Back to business

It has been a while since the last post. It is not that there is nothing to say, quite the opposite!! I've been traveling around and had visitors home so... But this weekend was a quite nice weekend at home...well, except for yesterday night that I went to have dinner in a Thai restaurant and then played bowling ;-)

A couple of days ago I watched Brigitte Jones'diary and I like the way she sumarises life... so If I follow that model...

Age: you know that one I don't need to repeat it

Weight: 55 kilos,

Cigarrets: none

Number of meetings since last post: 16 (yes, office life...)

Number of planes taken since last post: 8 (good my fear for flying is disapearing...)

So where have I been?

1) Bergen: a nice but rainy city on the west coast of Norway. This city has a record of 90 days of rain in a row!! This is my most common destination, as I have to travel to our office there very frequently, sometimes even once every other week! At least it is just a 50 minutes flight and the food in the cantineen is better than the one in Oslo :-)

2) Iran: YES, this is one of the most exotic trips I've done so far in my life. Honestly I never planned on visiting the Middel East so this was quite an interesting experience.

I will not lie to you, I was a bit nervous. We hear so much about women's condition there and how strict rules are that you are very self-consious...

I travel via Frankfurt and met my boss there to continue to Tehran. I'm very happy and grateful that he travelled with me. He had been there several times and knows how everything works.

The business class in Lufthansa was very nice. It was a bit funny that I was going there as a project leader to meet the managers of the contractor company and still a was watching "Happy feet" in the plane (You know, the one of the penguin that dances tap :-) SO cute!!)

Anyway, we arrive in Tehran at 1:30 am. The city from the plane looks very dense, lights, lights and more lights, very long roads and in general low buildings. Before landing the flight attendance gave the message that, by law, all "females" should wear the headscarf when they are in public places. I had gone shopping with an Iranian friend so she had told me all about the "fashion" there. It is not only the headscarf but also that you (women of course) should wear a long blouse or jacket that covers half the legs and clearly (?) long sleeve.

We had a chauffeur from the company waiting for us to take us to the Hotel. It was a very nice one. We arrived there at 3 in the morning to go to the office early next day. In the room there were pistachio nuts and chocolates waiting for me :-)

Nuts are the thing in Iran (apart from carpets, of course) My boss was very kind to find a spot in our agenda so that the chauffeur took us to a store to buy nuts. It was VERY nice, very special place (for me at least). It was so crowded! And you could taste from (almost) everything in the store(see the picture!). A bought like three kilos of nuts!! There were (still are) very nice!!!

In general, with all the clothes I had on me I found it very warm but the temperature was not more that 18 degrees or so... Everybody was very friendly and nice to us. The city looks pretty much as one from the 70's...

The traffic is a real problem (reason for us to start very early in the morning and leave very late from the office to avoid it!!) There are about 16 million people and 5 million cars in the city...you can tell... coming from Scandinavia where the cities have such a good and clean air... it was a contrast. AH!!! And crossing the streets! that is suicidal!! The only time I did it I had our chauffeur as a shield stopping (?) the traffic. I had never seen such a thing, even coming from Caracas!!

Another interesting thing is when you leave the country. There are separated queue for women and men to go through security!! But I must say it was the only time in my life that I saw an advantage of being in a women's queue...We were just two while the men's queue was super long :-)

Well, the work went fine and here you see a picture of me in the meeting. There you can also see my boss beside me.