You know, Fugro NL never ceases to impress me. The cafeteria with the Fugro monikered plates, cups, and bowls. The glass atrium. The swarm of Fugro rigs and trucks. the machine shop with that cool automatic sip door that keeps the wind out and the machines that you put your hands into like on The Simpsons when Homer is working at the nuclear power plant handling those green sticks. The perfect harmony and fluidity with which everything is done here. Seamless.
Next example - Fugro Infoavond (Fugro Info Evening). Since there are so many people in the Leidschendam office, the evening is actually three nights, with different OpCo's participating each night. I went on Friday evening, about half of FIBV went on Thursday and half on Friday evening. They converted the atrium and constructed a stage and put up a big sound system and and put up black cloth to cover part of the room to act as a backdrop. they had a big screen that was suspended from one of the walkways to project the presentation on. They also have a microphone and sounds system.
So the presentation started at 5PM so i left he office around 4PM to go to the cell phone store. Phones here (at least the pay-as-you-go kind) everytime you turn them off, they require a password to use the phone. WTF?? i can't remember the damn password. so i went to the phone store and they unlocked it and turned off the feature that requires the password. he thought i was weird for wanting the feature off. he said what if someone steals your phone?? i said well, then they can talk for however long 20 euro will last for, and i'll manage to get over it.
OK so back to the info evening. There were about 15 big round tables set up. Presentations were given by 3 or 4 people, including Aarnold Steenbakker who is the head of onshore geotech. he came to for a field visit to one of my projects over the summer while he was in Ventura so i recognized him. The program was in dutch, but i had my dictionary there with me so i could kind of follow along. At the info evening, i saw some other folks i've worked with, Jan Willen (CPT op), Maarten (drill rig op), a bunch of people in my group, some women that i met at the women's dinner 2 weeks ago. it was nice to see everyone all in one place. i ask jan willem about the jacket. he's super stoked and says all the other guys want one. i said no, only him. he's special. hahah he blushes a little.
the presentation was about how the company was doing overall. there were a bunch of charts and graphs that generally trended upwards, so i'm assuming things are going well. i got a positive feeling overall about the company's 2009 forecast, even though the presentation was in dutch so i'm not 100% positive. they played a video of the Statnamic test that I saw on wednesday and they played it in slow motion so you could really see the test. i'm hoping to get a video of it, if i do i'll post it up. they seemed really excited about the statnamic. i'm still not super impressed with it, but it seems pretty groundbreaking over here. we'll see.
After the 'boring' part of the presentation, they had a nutritionist speak about healthy living and working for the Fugro employees. his first slide showed a family of severely overweight/obese americans. of course. a mom a dad and a son, at least 250lbs each. the mom was wearing a red tshirt that said "Special Olympics, Lancaster County". HAHAHAH priceless!!! where the heck did they find that picture??? the next slide showed a black women working at mcdonalds who had the hugest ass i've ever seen. everyone laughed.
so the nutritionist continued his presentation with several maps of the united states showing the obesity rates over a 20 year period. lots of oohs and aahs from the dutch people. i was cringing with embarrassment for our country. the nutritionist's message: the dutch people will end up like americans if they dont continue to eat well and excercise, and not let the kids watch too much TV and play too many video games. I was so thankful that i'm thin. how awful would that have been for me to sit through that presentation if i was fat?? part way through the presentation the nutritionist was making another joke about the fat americans, then stopped and said "oh yes, don't we have a woman here from california?" all my colleagues at my table just died laughing, including me. you could tell the nutritionist was a bit sheepish for all of the things he was saying. i couldnt argue with the presentation though - its true!!! many americans are overweight, don't eat right, and don't excercise, and the problem is only getting worse with the next generation. i can tell that the dutch people think that americans are fat and lazy. i wish we had a better image.
so after the nutrition presetation (within which he stressed not to eat breakfast, sine most people eat dinner very late) there was an awesome buffet. i thought you were supposed to eat something within 30 minutes of waking up the "break the fast" and get your metabolism going for the day??? i think i'll keep eating breakfast. the buffet has foods from around the world, including mexico, america, china, and indonesia. the mexican food is aweful. just terrible. i had a burrito, if you want to call it that. yes it was a tortilla with meat wrapped inside, but that's as far is it goes to resembling a real burrito. no salsa, no cilantro, etc. the american food consisted of fish, shrimp, cheeseburgers, mini corns, shrimp salad, and some meatballs. the US food seemed to be more like "new orleans" food. they also had some curry chicken and other good stuff. yum!!!
so after dinner there some more short presentations, and then the bidg surprise for the night!!! YMCA started playing, and a bunch of fugro people came running onstage dressed up like the village people!!! they had changed the words to some fugro song. patricia and maartijn, who are both in my group, were dressed as the indian and the construction worker, respectively. gitta, the executive secretary was dressed as the military person or maybe its a flight attendant i'm not sure. mark pehlig, one of the senior executives, was dressed as the cowboy. he was the best one by far. great dance moves. there was another guy dressed like the cop but i didn't know who it was. the awesomeness of it is not describable. it was so funny and unexpected and rediculous all at the same time. check out the video below!! i hope you can see it. its in MP4 format. you may need to convert it to an .mpeg or .avi file to play it on the windows media player but my (nonexistant) tech skills are not good enough to do that for you.
after the YMCA awesomeness, there was a dessert bar open with was sooooooooo yummy. cakes and pies, ice cream, tiramsu, chocolate. ooh soo good. :) the perfect end to an awesome evening. oh also i got a cool fugro umbrella! a big one like a golf umbrella. i got home around 10:30 and went to bed soon thereafter. looooong day :)
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