My Mind's Teeth Are

The line at the Starbucks in San Li Tun south is excessive.  There are fifteen people in front of me and things snake around nearly back to the stools against the window.  Before I can get in line, I spy the gent I’m supposed to meet.  He’s a young engineer and he is in fact the one that locks me in gaze first.  He’s smiling.  I suggest he head over to the stools by the window and find us a seat to defend until I get there.  He’s already got a Starbucks cup in hand.  “No." He confirms.  "I don’t need anything else.”

Routines.  As when I used to work across the street from here about five years ago.  I’ll finish up my coffee with him, charge my computer and most importantly my phone while we talk and I gaze across the esplanade.  As I’ve done many, many, times before, I’ve booked a lunch up at Element Fresh on the third floor to follow on this meeting.   They had a salad there that used to be served with hunks of grilled lamb and big chunks of feta cheese.  It was what I ordered, every time and now it’s gone.  I’m lost looking at their new salads.  My mind’s teeth are incisored into that grilled lamb and the mushy Greek cheese.

A former student from Brazil is waiting for me in the sunny open dining hall.  He has another young Brasileirao accompanying him whom he wants to introduce me to.  As this unfolds, I take an immediate liking to this young gentleman and as his life’s story is presented to me I begin to realize that he and I have already been introduced, on Wechat, at least.  How many other young guys from Brazil visited Moscow last summer, accompanying their brother who plays for the Brazilian soccer team?   I check my Wechat and show him our exchange from earlier in the summer when we’d tried to meet up there in Moscow. 

The discussion starts me thinking about the China and Brazil nexus and we come up with idea after idea, effortlessly. And before long the subsequent meeting I’d booked at this same place for two hours on, arrives.  And as he approaches with his big smile I’m reminded that this was precisely the same location I’d met him in for the first time, some six or seven years ago.

An entrepreneur, and inventor, he has been doing a business between the Nordics and Japan and the Nordics and China for many years.  And there is no hesitation as we momentarily stretch out the thread to tie Helsinki to Sao Paolo, as well.

Wednesday 8/15/18