Tag: travel
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Soul Training
I’m two weeks into an eight-week residency in ‘beautiful’ Port Allen, Louisiana. For those not up to speed on their American cities and states, Port Allen is on the other side of the Mississippi from ‘beautiful’ Baton Rouge (and about an hour up the coast from New Orleans – you’ve heard of that, right?). Both Baton Rouge and Port Allen pretty much exist only for the petroleum industry (hence my being here), and both sides of the river are chock full of refineries, tank farms, and barge moorings. Both cities tend to prepend ‘beautiful’ to any mention of their names… Read more
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Farewell Tour
I’ve just finished my latest work assignment – three years doing the documentation, training, change management and knowledge management for an implementation of SAP Retail. It was a really interesting project, and I’ve learnt more about retail operations than any sensible person would want to know. Being a contractor, it’s inevitable that at the end of the project I would be ‘dispensed with’. This is my fourth large SAP implementation, so the fourth time I’ve been let go. It’s always difficult (I suffer separation anxiety), but you get used to it. One of the activities I always go through is a… Read more
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Turning Japanese #1: Food
My current project is implementing a new SAP system at some of our warehouses in the U.S, Japan, and Europe. When I joined the project I relished the possibility of going to Japan – I’d only been here once before, for a mere 24 hours, in transit from Singapore to Houston, so the possibility of a longer stay was enticing. Six months into the project I managed to wrangle my first trip. I’d originally conceived of this as a Change Management dog and pony show for myself and my immediate supervisor, but by the time I’d floated it past management, several other members… Read more
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You are not free to roam…
I recently bit the bullet and bought the BlackBerry Bold I’d coveted for so long. One of the primary drivers was that I’m due to spend a fair bit of time in Japan this year, and I wanted a phone that I could use over there. My first trip is fast approaching (next week), and as part of my preparations, I thought I’d check the details of my ‘phone plan. Sadly, it appears that although my ‘phone will technically work in Japan, actually using it there is a whole ‘nother ball game. To start with, AT&T list the international roaming charges in Japan… Read more
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Refining my appearance
After four months on my new project, I finally got the chance to travel beyond my cubicle. All the way to our refinery at ‘beautiful’ Baton Rouge, Louisiana. We’re implementing (among other things) a new dock management system, and I had to go and train some of the users on how to use it. The site is on Scenic Highway, but I think this must be an attempt at suspension of disbelief, because you’d be pretty hard-pushed to find a place less ‘scenic’ than this – it’s just a huge collection of tanks, pipes, and chimneys which takes up all… Read more