexible; it will relax, stretch or shrink to absorb the jerking force. Therefore there is no relentless jerking force like the one described above that is incurred by the timing chain. Additionally, quietness is the well-known virtue of the belt.
The drawback of belt is that it must be changed strictly abiding by the maintenance schedule to avoid the catastrophic failure. And the maintenance fee is relatively high.
I would bet that the car maker will always put timing belt in their high-end (expensive) models; like Lexus is to Toyota, and RL/TL sedan is to Acura. How about the low-end/entry-level models? Well, if a customer is not rich enough to buy a high-end car, he is not likely happy to pay the timing-belt changing fee either; instead, he would risk the belt failure to save the dollars. And when the catastrophic failure does occur, he will be another upset customer. On the other hand, when one is financially stringent, he is more inclined to learn how to tolerate the noisy chain. In recent years, both Corolla and Civic adopt the timing chains; they are the foot-print of this strategy of the car makers: Since you pay the bill, I will offer you what you want; even though the other way which you don't like might be a better one.
I also speculate that after the Civic adopting the timing chain since 2006, oil/coolant leaking problems (especially oil leak between engine head and head cover), oil (dripping from seal between the plug tunnel tube and head cover) fried around the spark-plug, cam-shaft mountings loosing, valve-clearance error issue, cam working surface lubricant insufficient… and etc would happen much frequently and prematurely. None of these problems is fatal to a car; accumulated and delayed to fix, however, will shorten the life expectancy of a car significantly. Failing to remove the fried oil deposit around the spark plug before taking the plug out, for example, will get the fried deposit, accompany with dirt mixing among them, falling into the cylinders. This foreign particle is very good grinding material in grinding your piston rings and the cylinder wall. Therefore, a 300,000+ miles reading in the odometer of a Civic version later than 2006 might not be as common as those Civic generations prior to 2006.
Theoretically, if it must use timing chain, a 4 cylinders engine is better than a 6 cylinders', and V6 cylinder is better than an I-6 engine. That's because the resistance force of the cam-shaft is relatively lighter in the 4 cylinders and the V-6 engines (I assume that the V-6 uses 2 separated timing chains, rather than 1, hence the delta-function force are evenly distributed), and hence the delta-function force is weaker in these engines, and less likely cause trouble.

Last weekend, march 6 and 7, I went to Daytona, actually I rode the 230 miles or 370 km from my house to Main Street in Daytona Beach for the bike week, was my first bike event and hopefully one of many!!!
Bike Week is a biker festival of epic proportions. An estimated 600,000 bikers usually attend Bike Week during those actually 9 days of March every year, is an astronomical number of bikers on every brand of motorcycle in one town at one time. It's very stimulating to experience that many people gathering in one town for one reason... to enjoy all the people with one common passion... enjoying all the chromed iron horses, feeling the thunder of the exhaust and the smells of food cooking (now that is festival). Within 9 days of bike Week, bikers spend an estimated $300 million dollars of revenue in the local economy.
You wanna have a crazy fun weekend, with a lot to see, a lot to drink and a lot to talk about, you HAVE to EXPERIENCE the bike week at least once, rider or not, biker or not, just get in to the biker mood and have some fun!!!

No último final de semana, dias 6 e 7 de março, fui pra Daytona, na verdade viajei de moto as 230 milhas ou 370 km que separam minha casa da Main Street em Daytona Beach onde acontece o Bike Week, foi meu primeiro evento de moto e se depender de mim de muitos!!
O Bike Week é um festival de motos de proporções épicas. Estima-se que 600.000 visitam o festival durante os atuais 9 dias de Março todo ano, é um número astronômico de bikers de todas as marcas, numa mesma cidade, ao mesmo tempo. Uma experiência estimulante ver essa quantidade de pessoas juntas pela mesma razão, o mesmo interesse, a mesma paixão...amantes de seus cavalos de metal, sentindo o ronco dos motores e o cheiro da comida de rua. Estima-se o gasto desses amantes de 2 rodas em mais de 300 milhões de dólares em apenas 9 dias, gostando ou não de motos, que cidade que não gostaria de ter este tipo de receita em tão pouco tempo!
Se você que ter um final de semana extremamente engraçado e divertido, com muito pra se ver, comer, beber e memórias pra se guardar, você TEM que EXPERIMENTAR o Bike Week pelo menos uma vez, com ou sem moto, gostando ou não de moto, apenas entre no espirito da coisa e se divirta!

... "What my Research has brought me to believe is this", Katherine said. "God is very real - a mental energy that pervades everything. And we, as human beings, have been created in that image-"
"I'm sorry?" Langdon interrupted. "Created in the image of mental energy?".
"Exactly. Our physical bodies have evolved over the ages, but it was our minds that were created in the image of God. We've been reading the Bible too literally. We learn that God created us in his image, but it's not our physical bodies that resemble God, it's our minds".
Langdon was silent now, fully engrossed.
"This is the great gift, Robert, and God is waiting for us to understand it. All around the world, we are gazing skyward, waiting for God... Never realizing that God is waiting for us". Katherine paused, letting her words soak in. "We are creators, and yet we naively play the role of  'the created'. We see ourselves as helpless sheep buffeted around by the God who made us. We kneel like frightened children, begging for help, for forgiveness, for good luck. But once we realize that we truly created in the Creator's image, we will start to understand that we, too, must be Creators. When we understand this fact, the doors will burst wild open for human potential."
"The most amazing part", Katherine said, "Is that as soon as we humans begin to harness our true power, we will have enormous control over our world. We will be able to design reality rather than merely react to it".

Quoted from the book "Lost Symbol" from the writer Dan Brown

... "O que minha Pesquisa me fez acreditar é isso," disse Katherine. "Deus é extremamente real - uma energia mental que prevalece sobre tudo. E nós, como seres humanos, fomos criados a essa imagem-"
"Como assim?" Interrompeu Langdon. "Criados à imagem de uma energia mental?".
"Exatamente. Nossos córpos físicos foram se desenvolvendo através das gerações, mas foram nossas mentes que foram criadas a imagem de Deus. Nós estamos lendo a Bíblia muito ao pé da letra. Nós aprendemos que Deus nos criou a sua imagem, mas não é nosso corpo que lembra Deus, são nossas mentes."
Langdon estava em silêncio agora, completamente perplexo.
"Esse é o grande dom, Robert, e Deus esta esperando o nosso compreendimento. Em todo o mundo, estamos levantando as mãos aos céus, esperando por Deus... Nunca percebendo que Deus esta esperando por nós." Katherine fez uma pausa, deixando suas palavras serem enterpretadas. "Nós somos criadores, e ainda ingenuamente fazemos o papel de 'criados'. Nós nos vemos como ovelhinhas indefesas sendo tocadas pelo Deus que nos criou. Nós ajoelhamos como crianças assustadas, implorando por ajuda, perdão, boa sorte. Mas assim que percebermos que fomos criados à semelhança do Criador, vamos compreender que nós, também, devemos ser Criadores. Quando entendermos este fato, as portas vão se escancarar para o potencial humano."
"A parte mais incrível," disse Katherine, "É que assim que começarmos a conduzir nosso verdadeiro poder, nós teremos um controle enorme sobre nosso mundo. Seremos capazes de desenhar nossa realidade ao invés de apenas reagir a ela."

Trecho extraído do livro Símbolo Perdido de Dan Brown.

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Beach House is a place where I go for all the stuff that makes me happy. Is not always sunny at the beach but we will always have the beach house, a place that always bring family and friends closer even when they are distant. I hope you enjoy your time at the beach. A casa da praia é um lugar que eu vou para todas as coisas que me fazem feliz. Nem sempre tem sol na praia mas a casa da praia vai estar sempre lá, um lugar que sempre coloca família e amigos mais próximos mesmo quando estão distantes. Espero que aproveite seu tempinho aqui na praia.

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From the 4th biggest city in the world, living in USA for the last four and half years, worked as bunch of things but now in love with the HR field.

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