The Barbeque
They spell Barbeque as Barbq here. But maybe that's just to save money on signs.
Friday night we went out for dinner with the IBM 'team'. I knew quite a few of them from CCS, three or four, mostly network guys. There was one woman from Brazil, who was quite charming, and a Portuguese speaking manager from California. It was pleasant enough. We ate Italian basically and it was not significantly different from some meals I have already described. The geeks were more entertaining than the usual gathering of geeks; but these are international geeks. I have visited Americans abroad before and was really expecting lots of complaints about not getting a salad bar and such, but these folks were fun. They were also very, very drunk. They did not spend much time talking about work.
I am suffering the usual effects of traveling and living in a hotel. I have lethal hurt burn, for one thing. It seems that wherever we go, they are pushing massive amounts of alcohol on us along with meat, meat, meat and very strong coffee. Nice enough for a change, but I am beginning to want veggies, veggies, veggies and water that does not taste like a swimming pool. That may be a sign I am ready to go home. Or at least to NOLA, my home away from home.
Anyway, Saturday we got up, got dressed, packed little bags and got into the IBM vans and cars and were taken away to the country. We passed "techno city" outside of Campinas - a series of barbed wire compounds and giant modern buildings with recognizable signs. IBM, EDS, Xerox, and so on. We drove on through the giant paper company forests and into real, undeveloped Brazil, finally turning into a dirt road and into a little village, and then off to the gate of the Ranch of the three girls (Ninas). TQO, raised in NOLA, called it the Court of the Three Sisters.
There was a small but adequate pool, a small soccer field, very nice tropical plantings to provide privacy and a barbeque building. The building was a narrow "L" with a kitchen at the base, a thick wall on the rising side and a brick grill with chimney and a bar in the corner of the "L". There were plastic tables and chairs nicely grouped under the big porch created by the roof of the "L". The roof was wooden beams and lattice supporting red tiles. There were ceiling fans hanging from the roof beams, and all turned on. It got close to 90 and the sun was brutal. Only a few minutes in the sun and you wanted to move away into the shade.
The plan seemed to be to nibble all day as the food came off the grill. The owners of the ranch and family were also the cooks and waiters and they were very persistent at overfeeding us and getting us totally drunk. They had chicken chunks wrapped in bacon, chicken hearts (which were actually very good - I ate a lot of them) and 2 types of beef sausages and beef steaks and beef roasts and beef, beef, beef. The chicken and sausages were on bamboo skewers. There was really wonderful fresh green salad, big baskets of hard sourdough rools, two kinds of salsa, the ubiquitous eggplant italian salad, an egg and bacon "salad" with beef, a rice pilaf with beef, and a potato/mayonaise salad that was actually very good and seemed to have no beef in it. They were also pouring massive amounts of cold beer and blenders full of something rather like pina colladas and strawberry dacquiris. There was music - either fairly good high energy latin dance music - or rather annoying American music of ten or more years ago. Or let's just say that I had enjoyed not hearing Lisa Loeb for awhile now and I could really go without hearing the "I get knocked down but I get up again" song pretty much from here on out.
The owners looked European to me. They could have been from Northern Italy or Southern France for all I could tell - grey eyes and sandy hair sprinkled amongst dark hair and dark eyes and all tall and pale skinned. Grand daddy definitely looked Italian. The owners had big white dogs that looked a little like Akitas. The mutt dogs were odd looking, almost wild dogs with very large ears, small bodies and narrow heads, hungry looking and nervous at the wonderful smells.
Folks played cards, soccer, played in the pool, threw each other into the pool, and generally had fun after being either at work or in a hotel room for weeks. TQO and I have been very sweet and hanging close to each other the last few days and we were definitely doing that at the Barbeque. We were in danger of the cutest couple award, except that we were pretty much the only couple.
Some folks talked about work here, but more from the point of view of how it was effecting their lives. Whether they like IBM or CCS more, how they missed their families, how they are upset with the trend of worklife to eclipse family life in general. One tall macho type guy wearing running clothes complained bitterly of missing his cat. He says he sleeps with the cat in his armpit and he misses that. A few of the team are permanently mobile long term IBMers and they were all single. One woman on the team has lived for a year or two in spots all over the world. She said that when she turned fourty (recently I gather) she had started to want a permanent base and to wonder about growing old on the move. So they all acted like humans, in general, once they had absorbed enough alcohol.
The party lasted a little too long and I really could have come back at around 5PM instead of 7 - 11 to 7 is a LONG barbeque. We mostly just hung around reading and such and burping the rest of the evening in the hotel room. Quite a few of the youngsters went out on a bender after and there were reports of closing down a bar. I liked what we did better. 8^).
Friday night we went out for dinner with the IBM 'team'. I knew quite a few of them from CCS, three or four, mostly network guys. There was one woman from Brazil, who was quite charming, and a Portuguese speaking manager from California. It was pleasant enough. We ate Italian basically and it was not significantly different from some meals I have already described. The geeks were more entertaining than the usual gathering of geeks; but these are international geeks. I have visited Americans abroad before and was really expecting lots of complaints about not getting a salad bar and such, but these folks were fun. They were also very, very drunk. They did not spend much time talking about work.
I am suffering the usual effects of traveling and living in a hotel. I have lethal hurt burn, for one thing. It seems that wherever we go, they are pushing massive amounts of alcohol on us along with meat, meat, meat and very strong coffee. Nice enough for a change, but I am beginning to want veggies, veggies, veggies and water that does not taste like a swimming pool. That may be a sign I am ready to go home. Or at least to NOLA, my home away from home.
Anyway, Saturday we got up, got dressed, packed little bags and got into the IBM vans and cars and were taken away to the country. We passed "techno city" outside of Campinas - a series of barbed wire compounds and giant modern buildings with recognizable signs. IBM, EDS, Xerox, and so on. We drove on through the giant paper company forests and into real, undeveloped Brazil, finally turning into a dirt road and into a little village, and then off to the gate of the Ranch of the three girls (Ninas). TQO, raised in NOLA, called it the Court of the Three Sisters.
There was a small but adequate pool, a small soccer field, very nice tropical plantings to provide privacy and a barbeque building. The building was a narrow "L" with a kitchen at the base, a thick wall on the rising side and a brick grill with chimney and a bar in the corner of the "L". There were plastic tables and chairs nicely grouped under the big porch created by the roof of the "L". The roof was wooden beams and lattice supporting red tiles. There were ceiling fans hanging from the roof beams, and all turned on. It got close to 90 and the sun was brutal. Only a few minutes in the sun and you wanted to move away into the shade.
The plan seemed to be to nibble all day as the food came off the grill. The owners of the ranch and family were also the cooks and waiters and they were very persistent at overfeeding us and getting us totally drunk. They had chicken chunks wrapped in bacon, chicken hearts (which were actually very good - I ate a lot of them) and 2 types of beef sausages and beef steaks and beef roasts and beef, beef, beef. The chicken and sausages were on bamboo skewers. There was really wonderful fresh green salad, big baskets of hard sourdough rools, two kinds of salsa, the ubiquitous eggplant italian salad, an egg and bacon "salad" with beef, a rice pilaf with beef, and a potato/mayonaise salad that was actually very good and seemed to have no beef in it. They were also pouring massive amounts of cold beer and blenders full of something rather like pina colladas and strawberry dacquiris. There was music - either fairly good high energy latin dance music - or rather annoying American music of ten or more years ago. Or let's just say that I had enjoyed not hearing Lisa Loeb for awhile now and I could really go without hearing the "I get knocked down but I get up again" song pretty much from here on out.
The owners looked European to me. They could have been from Northern Italy or Southern France for all I could tell - grey eyes and sandy hair sprinkled amongst dark hair and dark eyes and all tall and pale skinned. Grand daddy definitely looked Italian. The owners had big white dogs that looked a little like Akitas. The mutt dogs were odd looking, almost wild dogs with very large ears, small bodies and narrow heads, hungry looking and nervous at the wonderful smells.
Folks played cards, soccer, played in the pool, threw each other into the pool, and generally had fun after being either at work or in a hotel room for weeks. TQO and I have been very sweet and hanging close to each other the last few days and we were definitely doing that at the Barbeque. We were in danger of the cutest couple award, except that we were pretty much the only couple.
Some folks talked about work here, but more from the point of view of how it was effecting their lives. Whether they like IBM or CCS more, how they missed their families, how they are upset with the trend of worklife to eclipse family life in general. One tall macho type guy wearing running clothes complained bitterly of missing his cat. He says he sleeps with the cat in his armpit and he misses that. A few of the team are permanently mobile long term IBMers and they were all single. One woman on the team has lived for a year or two in spots all over the world. She said that when she turned fourty (recently I gather) she had started to want a permanent base and to wonder about growing old on the move. So they all acted like humans, in general, once they had absorbed enough alcohol.
The party lasted a little too long and I really could have come back at around 5PM instead of 7 - 11 to 7 is a LONG barbeque. We mostly just hung around reading and such and burping the rest of the evening in the hotel room. Quite a few of the youngsters went out on a bender after and there were reports of closing down a bar. I liked what we did better. 8^).