Week 3

Monday. Start of week three here in Asuncion. The weather is still on the nippy side. I buckled and bought a fleece jacket over the weekend. My other light fleece hoody was being laundered and only came back today. At least I have something to alternate with. I had been wearing the pink hoody for most of the past 2 weeks!

I think the time passes more quickly during the week. All I do is get up, have some breakfast and then head off to the customer site. We spend 10 hrs there before heading back. By the time we're back at the hotel it's almost 7:30. A bit too late to really do much else. Plus, after being cooped up in an enclosed, air-conditioned environment, it just makes you that much more tired.

Yeah, I know. This is one REALLY exciting blog entry. But hey, it's something, right?

I am really hoping I can fly home Saturday and not have to stay the 4th week. We'll see. So far, most of the testing we're doing is going along pretty well. But, you never know...

Maybe I shouldn't blog about my work-related trips here. Vacation trips are more interesting.

Sweetness

Something I noticed at breakfast. And this goes for both of the hotels I've stayed or am staying at. There's an awful lot of sweet items. There are croissants filled with fruit preserves or dulce de leche. There are other pastries that are sugary sweet. There are cookies and other small sweet items. Aside from the sweet stuff there is also some fruit, breads and ham and cheese.

At the Andares del Agua, you can ask them to prepare something specific. A few times I've asked for fried eggs. Gotta have something warm sometimes.

Thursday, Asuncion, Paraguay

It's a national holiday here in Paraguay: Dia de la Paz del Chaco. However, being that we are on Canadian work week, my colleague and I went to the customer site. We were hoping to get this one last group of test cases done for this particular interface test. Alas, our being here would be for nought. Let's just say, nothing worked.

Some observations...

I read somewhere that there are still people who drive horse-drawn wagons. I've seen a few for sure on the ride from the hotel to the customer site. I have yet to successfully take a photo of one.

The roads here are not the smoothest I've seen. The main roadways seem to be the smoothest since they're paved in asphalt. However, I don't think they use the same methods as in North America. A lot of the streets I've seen so far are cobbled red brick. It makes for a very rough ride in the car. This would also explain why our driver always slows down on these roads. Of course, the car is not the newest thing either, but it runs!

The streets are not all level. It's almost as if some streets were added on at different times. There are intersections where there are significant dips and/or inclines. Again, gotta slow down for these. Sometimes there are these "gutters" that run right across the street. Then there are some streets that have speed bumps all along the entire length of the street. It's kinda like no two streets were built the same way.

Street lights are few and far between. I think they only put them up at the very busy intersections. Otherwise, you just go when you have an opening. Surprisingly, traffic just seems to flow like this. Since it's the norm, drivers expect it. There may have been some close calls, but I haven't seen any accidents yet.

The part of town my hotel is in is one of the nicer areas. The much swankier Sheraton is about a 5 minute (or 3 dollar) taxi ride away. There's a decent but small (by N. Am. standards) shopping center across the way. Not too far in Villa Morra is another nice shopping area with some nice bars, clubs and restaurants.

Last night, one of the guys down here on another project said he'd swing by to pick me up to go out for some dinner. I thought he'd grab a cab. Before he came by, he called and said something about meeting up with Sergio (this is another story) but will be by shortly. So I'm waiting in the hotel lobby, when I eventually see this car pull up. I saw a familiar hand wave at me. Huh? That's a friggin Mercedes. Apparently, this Sergio guy is some prosecutor in the ministry of justice. Yeah. Just HOW do these guys meet up with these people??

Anyway... We went over to the Sky Restaurant & Lounge. It's a really nice place. It's expensive by Paraguayan standards, I guess. Unfortunately, Sergio was not able to stay and have dinner with us as he had other things to attend to. So, we had some wine, some starters and dinner. By the time we finished it was a bit after 11PM. Yes, dinner starts pretty late here, no earlier than 8PM. Gotta splurge on the nice dinner once in a while.

Not sure what's happening tonight. Gotta see what the boys are up to. I don't think they're having as easy of a day as I have had so far.

Asuncion, Paraguay

Well, I made it here. After traveling for nearly 24 hours, I made it to Asuncion.

My flight left Saturday evening from Montreal to Toronto. From Toronto, it was about 10.5 hours to Santiago, Chile. After hanging around the Santiago airport for a few hours it was another 4.5 hours to Asuncion, with a short stop in Ciudad de le Este.

So it was Sunday a bit after 6PM when I finally got into my hotel room.

Monday, went to the local office and met briefly with the project manager. Met my colleague who was already here a week. We headed off to the customer site. We worked until 7PM. Afterwards, I met up with one of the other guys from work who's here with another guy for another project. They're here for another 2 weeks.

I'd update more, but with the hours I've been keeping so far, it's hard to find the time to write up a proper entry. I did manage to take a few pics on the car ride to the customer site this morning. I haven't uploaded them to the laptop yet to see how they came out. So be forewarned.

In the meantime, I'm just gonna chill a bit before heading out for some dinner tonight.