2012-08-13
Missed the closing ceremonies of the 2012 Olypmics. Oh well, I’m not a fan of the spice girls anyway 😉 A limo came and picked me up at 8pm, very nice. Niamh was duly impressed. Picked the other 3 guys up at work, and off to SFO. The flight left on time. Had an orange juice. A little person under two decided two scream and moan during the take off, and 4 hours later decide to repeat the performance. Well it was 3:30am but the local time was 5:30. Good flight other than the kiddie. Customs not a problem, however the declaration and associated paperwork was all in Spanish. I’m pretty sure I filled it out right. I guess we will see if I can leave on the 18th! I didn’t check my bag, and everyone got their bag. Found our driver, Luis, who didn’t speak a word. Arrived and had a ‘make your own omelet’, a bit of hard browns, cantaloupe, and a yogurt with almonds bits. Had pineapple and guava juice. They have free wifi here so can skype with the Fiona. Anywho, I’m going to now get a few winks. Goodtimes.
Ate at a place called El Bajio and had some very good enchiladas with the green mole sauce. It was very good with a coke. About a 10 minute walk from the hotel. Lots of traffic and people, and I didn’t get lost which in itself a small miracle. Only slept about 1.5 hours as I really do want to go to sleep tonight. I ran into Douglas and Winter who travelled from Singapore, a 26 hour flight, who were also eating at the restaurant! So we all walked back and now going to test the RN upgrade…oh… exciting.
So testing really didn’t happy, but went to dinner at a place called La Bodega where I had a negra modelo Michelada style, which is they put some lime juice in the bottom and then poor the beer in. Needless to say it ruined a perfectly good beer. I probably will not have that style of beer again. Oh well, at least I can say I tried it. The food was tastey, Tostadias de Tinga de Pollo, which were little tostada which chicken – three little ones. Sacnite order a new as appetizers too so I was very full. The decoration where neat too – they had 12 ounzes cans (coke or beer) all made up into little planes that had an LED light in them – it was pretty creative. Anywho a very successful first day and I was very tired – went to bed at 9pm.
2012-08-14
Woke up and went running. 2 miles. Mexico City is higher in elevation that Denver so really didn’t want to push myself. First day of the WW customer care meetings. I thought it went pretty good. . The TeleTech office is about 500 feet away from the hotel but we took a van there. The campus is very nice and they host about 5 different companies in this call center. Watched a kid named Adrian take some calls and there are some improvements we can do to RN. I wrote up some notes and shared them with the team. We had a 4 course meal for lunch – way too much a salad, roast beef sandwiches (but like a big hunk of meat not sliced up) and a cheese cake for desert. Wow. I walked back to the hotel as I thought it was silly to ride in a van. We went out to an Argentinean Restaurant called Cambalache which this time I just had a negra modelo well two of them. The dinner was tuna which is perfect – seared and done on the outside and pink in the middle – very good with some old/vinegar to put over it. The also had these papas soufflés, which is puffed up French fries – these are something that would go over well in the states which I’m surprised had not caught on as I’ve never seen them. Oh and lets not forget desert, vanilla ice cream with whiskey and chocolate. Yup, you read correctly whiskey, and it was great. Went to bed at 10.
2012-08-15
So Barry yelled at me for 2 hours this morning about the crappy website. Yeah for me. Good thing I ran 3 miles on the treadmill, and I walked to the Teletech office. Didn’t go to the QBR (quarterly business review for those of you who do not speak business acronyms), and instead fired off a few emails to my team to put together some screen shots of the new support home page and figure out how to make downloads fool proof. I think we did a pretty good job and the only reason we are running around with our heads cut off to repair a crappy site of over 3 years is the CEO decided it was a crap experience. We happen to agree so we are all fired up to make a change which just happens to be right this very instant. Lunch was again a 4 four course delight, pasta with cream sauce, chicken wrapped up with cheese, and some whipped cream thing. Regardless of a tasty lunch, I again walked back to the hotel but this time a little grumpy. At least dinner was good. It was a free night so Barry, Robert, Dominic, and myself ate at the bar down in the hotel on the ground floor. I had tortilla soup and a ham and cheese hot pocket. However the ham/cheese hot pocket was not out of a freezer and only 3 inches big, this was 6 inches big and freshly done. I had quite a few beers that evening three. We had a good session about the future of technical solutions which is the group I’m in under Barry with Robert and Dominic. We own the tool side of things which helps operations which is the agent side of things. Went to bed at 11:30.
2012-08-16
No running for me today, as it was the last day of the WW customer care meeting in Mexico City. Ehtisham (http://www.logitech.com/en-us/169/8051) showed up this morning which was pretty cool. He took a quick tour of the Teletech office and then operations gave their results, Pat went through the RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed) chart and Ehtisham made a few clarifying points which was nice to see. We talked with supply chain and cleared the air about how to get returns done in EMEA also a good thing to see. A pretty good day I would say since we had everyone in the room. Lunch was tortilla soup (which was better than the soup from dinner last night by a mile), some big pasta thing was served cold (didn’t each much of it), and some strawberries, berries drizzled in chocolate. Over all I would give it 3 stars for the started and desert, but the main was not that super in my opinion. I was working with my team to finalize the design to move forward with the website updates. I’m pretty sure I made Matt grumpy as we wants the perfect thing, but this is a patch job and we need a sense of urgency to get something to the CEO to show him we can can get something done even if it only takes us 3 years. Oh, well, the redesign will hopefully make everyone happy in the long term. Barry didn’t get a chance to show Ehtisham our little preso but said he would make it happen sometime before we left. I walked back to the hotel and we rushed out to the Villa Maria where I had some beef and guacamole that I cut up into strips on corn tortillas. Also they served these massive frozen/blended margaritas (I think you could fit 4 normal drinks into one of these puppies). They were so good I had another. Yeah Baby. We sat outside on this covered patio and it rained really, really hard and the wind blew too – it was ferocious for about 10 minutes and then it just drizzled. Back to the hotel and I had water and a negra modelo with Barry and Dominic. Went to bed at 12.
2012-08-17
Woke up at 3:45. Awesome. Went back to sleep got up at 5. Went down stairs and ran for 2 miles. It was like running on two frozen hams. Clunk, clunk when the feet. Awesome. In case you can’t tell I’m throwing in a bit of sarcasm here, eh. Oh, I’ve eaten breakfast at the hotel each morning – pretty good they have a make your own omelet bar and all the other stuff like cereal, yogurt, fruit, breads, and a bunch of hot things like bacon, sausage, has browns – I helped myself to an omelet first day but for each day after it has been corn flakes, yogurt, bacon, and fruit a nice little breakfast. I helped myself to my usual. Oh, and each morning we left at 8am in the morning and today was no exception. Off to the pyramids of Mexico City, Teotihuacan, I walked up to the top of the Sun Pyramid which is the bigger of the two and it started drizzling a little bit which put everyone in a grumpy mood. No one really wanted to be there but we didn’t climb the Moon pyramid since it was raining and there were a bunch of old people. Oh well. I never thought I would be back to Mexico City in the first place so it was great to go back and at least get to climb it again. Some people are digging into the Sun pyramid at the top and through the side looking for clues about its past I guess. I was nicer when we could go to the very top and touch the little pole that said you made it. Anywho, came back and Sacnite took us to a local market which was full of tourist stuff. I really didn’t get anything as your kids already have too many toys and clothing which they would just grow out of and stop playing with in 3 months. On the walk back from the market stopped at a local liquor store and picked a few 100ml bottles of tequila. Figured I would give some as gifts. I think I’ll pick up two more at the airport. Got back to the hotel and went to eat a local taco stand. It was pretty darn good. After eating luch made out way with Douglas and Paul to a tourist double decker bus and for 140 peso’s (~11 US dollars) got to go around the city and see the sights. I sat on the top while it briefly showered on us. It stopped after a bit, but took 3.5 hours to go around the city in the traffic. The traffic and driving to the restaurants and on this bus ride has been awe inspiring to think about how aggressive everyone is when driving. Pretty much everyone has a loose definition of stopping at lights, pedestrians, driving in lanes, or going around roundabouts – in short choas. There is a shopping mall that is about a 15 minute walk from the hotel, 222 La Reforma, the same place I went to on Monday that I went on for the tour. It dropped us back off at 6:30 and I ate at chili’s with Paul. It was probably one of the worst meals I’ve had in Mexico City. I forget that everything American outside of the US really just is not that great. Oh well perhaps sometime I’ll learn. Talked to Fiona for a bit and then went to bed at 9, needless to say I was a bit tired from the lack of sleep, running, and walking all day.
2012-08-18
The last day and check out is at 1. Woke up at 8, had my usual breakfast, and now finished typing up 5 days worth of Mexico City travels. It was fun and good to have everyone in the room. My flight leaves at 3:30 and the van comes at 1. I’m hoping there is no traffic this afternoon? It is just past 10:30 now and will probably update this on the plane if I’m bored which I will be since they show crap movies.