:The first work week is in the books. I'm starting to fall into somewhat of a routine finally. The nights still seem earlier than they actually are here. Work goes by pretty fast, not really sure why which leaves us with plenty of time to go out each night for dinner, walks and drinks. I've been trying to keep myself busy so I don't miss home too much, which except for a few moments here and there, hasn't been a problem yet. Most of my day is centered around this hotel, so it's a good thing it's a pretty nice hotel. It's a bit old in some places, but it could be a whole lot worse without a doubt. Without getting into the exciting details of work itself (note the heavy sarcasm), I'll run down what a typical day is like here so far for me...
7:45 a.m. - 8:00 a.m. (Local time of course)
Attempt to hit snooze, only to realize that the snooze doesn't work. Then turn on a light to set the alarm back 15 minutes, hoping I did it right. Then I throw a pillow over my head and attempt to get more sleep.
8:00-8:15
Take a shower. The bathroom is pretty nice. It's got marble floors and counter tops. The shower is also a jacuzzi bath tub, which I have yet to use. The shower itself is kind of weird; there are no curtains, and only a small glass divider that goes about a quarter ways length wise down the tube. Just enough so anyone taking a shower doesn't completely soak the floor, just enough for a small pond on the bathroom floor. I'm still afraid to use the bidet (sp?), anything that shoots up water high enough to be classified as a small geyser, I think I'll skip.
8:15 a.m.-8:30 a.m.Get dressed, set my fantasy baseball teams, send out any emails that need be, and check facebook. It's my relaxing time before the rigors of work.
8:30-8:40
The commute to work is kind of a bitch. It consists of waiting for an elevator. Now, I know what you are thinking, "Trav is bitching about waiting on an elevator?! Waaaaaaaaaa." Now mind you, these elevators only hold three grown size people, there are 14 floors, and everyone seems to be going somewhere on the elevators at that time in the morning. One morning, I did wait almost ten minutes, only to get on, and have it take me to every floor above me except for the one I wanted. I did finally figure out where the stairs are, I would have been toast if we would have had to evacuate this place. From here on out, it's the stairs for me.
8:40-8:59:55
The hotel offers breakfast for guests. It's got cereal, muffins, toast, breads, eggs, ham, fruit, yogurt and a bunch of other stuff. I usually snag some eggs and throw some chopped ham on them, nothing extraordinary about the eggs, bummer. Then I get some fruit. There is a lot of fruit, some which I don't know what it is. The grapes have seeds in them, as I found out the first morning as my first bite into the grape went "CRUNCH". The oranges are a bit more sour than what I'm used to. There are some pink fruit, which I think might be grapefruit, but I haven't been brave enough to check out yet. I stick to pears, peaches, apples and that kind of thing. The yogurt is a bit more runny than the stuff we have in the states, but it's pretty good. It's not a big breakfast, but enough to get me going.
8:59:55-9:00
Run down a flight of stairs to the conference room that we are using for our work. It's tough, but convenient.
9:01 a.m.-1:00p.m.
I cuss at printers mainly, and think of new, creative ways to call something a piece of crap. We are in a big conference room, which has to be kept in a climate controlled environment for the work we are doing. It hasn't been too bad yet, the temperature (23 degrees Celsius, +/- 2 degrees) has been around what we need and the humidity (50%, +/- 10%) has been bouncing around, but pretty much within the requirements. The maintenance people love it when we ask them if they can raise the temperature one degree.
1:00-1:30 or 2:00 p.m.
Eat lunch. Part of the deal when we got our rooms and conference room was that we would get free lunch as well (except for the weekends). The first few days, we got them catered down in our conference room. They would bring tons of food, and stuff that was more Argentine in nature. Lots of cheese, lots of vegetables, meats, breads, more food than we can eat. We were feeling guilty for wasting a lot of it. Then once you fill up on that, they bring the main course, which was steak for a few days, served different ways and is always good. Yesterday was chicken, but it was good as well. For drinks, it's water, and if you want plain water, you ask for "sin gas", or "without bubbles". It's always served in bottles, always from the same brand, everywhere I've been so far. Then they have Coke served in bottles, that's pretty much a city thing as well, at least where I've been. And everything is served in wine glasses. It's not a hotel thing either, pretty much everywhere I've ate, use some version of a wine type glass for water and pop. Even our drinking glasses they supply us are wine glasses.
2:00ish-5:30ish
After fighting to stay awake the first few hours after a huge lunch, and having Sidney flip me shit for yawning more times in one hour than should be humanly possibly, I try to learn colorful words in Spanish to express my displeasure of what I'm working on.
5:30-5:32
After work commute is better than the morning commute. Go up a flight of stairs, go through the bar area, head into the lobby to the elevator, push floor one, and walk into my room.
5:32-6:00
Plug in the laptop, and catch up on emails and facebook and anything else I might have missed. The hotel has wi-fi, but it's painfully slow. It might as well be dial up as fast as it is. So the half hour is about ten minutes of actual productivity.
6:00-7:00ish
The five of us (my lead, Chris, our boss, Joe, his daughter, Sandra, my coworker, Sidney and myself) head out to find someplace to eat. We usually ask the front desk on our way out to suggest something. We've had Italian, Spanish, and Argentine meals so far. The food has been beyond great. I can't say we've had a bad meal yet. Everything is so fresh, prepared well, and they make sure you don't go away hungry.
Last night was our night to an Argentine steak place. You walk in and it's like a big, long room, with a ton of tables in it. Argentinians eat dinner later, at least 8pm, and even later on Friday, so we are always before the crowds. So we are the only people in this steakhouse. At the front, the are slow cooking meats and that grabs you immediately. Succulent meats that look like they could melt of the bone. Then you go to the dining area, and there are stuffed animals all over the place. Peta's nightmare, but it didn't bother me a whole lot, I just wanted some dead cow. The place looks like it's straight out a Argentinian mafia movie, the winters, all older with their dark hair slicked back, look like they could pull out a tommy gun from under their trays and lay the place to waste. You order, and like most food establishments here, they aren't in a hurry to get you your food. Then the food starts coming, with baskets of bread. Then comes the empanadas, which is a beef filled pie kind of thing. They were amazing. Then my salad comes, and it's not a single salad, it's a big bowl of it. They shovel some onto my plate and sit the rest of to the side. It's lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions all tossed in some kind of vinaigrette. It was great as well. Then finally, my ribeye comes. The meat is tender, cooked exactly the way I like it, and better than most any steak I've ever had. It's huge as well. I end up giving a part of it to Sidney, but I'm more than full by the time I'm done.
7:00ish-to whenever
We've been walking around after dinner, taking in the sights and sounds of our local area. Sometimes we come back to the hotel, then go out a bit later, or just walker around right after dinner. Whatever it is, it's always interesting to take everything in. We to different areas as much as we can. It's amazing how different areas can change in only a few blocks. I've seen everything from homeless people laying in cardboard beds, to seeing Broadway like shows and an Opera house, all with in five miles of my hotel. Sidney and I have got out for drinks two different nights and both were different experiences. One place was a kind of hole in the wall type of place, but the people were nice and the drinks were cheap (seven bucks for a beer and a rum and coke). Last night was to a more crowded area, where we hit up a few different places. It also had tons of people sitting outside on the patios, soaking in the warm nights here. We ended up spending some time in an Irish bar, go figure, but it was a lot of fun. I also find it ironic that all the music in these places was American, everything from hip hop, to 90's to piano bar type music.
Whenver I get back until bed time
When I get back and now I'm in for the night, which has been usually after 11pm, I catch up on the internet again, and try to find a channel with american TV shows. I need something familiar around this time, just so the reality that I'm clear on the other side of the world doesn't kick in. I usually find Two and a Half Men, which I've never watched before, but it works for what I want.
That's a day in the life of Trav in Buenos Aires....more to come....
No comments:
Post a Comment