March 21, 2015 — It was just slipping into the wee hours of Saturday morning back home in Malaysia, where the temperatures ranged from the upper 70s to mid-80's, when the group of nine Malaysian seafood buyers made their way into the Cape Ann Seafood Exchange and Zeus Packing plant on the Harbor Loop.
With the time difference, it was just past noon today on the Gloucester waterfront and the dull gray that seemed to be the official color of this protracted winter, when it hadn't been snow-blindingly white, had settled onto the harbor like a shawl. Temperature held at a balmy 30 degrees. On the first day of spring.
Still, there was no gloom in the mood of the group, which had spent the morning touring the city's waterfront and some its shore-side businesses as the most recent guests of the Selling of Gloucester.
The campaign had run amok all week, stretching from the city's booth at the Seafood Expo of North America in Boston, through another state visit of international seafood buyers and companies on Monday and on into Friday, when Malaysia came calling.
"Gloucester to me, the first time being here, is a beautiful city, very special," said Andre C K Loo, director of C-Food Portions, a seafood buyer and food importer that does about $200 million worth of business a year out of Selangor, Malaysia. "It's very nice, with many old buildings."
But more importantly, he said, was the feeling the group had gotten from the businesses it had visited and the people it met.
"It's feels very real," he said.
The band of merry travelers, its own little Rolling Thunder Review led by city Economic Development Director Sal Di Stefano and tourism czarina Carol Thistle, had just come from Mortillaro's Lobster Co. and Ocean Crest Seafood down The Fort and Fisherman's Wharf Seafood on Rogers Street.
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