robbed and stranded

don't be alarmed! it's not as bad as it sounds, but still pretty annoying and depressing.


Edited to add (11:13 am Friday): I think my brother will be able to travel thanks to our cousin in Curitiba, Paraná (state South of São Paulo) who is the head of that state/city's passport office. Phew! I don't know what was lost with the computer. Probably lots of his work files as well...

My poor brother is stuck in Brazil where he spent the last 4 days on a quick business trip. He was due to be back to New Zealand on Sunday, just in time to hug my parents good-bye and drive them to the airport so they could start their trip back to Brazil (stopping in Australia first).

This evening he arrived in the city of São Paulo (where we lived with our family for 11 years) and when he was unloading his suitcase from the taxi to the hotel, he briefly left his backpack behind and it was robbed. So now he lost his laptop and his passport, so he can't travel back home to his wife and 5 month-old baby. :(

The worst part about the passport is that next week on Tuesday he had an appointment at the Brazilian embassy in Wellington (NZ) to sign his passport -- he had already mailed all the documents to them before hand. THEREFORE, his documents are back in New Zealand and not at home, but in the Brazilian embassy... and how in the world is he going to get a new passport in Brazil?! The answer is, only if they decide to be kind enough to accept photocopies.

So... my parents are risking still seeing my brother in Brazil at the end of next week if everything goes wrong and he can't get a new passport before then... :(

And all *I* can think of is the possible lost of irretrievable photos if there were photos of the baby or my brother's travels in that laptop that hadn't been backed up elsewhere!! :(  I better not even ask him, his wife or my mom about that. Sigh.

Like my mom said to me on skype a couple of hours ago, nobody died, everyone is well, but we're still really upset (and I, silly me, upset about photos, :P). I hope things get sorted out soon for my brother and now I'm a bit more scared of our trip to Brazil, we have to be extra careful! (I must say I was always very lucky living in Brazil, I only experienced one small armed robbery, while my husband and other friends experienced multiple kinds of robbery...).

I'll keep you posted, OK?