So, if you haven't guessed, I'm back here stateside. Hence the lack of new entries, and hence the brevity of this one.
Let me just say that returning from Brazil and being back in my family's house is the weirdest feeling. It's like Brazil was some extremely vivid dream, and it seems almost impossible to believe that mere days ago I had a completely different life, of sorts, thousands of miles away.
I am eager to see everyone and catch up on the summer I didn't have here in the US, and soon the realization that I'll be in Spain in under two weeks will also hit. Yet I would return to Brazil in a heartbeat, were it possible.
Ah, well, I'll stop this sentimental stuff. I bet it through all you sarcasm-watchers off a bit, right?
This next week and a half before I fly to Spain will be busy with a trip to secure my visa and the hassles and joys of moving things into the house in Pittsburgh, all laced with packing galore.
Until the next journey...
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Twee Twee Hee Hee Hee
Rats...Since it's been two weeks since I last thought about thinking about what you're all probably thinking should go in my blog, I'm going to have to think. Two weeks is a lot to remember. I mean, normally right after a class I purge all the content from my mind, so to recall two weeks of life is like some sort of final exam. Speaking of one final exam, recall is harder than recognition, said my cognitive psych professor. I got that question right, if I recall correctly.
Okay, enough - I'm boring even my stoic old self.
After all the events of the last entry, I resumed work at AMCHAM. Similar stuff...although it's interesting to note that my boss there was probably at some times about two hundred feet away from you Pittsburgh subscribers near campus, while I remained here. It was tempting to ask her to carry a cardboard cut-out of my head around for the paparazzi, but I resisted the urge.
One of the days that week, I visited Wittel, a telecom company with headquarters in Rio and the office I saw in São Paulo. During that day, besides meeting various departments and aurally ingesting a million facts in Portuguese, I got to sit in on two meetings. Meetings are probably the best way to illustrate differences in business practices between cultures. The first was to renegotiate a deal for the price of something-or-another when someone-or-something orders whatchamacallit. And the next was to determine terms of a five million dollar deal. They asked my opinion once, about my perception of the difference between "upgrade" and "update" (Portuguese conveniently borrows these words from English). So that's how I left my mark on a Brazilian company! Ha. Obviously, it's very hard for a foreigner to pick out a lot of details from a fast-paced conversation. It's like playing that arcade game - you know, where the light spins around and you have to hit the button at the right time. Except these little lights represent all sorts of words and slang, and in this case, when I time it just right, instead of getting a mountain of tickets to buy some sticky ball prize, I merely gain a few words with which I have to infer what the heck the other 200 meant. But all in all it's still very enlightening.
[Quick note on those sticky flame balls: according to the website, they cannot be shipped or resold to NJ or IL due to state regulations. Now that's a government protecting its citizens!] Everyone at Wittel was very nice and open, and I enjoyed the fresh experience of a different business environment.
Another day that week I bought a newspaper, in Portuguese of course, to read while I lunched alone (don't worry, I was only alone for one lunch. In fact, normally I am too busy signing autographs to eat). Of course, I suppose it might be a tad ironic that all I read was the global business section, and even then just the articles about US business. But whatever, I felt more like a proper businessman, and it probably significantly reduced the large contingent of xenophobic birds that follow me chirping "extrangeiro! extrangeiro! twee twee hee hee hee!".
That weekend, I didn't do anything. People were still away with families or whatnot because of winter break, and pigs with bursting thermometers ran all around the south of Brazil as swine flu continued to take the news.
The next week, as in, the one ending now, I spent with Tallard. How is it that all the companies I'm visiting have such un-Brazilian names? Next week: Dixie Toga. Anyway, Tallard is a vendor of technology...the middleman in the food chain. They sell various hardwares and softwares, but no silverware. Okay, bad joke.
So, on the menu for this week was visiting the various departments to get a general sense of how things work. So I saw areas like marketing, IBM sales, support, supplier research, finance, etc. The structure is very similar to the equivalent type company in the USA (here's a fact to nibble: Tallard is actually headquartered in Miami, where the office apparently speaks Spanish nearly exclusively). But, to use yet another food analogy, the meat of the company isn't the setup; it's the people. Not to imply cannibalism. This week further demonstrated the differences in business conduct. I mean, sure, the bottom line is still money, but the way there takes a different road. I attended more meetings, including Tallard's annual business review with IBM, at IBM's Brazilian headquarters. The meeting was set for 10am, and due to end at noon. So, we arrived to the room around 10:10. Again, I could understand very little, most of the time, so I'm assuming that what I type was what was said. The meetings always start with small talk - about other matters, how business is going in general, non business stuff, all that jazz. The actual topic of the meeting, in this case the Power Point presentations of current affairs, are always eased into. I wanted to use the example of easing into a chair when you have a sunburn on your back, but it's not that slow, red, or painful. And no one else on Earth is cursed with my ability to incur the wrath of the sun. Contrast this to how a review Stateside would go, where not only would a 10:10 arrive receive icy eyes of death from the host, but business would commence almost before you know the names of people in the room.
Things aren't rigidly set, either. Instead of a point by point agenda to be followed, the various topics are discussed as they flow by. Oooh - another analogy. It's that magnet-in-the-fishes'-mouths-game, like at state fairs. You've got the fishing pole with the magnet at the end - the conversation, see? And the little fishes, the topics, bobbing around in the circular flow occasionally open their mouths and you pluck them out of the water. Sometimes they fall back in and you recover them later. And at the end, hopefully everyone wins that one goldfish out of the hundred that doesn't die before you get to your car.
Another difference is that everyone can be talking at the same time, to the same person or to different people, and details aren't missed and people aren't angry. Sometimes there were three conversations going on around me, all about different things and with different people, all at full volume. Speaking of full volume, the conversations might sound heated and somewhat angry, at times, to the uninformed, but instead it's because there is much more emotion throw into the way people talk. A "no" isn't the simple monotone answer like we give in English. Instead it could be a drawn out naaaaãaaaoooo with some changing pitch thrown in. I like it - it's much more entertaining. And I needed entertainment, since at the most passionate parts of the meeting, I could only make sense of some words. "Nós concordamos asddofjdflfdpo sdkjf sdfosdf que adsfoi fvldldo sdo quanto asdf yuyu sid odl maisqu discos lodfi csasixi somate ouid dnos que ele sdfser iosduf come loçoi sdoi awoiu quanto djosdiu mais dsf ois choverá." ...So, you are in agreement...that the more disks...that he eats....the more....it will rain? What?
Other times though, it wasn't so bad. Really, I could probably write an equation to calculate my level of understanding. Something like: my knowledge of the conversation is inversely proportional to the quantity of people involved in the convo multiplied by some factorial based on their current level of interest in the subject area, taken to the power of the number of cubic centimeters of cafezinho they just drank...and so on and so on. Red, if you're reading this, I need you to work out the math bits for me.
Another great thing about this company I visited was that all the people knew each other pretty well, even if they were in different departments. This added to the overall light and fluffy atmosphere around the office. Again this all adds support to my idea that the best part about Brazil is the people.
What else to say? I mean, I could talk in more detail about my week at Tallard, but at the moment I'm not feeling any connection to my inner sarcasm, so I don't want to keep beating a dead horse unless that horse will make people laugh in its postmortem state.
Oh, Pittsburgh visited me this week. It rained for five days straight, basically. Thanks, Pittsburgh. It's not like I missed your sunny side more.
Okay, enough - I'm boring even my stoic old self.
After all the events of the last entry, I resumed work at AMCHAM. Similar stuff...although it's interesting to note that my boss there was probably at some times about two hundred feet away from you Pittsburgh subscribers near campus, while I remained here. It was tempting to ask her to carry a cardboard cut-out of my head around for the paparazzi, but I resisted the urge.
One of the days that week, I visited Wittel, a telecom company with headquarters in Rio and the office I saw in São Paulo. During that day, besides meeting various departments and aurally ingesting a million facts in Portuguese, I got to sit in on two meetings. Meetings are probably the best way to illustrate differences in business practices between cultures. The first was to renegotiate a deal for the price of something-or-another when someone-or-something orders whatchamacallit. And the next was to determine terms of a five million dollar deal. They asked my opinion once, about my perception of the difference between "upgrade" and "update" (Portuguese conveniently borrows these words from English). So that's how I left my mark on a Brazilian company! Ha. Obviously, it's very hard for a foreigner to pick out a lot of details from a fast-paced conversation. It's like playing that arcade game - you know, where the light spins around and you have to hit the button at the right time. Except these little lights represent all sorts of words and slang, and in this case, when I time it just right, instead of getting a mountain of tickets to buy some sticky ball prize, I merely gain a few words with which I have to infer what the heck the other 200 meant. But all in all it's still very enlightening.
[Quick note on those sticky flame balls: according to the website, they cannot be shipped or resold to NJ or IL due to state regulations. Now that's a government protecting its citizens!] Everyone at Wittel was very nice and open, and I enjoyed the fresh experience of a different business environment.
Another day that week I bought a newspaper, in Portuguese of course, to read while I lunched alone (don't worry, I was only alone for one lunch. In fact, normally I am too busy signing autographs to eat). Of course, I suppose it might be a tad ironic that all I read was the global business section, and even then just the articles about US business. But whatever, I felt more like a proper businessman, and it probably significantly reduced the large contingent of xenophobic birds that follow me chirping "extrangeiro! extrangeiro! twee twee hee hee hee!".
That weekend, I didn't do anything. People were still away with families or whatnot because of winter break, and pigs with bursting thermometers ran all around the south of Brazil as swine flu continued to take the news.
The next week, as in, the one ending now, I spent with Tallard. How is it that all the companies I'm visiting have such un-Brazilian names? Next week: Dixie Toga. Anyway, Tallard is a vendor of technology...the middleman in the food chain. They sell various hardwares and softwares, but no silverware. Okay, bad joke.
So, on the menu for this week was visiting the various departments to get a general sense of how things work. So I saw areas like marketing, IBM sales, support, supplier research, finance, etc. The structure is very similar to the equivalent type company in the USA (here's a fact to nibble: Tallard is actually headquartered in Miami, where the office apparently speaks Spanish nearly exclusively). But, to use yet another food analogy, the meat of the company isn't the setup; it's the people. Not to imply cannibalism. This week further demonstrated the differences in business conduct. I mean, sure, the bottom line is still money, but the way there takes a different road. I attended more meetings, including Tallard's annual business review with IBM, at IBM's Brazilian headquarters. The meeting was set for 10am, and due to end at noon. So, we arrived to the room around 10:10. Again, I could understand very little, most of the time, so I'm assuming that what I type was what was said. The meetings always start with small talk - about other matters, how business is going in general, non business stuff, all that jazz. The actual topic of the meeting, in this case the Power Point presentations of current affairs, are always eased into. I wanted to use the example of easing into a chair when you have a sunburn on your back, but it's not that slow, red, or painful. And no one else on Earth is cursed with my ability to incur the wrath of the sun. Contrast this to how a review Stateside would go, where not only would a 10:10 arrive receive icy eyes of death from the host, but business would commence almost before you know the names of people in the room.
Things aren't rigidly set, either. Instead of a point by point agenda to be followed, the various topics are discussed as they flow by. Oooh - another analogy. It's that magnet-in-the-fishes'-mouths-game, like at state fairs. You've got the fishing pole with the magnet at the end - the conversation, see? And the little fishes, the topics, bobbing around in the circular flow occasionally open their mouths and you pluck them out of the water. Sometimes they fall back in and you recover them later. And at the end, hopefully everyone wins that one goldfish out of the hundred that doesn't die before you get to your car.
Another difference is that everyone can be talking at the same time, to the same person or to different people, and details aren't missed and people aren't angry. Sometimes there were three conversations going on around me, all about different things and with different people, all at full volume. Speaking of full volume, the conversations might sound heated and somewhat angry, at times, to the uninformed, but instead it's because there is much more emotion throw into the way people talk. A "no" isn't the simple monotone answer like we give in English. Instead it could be a drawn out naaaaãaaaoooo with some changing pitch thrown in. I like it - it's much more entertaining. And I needed entertainment, since at the most passionate parts of the meeting, I could only make sense of some words. "Nós concordamos asddofjdflfdpo sdkjf sdfosdf que adsfoi fvldldo sdo quanto asdf yuyu sid odl maisqu discos lodfi csasixi somate ouid dnos que ele sdfser iosduf come loçoi sdoi awoiu quanto djosdiu mais dsf ois choverá." ...So, you are in agreement...that the more disks...that he eats....the more....it will rain? What?
Other times though, it wasn't so bad. Really, I could probably write an equation to calculate my level of understanding. Something like: my knowledge of the conversation is inversely proportional to the quantity of people involved in the convo multiplied by some factorial based on their current level of interest in the subject area, taken to the power of the number of cubic centimeters of cafezinho they just drank...and so on and so on. Red, if you're reading this, I need you to work out the math bits for me.
Another great thing about this company I visited was that all the people knew each other pretty well, even if they were in different departments. This added to the overall light and fluffy atmosphere around the office. Again this all adds support to my idea that the best part about Brazil is the people.
What else to say? I mean, I could talk in more detail about my week at Tallard, but at the moment I'm not feeling any connection to my inner sarcasm, so I don't want to keep beating a dead horse unless that horse will make people laugh in its postmortem state.
Oh, Pittsburgh visited me this week. It rained for five days straight, basically. Thanks, Pittsburgh. It's not like I missed your sunny side more.
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