Observation Round

This morning's coffee went a bit wrong. The lass serving had obviously had a nice day off and concentration wasn't high on the agenda. So when I asked for a Normal Americano coffee, this is the cup I got.

Yup, instead of my name it says 'Normal' and it's brilliant. She wanted to take it back and give me either a plain cup or one with my name on. But I insisted on having this. Not cos it's funny - cos it is, really - but because I now have it in the office on my desk. And when I look around at what is going on, this cup is the closest to normal I can get. Everything else is just, well, mental.

For example, Customer has brought in excess of 1000 laptops for their staff and due to security concerns, these are likely to be destroyed at the end of the games. In their defence, they are two year old Dell laptops, so they're lucky they've lasted this long, and were used at London. But, still. I'm sure there's many a school in developing nations that would kill for such things.

And the number of staff goes up each day. At the start you could have a choice of table at lunch, now you have to wait for one. And the choice for lunch has expanded with the pizza and burger bars now open.

This is a picture of one of the data centres here. You can see a couple of ASX-9000's here. No I don't either, but they have Employer written on them and they hum something rotten.

The actual work we're doing progresses well and we got brownie points for recording and playing back the football from last night. Apparently there are many Seattle fans working here, so they were pleased with the result. And how the game went. A week on Sunday/Monday we best make sure we succeed again.

But the reason this is Observation Round is I thought I would sum up some of the trivia from the week.

Heating

In the office there isn't any. It is fecking cold, you could keep beef in the office. For weeks. I relented today and wore my thermal liner, the one I brought for mountain activities, to the office. It didn't stop my fingers freezing but at least my teeth stopped chattering.
In the hotel, however, there is an elegant sufficiency of heat. Now, many years ago a friend of mine lived in Moscow and she said the heating came on on a fixed date and went off on a fixed date regardless of conditions. And in Sochi, some 20 years later, it is still the same. It is winter so the aircon blows hot. The air is centrally heated and distributed to all the rooms. Your fan simply controls the flow. My thermostat is at 12C and every night I have to open the window. If I turn the fan off, the room freezes. If I leave it on, without the window open, the room bakes. If I turn it off and close the window the temperature slowly rises but like a frog in a pan you don't notice till too late. So the answer is to have the fan on and the window open and a fabulous temperature gradient across the room. Perhaps those folks in the 4 star hotel have better control of their environment, but I somehow doubt it.

Weather

When you think of the Winter Olympics you think cold, snow, ice. Clear skies and seeing your breath. Sochi is slightly different. You get rain. It is January. You get rain in the morning, afternoon and evening. It is cold rain. The place is miserable. Waiting for a bus is not a pleasant experience. And with the rain comes puddles, and even though this is all new build they are professional puddles that have been doing this for a long time. In places they could be mistaken for the sea, except people would be allowed to swim in these.

Building

It's fair to say the place ain't ready - yet (to be honest, neither are we, but we didn't get six years notice). They have the same amount of time to go as we do. Except one is being looked upon by a ruthless dictator that will accept no apologies and the other - yeah, you know the rest. Me and Vlad, best buddies. [What do you call Ventolin for an elf? Imp-haler...]

Yesterday on the way home they were ripping up one of the new roads, and this morning they were putting it back. Some of the old roads however, especially with the buses thundering over them, are ripping themselves up and becoming quite an adventure course.

Traffic

I mention this 'cos it's funny. There are now signs saying 'Olympic Traffic Only'. But I can't think for the life of me why anyone would be here if they weren't here for the games. And even then, they're Russian - these signs are for other people...

Shovels

As mentioned, the Yes Make Happy Work Camp across the way isn't complete and there is a considerable number of workers still building it. Today, as I got an earlier departing bus that strangely arrived at the same time as normal, we passed the workers as they queued to get in the park and I swear half of them were carrying shovels. I can't imagine why you would need so many when the major work is mostly done. Unless, like to a hammer everything is a nail, to a man with a shovel everything is a hole; that needs filling. I can point out a few on the journey to the IBC.

Finally

Welcome to Russia

As we left the airport on Tuesday we got stuck behind a Lada that was weaving all over the road. The driver must have had a couple, and when we did manage to pass him we could see that he was texting. This image is one that kind of burns in, along with the security guard/policeman on every corner.

In some respects, little changes.