9 May 2006

Surprise, surprise! It’s 4 am and I can’t sleep! After turning around in this comfortable bad over a million times, I decide to anticipate the beginning of my first complete day here:

get up at 4 a.m.!

I am writing some notes with my laptop and soon I’ll be searching for a fast food for having breakfast.

What they call a Deluxe Breakfast in McDonald's is a very mixture of USA food: we can find stuff raging from Hamburgher to maple tree syrup Pankakes. It's amazing to find myself able to eat all of that stuff (am I becoming US-like after a day only?).

The interesting thing here is that they provide some sort of prepaid Mc-cards you can use instead of Credit Cards.

[see picture 1 at the bottom]

Man, it looks like it is quite impossible to reach a cash advance for gaining US Dollars trough American Express. Lucky me that my company has mandatory policies forcing to use Amex for everything. Who said the don't accept VISA? They actually accept only VISA and MASTERCARD; let's go on.

Hey, look at that sports house: is there anybody who still doesn't know what YMCA is?

Well, for those who didn't believe it, I ifnally got the prove.

[see picture 2 at the bottom]

Time to go to work right now (actually it is quite early in the morning); and... hey...

would you believe me if I now can say I am proud of being a Motorola?

You would agree with me if you had the occasion to take a look at this head queartier; what we got here is a building just in the middle of almost nothing, sorrounded by green trees and, guess what, a big parking lot. Just for having an idea you could compare it to the space sourrounding our major Stadio in torino: the Stadio Delle Alpi.

That's only the very beginning of my surprise; if outside the building is big, inside if possible is greater! Oh gosh, there is the day care for the little children of my colleagues... no, that's not true, I'm sure I got the wrong plane and instead of landing in Chicago, I lent in Orlando and went to Walt Disney World.

Inside the building everything is perfect: just imagine the headquartiers of a reasearch center you can see in US movies... that's all true.

Ok, now I can definitively lose my senses: they have a Game Room with pool (not one, they got 2!!!, ping pong tables and calcetto (I'll ask how they call it in english).

My first working day here.