Sunday, November 20, 2011

Broadway in Sao Paulo, UFC, and farewell to a friend


I spent my final night in Sao Paulo with Valerio and his family enjoying a great meal, good wine, and entertainment. We started the evening by eating at Brooklyn Restaurante located in the Brooklin suburb of Sao Paulo near Valerio's home and the Tecno Logys office. The restaurante was started in 1999 and features a casual dining atmosphere and a singing wait staff. Many of the waiters and waitresses have a theatre and Broadway background and about every 30 minutes or so, they break out in song and dance with some of "Broadways" most famous songs.


I have post a few videos on my YouTube page, but I wanted to include one below for your view.




As you can see it was very entertaining, and the performances included their own version of the birthday song which they sang to many guests who were there celebrating their special day. I also had a chance to talk with Valerio's mother (through Valerio as a translator) and get to know more about her family and the area of Brazil which she lives and Valerio grew up. It her first time at this restaurant was well so we both got to share in the uniqueness of the experiences.


After dinner, we went back to Valerios house to watch UFC with his son Bernard. There were many great fights on the card including Stephan Bonnar win over Kyle Kingsbury, Urijah Faber over Brian Bowles, Wanderlei Silva over Cung Le, and  the main event of Dan Henderson over Shogun Rua. These fights were one of the better UFC fight cards in a very long time and proved that the sport is still the most exciting combat venue in the world. The Henderson vs Shogun fight looked to be ending quickly as Henderson won the first three rounds very easily, but the young Brazilian Rua fought back to win the last two rounds but still lost the fight 48-47. Both men showed their valor and are poised to make a title shot in the next year.

After the fights it was time to say farewell to Bernard and Valerio. As I have stated many times over the past 7 weeks in my blog, I have created a friendship with Valerio and his family, as well as the employees at Tecno Logys, beyond what I could have imagined. I was greeted with open arms and felt almost at home even though my real home is 5,000 miles away. We have discussed every aspect of the Tecno Logys business, sports, family, and just about everything else that we were not limited by our vocabularies. Valerio is more than a CEO, hes a friend, and like his son (who scored 3 more goals in his amateur club team games on Saturday) he has soccer skills. For a spotlight of his skills, I have included the following video. The first thing he said after I took this video is to not include it in the blog, so therefore now that I am leaving the country I will post it to my blog!



I am packing my things and headed to lunch with a few new friends from the management team of Tecno Logys and then head to the airport. Its hard to believe my time here has passed but I am ready to see all of my friends and family back home that I have missed for nearly two months.

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