Less Than 120 Hours

Week #4…  Monday, 9/30/13  --  Everyday from here on out has to be a productive day.  Five more work days...  As the days roll on, it seems like Hajira and I continue to create new documents.  An 'Employee Feedback Survey' and an 'Ipe Mission Statement' document are the two most recent.  It’s ironic how the mind works.  One part of my brain tells me to shut down new document creation because time is running out, while the other part of my brain says to create any documents Ipe might need because once we head home, there will be no more commitment of time to our project.  The part that says give them as much documentation & process as you can wins out; I'm just not sure for how long.  

                                       Lumia Brainstorming with the CSC Team

          

As we start the final week, our interns (Aline & Lumia) are working just as hard as Hajira and I are working.  We have created documents written in English.  Aline and Lumia are needed because they are going to translate them into Portuguese for the Ipe.  Some of our shorter documents have already been translated, but the larger documents will obviously take a lot of time.  We have a 44+ page document, in addition to a 15 page document.  (These are 2 of our longest documents.)  Also, we’ve created a summary Power Point (.ppt) document to capture the essence of our 4 weeks.  This is approximately 30 slides.  We will present this on Thursday morning.  The clock is ticking.

                     

Ana presented Ipe, via a tour, to a small group of school children who come from a part of town called Cidade Jardim (Garden City).  She captured the students’ interest and they all seemed to listen intently.  (Usually, Guilherme’ gives the tours and lectures, but today, Ana filled in admirably for him.)  Also in the early afternoon, Camila (a local UFU student) came by to tend to Ipe’s vegetable gardens. 

                   

On my way back to the hotel, I saw a juggler, on a very tall unicycle, at the intersection right next to the hotel.  As if that visual wasn’t amazing enough, he was at a red light and was actually juggling 3 pins (that sort of looked like small bowling pins) while facing traffic.  Before the light turned red, he solicited drivers in the queue for contributions.  This is not that uncommon in Uberlandia.  Over the past 3 weeks, I’ve seen people juggling balls, torches, and knives at intersections.  People will do and try anything to get income; regardless of what country they live in.   

During the time that I was patiently waiting for the unicycle juggler to start up again, the skies started to open up.  I really wanted to get a picture of this sight.  However, good old Mother Nature had different plans.  Rain began to fall rather heavily, so I quickly made my way up the steep hill to the hotel lobby. 

Tonight we held our final CSC Team meeting at 8PM.  Larissa, our local CDS consultant, and Bruno, our IBM CSC focal point, hosted the meeting.  For about 90 minutes, all of the CSC Teams provided updates on the positives and negatives of the prior week.  Additionally, we were also given a detailed itinerary for the rest of the week.  Prior to our meeting, I knew this week was going to be busy.  However, after this meeting, we were told about new commitments and we all realized, the week just got a little busier.

#ibmcsc brazil