I changed my flight last minute on Tuesday afternoon to fly out Wednesday morning as our first meeting starts Wednesday 2pm. Unfortunately I didn’t get to sleep more on Tuesday because I spent 2.5 hrs at the ER to check a skin cut that is looking like it’s getting an infection. Nothing major but I was prescribed a 7 days antibiotic course to treat it. Sigh..
I landed SP 9:30am. Immediately took a work call at the airport and then got to the hotel, left my luggage to meet my colleagues and friend for lunch. The most exciting part of this biz trip is to see my grad school friend who happens to work on Brazil too so we had a joint biz trip. It’s so fun to “work” with a good friend.
Our first meeting took 5 hrs! That was the longest meeting I’ve ever been, all in Portuguese which worked my brain double the effort. Luckily I could understand the essence of the talk.
We chose a Japanese restaurant for dinner and we went with Okinawa menu. It blew my mind how good it is. My favorite dish is this bittermelon with egg tofu and bonito flakes.
The boys had this pork dish that seems to be super good too.
The four of us chatted over good food and beers and excited for this new project. I was exhausted by the end of the day but glad to have spent time with them.
The second day was also 9am to 10pm, with good meetings, good Italian food, and a lot of bonding time with the team. If it’s up to me, I would have wanted to return to my hotel room and rest. But I know part of the point of traveling with the team is the social time between meetings, to get to know each other at personal level, to let conversation flows, to build personal connections. During regular office hours, we don’t get to do that much, biz trip is meant for that.
This is part of my pivot this year at professional front, doing things that I wouldn’t do but need to do due to my new role. It’s tiring and rewarding. At the end of the day, what matters is personal connection, at all front of life.
Back to Brasilia, rushed to finish few errands (change names on the utilities of the house, advance one more process on the car purchase. Looking forward to the relaxing weekend.
Our New Journey 
Your dinner looks great! That pork dish reminds me of the pork knuckle that you often get in Germany or those regions, which is one of my favorites! However, I like the look of your bitter melon dish too! I am glad you are settling in. I think you are right about those work trips; they are tiring but are a good way to get a deeper relationship with the people you work with. I used to go to NY a couple of times a year to meet with our trading team and it made future phone calls with them so much more pleasant!
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You had some really long days but I bet it’s great to spend time in person with your team. And how fun to see a friend, too! It would be so hard to absorb info in a language you are still acquiring. I know there is some overlap between Spanish and Portuguese but I think they are still quite different. My husband said he had the hardest time understanding anything when he traveled to Portugal while studying across in Spain and he was fluent in Spanish at that point.
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That food looks amazing! I am glad you were able to meet up with someone from your team. I am sure it helps with the settling in.
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Sounds intense! But in a good way. It definitely does sound like you’re having to do a lot of different things at work, at least compared to what I remember reading about before. Will you be full time in the office now? In Jakarta I feel like you were only in office some days and worked shorter or WFH other days? Maybe I’m remembering wrong though. It’s great you’re making strong connections with your team.
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in Jakarta, I was going to office 4 times a week. Same rules apply here but it’s likely that i’ll come 5 days before my shipment arrives as the chair at home is so uncomfortable.
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