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
Saturday, January 29, 2011
TRAVELLING MORE THAN EVER BEFORE
BUENOS AIRES, THE ARGENTINE CAPITAL,
ONE OF THE JEWELS OF LATIN AMERICA
At first it was kind of nice, going places with all expenses paid, travelling first class and staying at five star hotels, I confess, was really fun when I was 40, but, when such travel means you have to leave your family behind more than two thirds of your time, I can tell you, it soon gets into your nerves! That was the case with me. Between my trips to Argentina and my visits to the Cayman Islands I was away from home more than it was humanly tolerable.
THE CAYMAN ISLANDS, A PARADISE
FOR SCUBA DIVERS
Even for a young guy like me, staying away from the family most of the time was not pleasant at all, to put it in a mild way. The whole weight of growing the kids, of caring for the three young ones in the family was falling on Fanny’s lap, it wasn’t fair to say the least, though, much to her admirable endurance and character, she never complained. True, when I was at home we tried to make up for my frequent and prolonged absences by going places, visiting friends, going fishing in the summer or skiing in winter time. My wife was very understanding of the whole situation, however, the kids started to complain more and more, especially the youngest one, two year old Angie, who sometimes didn’t even recognized me when I returned home after being away for three or more weeks. So, without saying anything to anybody, I began to think about looking for another job in the winter of 1983, however, I just send my first application for a job in July. It was for a position as an analyst in the World Bank, in Washington D.C. My application was never answered, nor did I make an effort a follow up on it, I was just testing ground. Behind my lack of real desire to leave was the fact that I was being paid an excellent salary at Northwest, a salary that was certainly well above the market for comparable positions, so it would have been hard to match it in any other job within my scope.
THE SEVEN MILE BEACH IN
GRAND CAYMAN, THE CAYMAN ISLANDS
Between trips to Buenos Aires and Grand Cayman, the months went by; the skiing season of 1982-83 was great, as there were over 70 inches of snow in the mountains in the Salt Lake City area for most of the winter. My family and I enjoyed that skiing season together most weekends and holidays. We found a family who cared for Angie on Saturdays and Sundays and off we went to the mountains. Mariuxi and Rafaelito (10 and 8) were good skiers by then, and participated in the company’s skiing club contests. They were very happy kids. Maria Paula Angeleri, who was spending the winter with our neighbors the Bemis, was always in the mountains with us, she loved skiing and therefore she was having the time of her life too. In fact, Maria Paula used to spend a great deal of her time with us, where she always felt at home.
Our Argentine operation was not changing very much from what had been for the previous ten years. Naviera Perez Companc, the majority partner in the Entre Lomas Oil field joint venture, was always doing things the way they thought was most beneficial to their own interest; with no regard whatsoever for the interest of their minority JV partner, APCO ARGENTINA. By then it was time to start what is called in the oil production industry a “secondary recovery project”, and, therefore, it was time to “reinvest” the profits generated by the Entre Lomas milking cow. Again, APCO Argentina was a almost a completely passive witness to the important events going on in the field. For us, it was like saying "hey, we are rich, very rich, but, unfortunately we can’t have our money, our partner says it has to be reinvested so we can become richer at a later time"
In the summer of 1983, we decided to take a vacation in Ecuador, so in early July, off we flew to Guayaquil. We were five in the family, our kids did not have a good memory of how Guayaquil was like, and we were all excited to go back to our country, to our home town and to see the relatives we hadn’t seen in several years. The weather however, played a bad trick on us. As we arrived in Guayaquil, the El Niño atmospheric phenomenon, which manifests itself with torrential rains and very hot temperatures, as well as hotter than normal sea waters, was blasting with no mercy the Ecuadorian Coastal Region where Guayaquil is located. It rained and rained, and rained, day and night, thundering and lightning were an intermittent part of our daily lives, it rained cats and dogs, there were mosquitoes and all other kinds of hot and humid weather insects every where, in sum, Guayaquil had become itself the nicest place to be away from, and so away we went. We changed our plans and decided on having our holidays in Quito and Buenos Aires, where we found a lot better weather to accompany us. Though we didn’t say it, we all felt that Guayaquil was not a nice place to spend our vacations any more, at least not our summer of 1983 holidays.
Spanish Cove our Caribbean scuba diving resort, also under my jurisdiction of controllership, was showing a negative bottom line, although not seriously negative, it was a reason to be concerned and to monitor it more frequently. Though we couldn’t say it was a seriously bleeding wound for the parent company, Northwest Pipeline, there were reasons to monitor it closer than in profitable times. Aware as we were, that this was our CEO’s favorite toy, we needed to make sure that things were running in an orderly and business like way, after all, he used to come by at least once a month, flying the company's plane and accompanied by his wife and other important business associates, so it was in the order of the day to make sure everything was marching very much to his satisfaction.
THE CAYMAN ISLANDS, GREAT
BEACHES AND SCUBA DIVING
As the year end holidays approached, on December 22, 1983, after completing my review of the books of Spanish Cove, in Georgetown, British West Indies, I was scheduled to go back to Salt Lake City via Houston. The night before my departure for the continent, I was approached by Buzz Murphy, the manager of the resort and Barbara Murphy, his wife, who asked me to take with me a pack of things they were sending to their family in the US. I said of course, I can do that for you and I took the sealed package weighing about five pounds and took it to my room where I placed it in my suitcase.
CAYMAN ISLANDS DIVING AT ITS BEST
The day after, in the morning, Buzz took me to the airport in Georgetown and off I started my flight to Houston. Once in the airplane, I handed a copy of the local newspaper and started to read it. At first there were no news that attracted my attention, but, all of a sudden, in the third page of the paper, I saw this large headline: “CAYMAN ISLANDS ARE A TRANSIT PORT FOR DRUGS GOING TO THE US". I immediately started to read the article where they reported that for some time, the US DEA had been capturing small cargoes of cocaine originating in Colombia, as they were in their way to be smuggled by people flying from the Cayman Islands to Houston, Miami and Atlanta.
Suddenly, I was scared to death!, what if the package that was given to me the night before and that was in my travelling bag was cocaine that Buzz and Barbara were sending to the continental US, using me as their mule?. I suddenly felt like vomiting, I was anguished to the point of desperation. For a moment I felt like talking to the one of the crew members to tell her my story and my fear, but then, I felt horrible for making such a terrible pre-judgment about people I thought i knew damn well. I thought I was making a serious mistake, after all, I had known Buzz and Barbara Murphy for over a year, and both of them were very nice, hard working people whose friendship and respect I had gained over time.
I had this very serious dilemma in my mind, it was almost like “I’m at a horrible risk, and my family is too, if the package I’m carrying in my suitcase is cocaine I’m dead meat, my family and I will pay the consequences of my stupidity, but if it’s not, I’m making a terrible judgment on two people I know and respect very much”. “What should I do?” I didn’t know which side to take, I had been thinking about which way to go and haven’t taken a decision until the crew announced we were approaching the Houston airport, at which time it was too late to try talking to any member of the crew, so I decided that I would stay put, I will just pray to God that everything was alright and that in fact the package contained Christmas presents for Buzz and Barbara’s family in the US. And praying I did.
In my next posting: WHAT DID THE PACKAGE CONTAIN?
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
BACK IN SALT LAKE CITY
It wasn’t a change in itself, on the contrary, it was a kind of “back to normal” situation where the kids got back to their school, we got back to our home, which we had rented for a year and was vacated a week before we returned. Everything was just like having been kept on a freezer for a year and suddenly returned to life. Our neighbors, our friends, my office, Fanny´s daily work was just as if it was only yesterday that we left and today we returned.
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK-
NATURE AT ITS BEST
By the beginning of June of 1983, we decided to go visit Yellowstone, the most beautiful National Park we have ever seen. This is the oldest National Park in the US and was established in 1872, Yellowstone extends its natural wonders to territories in three different states; Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.
BUFFALOS PASTURING IN YELLOWSTONE
JUST LIKE IN THE MID 1800'S
The park is only hours away from Utah, and it is home to a large variety of wildlife including grizzly bears, wolves, bison, and elk.
OLD FAITHFUL THE MAIN
ATTRACTION IN YELLOWSTONE
Carefully preserved within Yellowstone National Park are Old Faithful and a collection of the world's most extraordinary geysers and hot springs and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River, all of them true wonders of nature in which the US Parks Service has traditionally done a magnificent job at preserving the beauty of Mother Nature.
A BUFFALO AND HER CALF AT
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK
In our way back from Yellowstone, we stopped in Idaho and as we arrived to jackson Hole, we enjoyed a boat ride in the Snake River and watched an enormous variety of wild life on both sides of it. Angie (2 1/2 years old) endured the whole trip and seemed to enjoy not only mother nature at its best, but the company of her sister and brother as well as the pampering of her parents.
GRAND TETON NATIONAL
PARK, WYOMMING
Jackson Hole is a beautiful old town reminiscent of the old Wild West and here we took pictures of Angie and Rafaelito with the traditional raccoon tale hat used by hunters in the old west days. Not very far from Grand Teton National Park, which is located in the northwestern section of the state of Wyoming, we found spectacular views with immaculate mountains and clear bustling streams, all within the Grand Teton range of mountains peering up above it.
GRAND TETON IN THE FALL,
INCREDIBLE NATURAL BEAUTY
Grand Teton National Park was established on February 26, 1929 and covers almost 500 square miles of land and lakes water. There are nearly 200 miles of trails for hikers to enjoy in Grand Teton National Park, which attracted then over 2.5 million visitors a year, making the park and the Grand Teton Range one of the most visited sites in the United States
A few weeks later, for the 4th of July holiday, we headed south toward the Arches National Park, a great wonder of nature which preserves over 2,000 natural sandstone arches which include the world-famous Delicate Arch, as well as many other unusual rock formations.
ARCHES NATIONAL
PARK, UTAH
In some areas, the forces of nature, mainly the winds, have masterly exposed millions of years of geologic history.
The extraordinary features of the park create a landscape of contrasting colors, landforms and textures that is unlike any other in the world.
CRAFTED OVER MILLIONS
OF YEARS AT ARCHES NP
NO MAN'S HANDS
COULD HAVE
EVER DONE THIS
We spent two days at this park, staying within it for one night.
DELICATE ARCH AT ARCHES
NATIONAL PARK, UTAH
As we continued driving on the Interstate 15 highway, we visited Zion National Park, designated as such in 1919. Zion is Utah's oldest national park which is known for its incredible canyons, including spectacular “The Narrows”, which attract canyoneers from around the world. Hiking possibilities are endless, however, we couldn’t do any of it as we had little Angie with us, riding either her little stroller or my own back. With nearly two million visitors per year, Zion was then, as it is today, Utah’s most heavily visited park.
THE THREE PATRIARCHS IN ZION
CAYON NATIONAL PARK, UTAH
A prominent feature of the park is Zion Canyon, 15 miles long and up to half a mile deep, cut through the reddish and tan-colored Navajo Sandstone by the North Fork of the Virgin River, a tributary of the Colorado River. The lowest and highest elevations are 1,200 and 8,726 ft respectively.
OTTOM A THE ENTRANCE TO
ZIONS NATIONAL PARK, UTAH
The park is Located at the junction of the Colorado Plataeu and the Mojave Desert regions. Its unique geography and variety of life zones allow for unusual plant and animal diversity. Numerous plant species as well as 289 species of birds, 75 mammals and 32 species of reptiles inhabit the park's four life zones. Its fauna include mountain lions, mule deer and Golden Eagles. Zion National Park includes mountains, canyons, buttes, mesas, monoliths, rivers and, of course natural arches.
In September, by the Labor Day holiday we again decided to travel far away in our very comfortable and efficient 1981 Honda Accord. This time we drove west on Interstate 80 toward the Pacific Coast. We drove about 500 miles in one day to Reno, Nevada where we stayed overnight at the Flamingo Hotel. It was in Reno that we had a bad time when we parked our car in front of a food store and found that it wasn’t there when we returned. Firtunately it hadn't been soled, it had just been tugged away for bad parking and I had to pay a $50 fine to have it returned.
Our next destination was San Francisco, however, the second night we slept in San Jose, since we wanted to visit Yosemite National Park, another wonder of Nature, which we did the following night. John Muir helped sparked the creation of Yosemite National Park, home to the gigantic sequoia trees, in 1890. The beauty of this park is almost unparalleled and inspired one of its admirers and guardians of the Yosemite Grant to say:
“I have seen persons of emotional temperament stand with tearful eyes, spellbound and dumb with awe, as they got their first view of the Valley from Inspiration Point, overwhelmed in the sudden presence of the unspeakable, stupendous grandeur.”
For tens of thousands of years, humans have changed, and have been changed by, this place called Yosemite. The Ahwahneechee Indians lived here for many generations, followed by the arrival of Europeans in the mid-1800s. The rugged terrain challenged many early travelers, with just a few—only 650 from the mid-1850s to mid-1860s—making the journey to Yosemite Valley by horseback or stagecoach. By 1907, construction of the Yosemite Valley Railroad from Merced to El Portal eased the journey, thereby, increasing visitation.
YOSEMITE AT MID OTTOM
History says that seven present-day tribes descend from the people who first called this area home. Europeans arrived in the mid-1800s, and provoked violent disruptions that displaced the native populations. Early white settlers arrived and hosted writers, artists, and photographers who spread the fame of "the Incomparable Valley" throughout the world.
MOTHER NATURE SHOWING OFF
AT YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
History books detail the Mariposa Battalion entering Yosemite Valley in 1851 to remove the Ahwahneechee. As Euro-American settlement occurred, people arrived on foot, on horseback and by rail to rustic hotels. Parts of the landscape were exploited, spurring conservationists to appeal for protections. President Abraham Lincoln signed an 1864 a bill granting Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove to the State of California.
MAMMOTH SEQUOIAS AT YOSEMITE
NATIONAL PARK IN CALIFORNIA
When we finished visiting Yosemite, we left for San Francisco, that beautiful city which Frank Sinatra sang to in “I left my Heart in San Francisco”. We enjoyed the city, visited the Golden gate, we rode the trolley and visited the market place.. One day later we headed south toward Los Angeles and San Diego, but that is going to be the material for my next posting.
The summer of 1983 was the most educational and entertaining summer our family and I had while lived in the US. Our children learned to like and respect Mother Nature and we educated ourselves by visiting these wonderful places not many people around the world have the luck to visit.
We all in our family learned then, and we know now, that Mother Nature is very delicate, she needs to be cared for, she needs not to be abused, but we feel extremely frustrated to hear even now, some 30 years later, that some people continue to claim that climate changes are a fact of life we have to live with, that there is nothing we, as a human race can do to stop those changes. We feel extremely frustrated by the fact that there are countries, first world countries that are willing to do nothing to stop the damage. Eventually they’ll learn too, however, by then it may be too late, and our children and grand children may have to live in a devastated world.
Meanwhile, at work, I got more responsibilities. Northwest Pipeline, through one of its international subsidiaries, decided to invest in the tourism industry and bought a couple of diving resorts in the Golf of Mexico, in the Cayman Islands, half way from Cuba to Honduras. I suspect this investment was a good excuse for the CEO of the company to use the company´s plane to go diving, since that was one of his favorite sports. Any way, two diving resorts in the Caribbean needed to be kept under control, and I was the Comptroller of those operations, on top of being the comptroller of the Argentine oil operation. Between the two operations, my travelling got more frequent than ever.
In my next posting: TRAVELLING GETS MORE FREQUENT THAN EVER BEFORE
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK-
NATURE AT ITS BEST
By the beginning of June of 1983, we decided to go visit Yellowstone, the most beautiful National Park we have ever seen. This is the oldest National Park in the US and was established in 1872, Yellowstone extends its natural wonders to territories in three different states; Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.
BUFFALOS PASTURING IN YELLOWSTONEJUST LIKE IN THE MID 1800'S
The park is only hours away from Utah, and it is home to a large variety of wildlife including grizzly bears, wolves, bison, and elk.
OLD FAITHFUL THE MAIN
ATTRACTION IN YELLOWSTONE
Carefully preserved within Yellowstone National Park are Old Faithful and a collection of the world's most extraordinary geysers and hot springs and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River, all of them true wonders of nature in which the US Parks Service has traditionally done a magnificent job at preserving the beauty of Mother Nature.
A BUFFALO AND HER CALF AT
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK
In our way back from Yellowstone, we stopped in Idaho and as we arrived to jackson Hole, we enjoyed a boat ride in the Snake River and watched an enormous variety of wild life on both sides of it. Angie (2 1/2 years old) endured the whole trip and seemed to enjoy not only mother nature at its best, but the company of her sister and brother as well as the pampering of her parents.
GRAND TETON NATIONAL
PARK, WYOMMING
Jackson Hole is a beautiful old town reminiscent of the old Wild West and here we took pictures of Angie and Rafaelito with the traditional raccoon tale hat used by hunters in the old west days. Not very far from Grand Teton National Park, which is located in the northwestern section of the state of Wyoming, we found spectacular views with immaculate mountains and clear bustling streams, all within the Grand Teton range of mountains peering up above it.
GRAND TETON IN THE FALL,
INCREDIBLE NATURAL BEAUTY
Grand Teton National Park was established on February 26, 1929 and covers almost 500 square miles of land and lakes water. There are nearly 200 miles of trails for hikers to enjoy in Grand Teton National Park, which attracted then over 2.5 million visitors a year, making the park and the Grand Teton Range one of the most visited sites in the United States
A few weeks later, for the 4th of July holiday, we headed south toward the Arches National Park, a great wonder of nature which preserves over 2,000 natural sandstone arches which include the world-famous Delicate Arch, as well as many other unusual rock formations.
ARCHES NATIONAL PARK, UTAH
In some areas, the forces of nature, mainly the winds, have masterly exposed millions of years of geologic history.
The extraordinary features of the park create a landscape of contrasting colors, landforms and textures that is unlike any other in the world.
CRAFTED OVER MILLIONS
OF YEARS AT ARCHES NP
NO MAN'S HANDS COULD HAVE
EVER DONE THIS
We spent two days at this park, staying within it for one night.
DELICATE ARCH AT ARCHES
NATIONAL PARK, UTAH
As we continued driving on the Interstate 15 highway, we visited Zion National Park, designated as such in 1919. Zion is Utah's oldest national park which is known for its incredible canyons, including spectacular “The Narrows”, which attract canyoneers from around the world. Hiking possibilities are endless, however, we couldn’t do any of it as we had little Angie with us, riding either her little stroller or my own back. With nearly two million visitors per year, Zion was then, as it is today, Utah’s most heavily visited park.
THE THREE PATRIARCHS IN ZION CAYON NATIONAL PARK, UTAH
A prominent feature of the park is Zion Canyon, 15 miles long and up to half a mile deep, cut through the reddish and tan-colored Navajo Sandstone by the North Fork of the Virgin River, a tributary of the Colorado River. The lowest and highest elevations are 1,200 and 8,726 ft respectively.
OTTOM A THE ENTRANCE TO
ZIONS NATIONAL PARK, UTAH
The park is Located at the junction of the Colorado Plataeu and the Mojave Desert regions. Its unique geography and variety of life zones allow for unusual plant and animal diversity. Numerous plant species as well as 289 species of birds, 75 mammals and 32 species of reptiles inhabit the park's four life zones. Its fauna include mountain lions, mule deer and Golden Eagles. Zion National Park includes mountains, canyons, buttes, mesas, monoliths, rivers and, of course natural arches.
In September, by the Labor Day holiday we again decided to travel far away in our very comfortable and efficient 1981 Honda Accord. This time we drove west on Interstate 80 toward the Pacific Coast. We drove about 500 miles in one day to Reno, Nevada where we stayed overnight at the Flamingo Hotel. It was in Reno that we had a bad time when we parked our car in front of a food store and found that it wasn’t there when we returned. Firtunately it hadn't been soled, it had just been tugged away for bad parking and I had to pay a $50 fine to have it returned.
Our next destination was San Francisco, however, the second night we slept in San Jose, since we wanted to visit Yosemite National Park, another wonder of Nature, which we did the following night. John Muir helped sparked the creation of Yosemite National Park, home to the gigantic sequoia trees, in 1890. The beauty of this park is almost unparalleled and inspired one of its admirers and guardians of the Yosemite Grant to say:
“I have seen persons of emotional temperament stand with tearful eyes, spellbound and dumb with awe, as they got their first view of the Valley from Inspiration Point, overwhelmed in the sudden presence of the unspeakable, stupendous grandeur.”
For tens of thousands of years, humans have changed, and have been changed by, this place called Yosemite. The Ahwahneechee Indians lived here for many generations, followed by the arrival of Europeans in the mid-1800s. The rugged terrain challenged many early travelers, with just a few—only 650 from the mid-1850s to mid-1860s—making the journey to Yosemite Valley by horseback or stagecoach. By 1907, construction of the Yosemite Valley Railroad from Merced to El Portal eased the journey, thereby, increasing visitation.
YOSEMITE AT MID OTTOM
History says that seven present-day tribes descend from the people who first called this area home. Europeans arrived in the mid-1800s, and provoked violent disruptions that displaced the native populations. Early white settlers arrived and hosted writers, artists, and photographers who spread the fame of "the Incomparable Valley" throughout the world.
MOTHER NATURE SHOWING OFF
AT YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
History books detail the Mariposa Battalion entering Yosemite Valley in 1851 to remove the Ahwahneechee. As Euro-American settlement occurred, people arrived on foot, on horseback and by rail to rustic hotels. Parts of the landscape were exploited, spurring conservationists to appeal for protections. President Abraham Lincoln signed an 1864 a bill granting Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove to the State of California.
MAMMOTH SEQUOIAS AT YOSEMITE
NATIONAL PARK IN CALIFORNIA
When we finished visiting Yosemite, we left for San Francisco, that beautiful city which Frank Sinatra sang to in “I left my Heart in San Francisco”. We enjoyed the city, visited the Golden gate, we rode the trolley and visited the market place.. One day later we headed south toward Los Angeles and San Diego, but that is going to be the material for my next posting.
The summer of 1983 was the most educational and entertaining summer our family and I had while lived in the US. Our children learned to like and respect Mother Nature and we educated ourselves by visiting these wonderful places not many people around the world have the luck to visit.
We all in our family learned then, and we know now, that Mother Nature is very delicate, she needs to be cared for, she needs not to be abused, but we feel extremely frustrated to hear even now, some 30 years later, that some people continue to claim that climate changes are a fact of life we have to live with, that there is nothing we, as a human race can do to stop those changes. We feel extremely frustrated by the fact that there are countries, first world countries that are willing to do nothing to stop the damage. Eventually they’ll learn too, however, by then it may be too late, and our children and grand children may have to live in a devastated world.
Meanwhile, at work, I got more responsibilities. Northwest Pipeline, through one of its international subsidiaries, decided to invest in the tourism industry and bought a couple of diving resorts in the Golf of Mexico, in the Cayman Islands, half way from Cuba to Honduras. I suspect this investment was a good excuse for the CEO of the company to use the company´s plane to go diving, since that was one of his favorite sports. Any way, two diving resorts in the Caribbean needed to be kept under control, and I was the Comptroller of those operations, on top of being the comptroller of the Argentine oil operation. Between the two operations, my travelling got more frequent than ever.
In my next posting: TRAVELLING GETS MORE FREQUENT THAN EVER BEFORE
Monday, January 10, 2011
HOUSTON IS OUR NEW HOME TOWN
Glenn pushed for a decision in that direction, and relatively soon he got the home office approval for his request. As a result, by mid April 1981, I began commuting between Salt Lake City and Houston every week, flying out to Houston very early on Mondays and returning to SLC late on Fridays. The Hyatt hotel in downtown Houston, which was only three blocks away from our office on Lamar Street, became my home for nine months, and the Restaurant Benihana of Tokyo became my dinner place every night. Dining at Benihana in a table for eight people made my daily solitude more bearable. That was the time when I became a fan of Japanese food, which I still love.
Working in Houston resolved one problem but created another. I was given high responsibilities in Houston and I felt that I was indeed earning my salary and making a good contribution to our company, but, I was away from my family seventy percent of the time, therefore they missed me and I missed them too. Working for APCO required that I travel to Argentina at least once every two months for a couple of weeks. Usually I would fly to NYC to make a connection to Buenos Aires, a flight that would take between 10 and eleven hours, but was not too tiring because, number one we were flying within the same time zone, and, I was always flying first class, a luxury that was allowed in all company business flights with a duration of four or more hours.
Those were the days when I began loving Buenos Aires in particular, but, Argentina in general, its people, and its food but I never got used to the tremendous fluctuations of Argentine prices and exchange rates. In one trip the cost of one night’s stay at the Claridge Hotel, one of the most traditional hotels in Buenos Aires was about $70, and the next trip it was $250, all because of the never ending escalation of prices and exchange rates. Between the bimonthly trips to Buenos Aires and the weekly trips from SLC to Houston, the rest of the year 1981 went by. In April 1982, I discussed the matter with Glenn and he requested and obtained approval from the upper management in SLC to have me and my family moved to Houston, which we did in June 1982.
Moving to Houston with the whole family we did in May of 1982. At first, we rented a house in a very nice golf area in NW Houston, about ten minutes away from Interstate Hwy 10, better known in Houston as the Dixie Highway. We lived in the Heartstone subdivision, 45 minutes away from my office in downtown Houston.
Houston was in those days something like the world’s capital of the oil industry, almost everything there was somehow connected to the ever expanding oil industry. It was the home town for the most important players in the world’s oil such as Mobil, Pennzoil, Royal Dutch, Shell, Texaco, British Petroleum, Conoco, Halliburton and the likes. In fact, it was home to the oil barons of those days.
Our company, Northwest Pipeline Corp, in spite of being a large company in the US Stock Exchange, was small in comparison to all those giants in the oil industry, in fact it had no significant oil fields in the continental US and 95% of its revenues were generated by its gas production and transportation geographically located in the Northwestern United States. APCO Argentina, its small subsidiary, domiciled in Houston, the company I was now assigned to as a Controller, derived all it revenues from the Entre Lomas oil field, located in Neuquén, in Southern Argentina, where we were a minority shareholder of Petrolera Perez Companc, the concessionary of the field, which was operated by our associate Naviera Perez Companc (“Naviera”). The company’s revenues deriving from the oil field, however, were very seldom materialized in cash, since the operator and majority shareholder of the oil company was always “reinvesting” in the field.
My job as a controller of the company in Houston was to make sure we kept a good eye on what our Associate Naviera was doing in terms of “reinvestments” in the oil field, since all works in connection with those reinvestments were carried on by Naviera our majority shareholder. I saw it from the beginning that it was a no winning situation, because the contract did not allow the minority shareholder (APCO) a veto power on the “reinvesting decisions of the majority shareholder. As a consequence, in the end, my job was to try to report, as accurately as possible, how much we were being screwed by our Argentine associates in Naviera.
Neither the continuous and clear technical reports from our people in Buenos Aires headed by Alberto Angeleri, who was always waiving red flags to Houston, nor the continuous visits to Buenos Aires by Glenn Nelle who was meeting with the top shots of Naviera , improved the cash flows for APCO Argentina. Somehow, The Northwest people had decided that in the end, patience will pay its dividends. No significant dividends were reported to the company for my entire tenure as a controller of the company which ended in May of 1984.
Meanwhile, our life in Houston was different in many ways to our life in Salt Lake City. To begin with, we were now living in a much larger city, a city of two and a half million people, as opposed to only half of a million people in SLC. People in our neighborhood in Houston were not nearly as friendly as they were in SLC., each family seemed to live their own lives, minding their own business and letting every body else mind their business. Our older kids were registered in the nearest public school, in a school district that was well known to be very good for the State standards, so that was OK, in fact neither Mariuxi, nor Rafaelito felt any significant negative or positive impact from the change.
In the absence of friends in our neighborhood, we looked and soon found some friends elsewhere in the area or through a networking that we began to apply when we started to feel the isolating effects of the lack of friends in the area where we lived. First it was some dear and old Ecuadorian friends living not very far away, and then the net started to work. Soon we began to feel as a part of a social group it was nice to be associated with, then the group made us feel as an important part of it. Our children found some friends of their age to play with, some of them attending the same school they attended. Felipe Rodriguez, a former classmate at the U of Guayaquil and a man who loved Houston more than any other place in the world (he called it “paradise”) was the first friend we found, and through him we found many other friends, including the Ecuadorian Consul, Mrs. Huerta who was the one who introduced us to many other Ecuadorian people who had been living in Houston for many years and loved it.
In spite of all the friends we found, and the fact that my wife Fanny felt much better in Houston than in SLC, I did not find very amusing the fact that I had to mow the lawn in my 2000 sq ft backyard, twice a week under 100 degree temperatures in the Houston Summer time, where I could almost watch the grass growing in the hot and rainy summers of the “oil capital of the world”. It was like being inside a sauna box. I did not enjoy this at all, so, when a year later my bosses in Salt Lake City announced that I had to go back to live in Salt Lake City, because the APCO Argentina offices were being moved to Utah, I was so much relieved and happy, I felt almost like getting out of hell. Our children loved it too. Fanny was less enthused but finally she was very happy to go back to our loved Utah too.
In my next posting: BACK IN SALT LAKE CITY
Working in Houston resolved one problem but created another. I was given high responsibilities in Houston and I felt that I was indeed earning my salary and making a good contribution to our company, but, I was away from my family seventy percent of the time, therefore they missed me and I missed them too. Working for APCO required that I travel to Argentina at least once every two months for a couple of weeks. Usually I would fly to NYC to make a connection to Buenos Aires, a flight that would take between 10 and eleven hours, but was not too tiring because, number one we were flying within the same time zone, and, I was always flying first class, a luxury that was allowed in all company business flights with a duration of four or more hours.
Those were the days when I began loving Buenos Aires in particular, but, Argentina in general, its people, and its food but I never got used to the tremendous fluctuations of Argentine prices and exchange rates. In one trip the cost of one night’s stay at the Claridge Hotel, one of the most traditional hotels in Buenos Aires was about $70, and the next trip it was $250, all because of the never ending escalation of prices and exchange rates. Between the bimonthly trips to Buenos Aires and the weekly trips from SLC to Houston, the rest of the year 1981 went by. In April 1982, I discussed the matter with Glenn and he requested and obtained approval from the upper management in SLC to have me and my family moved to Houston, which we did in June 1982.
Moving to Houston with the whole family we did in May of 1982. At first, we rented a house in a very nice golf area in NW Houston, about ten minutes away from Interstate Hwy 10, better known in Houston as the Dixie Highway. We lived in the Heartstone subdivision, 45 minutes away from my office in downtown Houston.
Houston was in those days something like the world’s capital of the oil industry, almost everything there was somehow connected to the ever expanding oil industry. It was the home town for the most important players in the world’s oil such as Mobil, Pennzoil, Royal Dutch, Shell, Texaco, British Petroleum, Conoco, Halliburton and the likes. In fact, it was home to the oil barons of those days.
Our company, Northwest Pipeline Corp, in spite of being a large company in the US Stock Exchange, was small in comparison to all those giants in the oil industry, in fact it had no significant oil fields in the continental US and 95% of its revenues were generated by its gas production and transportation geographically located in the Northwestern United States. APCO Argentina, its small subsidiary, domiciled in Houston, the company I was now assigned to as a Controller, derived all it revenues from the Entre Lomas oil field, located in Neuquén, in Southern Argentina, where we were a minority shareholder of Petrolera Perez Companc, the concessionary of the field, which was operated by our associate Naviera Perez Companc (“Naviera”). The company’s revenues deriving from the oil field, however, were very seldom materialized in cash, since the operator and majority shareholder of the oil company was always “reinvesting” in the field.
My job as a controller of the company in Houston was to make sure we kept a good eye on what our Associate Naviera was doing in terms of “reinvestments” in the oil field, since all works in connection with those reinvestments were carried on by Naviera our majority shareholder. I saw it from the beginning that it was a no winning situation, because the contract did not allow the minority shareholder (APCO) a veto power on the “reinvesting decisions of the majority shareholder. As a consequence, in the end, my job was to try to report, as accurately as possible, how much we were being screwed by our Argentine associates in Naviera.
Neither the continuous and clear technical reports from our people in Buenos Aires headed by Alberto Angeleri, who was always waiving red flags to Houston, nor the continuous visits to Buenos Aires by Glenn Nelle who was meeting with the top shots of Naviera , improved the cash flows for APCO Argentina. Somehow, The Northwest people had decided that in the end, patience will pay its dividends. No significant dividends were reported to the company for my entire tenure as a controller of the company which ended in May of 1984.
Meanwhile, our life in Houston was different in many ways to our life in Salt Lake City. To begin with, we were now living in a much larger city, a city of two and a half million people, as opposed to only half of a million people in SLC. People in our neighborhood in Houston were not nearly as friendly as they were in SLC., each family seemed to live their own lives, minding their own business and letting every body else mind their business. Our older kids were registered in the nearest public school, in a school district that was well known to be very good for the State standards, so that was OK, in fact neither Mariuxi, nor Rafaelito felt any significant negative or positive impact from the change.
In the absence of friends in our neighborhood, we looked and soon found some friends elsewhere in the area or through a networking that we began to apply when we started to feel the isolating effects of the lack of friends in the area where we lived. First it was some dear and old Ecuadorian friends living not very far away, and then the net started to work. Soon we began to feel as a part of a social group it was nice to be associated with, then the group made us feel as an important part of it. Our children found some friends of their age to play with, some of them attending the same school they attended. Felipe Rodriguez, a former classmate at the U of Guayaquil and a man who loved Houston more than any other place in the world (he called it “paradise”) was the first friend we found, and through him we found many other friends, including the Ecuadorian Consul, Mrs. Huerta who was the one who introduced us to many other Ecuadorian people who had been living in Houston for many years and loved it.
In spite of all the friends we found, and the fact that my wife Fanny felt much better in Houston than in SLC, I did not find very amusing the fact that I had to mow the lawn in my 2000 sq ft backyard, twice a week under 100 degree temperatures in the Houston Summer time, where I could almost watch the grass growing in the hot and rainy summers of the “oil capital of the world”. It was like being inside a sauna box. I did not enjoy this at all, so, when a year later my bosses in Salt Lake City announced that I had to go back to live in Salt Lake City, because the APCO Argentina offices were being moved to Utah, I was so much relieved and happy, I felt almost like getting out of hell. Our children loved it too. Fanny was less enthused but finally she was very happy to go back to our loved Utah too.
In my next posting: BACK IN SALT LAKE CITY
Saturday, December 25, 2010
OUR LIFE IN SALT LAKE CITY
THE STREET WHERE WE LIVED
IN SALT LAKE CITY IN 1980
Our social life, which I have said before was a very active one in Quito, during the first few months of our stay was almost non existent in Salt Lake City. That made us a bit home sick, but, slowly and consistently we began to develop a relationship with a few friends in our neighborhood, among whom our dearest ones were Wilmer (a former LDS bishop) and Nelly Barnett, our next door neighbors, whose children had already gone from home (Wilmer is the Angel who saved me from the effects of the first snow storm in early October 1980); Dennis & Marilyn Adams and their three lovely children; Murry and Nancy Bemis and their three children (the only non LDS couple in the neighborhood besides us); Ken and Roma Clark, whom I got to see last January and have kept themselves in very good shape); Piero Ruffinengo and Tony Durando (engineers and lawyers, Italian and were about my age), both of whom worked for Northwest Pipeline also, and were married to Jennifer ( a medical doctor) and Nann (a lawyer) respectively. Piero and Tony had just started to grow their own families and had young children too; Joe Vallely, who at the time was Northwest’s HR VP, and his lovely wife Ceres (from Puerto Rico) who later on became Angie’s God Mother, were also a very important part of our small social circle. Ceres Vallely, and her lovely mother Angela, became one of our closest friends and later on she became Angie’s baptism’s God Mother. We also met and became very good friends with Oscar and Mina Abeyta, the finest people from Mexico which we have ever met. We have kept in touch with them throughout these many years until these days. They have a daughter who married and came to live in Tampa, FL, not very far from Orlando, where we live one half of the year.
THE ADAMS' HOUSE IN FONTAINEBLEU DR.
IN SLC AS SEEN IN JANUARY 2010
Most of our neighbors were very friendly and helpful to us, but, Dennis and Marilyn Adams and their children need to be mentioned especially. Marilyn, who passed away only a year and a half ago, was the sweetest lady one can think of. In spite of the fact she had been suffering from a serious illness for a long time, no one in my family can remember one single time when she was not in a good mood, smiling and trying to be helpful. At two years of age, our youngest daughter, Angie became very independent and would walk away from home to go visiting either Mrs. Barnett, who became her main candy supplier, or Marilyn for other sweets. One of those days, Marilyn found Angie happily sharing lunch with their little dog, eating from the dog’s plate. Over the last 28 years, this story has remained and will continue to be one of the favorite subjects of our conversations with the Adams’, every time we get together, provoking our uncontained laughter. In January of 2010, I visited Dennis and had dinner with him and his family, at their always warm and welcoming home, in Fontainebleau Dr where he lives by himself. Dennis continues to be a happy looking man. He is a great cook, and once he fixed the best hash browns I have ever had in my whole life.
THE CLARKS AT THEIR HOME IN SLC IN JANUARY 2010
The Bemis also became our dear friends. We helped them make personal arrangements with our dearest friends the Angeleris in their Buenos Aires, Argentina, to have Gail, their 16 year old daughter go to Buenos Aires and spend a summer with them. Gail, a beautiful and very charming girl, had a great time in Argentina and the two families became great friends thereafter. I suspect that it was Gail’s fascination with the Spanish Language one of the reasons that made her fall in love, and then get married to a Spanish speaking young man from Mexico, with whom they now have three beautiful children. I saw them in Salt Lake City in January 2010, when I went there skiing and took some time to visit our Utah friends. Nancy Bemis also lives by herself, after her husband passed away many years ago. She lives right next door to the Adams. It was Nancy who, in our early days in SLC, was trying to help Fanny learn English by speaking so slow it got to be kind of funny.
NANCY BEMUS AT HER HOME IN SLC IN JANUARY 2010
She used to greet Fanny like this: Gooood moooorning Faaanny, hooooow aaaare youuu?, caaan Iiiiii beee oooof heeeelp thiiiis mooorniiing?, and she continued to talk like that to Fanny for a long time after she made sure Fanny was on track with her English. That just tells the helping attitude all our friends had with us while we lived in SLC.
Over time, Tony and Nann Durando became our dearest friends, and have remained so all of these many years after we left Salt Lake City and the U.S. Tony and I talk two or three times a year and when we do, we do it for an hour or more till our ears hurt. We have many things in common, mainly a most old fashioned concept of what a family should be, and we are very proud of our families and love and care for all and every one of their members. We have recently become grand parents and we are deeply in love with our grand children too.
VISITING THE DURANDOS IN SLC IN 1981
During our stay in Salt Lake City, the Durandos and our family began to visit one another with certain frequency, as a result, we were able to develop a closer relationship, which we have maintained and improved over time. Their oldest daughter Chiara came to visit us and stayed with us in Guayaquil during the summer of 1992; Fanny and I saw them again in mid 1997, in Tucson, AZ, where they have lived since the late 80’s, and we saw them again in Phoenix, AZ, at the end of April of 2000, when Mariuxi, our oldest daughter graduated from Thunderbird, The American International School of Business as a Master of International Business. Tony and Nann drove the 500 miles from Tucson, to be with us during that great day for our family. Tony and I maintain a fluid correspondence via internet and among other things, I have promised Tony that I will learn Italian (which I’m doing so), and he has promised me to improve his already fluent Spanish.
On the work front, at Northwest Pipeline, during my first few weeks at the home office, nobody knew what my responsibilities were going to be; later on and for a few months, I was assigned meaningless responsibilities, it was like they brought me in without a clear plan, no one was in charge of me, and no one would care about the cost of having me there. I began to wonder whether I made the right decision when accepting to move to Salt Lake City without a clear definition of what my new job was going to be. I understood later that in a big corporation like Northwest Pipeline, the decision making process was slow, sometimes very slow and some other times extremely slow. I was drawing a very good salary but I was not producing anything in return, and that made me feel concerned and somehow guilty. I had to be patient, but at the same time I was beginning to feel a bit nervous about the whole thing. It wasn’t until March of 1981, that my former boss Glenn Nelle, in Houston, at my request, took the initiative and suggested my presence in his office beginning mid April. He wanted me to be in charge of the controllership of APCO Argentina, the Northwest’s affiliate located in Houston, TX.
In my next posting: HOUSTON IS OUR NEW HOME TOWN
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