Nightmare in Rio

Culture shock slammed Greg Anderson hard and fast when the Los Angeles ad man arrived in Rio de Janeiro not knowing a word of Portuguese, but having to take orders from Brazilian executives. With Bossa Nova and "Girls from Ipanema" in near bare-all bikinis dancing in his head, he had believed the job offer from the largest and most innovative advertising agency in South America to be a creative man's dream of paradise. That illusion faded fast when coworkers resented his presence as being intrusive, the sweltering heat seemed insufferable, the food was strange and, for him, not appetizing, the seasons were turned around; Christmas was in summer, and then he encountered runaway inflation of local currency making the dollar-price of an escape ticket impossibly high.