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!