Ambient Arguments During His Meal

A Brazilian day.  Necessarily and upbeat, positive day.  We talked.  We visited a special Italian mall with a delegation of people interested in retail.  I was warned ahead of time that the host of this huge Italian project, was a former student.  When I saw him I said, “Hey, it’s been a while.” And he confirmed, nodding asking how long it was since my last visit from Brazil.  I bother to explain my proper identity.  

We sat down to eat in a lovely Italian restaurant.  With thirty Brazilians we now became the event.  I sat down next to a lovely gentleman without much English.  I had less Portuguese.  My effort to code switch to Spanish fell flat.  Saude, then.  Here’s to your health.  To my right was a woman who’d lived in New York.  She had “hey man, what’s up” English.  Not a problem to speak and learn about her work in fashion and her impressions of China.

We had salad.  They served pizza for the table.  A Chinese lad two tables across was suddenly upset.  He yelled.  He yelled again, this time louder.  I couldn’t tell if he was upset with our group or not.  The manager came and one of the guys as our table discretely yelled “yee ha!” at the top of his lungs and quietly went on eating.  One assumes this was not his first experience with ambient arguments during his meal.

I tried to explain to the woman to my right that in the south, particularly people in Shanghai would argue.  The might argue for hours.  They might argue with great passion.  But all they would ever do was argue.  Someone from the north would say one thing and then a second and then a punch would be thrown and the talking would be over and the dispute resolved.  This had the unintended consequence of making the Shanghainese seem sophisticated and the northerners brutal.  When I had meant to suggest that things in the north were efficient.

Later I heard a talk about this remarkable Tuscan mall.  And I rode home then, back to the hotel, with a gentleman who owned thirty-four fish restaurants back home in Brazil.  Listening to him he seemed to have it all figured out.  He opened one.  Then he opened two.  He got the process down.  He was building more and more restaurants.  They were all doing very well.  He was insistent on time with family and time for health.  These are key for balance.  And then you can scale more and more and more.  All I could do was nod.

Thursday, 05/02/19