Days Seventeen through Twenty-one: Lessons I learned from my "driver" and interesting coincidences!

Note: This is a delayed blog entry - I've not had a chance to update the blog in about a week due to the sheer volume of activity that is occurring as we prepare for our final deliverables for the client and get ready to wrap-up our visit.  Hard to believe that we'll be heading home soon - while this has totally been a tremendous experience, I am ready to get home!  I'm blending my key takeaways from Days 17 through 21 into 1 post and am not breaking it out by day - blending the days of the week into this blog post is consistent with the blending of thoughts and emotions that is happening inside me and the multitude of experiences that I'm being exposed to!  I've called out key highlights from the week that was.  Key thoughts/takeaways appear at the end.

Day 17 - Monday, May 23 to Day 21 - Friday, May 27

After the excitement and R&R from the Saturday trip to Praia do Forte and the relaxing Sunday after, we were energized and ready to get the week started!  Since this is our 2nd last week here, we spent most of our time consolidating our notes and preparing our final deliverables - as a quick refresher, we're delivering a high-level IT strategy, a fundraising plan, a Marcomm strategy and org management recommendations for Instituto Cultural Steve Biko (ICSB).  We're scrambling to line everything up and get it in a high-quality format for final delivery to the client ... along the way, we've also given them sneak peeks into what's coming so they're pretty clued in and we have good buy-in.  Always a good idea to socialize your deliverables prior to the end so that you can course-correct, if needed.  And my analogy for life is that if we have a plan for where we're headed and we socialize the plan with key stakeholders in our life, we increase our chances of success and our chances of hitting our goals!  Hmm... food for thought.

Moving on, continue to enjoy the "joie de vivre" of the folks of Bahi'a - everyone smiles (or mostly everyone does!), people are laid-back, easy-going and this is evident across all walks of life.  It is hard to describe until you've experienced it first-hand!  Not for nothing is Salvador known as Brazil's capital of happiness due to its easygoing population and countless popular outdoor parties - speaking of outdoor parties, the Brazilian people definitely know how to party - I can hear music outside on the street every night except Monday - Monday is apparently a day to rest and recover!  The music goes on till at least midnight every night and I've gotten accustomed to it - am going to miss it back home!  During the week, we went to this great outdoor music show by one of the best known local singers - Geronimo - every Tuesday night, he plays on the steps of an old cathedral and has a band accompany him.  Great ambience, music and a lot of people!  I've incl. a Youtube clip I found of Geronimo at the end of this post.

During the week, we also got our first (and second) taste of the famous Brazilian churrascaria (steakhouse) where the cooking style is churrasco (pronounced, chuhasco and roughly translated to barbecue) - amazing cuts of meat!  Our first experience was here in Salvador and the 2nd was at a place called Bovino's in Sao Paulo - what a feast - more on that in just a bit.

One very amazing highlight from the week was related to a song that I absolutely loved growing up (and still do) - it's by one of my favorite singers/musicians - Paul Simon and it's called "The Obvious Child" - reference link at the end of this blog post.  Growing up, I must've heard the song a 100,000 times but I never saw the video - the other day, a friend of mine posted a Paul Simon clip on facebook and I was reminded of the song that I used to listen over and over and over - so I checked it out on Youtube and, guess what??!! The video was shot here in Salvador with a local drum band called Olodum (the same band from MJ's They dont' really care about us video) - how cool is that?  I recognized most of the places in the video.  I guess I was just meant to come to Salvador! :-)  And my takeaway on this one is that a lot of times in our life, things happen for a reason - coincidences occur, deja vu occurs - it's important to pay attention and see if one can understand the bigger pattern at work.  Going back to one of my earlier posts about Steve Jobs' Stanford commencement address - he talks about the dots in life connecting when you look in the rearview.  If you can see the patterns, maybe you can connect them going forward too! :-)  ... which leads me to the concept of Synchronicity - first proposed by Carl Jung that 2 seemingly unrelated events when viewed together can have meaning!  The same concept is also talked about in a book I read quite a while ago - "The Celestine Prophecy" by James Redfield.  I've included a reference link with a synopsis of the book below.  In short, it's a book about spiritual discovery and about nine insights - the main character of the novel undertakes a journey to find and understand a series of nine spiritual insights on an ancient manuscript in Peru.

At the end of the week, we headed to Sao Paulo for an office visit - Sao Paulo is an urban jungle - a New York to Salvador's New Orleans!  Completely different beat and feel to the city and much like many other countries - the differences in lifestyle, culture and pace are apparent between North and South Brazil!  There are 3 highlights that I want to call out from the trip to Sao Paulo (and only 1 of them has to do with food!)

- The super-friendly and passionate folks at our local express station in Sao Paulo - Vera, Edu and Julie - thank you for welcoming us and for making us feel at home.  You guys do a tremendous job in a tough setting!  Kudos to you.  I also felt super happy to see the familiar Purple and Orange logo around me!  And it was great to see the shared passion and commitment translate to instant camaraderie.

- An awesome lunch at Bovino's churrascaria and a brilliant dinner at a restaurant called Figuera - it's built around a fig tree and the food, service, company and conversation were all exceptional!  I've included some pics at the end.

- Dinner conversation: On arrival in Sao Paulo, we were greeted by our guide for the day, Marcos.  From the airport, we went straight to the hotel to freshen up before heading to our business meetings.  One of the hotel agents asked Marcos if he was checking-in too and, in his humility, he said that he was simply the "driver" - I cringed when he said that and it wasn't easy to understand at first.  Growing up in India, it was common to refer to someone as the "driver" or the "domestic servant" but now I feel that those labels are not in good taste.  This ties directly back to my earlier post about putting on your "human" face.  One of the greatest impacts living in the US has had on me is about the "dignity of human labor" and how everyone is largely treated with respect - it doesn't matter if you're a CEO or a server at a restaurant - people typically will address you by first name!!!  At dinner that night, Marcos arrived a little early to take us back to the hotel and we asked him to join our table and this is where it got really interesting.  Prior to Marcos joining us, we had been talking about several weighty topics around race, equal rights, education and Marcos jumped right into the conversation - to my pleasant surprise - the conversation then veered to things needed to be effective and Marcos quoted from "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People"... included below for reference.  This experience and conversation reinforced for me - the need to keep an open mind, the need to treat others with respect and the need to forget any and every label!

* Habit 1: Be Proactive

Synopsis: Take initiative in life by realizing that your decisions (and how they align with life's principles) are the primary determining factor for effectiveness in your life. Take responsibility for your choices and the subsequent consequences that follow.

* Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind

Synopsis: Self-discover and clarify your deeply important character values and life goals. Envision the ideal characteristics for each of your various roles and relationships in life.

* Habit 3: Put First Things First

Synopsis: Plan, prioritize, and execute your week's tasks based on importance rather than urgency. Evaluating if your efforts exemplify your desired character values, propel you towards goals, and enrich the roles and relationships that were elaborated in Habit 2.

The next three have to do with Interdependence (i.e. working with others)

* Habit 4: Think Win-Win

Synopsis: Genuinely strive for mutually beneficial solutions or agreements in your relationships. Valuing and respecting people by understanding a "win" for all is ultimately a better long-term resolution than if only one person in the situation had gotten his way.

* Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood

Synopsis: Use empathetic listening to be genuinely influenced by a person, which compels them to reciprocate the listening and take an open mind to being influenced by you. This creates an atmosphere of caring, respect, and positive problem solving.

* Habit 6: Synergize

Synopsis: Combine the strengths of people through positive teamwork, so as to achieve goals no one person could have done alone. Get the best performance out of a group of people through encouraging meaningful contribution, and modeling inspirational and supportive leadership.

The Last habit relates to self-rejuvenation:

* Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

Synopsis: Balance and renew your resources, energy, and health to create a sustainable, long-term, effective lifestyle.

"Above quoted from Wikipedia"

Key Takeaways/Thoughts:

- Have a plan and socialize it - for life and for work

- Keep an open mind - in any situation, your perception determines reality - two people can look at the exact same thing and come up with different conclusions (glass half-full, half-empty) - you have it within you to turn everything into a positive.  Not everything you encounter will be what you want but it is still an opportunity - I know, easier said than done!

- Try to be effective - we get busy, forget the really important things and just find ourselves caught up with things ... do not confuse being effective with being busy.

- Life is short - what are you waiting for?  I've been revisiting my bucket list on this trip and my wife and I are going to do a joint review once I get back - looking forward to that.  How many times we wish we had another opportunity to do something, reach out, make contact, live an experience etc. etc. etc. -  Carpe Diem!  More on our bucket list in a future post.  Oh, by the way, what's next on your list?

- Passion (a continuing theme for me on this trip) is powerful: It can make you achieve more than you thought possible, it can turn strangers who are passionate about the same things as you into instant friends, it can overcome many challenges and it most certainly is contagious.

- If you don't like something, change your attitude!
- Enjoy and cherish what and who you have while you can - who knows what tomorrow will bring?

- And finally, two quotes I read recently 
1. "It takes more than good memory to have good memories" - at the end of the day and at the end of our life, all we have is memories - take the time to create some good ones today!
2. "Start by doing what's necessary, then do what's possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible"

Reference links:

- Geronimo: Salvador musician - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TZoW7CAAZk

- Book synopsis: "The Celestine Prophecy" - http://www.homestar.org/bryannan/celistin.html

- Book link: Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/Celestine-Prophecy-James-Redfield/dp/0446671002

- Need to get started on a bucket list?  http://www.ehow.com/how_2199305_bucket-list.html 

Sign on the office wall in Sao Paulo

Figuera - amazing dinner - Sao Paulo