Primeras impresiones

Although coming to Colombia always was combined with very nice feelings (as it meant I was on holidays) this time was a bit different as I was landing in Bogota to live here for a few months and start a different chapter of my professional career, and I still was (still am) not quite sure what would (will) expect me. Therefore I was very happy to see the well known faces of my relatives Margarita, Leonor and Rafael (aunts and uncle) waiting at the “El Dorado” airport and I was also excited about the nice almost 20 degrees Celsius (as opposed to the minus 5 in Zürich and the snow (!) in Madrid) that were welcoming me. As always another “host” waiting in Bogota, was the heavy traffic, but more to that specific topic later. Anyways, after a “short” drive and a first taste of Bogota’s streets at peak-hour, I arrived at my relatives’ place, where a very delicious “Ajiaco” (that’s a regional meal from Bogota, a really tasteful soup with chicken, potatoes, avocado and other stuff!) was served. That and a couple of hours’ sleep got me ready for my first day in corporate Colombia…
Before I tell you what a typical day in Bogota looks like for me and what kind of stuff can happen to a “principiante”, I would like to tell you more about my whereabouts. I live in a neighborhood called “los Rosales”, located at the eastern boarder of Bogota and pretty much in the middle between the northern and southern ends of Colombia’s capital. I’m very grateful to my relatives Magola and Hernan, who let me stay with them in their apartment. It’s a very spacious but yet cozy flat and they are treating me like their son, what makes me feel at home all the way. We live together with our maid Luz, which means ‘light’, and that’s actually a very accurate name, because she cooks delightful. I feel really lucky as she also washes my clothes and cleans my room, which means I’m getting totally spoiled here and I don’t know if I’ll get used again to doing chores when I’m back in Switzerland (sorry Meli ;)). The Rosales-area is a rather quiet place and has everything I need close by (Shopping centre, banks, supermarket, etc.). As central as it is, it only takes me about half an hour, whether walking or driving, to my office, which is situated at the “Parque de la 93”



, one of the city centers, of which Bogota has a couple.
There I work in the offices of the “CCIT: Cámara Colombiana de Informática y Telecomunicaciones” (www.ccit.org.co). They are the Colombian chamber of commerce representing the ITC-industry, like Dell, HP, Nokia, etc. It is the ideal place for my work as I will need their know-how and network to advance with my report. The CCIT kindly provides me with a workplace and its employees with a lot of Bogota-tips and colloquial vocabulary.

My relatives live all in different parts of this huge city and so I guess I’ll learn all the spots step by step by visiting them. As I’ve been here only for a couple of days, I’ve only been to the places of my uncles and aunts who all live in the northern part of Bogota, the office, my home and a few select places (to do sports and to have a few drinks). More to everything in a later post, but believe me, get mobilized in Bogota is a challenge, at least at the beginning! Check this video to see the dimensions of the city I’m talking about:
If you want to know more about Bogota and its almost 8 Mio unique inhabitants, you best check it out here: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogot%C3%A1 .
Well, so far so good, I could go on and on with the stuff I’ve seen, but first I have to organize my impressions a little and soon there will be more from “lique en Colombia”… take care y un abrazo, Gabriel

Despedida

After 3 weeks of working at EMPA St.Gallen, which was an interesting change compared to working in Zürich, where I had been for 8 years (incl. university) the day had finally arrived that I would take off into my Colombian adventure.
I did want to mention this part of my trip although it didn’t take place in Colombia, because it was just great and I wanted to thank everybody for saying good bye and sending me off with their best wishes! So: many thanks for the time in St.Gallen to the whole EMPA team, where I got the basics in e-Waste management...
thanks to my team-mates from the volley-team (http://www.vc-smash.ch/), who will try to get the NLB-promotion without my shouting and setting (I wish you all the best and hope we can make it!)...
thanks to all my friends spending the whole night at my place helping to empty my mineral-water stock...
thanks to my family for a very nice farewell-party and the never-ending support...
and of course a big thanks to Melanie for letting me do this and for organizing the whole moving-stuff (btw, thanks to everyone who promised to help her with that), before she takes on her own "adventure" in Chicago herself!
THANK YOU

Introducción

At the end of 2009, while looking for a new endeavor after leaving the bank, I was having quite a dilemma: should I keep applying for a new job, hoping it would become my dream job, should I just pack up and go travelling around the world to have a real time-out, or what the hell was my plan anyways, etc… and on top of that I was doing my guesswork knowing that I would have to spend the last month of the year in the Swiss army no matter what direction my decision would turn to, which is an outlook as motivating as a dirty kitchen.
Usually this kind of problems don’t get solved by themselves and we end up putting up with the second best compromise-solutions… but guess what, usually doesn’t mean always and I was about to get really luck this one time ;) While looking into the possibility of working abroad for some time, a friend suggested having a look at the Swiss civil service homepage (www.zivi.admin.ch), because they were sometimes looking for qualified personnel in Swiss projects abroad. He himself had been very happy with his decision to do civil service instead of going to the army (a choice that was facilitated in Switzerland about a year ago) and so I thought a look wouldn’t hurt. And it didn’t! On the contrary: although lots of the openings were about engineers, computer scientists, medics and teachers, there was one organization looking for an economist in a project of theirs in Colombia… long story short: EMPA (Federal Institute for Materials Science and Technology Research, see: www.empa.ch/tsl) contracted me as civil servant for their e-Waste Initiative Colombia (check out: www.ewasteguide.info), which was about to get implemented and needed some backing up on the financial side (meaning help to get some economic questions out of the way).
So suddenly I would travel to Bogota and help building a system for e-Waste-recycling, kinda something I would never have dared imagine even in my most creative dreams… but there it was: no more army (ever again), no more hamster-race in a big multi-national corporation and the chance to explore my Colombian roots! And the best part of it all was, it would be for a purpose that kept fuelling my motivation the more I learned about it. Of course I would have to leave my beloved Winterthur together with my dearest girlfriend, friends and family (and even my volleyball, where I never had went away in mid-season before in all my life!), but I thought in the end it’s a small price to pay for a once in a lifetime-experience, isn’t it?
Anyways, let’s get to the point of this introduction: because I will be away from home for half a year, I decided to create this blog so I can write down some of my experiences somewhere and at the same time share my Colombia-impressions with anyone who’s interested. I hope you have some fun reading these lines and please feel free to write back to me, so I can keep up with what’s going on elsewhere. And of course let me know if you’re close and want to drop by!!
Un abrazo, Gabriel “lique en Colombia”