April 10, 2010

2 weeks in Germany

Good day people,

Here I am again for a little story telling of my adventures abroad. We are Saturday and it's 8pm and today was my second day off.  We arrived in Bremen last Monday and we're staying at the Maritim Bremen hotel. As I said before, the travel day is always a day off, so I took the opportunity to go for a walk. There was a carnival/fare right next to the hotel so I went there. I was impressed by the quality of the rides they had there. It was like a mini La Ronde :) It was funny to see all the signs in German. They had a mushroom specialty that I tasted but not really liked. They also had long grilled sausages and I had one of those..they're a foot long lol. I can already hear you make jokes about me eating foot long sausages..go ahead it's alright, but I'll take down the names and prepare my vengeance at Big Foot lol.

This week was a special week. First, it is a bit like Stuttgart where the arena is literally 2 min away from the hotel. In fact, they're so close that we don't even have to go outside, the buildings are connected by a tunnel.
Second of all, we had the "info sessions" for the artists. Management talks to the artits about the tour plan for next year, immigration, and taxation. I had to book the conference room and make all the necessary arrangements. Everything went well and I'm glad it's over. However, next week there is the President's tour. I could compare it to CGI's annual meeting where everyone can go and ask questions to the company's founders. But instead, the founders come on tour. Also, the artists had their bi-monthly physical tests. Just like athletes, they perform various exercises (muscular, cardio etc.) to measure the physical abilities. It was fun to watch them suffer lol.
On my side, I suffered too, because for the first time, I did 12 hour work days, 4 days in a row...let's say that today, I really enjoyed relaxing at the hotel. I guess that's the reality of the job. Sometimes it can be slow, boring with a lot of downtime, and other times it can be so rushing that time flies. This week went by like a breeze!
Talking about breeze, The weather is just okay, very sunny during the but as soon as the sun comes down, the temperature drops quite a lot. and it's windy. I heard you had very warm, not to say hot temperatures in Montreal recently. I gotta say that I do want to come back for that because we didn't have any really hot and sunny days since I'm here.

We're starting to talk about tour break here, there are only 3 weeks left before the break. We were given a sheet where we could choose to have the cirque book a flight home for us, or we could decide to book our own flight elsewhere and be reimbursed up to a certain individual quote. I chose to let cirque take care of my flight as I do want to go home see my family, my girlfriend and you guys :). I need time to breathe and come back to my senses. Everything went so fast. To say that one month ago I didn't know if I was going or not, and that I only had one week from the day it was confirmed to the date of my flight. Looking back at the whole situation, it was quite stressful. However, I do not regret my decision and still very happy to work on tour. I'll definitely be better prepared for the next chunk of 10 weeks.

Tomorrow Sunday will be our last day in Germany. We will fly to Valencia (Spain) after the show. Going to Spain is something I look forward to. They have a strong culture there and I don't know if I'll have the chance but if it's possible, I'll go see a "tauromachie" event. I'll eat tapas. And I'll take plenty of pictures for you guys :)

Talk to you soon!

March 31, 2010

Some news

Well hello hello, people of Montreal!

I know it's been a while since my last post..I'm getting lazy already :S lol. Say thanks to Gab, he got me off my ass to write something at last.

Almost two weeks have passed since the last time I posted and a lot has happened. Let's begin by the beginning; I'll try to retrace the events that took place on my trip in a chronological order.

2 weeks ago, I went to Venice, and my plan was to visit Bologna on my other day off..I ended up doing nothing, just stayed in the hotel all day and watched Italian TV...Rai to be more precise, that's the main TV channel in Italy, just like Radio-Canada.
The week after (last week), I was in Florence...yes, the city on which the game Assassin's creed is based. I took my first day off to go and visit the city. It's really beautiful. The historical aspect of the city is very well maintained and portrayed through the various buildings and monuments. As you can see in the album, you can see that the city existed for several hundred years.

We stayed at the Grand Hotel Mediterraneo and although the lobby looked really nice, the rooms were quite small and the style was really old. It's the kind of hotels you see in movies from the 50s with huge crystal chandelier hanging on the ceiling and cardinal red drapes with golden embroidered thread... To top it off, the rooms were very badly isolated so you could hear anything that took place in the next room. I could hear the "ding" sound msn makes when a new contact comes online from the other room! Fortunately, I did not hear "other" stuff :)

On my other day off, I went to Rome. This was something I couldn't miss! I took the fast train (eurostar) and 1 hour 40 minutes and 44 Euros later, I was in the capital. I could tell right away it was one, if not the most important city of Italy because it was FULL of people. First of all the train station was huge. Then just outside it was so busy!!
I have relatives there, my aunt lives in the outskirts of the city, so her husband came to get me at the train station with his scooter. I noticed that it's a privileged means of transport in Italy, and I guess Europe in general.
While waiting for him I went to grab a bite at this local food joint where I got a square piece of pizza. They don't do triangle slices there, as we know them lol. It was good but not awesome. It was funny because I had to communicate in sign language. Even when he said the price I did not understand I just gave him the money and he gave me the change. He could have screwed me over; I would have been the last to know.

So I hoped on the scooter and we went to his place. I took a several small video clips during the ride, with one of them while we were on the highway, riding at more than 100Km/h! That was a thrilling experience. It's very exciting to go faster than cars on a scooter lol! Oh, and don't laugh at my helmet. I just wore what he gave me :p
I spent a good part of the day at his place, hospitality obliges. We ate "a l'italienne" meaning pasta first, then salad. Pretty interesting if you ask me :).

At around 4pm, we took the scooter again and headed to the city. First stop, Vatican. Just WOW. Just from the outside you know it's not an ordinary place. It's breathtaking. It's the definitely the most impressive building I saw yet. The building is HUGE!! I got to see inside and the first thing that struck me is that the ceilings are so high! There's marble and gold everywhere, everything is spotless, and a grain of dirt would be scared to enter the place. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

After the Vatican, we hoped on the scooter again and headed to the Coliseum. Again, it was so impressive. That's another huge building. To know that several hundred years ago, that's the place where Gladiators fought, as we've seen so many times in movies and documentaries, it's pretty special. Unfortunately, when we got there, the place was already closed so I couldn't see inside. It would have been 15 Euros to get in too. Once again, pictures are worth a thousand words.

I was disappointed at first that I didn't get more time to visit and see inside the Coliseum, but all in all, I consider myself lucky to even have had the opportunity to go there. It will be a nice souvenir.

This was it for Italy, after Torino, Pesaro, Bologna and Florence (including Venice and Rome on my own) the tour moved to another country. This week, I'm in Stuttgart, Germany. We transferred with a plane (1 hour 30 minutes flight) and a bus (2 hour bus ride from the airport to the hotel). My first impression of Germany is good. I didn't get to visit the city yet, as last Monday, I was still pretty mashed up from the party the night before... I will tell you more about it live. We're staying at the Hilton Stuttgart and it's my favourite hotel so far. The beds are so comfortable! I really like the design, it has a very modern style with straight lines, square and sharp angles, metal and glass is often used as a material. And it's got a microwave in the room lol.
Also, the hotel is 300 meters away from the Venue. So just like last week, no shuttle to go to work, and no 25 minute walk :). We work at the Porsche Arena. Very nice building looks, brand new.

I will try to go and visit the city on my other day off and maybe go to the famous Porsche Museum and/or Mercedes-Benz Museum.

***

I've been talking a lot about the visiting and leisure stuff, so here's some news about the work stuff, we need to remember that it's actually a job and that I originally came here to work lol

My training is over, the technician that trained me left last week and I am now on my own. I did my first load in by myself yesterday and it went well. You feel a bit more pressure when you know that all the people here rely on you to have their local network and internet connection up and running. Fortunately, the local promoters were very helpful and everything went smoothly.

For those who are interested, each office needs to have their access point. There are 5. RMO (Road Management Office) which contain the Tour Manager, The Travel & Lodging Coordinator, the Accountant, the Publicist, the HR person and myself, the IT. You also have the SMO (Stage Management Office), the AO (Artistic Office), FOH (Front Of House) and Production Office. They are often spread across the building; it is my job to make sure that all those people have an internet connection. On top of that, I need to give internet access to the Wardrobe director (her team and her take care of costumes), the head of catering, the sound & lighting technicians and to top it all, I need to setup shared computers for the artists to use and if possible a wireless access point so they can use their personal computers.

When everything is setup, I provide day to day support for their various needs. For example, last week one of the printers ran out of toner ink. I had to ask the runner (a local person who knows their way around the city that goes and buy stuff for us) to buy a replacement. If someone is not able to access their voicemail on their company cell phone, I'm the one calling the service provider to help them. If an account runs out of Skype credit, as the business account administrator, I allocate more credit to the particular person.

What's been taking most of my time recently though, is a conference call happening next week in Bremen. As the IT, I need to call the hotel and ask they for their conferencing capabilities, I need to make sure they have a big enough room for us, and that they can provide the audio/video equipment we need. It's a lot of dealing with people rather than just technology. Also, I discovered that I'm not only responsible for the computers, but anything related to technology in general. Thus, IT :)

I had a false impression on my first few week regarding the job. I had a lot of downtime and was not really busy. But that's because we were two and he did most of the work. Now that I'm alone I see that it's not that laid back. But it's really fun at the same time because there are many different places, situations and challenges we face on a weekly basis, even daily basis.

***

Well well well, I didn't expect to write this much lol. I'll try to post more frequently instead, or else I'll end up writing a book each time lol.

It's 2:40 AM here, I need to go to sleep. Fortunately, tomorrow I'll go to work at 1:30pm. I'll do the late shift (stay until the end of the show, at 10:30pm). At least one member of the RMO has to stay late each night, and we rotate. I'll check up rds.ca to see if the Canadien won or not :P

Have a good evening and I'll talk to you soon!

Feel free to comment, it's always fun to read you :)

March 16, 2010

2nd week

Hello everyone how are things going? I heard one of my coworkers became a dad for the second time! Congratulations to him! It is currently 8:30 pm Sunday night, the week in Pesaro is over, and we are on the bus on our way to the next city: Bologna. I am writing this now but I’ll post it later as soon as I have an internet connection. Tomorrow will be off since it’s the first day after we travel. We'll be staying at NH Hotel in Bologna.



***

2 days have past when I started this post. We are now tuesday 16th and it's 9:15 pm. I did not have the time to finish it earlier as yesterday I went to Venice and today was load in day (unloading the truks, setting up the offices etc...). Also, I would have thought that in room internet access would be a normal commodity here in Italy but it's not the case. We have it in the lobby only and it's not free. 

Anyway here I am, for another story telling of my advantures in Italy. Like I said earlier, we have moved to Bologna and according to our travel book, it's one of the most beautiful cities in Italy. I will have the chance to visit it on my other day off, because yesterday I went to, in my point of view, the most beautiful city of Italy: Venice. This is the kind of cities you only get to see in movies, or on postcards. But I was there. I can't tell you how lucky I feel it's incredible. Monday morning 2 collegues and I took a cab to Bologna's train station. We had two option:
  • Regular train: 9 euros, 2 hours to get to destination
  • Fast train: called eurostar, it's comparable to the TGV, 20 euros, 1h20 minutes to get to destination
We decided that the extra money wasn't worth it so we took the slow train. 2 hours later, as soon as we get out of the train station we see the grand canal...my jaw was on the floor. Instead of taking a map and trying to find interesting places, we just decided to get in the city and wander around aimlessly, admirating the buildings and other structures. I took a wealthy load of pictures that you can see in my album as usual. It is just amazing..walking down those streets in place so full of history. It was so calm and quiet. The grand Canale is shaped like an S. Once you leave the sides of the canale and go deeper inside the city, this is where the real beauty is. I will tell you more about it once I come back (there's too much to say). But if you ever get a chance to go, do NOT hesitate, it's defenitely worth it.

Today was load in and it was easier that in the last city because this one has built in infrastructure so we did not have to run cables all over the place.  I'm getting more and more into the rythm and jet lag has worn off. I'm getting at ease with the people and everything is jsut great! I really like it. Maybe in a few weeks when I really settle in the routine will I be home sick? who know, for now I'm good :)

Talk to you soon and feel free to leave comments, they're always appreciated.



March 10, 2010

First week

Hello everyone,

Here are some news from across the Atlantic. It is currently 3 o'clock in the afternoon and I'm working at the arena. I didn't stay long in Torino because I arrived at the end of the week last week. I lived my first transfer which is basically changing cities.

In my first post, I said that organization was top notch. It was proven to me again that Cique takes good care of their employees. Since it would take more than 5 hours of bus to cover the distance between Torino and Pesaro, we took the plane. A shuttle took us from the hotel to the airport, and after we passed security, a transport was waiting for us on the tarmac to take us directly in front of the plane. You can see on the picture of this post that we are VIPs...

It was a 45 min flight that landed in Pesaro. We then took another bus to the hotel. This week, we're staying at the Baia resort, we have a beach right next to it! It's really awesome. Unfortunately, the weather is horrible, it's kinda cold (5 degrees) and today it's pouring like crazy. After we arrived, we went to bed. The next day (monday) was a day off. I went downtown Pesaros with some co-workers to visit the city. Pesaro is the average italian city with the architecture you would expect. Head over to my album to check out the pictures. Since it the city is next to the sea, it was very windy and I didn't expect the temperature to be this cold. I think I cought a little cold. Later that day, we celebrated one of the artist's birthday party. We went to a local italian restaurant and had pasta. It was good! Topped it off with some wine and I was set. After the meal, we went to a bar called the "Black Horse". Had a couple of drinks and ended up more ****ed up than I thought I would be :) People were partying hard and a bunch a guys were dancing topless on the stage. It was fun. Once again, check out the album for pictures.

The next day (Tuesday), I had trouble getting up, I don't know if it's because I'm still trying to catch up to that jet lag or because I was still hangover from last night. Probably both lol. We took the shuttle to the Arena and the load out started. This time, the arena is fairly old and it doesn't have any built it network infrastructure. My trainer and I had to run network cables all across the place to have the internet up and running for everyone. We ran into several chanlenges during the day like trying to find long enough cables, extra adapters, and power cords. The whole place only has 2 DSL lines going at a whopping 2 MB! That's not even standard 5 MB residential speed we're used to in Canada. And we are a bunch using it. I sent my first communication to the team asking to avoid traffic intensive applications as much as possible (skype video, downloading etc...). It was impressive to see how in 6 hours, the place goes from an empty floor to a full scene with lighting and all. Just the unloading of the trucks took 2 hours. I would have liked to show you pictures of it but that's classified. Internal secrets!

Today (Wednesday) we came in to work, finnished the setup and the artists are getting ready for the show tonight. They have workout equipement ready whenever they want to use it. We ate lunch at the catering service that follows us around. Yeah, there are full time cooks that are there to cook real food everyday. Free. Whenever you're hungry, you can go there and grab something to eat. There's always something there. And it's not frozen meals..it's real food. Like today, there was pork chops with rice. A fridge full of beverages is always available, as well as coffee, bread, cereals, yogurt, fruits etc... I really need to be careful with this, me who thought I would loose weight here....

I discovered something interesting too. Apparently, there's a "poker club" amongst the crew. Some people asked me if I played poker and I told them I played sometimes, they were like great! So tonight is poker night. We will do the same "formula" we are used to: 10 euros buy in, Texas Hold'em, tournament style. First place wins the big pot, second place wins the second pot, and third place gets their money back if we have enough players. Can't wait to play. I'll have the advantage because nobody here knows how I play. (I don't know how they play either lol) But it seems that it's always one of the girl who wins. My goal is to dethrone her.
Also, thursday is generaly the party day because we have fridays off. I'll be looking forward to that.

Well, this is it for today. I hope you enjoyed reading this, I'll keep them comming as frequently as I can. See you soon!

March 7, 2010

First Impressions

Hello everyone, this is my first post outside of Canada. I arrived in Torino yesterday and although I had pleasant flights and a good night of sleep, I still feel really tired.  Jetlag certainly has something to do with this. It is currently 10 am local time when in fact my body thinks it’s 3 am.

My first challenge here was the language barrier. I expected people around the airport to speak english but it wasn’t so much the case. And as soon as I left it, of course Italian was the spoken language. I have 0 knowledge of italian; “me scuzi” doesn’t count :). Fortunately, I had the hotel's address written on a peice of paper which I gave to the taxi driver. He got me there in no time.

I stayed at the “Novotel  Torino Corso Giulio Cesare” (what a name huh) hotel in Torino and I have to say that it’s first class hotel. I went to the reception, gave my name, and a key card was already waiting for me at there. Organization is top notch.

My first day at the circus was more of an introduction than anything else. The show took place in the arena that was built for the winter Olympic games in 2006. It’s a pretty neat building. I was shown around, was presented to the crew, artist and office members. Everyone is really friendly and I should't have any problems with my integration. I went backstage (I have an all access pass). It's cool to see how everything works in the background. For the first night, I got to see the show front seat. I was never really interested in circus but I have to say it's worth watching. The performers are amazing! juggler, trapezists and others really have talent.

Today, we performed a fire drill. Basic stuff. We will do it in every venue, once a week. Today will also be my first loading experience (getting everything packed in the trucks for the move). Loading and unloading is the bulk of the work. Once everything is setup, it's pretty much just maintenance and service calls. I will be provided with a laptop and a cell phone.

If our destination is less than 5 hours of bus, we take the bus. If not, we travel by plane. Next stop is Pesaro so we will take the plane. I didn't have time to visit the city of Torino. Being my first few days I guess I'll stick around the crew to get more acquinted, then when I have the chance, I'll take some time to visit.


This is it for the first post. As things happen I will tell you more about my trip. I hope everything is good for you guys and see you next time. 


ps: check out the album I've uploaded some pictures

February 27, 2010

Before I go

Hello everyone,

Once again, it took me another several months before I updated my blog. But as you know, I'll be travelling around europe for the next year so I'll actually have something to write about :)

As of now I'm very excited about what's in store for me. I don't exactly know what to expect. This is really an opportunity I couldn't miss and I'm glad I tried. I will certainly miss my great CGI team in Montreal but I'll make sure I see you guys when I come back.

Right now, I'm preparing my luggage and cleaning my appartment. The administrative part is dealt with (passport, cellphone account, internet account etc...) so I'm not stressed. The stress will come when I'll actually be there. I'll realize how big this really is. Can't wait.

Anyway this was just a little hello before I go.

There are several ways to follow me:
And of course there's the good old email, if you don't have it already, ask me in the comments, I'll contact you and give it to you.

Good day, talk to you next time.

June 9, 2008

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