A Study in Neutrality

Friday, April 11 It's here, my last day of work.  I promise, I'd work more if I could but my work permit limits me to the 13th, so I legally have to stop working.  Quel dommage!  😜  At coffee today, I learned the names of the fingers: pouce, indice, grand, annulaire, et l'auriculaire.  It was a fun "aha!" moment: the index finger makes sense, middle/big makes sense, and annulaire simply maps to ring.   While pouce/thumb is unclear the explanation for pinky was easily demonstrated: it's the finger that best fits in your ear 😆  A parting gift from my meeting earlier in the week with my head honcho was a chocolate bunny (they've been in stores in preparation for Easter).  Since my suitcase is too heavy for a 1lb chocolate rodent, I opted to share it with my colleagues.  But they had me do the cutting. I'll miss our little sweets table and after-lunch coffees.  It's so neat to have this little bonding ritual occuring in various langua...

Thursday, April 10  Today was my first and only full day at the 2nd site.  I'd originally had about 4 hours of meetings planned but my colleague made sure that I ended up spending 8 hours meeting people at the facility.  First, I'm grateful that he was willing to put so much energy into ensuring I met almost everyone for my last day at this site, but secondly, it was exhausting 😂  That being said, it was super cool to see a very wide range of perspectives in the company and different tools of the trade.  I had one particularly funny moment about a door in the perfumery department opening automatic; I'd thought it was related to things just happening according to the perfumer's will 😆.  I even ended up talking to someone quite high up on the train ride back to Gare Cornavin, turns out she'd spent several years working in New Brunswick, NJ! After work, my colleague and his wife had invited me to join them at their house for dinner, which was an incredibly k...

Wednesday, April 9 A whirlwind day again but, boy, was it a good one.  Starting out at one site, I got a nice tour of a very complicated reaction chain followed by a tour of the process safety labs.  Then I had to rush off to the next site, where I managed to catch lunch with the colleague who'd been one of the first to welcome me to the area.   I feel like he's become a very good mentor to me and I appreciate him and his wife having received me so warmly.  Maybe he's living vicariously through me but he was super helpful in organizing a few extra visits today; I was a little uncomfortable with him introducing me to everyone as "the guy who's going to take over engineering" but I appreciate the vote of confidence 😆  I didn't have time between conversations to make notes so I'll have to carry the info in my head until I can write it all down.  Eventually, it came to an end and I left the office during rush hour; there's a big difference in rush hou...

 Tuesday, April 8 It's weird to think that I'm still meeting some people on-site after 6 weeks, and yet here we are.  I had two very interesting conversations today: one was with a chemist who grew up near Interlaken and the other with an asset manager.  With the chemist, he told me a bit about his history and career with the company but really he was most excited to give me suggestions about things to visit in the Berner Oberland.  It must've been 20 minutes of work talk before he unleashed a torrent of excited recommendations of things for me to see and do around Interlaken.  Two of the items I'd already heard about but I appreciated his recommendations for rainy day activities too as a back up.   I felt bad having to eventually tear myself away from the chemist, I didn't want to stop him but I was late to have lunch with the asset manager.  Turns out asset manager's role is to examine equipment availability around the world and balance producti...

 Monday, April 7 Thus marks the beginning of the goodbye tour.  I had a lot of good discussions today, most involving a café.  And each one led right into the next such that I didn't have time to record my notes 😅 I'm realizing the wisdom in leaving a bit more buffer period between discussions, something to remember the next time I'm planning visits/discussions like a crazy person. In my discussions, the subject of tarifs kept coming up; it seems my ostrich routine here can only be so effective when the landscape is ablaze.  Four separate people of 4 very different departments mentioned them, I suppose after we'd exhausted work topics it is only natural to move to current American-inflicted events.   Spotted while waiting for the tram this morning: Nice. I took dinner this evening with a colleague who I'd first met on my very first visit to the site in France for what would be my first big-boy business trip.  It was great to be able to sit 1:1 and lea...

Sunday, April 6  I realize now just how sleepy the little berg of Lauterbrunnen is: my hotel/restaurant closed at 8pm last night and didn't have any employee handling the hotel this morning.  The checkout system is simply putting the physical key in a letterbox 😂 I'd hoped to leave my luggage at the restaurant and do a bit of exploring in the morning, but then I decided to simply hold on to my room until I left around 10:30 😆 I guess the hotel saves on labor by working completely online while guests get to benefit from honor system checkouts.   My room came with a surprisingly nice balcony from which one can enjoy the view of the sleepy little town or admire the play of light on distant peaks and massifs. I managed to snag a cable car up the valley wall on the opposite direction of yesterday: from Lauterbrunnen to Greutschalp.  I wasn't the only person, there was a ton of people with snowport gear going up too and we all snagged the train from the télécabine s...

Saturday, April 5 I'd planned to be out of Bern first thing in the morning but opted to sleep in a bit; and I'm glad I did.  An extra hour of sleep under my belt went a long ways today and having the opportunity to walk the old town of Bern was nice.  Honestly, I think the old town of Bern was nicer than Zurich's and Geneva's; it felt like it'd been integrated into modern times but also kept an old town atmosphere.   I was tempted to have some milk with my breakfast at the hotel, but I was too intimidated by the milk carton; I didn't want to botch opening the thing up and then put it back in the communal fridge 😅 I don't know Switzerland's government but I'm guessing this is an important building for the federal government  It took it a bit of effort not to wander through the market, the idea of buying some bread and cheese was tempting but I didn't want to get too distracted.   The view from the government building terrase looks out over a bend...