Monday, August 20, 2012

The Journey Begins...

Well, I've got to say that traveling business class is absolutely the way to go.  Half-again the seating area, free drinks, free food of above-average quality, and free hospitality area (with free drinks) at the airport for layovers.  (The attached picture is the hospitality room in the Panama airport.  The beer was recommended to me by the girls.  (I'm not quite sure what to make of the fact that my kids are making such recommendations, but I went with it.))



We've arrived at the hotel in Buenos Aires, and it's *lovely*.  It used to be a mansion built in the '20s, and has been converted into a luxury hotel.  We've started working (having "slept" on the 7-hour flight from Panama - more on that later...) at the hotel since today (Monday) is a holiday in Argentina and the Chevron offices are closed. 

I'm getting a bad feeling about my coworkers (Ketil and Daryl) - I suspect that they're robots.  The night flight from Panama, on which we were supposed to sleep so that we could hit the ground running this morning, had four (out of 16) seats taken by small children (all still in diapers) who were very unhappy to be on the flight.  They weren't coordinated in expressing this unhappiness - each would take turns being unhappy.  Nobody in the business section got any sleep on that flight.  When we got to the hotel, we were all very tired.  However, after a couple of hours to get unpacked and refreshed, we were at work planning the activities for the week.  Robots.