Portuguese Fortune Cookies?
Oct 17 2007

So the fortune cookie saga continues and it continues in Portuguese!  A reporter for BBC – Brazil saw my following posts on fortune cookies:

Those Darn Fortune Cookies (I was almost mentioned on the front page of the NY Times business section!)

Comments Now Working and Fortune Cookies

and emailed me to see if I would be willing to be interviewd for an article she was writing on fortune cookies.  She promised me fortune and fame that I would be mentioned because she was writing for BBCBrasil.com.  So, I said sure I’ll talk with you.  So the article called ‘Biscoitos da sorte’ ganham versão pessimista nos EUA was posted yesterday, October 16, 2007, and pretty much the only thing I recognize is my name. 🙂  I’m sure it is a great story.  If any of my readers or visitors happen to know how to read and translate Portuguese, please let me know what it says.

I happened to be eating at FireBowl Cafe again earlier this week and we grabbed some more fortune cookies that said:

  • Right now there’s an energy pushing you in a new direction.
  • It’s one of those low-key days that you’d rather spend just chilling.
  • Today is the day you let it go.  Your chance will come. 
  • When the moment comes, take the last one.  (I’m kind of wishing I didn’t take the last one of something I ate last night because my tummy hurts right now!)

Right now I’m thinking (in addition to the fact that my tummy hurts) that FireBowl Cafe should be paying me good money (or at least send me a bag of fortune cookies) because I’ve mentioned their name on all of these fortune cookie posts!

In case anyone is wondering, I do actually eat lunch at other places. Today I met with some of my Advisors at a local Austin fave, Chez Zee.

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2 Comments on “Portuguese Fortune Cookies?”

  1. 1 Caue said at 9:24 PM on March 9th, 2008:

    This is what the whole thing says… more or less… sorry not a perfect translater….

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    Aruni Gunasegaram, 37 years old, was lunch with her husband at a Chinese restaurant in Austin, Texas, and led a susto to open the biscuit of luck, served after the meal saying, “Anything you do today is prone to failure. ”

    Aruni, que naquele dia estava trabalhando em um projeto novo para a sua companhia, não conseguiu tirar a frase da cabeça. Aruni, who that day was working on a new design for their company, failed to take the phrase of the head.

    “Começamos a ter alguns problemas e fiquei pensando se aquilo estava acontecendo por causa dos biscoitos”, conta a empresária. “We started to have some problems and I was wondering whether what was happening because of biscuits,” says the entrepreneur.

    Os conhecidos ‘biscoitos da sorte’ trazem palavras de sabedoria ou profecias vagas, mas, assim como Aruni, clientes de restaurantes chineses ao redor dos Estados Unidos também começam a se deparar com frases negativas ao abrir a guloseima. The known ‘biscuits of luck’ bring words of wisdom prophecies or vague, but, as Aruni, clients of Chinese restaurants around the United States also begin to encounter sentences losses to open the guloseima.

    “É a vida”, diz Bernard Chow, diretor de marketing da Wonton Food, que fabrica 4,5 milhões de biscoitos da sorte por dia, entre ele, os biscoitos “cautelosos”, como a empresa prefere chamá-los. “It’s life,” says Bernard Chow, director of marketing for Wonton Food, which produces 4.5 million of the fortune cookies a day, between him, the biscuits “cautious” as the company prefers to call them.

    “Não necessariamente todo o dia será o melhor dia da sua vida”, justifica Chow ao ser indagado sobre o que levou a companhia a dar esse toque mais realista aos biscoitos. “Not necessarily all day is the best day of their life,” Chow justified to be asked about what prompted the company to make this more realistic touch to biscuits.

    ‘Boa risada’ ‘Good laugh’

    No catálogo da Wonton Food, um dos maiores fornecedores de biscoitos da sorte dos Estados Unidos, estão registradas 10 mil frases. In the catalogue of Wonton Food, one of the largest suppliers of biscuits fate of the United States, are registered 10 thousand phrases.

    Entre as “cautelosas”, Chow conta que sua predileta é: “Trabalhe para o melhor, prepare-se para o pior”. Among the “cautious”, Chow mind that their predileta is: “Work for the best, prepare for the worst.”

    “É uma boa risada. “It’s a good laugh. As pessoas também gostam porque serve como um conselho”, argumenta. People also like because it serves as a board, “argues.

    Para algumas pessoas, entretanto, determinados ‘conselhos’ podem chegar em momentos bem delicados ou inoportunos, como foi o caso de Karyn Turnbull, relatado ao jornal The New York Times . For some, however, certain ‘advice’ can get at times and delicate inoportunos or, as was the case of Karyn Turnbull, reported the newspaper The New York Times.

    Ela eo noivo foram comemorar o noivado em um restaurante chinês, onde tiveram o primeiro encontro, quando ele abriu o biscoito que alertava sobre um “dia desastroso” em sua vida. She and the groom were celebrating the engagement in a Chinese restaurant, where they had the first meeting, when he opened the biscuit that warned about a “day disastrous” in his life.

    “Nós rimos e ele disse que se tivesse recebido o biscoito antes talvez não tivesse pedido minha mão”, contou Karyn ao jornal. “We laughed and he said that if he had received the biscuit before might not have requested my hand,” Karyn to the newspaper.

    Reclamações Complaints

    Os novos biscoitos, em alguns casos, chegaram a causar apreensão entre os clientes nos restaurantes. The new biscuits, in some cases, came to cause concern among customers in restaurants.

    “Não sou muito supersticiosa, mas por uns dois dias fiquei pensando que algo poderia dar errado”, conta Aruni que, após o primeiro biscoito ‘de azar’, resolveu pedir à garçonete um segundo, que dizia “Pode haver uma crise surgindo, prepare-se”. “I am not very superstitious, but for us two days I was thinking that something could go wrong,” Aruni that after the first Cracker ‘chance’, decided to ask the garçonete a second, who said “There may be a crisis arise, prepare Up. ”

    “Eles eram deprimentes”, diz Aruni. “They were depressing,” says Aruni. “Geralmente eles dizem que as coisas ficarão melhores, que você vai ganhar dinheiro ou vai encontrar uma pessoa boa, mas esses eram ruins.” “Generally they say that things will be better, you will make money or you will find someone good, but these were bad.”

    A Wonton Food recebeu e-mails de clientes reclamando da novidade, mas Chow diz que a maioria das pessoas aceitou bem as mensagens de “cautela”. The Wonton Food received emails from customers complaining of novelty, but Chow says that most people accepted and the messages of “caution”.

    No entanto, a empresa resolveu tirar de circulação alguns dizeres negativos demais – Chow não revelou quais. However, the company decided to take some movement saying too negative – Chow did not reveal which.

    A cadeia de restaurantes Fire Bowl Cafe, onde Aruni almoçou, também recebeu reclamações de alguns clientes, segundo David Schaare, gerente de uma das filiais em Austin. A chain of restaurants Fire Bowl Cafe, where Aruni almoçou, also received some complaints from customers, according to David Schaare, manager of one of the branches in Austin. Mas a empresa não pretende mudar de fornecedor. But the company does not intend to change supplier.

    Biscoitos da sorte negativos não são, contudo, uma completa novidade, pelo menos não em pequena escala. Cookies are not negative of luck, however, a complete novelty, at least not on a small scale.

    Na empresa Expressive Fortunes, que produz até 5 mil biscoitos da sorte por dia, o cliente é quem personaliza as mensagens. In Expressive Fortunes company, which produces up to 5 thousand cookies a day of luck, the customer is who personalizes the messages.

    Segundo a companhia, algumas pessoas, às vezes, pedem frases negativas como “Amanhã trará apenas tristeza e desgosto”. According to the company, some people sometimes ask negative phrases such as “Tomorrow will bring only sadness and regret.”

  2. 2 Aruni said at 8:59 PM on March 10th, 2008:

    Hi Caue – Wow! Thanks so much for the translation! That is really neat! Biscuits of luck is a neat way to say fortune cookies. 🙂