Both countries have good wines… and also beautiful girls in Argentina!
Now, Argentina, and Chile.
I really miss Buenos Aires… Santiago de Chile…and NYC’s old twin towers’ of the WTC.
C’s lawyers had apparently talked to the Brazilian Ministry of the Economy, asking if time would be given to pay the unpaid back taxes of CG.
Their answer? “Of course not!”, they said.
“Payment has to be total and immediate”, was the final answer of the Brazilian Government.
You see, C was perceived by Brasilia’s bureaucrats as “a deep pocket company”, and not being a Brazilian entity, all unpaid taxes “had” to be paid cash.
Probably the directive of the bank, being composed by all-Brazilian citizens, had been capable of obtaining time to pay, “but not the gringos”.
I also found out in Buenos Aires that C had sued the original owner of CG, and him, in turn, had sued C and all people involved in the administration of CG,(Including me of course).
I’d found out about the lawsuit against me because a Court in Rio, through the Argentinian Exterior Relations Ministry, had sent me a request demanding my presence there to declare in a lawsuit.
The original owner had sued C, and me as ex-President of CG!
I sent the request to Human Resources of C in the USA and received instructions not to do anything and forget about the whole affair.
Months later, I found out that C had negotiated, and both lawsuits had been withdrawn.
The original owner was in charge of CG again!
A fit CG now, healthy again, with small debts, without the heavy load of an inflated headcount and high expenses, etc.
The original owner should be grateful!
We spent a lot of time in temporary quarters in Buenos Aires, as contrary to my original expectations, it wasn’t easy to find a good apartment in the city.
It should be easier nowadays, as in the last years there had been a lot of new apartments built in Buenos Aires, especially in the Puerto Madero area, but not at that time, 1999, when there were a lot of houses available for rent, but not apartments.
We knew we would travel quite a lot, and not having small children to worry about, an apartment was better, for we closed the door when traveling and that was it, we didn't have to worry about security, gardening or anything else, as we would have to do, if living in a house.
In the end, we rented a luxurious and rent-expensive, unfurnished apartment, in Palermo, Buenos Aires, with a great view, as it was located on a high floor of the building, 3 large bedrooms, spacious hall, private elevator, separated eating room, a lot of 24h security, well-equipped gym, swimming pool, etc., in the same building where the ex-wife and daughters of the Argentinian idol, the ex-soccer player Maradona, lived.
But, after 3 months of intensive search, we had not found anything else!
Buenos Aires is a beautiful city, the third or fourth most beautiful city in the entire world (at least of the part of the world known by me), after Rio de Janeiro, Paris, and probably Madrid. With regard to beautiful women, without any doubt, Venezuela is first, Buenos Aires is second, and the sexy Brazilian women third, with a distant fourth place...
In the operation of Argentina, I had a good team of people, headed by X who was and is a good manager who grew up with the operation, starting very young and having occupied positions in most departments.
X knew most details about the Argentinian operation, and therefore I maintained my intervention to the minimum possible, as I didn’t want to interfere with the business unnecessarily.
I’ll never forget that it was there, in that office, where I was on September 11, 2001, the fateful day in which two kidnapped commercial airplanes crashed against, exploded inside some floors, and eventually knocked down the Twin
Towers of the WTC in NYC.
I remember having thought — like many others — when the first plane crashed against one of the towers, that it was a case of a rare and lamentable accident, possibly caused by the extraordinary height of the tower which had been hit by the plane.
I had read somewhere, that in 1945, a B-25 military plane, whose pilot had made a mistake after the plane had been deviated to the airport of La Guardia by the Newark Airport’s air-traffic controllers, due to too much fog, and had crashed against the Empire State building (then the world’s tallest building), so I was internally damning the builders, who had learned nothing in spite of the many years gone since that accident happened in NYC, when a second plane hit the other tower, and then I realized it was a terrorist attack.
The anger I felt against the builders of the hit tower turned to astonishment first, and rage against the Muslim kidnappers afterward, as in the T.V. the news journalists began to say that it was a Muslim’s terrorist act.
When the first tower went down, I felt immense compassion and sadness for the horrible death of so many innocent people.
Based on what happened in the accident in 1945, in which there were “only” 14 deaths, including 3 aircrewmen, and a fire put down rapidly by firemen, I was not expecting a collapse of the towers at all.
The collapse of the second tower woke me up and caused quite an impression on me, as I could not believe my eyes.
All the same, I continue to think that nobody deserves that kind of death.
A few years before I had visited the Twin Towers — as a tourist — with my wife Isabel, and I remember we had a coffee in a restaurant — “ Windows of the World” — at the top of one of the towers.
I remember poking my head out and having felt dizzy heights, looking at people and the cars so small, down there below.
I don’t even want to imagine what those people felt, trapped in the burning towers and unable to escape, impotent and at that enormous height!
In my new job, I spent a lot of time in Chile, as we had to execute a plan in Santiago with a Chilean department store, with which C had signed a contract negotiated by N (HO’s Executive) and myself, to sell A&H personal insurance to the store’s client base holders of the store credit card in Chile, and in two other neighboring countries in which the store had operations at the time.
The idea was to offer by phone a C’s insurance plan, designed together with the captive insurance broker of the store, to the store’s customers holding the store-card (of which the store in Chile alone had more than 1 million).
The first campaigns we executed successfully through a third party call center (the S call center).
Later, the store requested we used a call center that the store’s management itself had ordered built in-house, as they were concerned about data security and its confidentiality.
As a matter of principle, I argued against the idea, but the truth was that we understood and shared their concerns, and provided we obtained at least the same selling results and not higher costs, it was indifferent to us to use one call-center or the other.
We ran a test and obtained even a better response utilizing the store’s call center, so we began to use, — and pay for its use — the store’s own call center.
