Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.
Since my coworker has left to come back to the states and my friend from Buenos Aires is also at his home, this has been a boring week so far. That is OK though since I have used the time alone to catch up on sleep (about 10 hours last night). Also since I am alone I have not been eating near as much. Dinner the last 2 nights has been bread, cheese and some chips that I bought from the grocery store on Sunday afternoon. So 2 meals for less than $6 US. Not a bad deal for my company that is footing the bill for my food. Tonight though I am going to order room service and hopefully have a nice meal. I only have 3 more days alone before another coworker from the states arrives and then I will not be alone any more. Also a few of my trainees have volunteered to be my guide the next 2 nights while I am alone and to them I am grateful.
Training is still going very well. The entire team is catching on to the processes that they need to master by the time I leave in 12 days. Next week we start doing real work and I will be there in a mentor role rather than a trainer role. This means that I will not be in a training room with a projector but will have to walk around a lot to all of their cubicles so I might try to sneak in my tennis shoes so my feet are not screaming at me by the end of the day. Since there are 19 more people that are going to be trained by my coworker who is coming on Friday, the team leader / manager of my group has been with that new group all week. This leaves me alone to run the whole show. While it is a little scary to have all the responsibility it is also a pat on the back to me (I think) that he feels comfortable to leave me in charge. Time will tell if this was a good choice I guess. I am starting to head in about 1 hour early to meet with the manager to give him an overview and some extra training as he is missing out.
I did get the chance to go to a "gas" station today as I am having the manager pick my up at this new hotel as it is close to work. We needed to get propane (yes, his car and many cars down here run on propane). I am told it is cleaner, has higher octane and gets better mileage but has about 20% less power than gasoline. You pull up and they open your gas door on the side of your car and there is a little nozzle there like you would see if you were filling up your car tire (not quite the same, but the same concept). The service guy sticks the hose in there and then releases the gas and very quickly you are filled. The tank has to fit in the trunk so it cannot hold that much so you cannot get as far on a tank as you would with a car that holds gas but everyone here mostly drives in the city so this is not an issue. I think this would be annoying if you had a long commute.
Driving downtown is a little scary too especially on the side streets as there are no STOP or YIELD signs. You cannot see if anyone is coming the other way or not because the buildings obstruct your view. This is quite an adventure for me as basically it is one giant game of chicken the whole trip to wherever you are going. At night you flash your lights to see if someone else is coming, during the day you honk your horn. But if there are 2 cars coming and each are close to arriving at the intersection at the same time it is a matter of who blinks first. If you sit in the back seat and pretend that the front windshield is a screen and you are just watching a movie or a video game it makes the ride easier. Once you remember you are in danger of dying at every intersection then you cannot enjoy the ride as much.
Well it is time for the wife to call. Hopefully the team can take me to some exciting places and I can spice the blog up a little. Until then...
Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.
Jon
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