The moment I mentioned my Arthur Andersen background to Rick, we made a perfect connection. He was the Corporate Comptroller and the officer assigned to find the man to fill the position in the company’s subsidiary in Ecuador, Molinos del Ecuador (“Molidor”). The world just happens to be a very small village, where sooner or later we meet one another. He was also a former officer of AA, a firm he had worked for for over eight years, and had (just as me), reached the managers’ level before going to work for Seaboard Corp. We were talking not only the same language, but we were talking the same business language, because we belonged to the same business culture. It was a very pleasant dining experience. That night, when I went to bed, I was almost sure that things would run smoothly the following day when I had been scheduled for six different interviews with various levels of the company’s management, including one with the Executive VP Mr. Dick Myers, the man most trusted by the owner of the company Harry Bresky whom I met several years later when he visited Guayaquil.
At eight O’clock in the morning the following day, I was picked up by Jack Miller, the VP-Operations, a man who said he knew the Ecuadorian operation very well, had been to Ecuador and to the mill many times, the last one of them just a couple of weeks before, and was fresh from talking to the General Manager of the Ecuadorian operation who had emphasized the importance of speeding up the hiring of the Comptroller for his local operation. Jack, a man about 6 ft tall and weighing at least 250 lbs. was very nice with me and talked mostly about how important it was the Ecuadorian operation for the corporation in KC. He explained to me the ownership structure of the Ecuadorian operation, which was 50% Seaboard’s whereas the other 50% belonged to Continental Grain Co., a NYC based corporation engaged mainly in the grain and poultry business. After talking to Jack for about half an hour in our way to the company’s headquarters, it was clear to me that Jack was going to vote for me. So far I thought the score was 2-0 in my favor. As soon as we arrived to the main office, Jack introduced me to several people whose names and positions I can’t remember, all of them were very polite but I was under the impression their opinion was not important at the moment of making a decision about my hiring. I even interviewed with two of them but I wasn’t very impressed, and most likely they were not impressed by me either. Their knowledge of the Ecuadorian operation was almost nil, or only vague at best, they had never been to the “field” and I’m sure they barely new where Guayaquil was located...
My next interview was with one of the corporate lawyers. Nothing important to remember was said or asked in this one which lasted for about half an hour. By noon time I was invited to have lunch by Ted Paulsen, the company’s director of HHRR and we were accompanied by a couple of persons in the financial department, not including the VP Finance, with whom I was to have an interview at 3:30PM, right after my interview with the Executive VP and head of the KC office, Dick Myers. Lunch time was nothing but a time to socialize, and I guess, to give a chance to Ted Paulsen to make an opinion on my manners and social behavior.
At 2:30 PM, right after lunch, I was due to be interviewed by Dick Myers, the man in charge, the senior most executive of the company in the KC headquarters, the man who reported only to Harry Bresky, the “capo di tutti” and majority shareholder of the corporation whose office was in Boston and seldom showed up in KC.
Dick was a man in his mid sixties, he was about 5’6”, his hair was grey, and his face was typical of an Eastern European Jew but had been born in America. It was evident that he was a good man from the way he talked, from the way he addressed himself to me as he was seating in the large corner office desk, typical of the big bosses in Corporate America in those days.
More than a question and answer meeting, it was a very pleasant conversation, mostly about personal things on both sides. In the process he let me know he came from a deeply religious but not fanatic Jewish family, his father had worked for Seaboard too and had retired many years ago, Dick told me he liked my personal background, my language skills and my international experience, but he made a special point of the fact that he knew (from my resume) that I was a person with a deep knowledge of Ecuadorian Tax Laws from both, the private side, and the government side, and had a good experience in Public Accounting and finances, which he said, “make you the prime candidate for the position we are trying to fill”.
He was so emphatic, that he asked me what would be a compensation I would feel happy with, and what kind of fringe benefits I would be looking for. I began to answer and said; “Mr. Myers”, but he interrupted me and said “please call me Dick”, so I continued; “Dick, I don’t think I´m ready to answer your questions at this moment, I believe it would be better for me, and for you as well, that in order to give you an educated answer, I should have a chance to go visit your operations in Ecuador, to meet the person I would be working for, as well as some of the people I would work with, in case I make a decision to work for you”.
Dick said he liked my answer, and was fully agreeable to my request, in spite of the urgency they had to fill the position of Comptroller in their Ecuadorian operation. Then he said, “Rafael, please find the most suitable date on which you could go visit Molidor, we’ll place you the tickets and will make the hotel reservations you need”. I told Dick that since it was mid March, and I was responsible for filing a series of corporate reports for APCO ARGENTINA, including, but not limited to reports to the SEC and the IRS, I did not think I was going to be able to make that trip before the end of April. “That is just fine with me Rafael, just let me know the exact date as soon as you can”, Dick said, then he reminded me that I had to go through one more interview, one I was scheduled with Don Robhom, the company’s VP Finance. Dick and I shook hands and exchanged smiles, while he told me that he wanted to personally take me back to the airport after my last interview.
Don Robhom’s office was just a few feet away from Dick’s, so I was led to it by Dick himself, who introduced me to Don and immediately shut Robhom’s office door behind him. Robhom was a man about 5’11”, weighing at least 270 Lbs, with a massive head which should have, itself, weighed at least 30 Lbs, his arms, both resting on his desk, looked like those of a sumo wrestler just about to grab his rival at the beginning of a fight. He had not asked me to seat, so I seated anyway in one of the two chairs in front of his desk and looked at his eyes which did not revealed a bit of grace.
In my next posting: TOUGH INTERVIEW, NICE OUTCOME
A memoir written by a 67-year-old grandpa to tell his children and grand children about his roots, his childhood in a little village in the Ecuadorian mountains, his difficult but productive years as a teenager, his struggle to overcome the hardships of poverty through hard work and sacrifice, and his success as a corporate executive.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Sunday, February 13, 2011
WILL WE RETURN TO GUAYAQUIL?
My family and I had a very good time in Salt Lake City in the winter of 1984. Skiing was good as the mountains got very good snow storms that left an average of 65 inches of snow on the ground in most skiing resorts. Past the year end holidays, we concentrated in enjoying the winter every weekend I was home; however, the travelling overseas did not slow down, and instead it intensified with the purchase, in November 1983, of a new scuba diving resort in the Caribbean Island of Bonaire, one of the three islands of the Dutch Antilles. Evidently, McMillian, the chairman of NWP Corp was not about to quit diving the magnificent waters of the Caribbean. As a result, I had one more offshore location to visit, just the opposite of what I had been expecting. But the Angels came to my rescue: In mid March 1984, on a Monday afternoon while I was doing some financial analysis concerning the Argentine operations, I got a totally unexpected phone call from Bogota, Colombia.
It was Bill Messett, the recruiter who had placed me in COFIEC, Quito, in 1978. Bill, a professional head hunter with his Latin American headquarters in Bogota, Colombia, had been requested by Seaboard Corporation ("Seaboard"), a large Kansas city based corporation, to find a Comptroller for one of their offshore operations, and he wanted to talk to me about it, despite the fact that my profile was somewhat different than the one looked for by Seaboard, he could arrange for an interview for me with the top executives of the company. Seaboard was basically looking for a high ranking financial officer, preferably American, in his late thirties or early forties, with a minimum of 10 years of experience overseas, preferably in Latin-America, who would be fluent in Spanish and be willing to transfer to one of their operations in that area of the world.
Bill had thought that I might make a good candidate for the position because I was a Latin-American, speaking fluent English and Spanish; I was 41, had a solid accounting and financial background and had over 15 years of experience, five of them in the United States. The idea made sense.
I was glad to hear from Bill, whom I had heard nothing from since I left Ecuador in 1980. A great salesman as he is, he painted to me a wonderful picture of my future, going back to Latin America as an American expatriate with all the privileges assigned to this type of executives: housing allowance; two fifteen day vacations a year with air travel and car rental expenses included; schooling allowance for our children in the best English speaking school in town; club expenses in two different sports or social clubs, two cars with all related expenses paid; etc., etc. It sounded like a dream come true and I was extremely excited about the possibility until Bill mentioned the place to which the searched executive would be assigned. It was Guayaquil, Ecuador. It may sound contradictory or even absurd that I was cooled off when Guayaquil was mentioned, unless we remember what happened with our vacations the previous summer, when El Niño made Guayaquil a great place to stay away from. Bill was surprised at my reaction and he tried to use his highly convincing arguments to change my attitude, all in vain. I just told him I was sorry to say no, but I was not going back to Guayaquil. Such was the impact of the 1983 El Niño weather on my family and me.
After about two hours of discussion, Bill seemed to have given up trying to convince me about the change, but that was just my impression. A good salesman like him never gives up and keeps trying to get his sale through. That same day, when I got home, Fanny, my wife was as sweet as she can be; she had fixed the most delicious dinner in months and waited on me like she hadn’t done in years. I was amazed to see and feel so much care and wondered what happened, or better, what was about to happen. I didn’t have to wait long before I began to discover what was behind that entire mom’s like behavior. As we were dining Fanny’s cooked delicious meal, she started to talk about how homesick she feels sometimes, how nice it would be to be back in Ecuador, near the family; near the whole “tribe” she said she missed so much. It was then and only then, that I decided to talk to her about my conversation with Bill Messett.
I looked at her eyes and I could see that she kind of knew about it, so I asked her directly how’s that she knew about my two hour conversation with Bill. She admitted immediately that Bill had called her that same afternoon, that he discussed with her about his search and the fact he thought I was very much qualified for the position he was trying to fill. Fanny then admitted also that Bill had convinced her that it would be a good idea to go back to our home town, Guayaquil. Fanny and I talked about this for hours and hours, in fact we talked about it for several days until she got me convinced it would be good for the kids, therefore, she concluded, it would be good for us as a family. Ever since I got married I have never taken an important decision without consensus with my wife, my partner, my companion, my confident, and the mother of my kids. Bill didn’t call again for the following week, he was apparently convinced that Fanny would do the job for him, and she did, she did it in the most effective possible way, just like intelligent women know how to do it.
When Bill called the following week, I pretended to be offended; I told him he was an SOB, that he was not playing in a leveled field, that he ganged up with my wife to get what he wanted, and so and so. He really thought I was mad at him until I laughed my heart out and told him he was a heck of a salesman, that he new the tricks of his business to the point I was impressed. We had a deal: he would call Kansas City and set up interviews with the top notch guys at Seaboard.
On April 2, 1984, I went to Kansas City, I took a late afternoon flight and arrived around seven PM. Rick Hoffman, the Company´s comptroller was waiting for me at the KC airport and took me to the hotel; it was the Sheraton Plaza, a nice hotel near the famous Plaza in the Missouri side of Kansas City. The man waited for me to check in and invited me for dinner, he wanted me to tell him what I would prefer to dine and I said “I’d love to have one of the famous Kansas City stakes I had seen advertized so many times in the airline magazines”. This was my first time in KC. He took me to a restaurant called The Old Mill (which it really was), a restaurant where I could get the meat I wanted to have. Dinner went from about 8:00PM to 10:00 PM. I ordered my favorite steak, a Prime Rib medium well with lot of meat juice, which I got, and was superb. During dinner, Rick and I talked about many things, including my background, my education, and, of course my professional formation at Arthur Andersen (“AA”), which was the second largest and most prestigious Accounting firm in America and the world in those days.
In my next posting: INTERVIEWING FOR A NEW JOB
It was Bill Messett, the recruiter who had placed me in COFIEC, Quito, in 1978. Bill, a professional head hunter with his Latin American headquarters in Bogota, Colombia, had been requested by Seaboard Corporation ("Seaboard"), a large Kansas city based corporation, to find a Comptroller for one of their offshore operations, and he wanted to talk to me about it, despite the fact that my profile was somewhat different than the one looked for by Seaboard, he could arrange for an interview for me with the top executives of the company. Seaboard was basically looking for a high ranking financial officer, preferably American, in his late thirties or early forties, with a minimum of 10 years of experience overseas, preferably in Latin-America, who would be fluent in Spanish and be willing to transfer to one of their operations in that area of the world.
Bill had thought that I might make a good candidate for the position because I was a Latin-American, speaking fluent English and Spanish; I was 41, had a solid accounting and financial background and had over 15 years of experience, five of them in the United States. The idea made sense.
I was glad to hear from Bill, whom I had heard nothing from since I left Ecuador in 1980. A great salesman as he is, he painted to me a wonderful picture of my future, going back to Latin America as an American expatriate with all the privileges assigned to this type of executives: housing allowance; two fifteen day vacations a year with air travel and car rental expenses included; schooling allowance for our children in the best English speaking school in town; club expenses in two different sports or social clubs, two cars with all related expenses paid; etc., etc. It sounded like a dream come true and I was extremely excited about the possibility until Bill mentioned the place to which the searched executive would be assigned. It was Guayaquil, Ecuador. It may sound contradictory or even absurd that I was cooled off when Guayaquil was mentioned, unless we remember what happened with our vacations the previous summer, when El Niño made Guayaquil a great place to stay away from. Bill was surprised at my reaction and he tried to use his highly convincing arguments to change my attitude, all in vain. I just told him I was sorry to say no, but I was not going back to Guayaquil. Such was the impact of the 1983 El Niño weather on my family and me.
After about two hours of discussion, Bill seemed to have given up trying to convince me about the change, but that was just my impression. A good salesman like him never gives up and keeps trying to get his sale through. That same day, when I got home, Fanny, my wife was as sweet as she can be; she had fixed the most delicious dinner in months and waited on me like she hadn’t done in years. I was amazed to see and feel so much care and wondered what happened, or better, what was about to happen. I didn’t have to wait long before I began to discover what was behind that entire mom’s like behavior. As we were dining Fanny’s cooked delicious meal, she started to talk about how homesick she feels sometimes, how nice it would be to be back in Ecuador, near the family; near the whole “tribe” she said she missed so much. It was then and only then, that I decided to talk to her about my conversation with Bill Messett.
I looked at her eyes and I could see that she kind of knew about it, so I asked her directly how’s that she knew about my two hour conversation with Bill. She admitted immediately that Bill had called her that same afternoon, that he discussed with her about his search and the fact he thought I was very much qualified for the position he was trying to fill. Fanny then admitted also that Bill had convinced her that it would be a good idea to go back to our home town, Guayaquil. Fanny and I talked about this for hours and hours, in fact we talked about it for several days until she got me convinced it would be good for the kids, therefore, she concluded, it would be good for us as a family. Ever since I got married I have never taken an important decision without consensus with my wife, my partner, my companion, my confident, and the mother of my kids. Bill didn’t call again for the following week, he was apparently convinced that Fanny would do the job for him, and she did, she did it in the most effective possible way, just like intelligent women know how to do it.
When Bill called the following week, I pretended to be offended; I told him he was an SOB, that he was not playing in a leveled field, that he ganged up with my wife to get what he wanted, and so and so. He really thought I was mad at him until I laughed my heart out and told him he was a heck of a salesman, that he new the tricks of his business to the point I was impressed. We had a deal: he would call Kansas City and set up interviews with the top notch guys at Seaboard.
On April 2, 1984, I went to Kansas City, I took a late afternoon flight and arrived around seven PM. Rick Hoffman, the Company´s comptroller was waiting for me at the KC airport and took me to the hotel; it was the Sheraton Plaza, a nice hotel near the famous Plaza in the Missouri side of Kansas City. The man waited for me to check in and invited me for dinner, he wanted me to tell him what I would prefer to dine and I said “I’d love to have one of the famous Kansas City stakes I had seen advertized so many times in the airline magazines”. This was my first time in KC. He took me to a restaurant called The Old Mill (which it really was), a restaurant where I could get the meat I wanted to have. Dinner went from about 8:00PM to 10:00 PM. I ordered my favorite steak, a Prime Rib medium well with lot of meat juice, which I got, and was superb. During dinner, Rick and I talked about many things, including my background, my education, and, of course my professional formation at Arthur Andersen (“AA”), which was the second largest and most prestigious Accounting firm in America and the world in those days.
In my next posting: INTERVIEWING FOR A NEW JOB
Monday, February 7, 2011
WHAT DID THE PACKAGE CONTAIN?
I must have been very nervous as I passed the Immigration counter and entered the Customs area at the Hobby International Airport in Houston, carrying my suitcase towards the exit door. I showed the agent at the gate the properly filed form, expecting him to let me go without inspection, at which time the Customs agent asked me where I was coming from, “The Cayman Islands”, I answered, deep inside wishing I hadn’t said it. And hopping he would let me go through. Not so easy! The customs agent told me at that moment that I should go to hand inspection point, about 40 feet away, where a six foot tall, blond and tough faced Texan man wearing sun glasses was waiting for me. I must have been sweating and my heart must have been about to have a stroke, but I got to the inspection point and the agent, pretending I was calm. The agent ordered me to open my suitcase and stay three feet away of it. He went literally through every piece of cloth I had in the case, I mean every pant, every short, every shirt, every underwear I had in it, then he asked me if the wrapped package which up until then hadn’t been touched, was mine, I said “no, it belongs to a friend who is sending Christmas presents to his family”. It was like giving him an order to tear everything up. Inside the wrapped package there were about ten smaller packages wrapped up in Christmas paper, the customs’ agent torn them all up and inspected everything every little present in the package. I was mute, I must have been yellow pale and my heart was sounding like a drum and about to blow out of my chest. Finally, after about ten minutes of inspection, the customs agent told me to shut my bag and gave me the OK to go through the exit door. I have never felt so happy to be let go, those ten minutes of inspection felt like years of imprisonment.
Once out of the Customs area, I felt so happy I have no words to describe my state of mind at that moment, the fact of the matter is I was so relieved I could only think of hurrying up to take the airport tram which would take me to my connecting flight to Salt Lake City which I made it right on time. In my way to the gate I could only think of my family, and how happy I was going to feel when I could embrace them, kiss them and tell them I loved them so much. The events of this day made me realize how fragile our lives are, how fragile and subject to change our state of mind could be. In fact, our life is like a roller coaster where emotions can go so high and then go so much down, so fast, that anything can happen in just a short period of time. A few hours later, around 5PM Salt Lake City time, I was with my family, I had never wished to be with them so much, I felt I was in heaven. A couple of days later and after going Christmas shopping with my family I was ready to celebrate Jesus’ BD!. Merry Christmas to everyone!.
The day after I arrived in SLC; I called Buzz and Barbara Murphy and told them of my anguish, my doubts and my desperation while flying, and at the Hobby Airport’s US Customs area. First, I apologized to them for my doubts and then I told them their “reconstructed” package was on its way to its final destination through the US postal service. Both Buzz and Barbara laughed their hearts out, they didn’t feel offended at all, on the contrary, they said they felt ashamed and sad for not having warned me that such kind of thorough reviews are customary they were used to tem.
That was one of my most beautiful Christmases ever, it was a real White Christmas, the great Wasatch Front Mountains, right in front of our house were as white as they can be, they had never looked more beautiful to my eyes, I was the happiest man in the whole wide world. I felt happy to have a family, I felt happy to have a home where my wife and my children were all waiting for me, I never felt so happy to be home.
Life returned to normal a few days later, I had to go to Buenos Aires (“BA”) again; I did it through the NY Kennedy airport this time. In my way to BA, which literally took over 12 hours of flying time, I had sufficient time to think about my life and where was heading and taking my family with me. I wrote down a few ideas in my notebook. I remember I did it just like I was planning my year 1984. Among the points I wrote was one that read “Try to get a new job, one which would not include so much travelling”.
Once in Buenos Aires, my routine work started: Meetings with Alberto Angeleri about the Entre Lomas oil field; visiting Maria Ortelli (the manager of Petrolera Perez Companc) accompanied by Alberto, to find out what the plans for the new year included in terms of new investments, cash to the partners (if any), responses to some production, accounting and financial issues; etc. This time my trip included a visit the oil field in the Province of Neuquén in the Argentine Patagonia with Alberto Angeleri who was always a great friend of mine; check the books’ closing for the year 1984, etc. But, on the social agenda, Alberto’s team at APCO, especially the girls in the Accounting Department had prepared a special treat for me. As a new years present, they handed me a ticket for a concerto by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. That was very nice of them, I felt very grateful for the present. I had a problem with that though, my problem was I had never, ever, been to one of this kind of performances, nor I had ever been exposed to this kind of events, and, apart from Mozart’s classical music which I had always loved, due to my humble origin, my education never included what you may call “musical education”, so, thankful as I was for such a nice present, deep inside myself, I felt that I might not be able to stand to the occasion.
I attended the Concerto; I had to dress up for the occasion with a suit and tie, of course, just like all other attendants did. I paid the most attention to the music, the stage looked magnificent, and the whole place looked like one of those Vienna theaters attended by “la crème de la crème” of the European royalty at the beginning of the 1900’s. I was sitting in the middle of the third row, at no more than 30 feet from the stage. The orchestra had world class musicians performing at their best, the violins sounded like music from heaven, however, I was just not up to the occasion, little Rafico, from Pallatanga never had a chance to learn music when he was a kid, neither he had the time to spend learning anything about it while he was a young man. The orchestra was playing just too classical a music for my ears to properly catch and my brain to process at the same time. I have always felt shy to say it, but I’m now confessing to all of you that by the middle of the show, I fell asleep... it was just too much of a sophisticated music for little me, for the young man who went to night school at the Borja Lavayen Secondary School in Guayaquil, to understand and enjoy such a jewel of world classic music. I was ashamed then, and I feel kind of shy to tell the story now, but that’s the truth, that happened, and I believe that by saying it to all of you now, I will feel better. In fact, I feel better already, because I believe most, if not all of you will understand me. Some of you might laugh at me, some of you might even think I should have never said it, but I know that most of you will agree with me that telling the truth should never be a reason to be ashamed.
In my next posting: RETURNING TO OUR HOME TOWN-GUAYAQUIL
Once out of the Customs area, I felt so happy I have no words to describe my state of mind at that moment, the fact of the matter is I was so relieved I could only think of hurrying up to take the airport tram which would take me to my connecting flight to Salt Lake City which I made it right on time. In my way to the gate I could only think of my family, and how happy I was going to feel when I could embrace them, kiss them and tell them I loved them so much. The events of this day made me realize how fragile our lives are, how fragile and subject to change our state of mind could be. In fact, our life is like a roller coaster where emotions can go so high and then go so much down, so fast, that anything can happen in just a short period of time. A few hours later, around 5PM Salt Lake City time, I was with my family, I had never wished to be with them so much, I felt I was in heaven. A couple of days later and after going Christmas shopping with my family I was ready to celebrate Jesus’ BD!. Merry Christmas to everyone!.
The day after I arrived in SLC; I called Buzz and Barbara Murphy and told them of my anguish, my doubts and my desperation while flying, and at the Hobby Airport’s US Customs area. First, I apologized to them for my doubts and then I told them their “reconstructed” package was on its way to its final destination through the US postal service. Both Buzz and Barbara laughed their hearts out, they didn’t feel offended at all, on the contrary, they said they felt ashamed and sad for not having warned me that such kind of thorough reviews are customary they were used to tem.
That was one of my most beautiful Christmases ever, it was a real White Christmas, the great Wasatch Front Mountains, right in front of our house were as white as they can be, they had never looked more beautiful to my eyes, I was the happiest man in the whole wide world. I felt happy to have a family, I felt happy to have a home where my wife and my children were all waiting for me, I never felt so happy to be home.
Life returned to normal a few days later, I had to go to Buenos Aires (“BA”) again; I did it through the NY Kennedy airport this time. In my way to BA, which literally took over 12 hours of flying time, I had sufficient time to think about my life and where was heading and taking my family with me. I wrote down a few ideas in my notebook. I remember I did it just like I was planning my year 1984. Among the points I wrote was one that read “Try to get a new job, one which would not include so much travelling”.
Once in Buenos Aires, my routine work started: Meetings with Alberto Angeleri about the Entre Lomas oil field; visiting Maria Ortelli (the manager of Petrolera Perez Companc) accompanied by Alberto, to find out what the plans for the new year included in terms of new investments, cash to the partners (if any), responses to some production, accounting and financial issues; etc. This time my trip included a visit the oil field in the Province of Neuquén in the Argentine Patagonia with Alberto Angeleri who was always a great friend of mine; check the books’ closing for the year 1984, etc. But, on the social agenda, Alberto’s team at APCO, especially the girls in the Accounting Department had prepared a special treat for me. As a new years present, they handed me a ticket for a concerto by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. That was very nice of them, I felt very grateful for the present. I had a problem with that though, my problem was I had never, ever, been to one of this kind of performances, nor I had ever been exposed to this kind of events, and, apart from Mozart’s classical music which I had always loved, due to my humble origin, my education never included what you may call “musical education”, so, thankful as I was for such a nice present, deep inside myself, I felt that I might not be able to stand to the occasion.
I attended the Concerto; I had to dress up for the occasion with a suit and tie, of course, just like all other attendants did. I paid the most attention to the music, the stage looked magnificent, and the whole place looked like one of those Vienna theaters attended by “la crème de la crème” of the European royalty at the beginning of the 1900’s. I was sitting in the middle of the third row, at no more than 30 feet from the stage. The orchestra had world class musicians performing at their best, the violins sounded like music from heaven, however, I was just not up to the occasion, little Rafico, from Pallatanga never had a chance to learn music when he was a kid, neither he had the time to spend learning anything about it while he was a young man. The orchestra was playing just too classical a music for my ears to properly catch and my brain to process at the same time. I have always felt shy to say it, but I’m now confessing to all of you that by the middle of the show, I fell asleep... it was just too much of a sophisticated music for little me, for the young man who went to night school at the Borja Lavayen Secondary School in Guayaquil, to understand and enjoy such a jewel of world classic music. I was ashamed then, and I feel kind of shy to tell the story now, but that’s the truth, that happened, and I believe that by saying it to all of you now, I will feel better. In fact, I feel better already, because I believe most, if not all of you will understand me. Some of you might laugh at me, some of you might even think I should have never said it, but I know that most of you will agree with me that telling the truth should never be a reason to be ashamed.
In my next posting: RETURNING TO OUR HOME TOWN-GUAYAQUIL
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