About Us


I was born in Edinburgh in 1966 & I am married to Carla. My interests are in amateur history, Celtic mythology & sixties music, but the big love of my life is Carla. I am a patriotic Scot who voted for my country to have her own Parliament in 1997, our first for almost 300 years. I can speak a little Portuguese & some Dutch but I am fluent in neither language. Annoyed that the only sites I had seen on the Internet for Brazilians visiting/wishing to stay in the UK concentrated on London, I decided to attempt to make a site which would give at least some rudimentary ideas of things to do & see to the Brazilian traveller when they visited here. I currently work as a Civil Servant & still live in Edinburgh.


Carla


Carla was born in Sorocaba, São Paulo, Brazil in 1978. She graduated from the University of Sorocaba in 2001 & has a degree in Advertising & Publicity. She loves to create cartoons & some of those were used in local publications in her home city & she will create all of the cartoons on this site once she sets her mind too it. She is open to job offers if any advertising firms are reading this! Currently Carla is working as a Civil Servant in her adopted City of Edinburgh & although she loves Scotland she will always be Brazilian first & foremost as she loves her country passionately. Carla misses everything about Brazil except the bureaucracy! She likes all sorts of music & is also interested in Celtic Mythology.


Carlie & Me after her Citizenship Ceremony.				Carlie & her colleague from work Dave, at the Party for her Citizenship.


On the 29th of August this year Carlie officially became a UK Citizen. This unique event took place at Edinburgh City Chambers in Edinburgh & consisted of a small ceremony in which those wishing to obtain Citizenship had to stand for the UK National Anthem & Swear or Affirm an oath of allegiance to the Crown & the UK. You had a choice which oath you chose to do. Most religious people Swear the oath as this is before Almighty God, but others, indeed most at the ceremony, chose to affirm it (including Carlie) & all that means is the words Almighty God are removed. Also you don't swear the oath individually, but en masse, so all of those Swearing the oath did so at once & then those Affirming the oath followed on thereafter. The ceremony culminated in each candidate for citizenship receiving their Certificate of Citizenship & that was that! My brother is also married to a foreign girl (she's Ukrainian) and tells me that the procedure for obtaining Citizenship has changed (in Carlie's case she could have got it after 3 years but didn't do so straightaway). So if you are thinking of becoming a British Citizen, for whatever reason, you ought to check out the Home Office page on the subject.

How we met one another
In the wake of the popular movie Braveheart, a fictionalised account of the life of William Wallace, perhaps Scotland's greatest patriotic hero, I (Jockie) was surfing the web looking for fan sites. I found a site called Ultimate Braveheart & noticed that it had a page for fans around the World. I entered my name on the page hoping that I would be able to educate non Scots about the real history of Wallace as I had never been taught it at school. The year was 1996. I soon heard from people in countries such as Sweden, Malta, USA & Mexico. One day in November 1997 I checked my inbox & saw a message from a girl in Brazil. That girl would become my future wife. I was impressed as I had not heard from anyone in South America before. We began to talk & as time passed the occasional e-mail turned into a daily occurrence & we were in touch up to three times a day. I first visited Brazil in February 1999 for Carla's birthday & stayed for two weeks. At the end of my first visit we were both inconsolable, but Carla promised she would come visit me in Edinburgh during the Edinburgh Festival that year. When she came she stayed for a month & I, deciding that I could not live without her, asked for her hand in marriage in front of the Sword of William Wallace at the Wallace National Monument in Stirling.