A trip to remember or forget?

What better time to pen down your thoughts when you are stuck with 23 new people in a conference room for 8 hours? 

Grammatically, I am not sure if I am right in my first sentence, but the intent is to sound different, kind of persuasive writing. (defending myself before the grammar police audience starts bombarding me).

This is the first time I am going to write about work, infact I wanted to write this in disguise, start off the blog with something and reveal the main plot later, but I think that needs some special skills which I lack and I definitely cant do it now, like think of something else maybe a beach in Miami, because I am in Miami, but I am in a conference room with all new people from different countries trying to jot down standards, make sense out of words that are in the standards to guide the world to make a better equipment. I won’t get technical and bookish, I promise, at the same time I will try my best to not make fun of anyone because the individuals I am sitting with right now are from different countries, so I will try my best not to get into being racist or..whatever. This is probably the first time, I am with a group of people from different countries and I get to interact with them, there are people from Austria, Italy, Japan, London, Germany, Australia, India, Bangladesh (I guess haha) and US, because these people are working towards developing a standard which will be used worldwide, it is important that each nation voice their opinion, there are small groups of people from different companies but they are addressed as ‘ Austria thinks that …’ instead of addressing an individual’s name or even the company.

So, I was asked to attend this 4 day session of 9-5 meetings and represent the company, I had no idea what I was getting into nor did I know the standards, infact this standard is for Construction Equipment and I work on Agriculture equipment.

First day was not bad, the part of the standard my ex team member was working on was completed on the first day and the rest of the agenda was nothing I was going to be involved in, but because this is a workgroup and you have to voice your opinion, I still had to participate on the rest of the days. I did not talk much, apart from time in lunches and break, sad but true. :/

Second day, I woke up with a worst throat than the previous day, the day was long, there were verbal battles in the conference rooms for the settlement of words to go in the document.

My plan after work was to go to downtown and spend some good time outdoors walking, but to my dismay there was chilliness in the air and downtown didn’t feel as happening as it used to..probably because a. it was a week day b. it was not a tourist season c. now that I have migrated to a bigger city, it takes much to get excited to see a downtown or a sight with tall buildings. The palm trees could have got me excited only if there was sunlight, but unfortunately there were clouds all 4 days.

After sitting in downtown for some time and having a dozen of mussels I was still hungry and I decided to hop in to a  restaurant near my hotel, it was called ‘Desi Grill,’ it had both Peruvian and indian food, my plan was to go and have something Peruvian but I realized I had a strong urge to eat something Indian, so I bought  a Biryani, which was half like a Biryani is supposed to be, what would you expect if someone sells you that saying ‘ Biryani, its yummy and fresh.’

Day 3, I resented  waking up. I wished I could call in sick, I wanted to just not go, but spending the day in a city like Miami didn’t feel as delightful without the sunlight. So, I decided to just get stuck with the folks creating standards and I also promised myself that I will work from home and take a good break next week.

I felt bad to think about skipping because on day 2, a guy from Japan came into the meeting at 3, when he flew into the city at 2. It was surprising, I don’t think I will ever do that. Infact, I feel bad to torture myself physically to force myself to go to these meetings when I am sick. Infact, I think my sickness exaggerated being with people from different countries, in the conference room there were atleast 5 people who were sick and I felt my body was like a magnet attracting all the germs.

One good thing that came out of the trip was, I tried Peruvian food and I loved the 4 pieces of meat they gave me..very tiny like kabab on a stick, but so flavorful and the sauce they had was so nice and right amount of tanginess and texture, not runny nor very chunky. The other day I had a very good looking a small round cup size, nicely molded potatoe mountain haha, inside there was 2 pieces of shrimp and a slice of avocado, it was kind of dry, though there was a yellow sauce, I realized whatever you eat in downtown does not offer flavor, the place might be lit, but at least in Miami downtown, so far I didn’t have any luck with the food, specially with the kind of cuisines Florida has to offer, downtown does a bad representation of that sadly.

Also, on day 3 evening after the meeting, I took a desi lady from the meeting to shop, not to forget the only lady with me in the meetings, she  lived and worked in Sweden. She told me she’d finish in an hour but she took about 3 hrs to finish her shopping, I initially enjoyed showing her around, Macy’s JC Penney etc..but after sometime I got impatient. She looked like a young mom; looked like she had kids at early age, because she had a 14/16 year old daughters but she shopped good like a 30 year old would...bought fashionable clothing for her daughters, the one which I wouldn’t even look at because they always looked uncomfortable to me, but I was surprised by the way she shopped, she said ‘ In Sweden the girls are very independent,’ also she said ‘they don’t like flare and frills,’ because they want to show that they’re independent, still trying to think about the flare and independence correlation but…  

Alright, I am here finishing my blog on Day 4, can’t wait for the clock to show 3 O’clock, so that I can get out of here and go home, sleep on my own pillow, the pillows in hotel rooms are very uncomfortable to me, especially because I am used to a little bit hard mattress and not so very fluffy pillows. I would like to go back and enjoy sleeping on my thin pillow tonight, also do nothing for the next two days on the weekend.

One thing I liked in this meeting was to notice people’s accents and the way they behaved, everyone was so different, so many people from different cultural backgrounds, I liked that part. Last night, I was sitting in a restaurant and I randomly asked a guy if he was Italian and he said ‘Yes.’ He was surprised and I was proud of myself to be able to guess it right. I think the last few years I tried to always figure out in my mind which country people were from whenever I saw people from middle east, if they were from Yemen, Saudi or Lebanon, because I had a small middle eastern friend circle, so I always use to get excited when I’d see people from the middle east, to play the quiz in my mind. So, now that I work for an Italian company (wrote this so many times on my blog already, I think) and there are significant number of Italians in the company, outside work I try to find out if a person is Italian if his/her manners are different than the guys in US and obviously when they speak, you can find out if your guess is right, most of the times.

This part of the blog is post edit after I landed and after few weeks, when I saw this blog, I realized I never ended it. The best and dramatic end to it is that, I thought I wont make it back on earth on my flight back from Florida, there was a very bad turbulence, the plane shook up and down, the kids started crying, the air hostess just sat in the middle of the isle and requested everyone to maintain their calm. I reminisced all the movies, news I read about plane crashes and how many people survived and even if you survive, how you face the post trauma from the crash, too many thoughts went in my mind, I wrote few lines to my husband on whatsapp, hoping he will get it when we land/crash whatever. (Astaghfirullah!), then my phone switched off suddenly. My sinus problem drove me crazy on the other hand with pressure increasing in my head, there was an indian couple sitting beside e, who I totally ignored throughout the flight, they told me how to get rid of the pressure in my head, by closing my nose and pushing air through my ears, something like that. Anyways, after an hour we landed, I came to know that the rain caused the turbulence. I was so thankful that everyone was fine and I came home and ate the comforting dal chawal husband made, thanked God for bringing me home safe.