Speaker:Mr Tom Falcäo R. de Oliveira Meeting: 15-Apr-10
Mr Tom Falcäo R. de Oliveira O
ur speaker for Thursday 15th.
April was Mr. Tom Falcäo who introduced himself as the General Manager for Tourism at the Brazilian Embassy. Yet again we were treated to an informa- tion packed talk from a
very charismatic speaker. So much information that I must apologize in advance for just touching a few facts in this article. Let‟s face it when Brazil is mentioned most people will think about football (Pele and the beautiful game) and music (The Samba and street carnivals)
T F
om began by teaching us the spelling and pronunciation of the word Rotary in Por-
tuguese.
irstly it is spelt „HOTARY‟, there being no R in the language, and secondly if you
begin to clear your throat just before you say Otary you will get the idea of what the word sounds like. I would advise you to practice on your own before going public. I tried showing off my knowledge to Janet and she was not amused as she was drenched in….. (I won‟t go into detail you get the idea! Actually it is quite nice sleeping in the spare room).
R T
B
otary is strong in Brazil and is well known for its charity work in general and
in particular for the work involving disabled children. In fact a recent president of RI was from Tom‟s home town of Sao Paulo.
om proceeded to explain the History of Brazil and the country‟s close association
with Portugal. Brazil is the only country in South America where Portuguese is spoken and is mostly surrounded by Spanish speaking countries.
razil had strong links with the mon-
archy of Portugal and 16
there is a strong connection with that link and the abolition of slavery.
B B I
razil has a population of 200 million of which about 50% are OK but the rest are
very poor. The population is made up of very large number of different ethnic groups from all over the world. It has for example the larg- est Japanese colony outside of Japan. (Not a lot of people know that!) About 6 million I think. Brasilia is the purpose built capital of Brazil with Sao Paulo and Rio d Janeiro being two of the largest cities.
razil is the 5th. larg- est country in the
world, as big as the USA minus Alaska, and Western Europe would fit comfortably inside its borders. Due to it‟s size Brazil has 3 climatic regions, Tropical, Sub-Tropical and Temperate.
t is the 10th. largest economy in the world and is self sufficient in most commodities
with Britain being one of the biggest buyers of Brazilian goods. There are also 8 car plants in the country.
F
inally for those wishing to visit this fascination and most interesting of
countries I would bear in mind that in 2014 they will be hosting the World Cup (Soccer) and in 2016 it will be the Olympic games.
A
fter an interesting assortment of questions from our members the vote of thanks was
given by President Brian .which was followed by an enthusiastic show of appreciation for our speaker Mr Tom Falcäo R. de Oliveira
(Apologies if any of the above facts are wrong. You’ll just have to get your pencil out and cor- rect any mistakes.)
S
tory supplied by George Larkey
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