Formalities...

Good evening, good morning, good afternoon. Peruvians are quite formal in their greetings. Whether it be answering the phone or at the start of a handshake, a friendly "Good ....., senor", is a formality that I've come to enjoy. I'm probably more guilty than most for speaking in what might seem like foriegn tounges to non-English speaking folks when I start spewing out jargon and vernacular that I've either gathered or concocted on my own over the years. Adding a bit of formality into my daily speech is a good exercise for me.

I've spent most of my time tonight putting together a report and uploading photos and more reports to an interactive workspace floating around somewhere in the binary abyss of cyberspace. The files are huge and my connection is slow, so before I begin the process of uploading a ton of site photos, I figured that I'd stop in and say hello.

Someone down the street had a party last night, but the music was so stinkin loud it sounded like it was in my room. I staggered down to the hotel office at a fuzzy 2:30 am to find out what in the hell was going on because at first, it sounded like someone in the hotel was having a grand old time. The cop that does night watch came by and I asked him if there was anything he could do. He said negative ghostrider (or something like that in Spanish), and I went staggering back up to my room wondering what the cops in Peru actually do. They obviously don't hand out traffic violations, otherwise, there wouldn't be any cars on the road. They don't cite people for disturbing the peace. Littering in the streets appears to be encouraged by the looks of hte wayside in Chincha. I guess as long as he keeps the banditos from kidnapping this gringo, it's a job well done.

Work is busy as I'm involved in a new facet of the project that Golder is involved with. Constantly learning new things everyday. At times overwhelming, but probably no better way to learn it all than to pack it in. It has become apparent that there are some very smart people working on this job. I would have to say that this is the most educated "client" I have ever worked for...Usually a client, say for example BP, has personnel that know enough about geotechnical engineering to know the lingo and what the important questions are. The client reps working on this job not only know the lingo and the important questions, they know many of the answers to those questions and what's more, they got a handle on the design and construction ends of the project as well. I guess when you're dealing with over a billion dollar investment, you build your team around people who know their stuff.

The client representative that I work with and report to on a daily basis, Brad, is no exception. Brad has about 25 years of experience doing marine construction and design. Brad is a vocal and whitty Aussie of husky build in his mid 40s with a keen eye for recognizing problems before they arise. Besides wearing a pair of navy khakis, a blue denim shirt and contemporary RayBans every day, his frank nature is softened by his concern and mutual respect for his colleagues. I enjoy working with him as he always has something educational to profess...war stories of projects in the past or plans and schemes for the tasks at hand.

I find myself doing a daily balancing act where I want to open up to learn, but not so much to have green coming out of my ears. As my folks or Auntie Manka can attest to, I like to ask questions and learn new things. For now, I'm just trying to stay on top of what I need to do, do it well and hopefully pocket as much insight that I can from Brad and the other veterans moseying around the site.

I suppose it's time to call it a night. Got my mind set on a crepe-like flapjack filled with some sort of goodness for breakfast tomorrow. I'm not sure what that filling is, but it's damn good. I'll catch you on the flipside.

Scotty