Work

Inspired by Exgerian's awesome minimalistic TV Show posters I started to create some myself. Here they are. (click to enlarge)

LED sign | photo: Jens

Monday, 7th August: Yesterday has been Mayte's birthday. Today we had a small marketing meeting. After the meeting I gave her my present although she was resisting strongly to accept presents. It is the FON logo engraved in transparent plastic enlighted by LEDs. It looks so cool. It is exactly like my Friends LED sign. The FON sign is a custom design I made myself which I then ordered online. I added her name as a small signature in the lower right corner to make it indvidual. It is both, a present for her as she heired me as an intern and a proof of my creativity. Check out the video. Workwise I am still working on German language bugs.
As the supermarkets are closed by the time when I am home after work I went to Alcampo 'next' to work. That way I can get my food supplies within the week, good to know . It is a huge supermarket. I almost got lost there. E.g. when I was looking for milk I found an alles with 50 different types of milk or milk substitutes. Man, it took me 5 minutes to find REAL milk, not this ugly long lasting milk which is the only type Lidl sells .

Thursday, 10th August: I got to know Nina today. She is from Germany and a former study colleague of Julian, my roomie in Cologne. She works at FON, too. Small world. And just when I was chatting with Nina Martin was coming into the office. He is the founder of FON and many other companies. A big guy in the IT sector. He is a great entrepreneur and cares about a lot of other things besides business. But why don’t you read his blog. Talking off it, I gonna translate some of his English entries into German .

Tuesday, 1st August: This was my first day at work and I got to meet my boss Mayte. I had to find my way to our meeting point at a huge bus terminal using solely her instructions I got via email. It was like in the old spy movies. I had a picture of a building and a red spot where I was supposed to wait and the name of the metro station. I should get picked up by Mayte by car. I had no idea how her car looked like back then. Being a good and reliable employee I started early to be on time. I don’t know how but I ended up 5 minutes late at the meeting point. But to my defense the place was huge and I couldn’t pinpoint the location directly. I immediately wrote her an SMS to inform here that I am at the meeting point. Some minutes later without a response I called her. She was on her way but got stuck in traffic. Around 10h a red car drove by and was honking. That was her. I jumped in the car we drove to the office. Let’s say the Spanish way of driving is a bit different. When we arrived at the office we immediately left with other employees or interns, who also started at that day, to take a coffee. As I am not a coffee guy I ordered juice. Everyone was giving me a look. I remember that I was a coffee guy in Stockholm last year but that was necessary to survive those 6 hour classes of Supply Chain management or Total Quality management at business school . After the coffee we went back and Jacobo who is one of the new guys me showed me how to work on the German website. From that day until today I mainly working on German website, emails, manuals, flash animations etc. Hopefully this Monday most of the changes will be online. I was the only guy dressed in a business shirt. Everyone else was wearing T-Shirts or Polos, flip flops etc. So Mayte's comment about 'no business look' was true . The people in the office talk Spanish except with me. That makes it difficult for me to socialize with my colleagues. Lunch time is the best. We get free lunch at the office. The food is decent but too less for the guy who chunks down 1kg of lasagna . At lunch everyone is talking at the same time. It’s impossible to just understand a single word for me. I finished that 1st day around 20h or 21h. This should become my regular closing time until today. Some times even later. It takes me almost one hour to get to work and at least 1h to get home unless someone from work is giving me a lift. When I commute home I sometimes spent the time watching Friends episodes on my lappie. Worst part of commuting is that the bus schedule has no meaning in the evening. Sometimes I have to wait 30-40mins until my bus arrives (should be every 20mins referring to the schedule). Thankfully I have my lappie to occupy myself. Good thing is that the Metro and busses are almost always equiped with air condition. The office is in Alcobendas outside of Madrid. But just next to our office is my best friend Deutsche Bank. What a true friend, always at my site. Very comfortable.

The following work days I just got to work on the website and similar tasks. I even got to know the German FON team within my first week. They came to Madrid for just one day. Very busy guys. The German FON CEO also went to Handels in Stockholm. During the first week I was sitting in the main area in the very open and colorful office. Now the marketing guys got their own room. The video here shows my work place during my first week.