I fell asleep last night relatively quickly, but woke up again around 2am with an aching head. Being a trained body therapist, I quickly realized that I'd been clenching my teeth and holding some of my weight off of my pillow. Holding on to the stress a bit, do you think? So I did some self treatment, some breathing exercises, but it was still after 4am when I finally fell asleep again.
When my alarm went off at 6:30, it took a few minutes for my eyes to unblur, but otherwise I didn't feel too bad. I got ready, had breakfast with Angela and we headed off to the office again. Sadly, it's just a wee bit too far from the hotel to realistically walk, so they have a driver pool at the office and we get picked up every morning. Of course, it worked out that our first sunny day here was a day that I couldn't face wearing my contacts, but we weren't really outside that long, so it was ok.
Angela and Collin had a full day of management-type meetings booked, so I was on my own with the developers. I spent the full day learning about the additions to the 1.3 release. They're really added some interesting and well thought out applications and I was very impressed with their planning documentation, which is much better than some of the dreck we see at home. They all seem 100% on board with having us do their doc, which is nice. We're not used to having much enthusiasm aimed our way, so I have to admit that I'm enjoying that.
I also got to have a bit more personal discussion with some of them - it's a little awkward because there are very few women and everyone I've been dealing with is young and male. Combined with the cultural and language differences, it was hard to get rolling. But apparently I made a good impression on the first guy who talked about something other than strictly product, because the rest were much more willing to take the plunge. Fortunately, their English is very good, because I'm still working on my three words of Serbian! Did you know that pigs are considered good luck here?
We had lunch in the cafeteria again, this time with the QA team. I had a stuffed chicken breast, green beans and cucumber salad - I picked a plate with a much smaller portion this time. It was good but didn't live up to yesterday's offering. I was back at the 1.3 demos in the afternoon and the jet lag hit hard around 2pm. My eyes wouldn't focus, it was hard to hold up my head and I just wanted to curl up on the conference table to sleep. By the nature of the universe, this was of course right in the middle of an explanation of the most complex application all day. I took a ton of notes and can only hope that they make sense later. It only lasted about an hour and then I got my second wind - if you could call it that. I finished up around 4 and by 5, Angela and I were getting a ride back to the hotel.
We decided to see if we could find a restaurant that had been recommended to us. The luck was with us, because I managed to walk us right up to it! And it turned out to be a great recommendation! The menu was huge, but in the end I had the best Greek salad I can remember, followed by mussels in tomato, white wine and rosemary and cheesecake for dessert. What I really wanted was the apple strudel with vanilla ice cream, but it was full of walnuts. Damn! Angela had roast duck breast with a celery puree and a layered chocolate and mousse creation for dessert. Along with a bottle of sparkling water, the bill came to just under 5000RSD , so about $50CAN. For that quality at home, we'd have been looking more like $80-100.
It's about 8:30 now. I'm awake, but I can feel the tired spininess lurking under my buzz of keeping busy. I'm still hoping to be able to see some markets and maybe the fortress, but it hasn't definitely been planned yet. I guess we'll see what tomorrow brings.
When my alarm went off at 6:30, it took a few minutes for my eyes to unblur, but otherwise I didn't feel too bad. I got ready, had breakfast with Angela and we headed off to the office again. Sadly, it's just a wee bit too far from the hotel to realistically walk, so they have a driver pool at the office and we get picked up every morning. Of course, it worked out that our first sunny day here was a day that I couldn't face wearing my contacts, but we weren't really outside that long, so it was ok.
Angela and Collin had a full day of management-type meetings booked, so I was on my own with the developers. I spent the full day learning about the additions to the 1.3 release. They're really added some interesting and well thought out applications and I was very impressed with their planning documentation, which is much better than some of the dreck we see at home. They all seem 100% on board with having us do their doc, which is nice. We're not used to having much enthusiasm aimed our way, so I have to admit that I'm enjoying that.
I also got to have a bit more personal discussion with some of them - it's a little awkward because there are very few women and everyone I've been dealing with is young and male. Combined with the cultural and language differences, it was hard to get rolling. But apparently I made a good impression on the first guy who talked about something other than strictly product, because the rest were much more willing to take the plunge. Fortunately, their English is very good, because I'm still working on my three words of Serbian! Did you know that pigs are considered good luck here?
We had lunch in the cafeteria again, this time with the QA team. I had a stuffed chicken breast, green beans and cucumber salad - I picked a plate with a much smaller portion this time. It was good but didn't live up to yesterday's offering. I was back at the 1.3 demos in the afternoon and the jet lag hit hard around 2pm. My eyes wouldn't focus, it was hard to hold up my head and I just wanted to curl up on the conference table to sleep. By the nature of the universe, this was of course right in the middle of an explanation of the most complex application all day. I took a ton of notes and can only hope that they make sense later. It only lasted about an hour and then I got my second wind - if you could call it that. I finished up around 4 and by 5, Angela and I were getting a ride back to the hotel.
We decided to see if we could find a restaurant that had been recommended to us. The luck was with us, because I managed to walk us right up to it! And it turned out to be a great recommendation! The menu was huge, but in the end I had the best Greek salad I can remember, followed by mussels in tomato, white wine and rosemary and cheesecake for dessert. What I really wanted was the apple strudel with vanilla ice cream, but it was full of walnuts. Damn! Angela had roast duck breast with a celery puree and a layered chocolate and mousse creation for dessert. Along with a bottle of sparkling water, the bill came to just under 5000RSD , so about $50CAN. For that quality at home, we'd have been looking more like $80-100.
It's about 8:30 now. I'm awake, but I can feel the tired spininess lurking under my buzz of keeping busy. I'm still hoping to be able to see some markets and maybe the fortress, but it hasn't definitely been planned yet. I guess we'll see what tomorrow brings.
No comments:
Post a Comment