The Nature of My Work

Firstly I would like to apologize for my lack of blogging since I've been here in BA. To those few dedicated readers who have been refreshing and hoping for something new, a brief spell of laziness allowed me to let you down. It has passed now and I'm ready to write.

So I began work at Bairexport last Monday and began with a brief orientation session with a fellow named Diego. The office was small and equipped with just enough to do business, but I still wasn't one hundred percent sure what business they did. Diego explained this to me in a 15 minute Spanish lecture and to my own surprise I actually understood what he was saying. Responding to him was a bit harder and speaking is surely going to be the part of Spanish I will need to work on. Bairexport helps small to medium size business in Buenos Aires expand and develop both at home and abroad, like a boutique consulting or business solutions firm. Sounds fairly simple and it is but I was still left to wonder what I would be doing.

The next day Diego asked me to look through the list of companies that Bairexport works with and choose a couple that I was interested in. After he mulled over my list he gave me my first assignment. I am to create a report on the Tourism and Hospitality industries of Santiago Chile, Montevideo Uruguay and Asunción Paraguay for 525 Hotels. So I would essentially being doing market research. Within the company my job is to research different markets in order to determine whether or not they would be worth expanding into. As the lowly intern, I will only research this stuff while the guy in the big chair will decide whether or not to actually enter the market, but I like to think that my work will make his decision easier.

The reason I write about this is that with many business jobs nobody actually knows what your doing. Like Chandler Bing before he got the advertising job it is often hard to either explain what you do for a business or for someone to understand. So this is the nature of my work, and it truly feels rewarding to do work that interests me while still having real business implications. Like Teddy Roosevelt said "Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing." So I have found work worth doing, all I need to do now is work hard. That maybe a problem considering I work from 10-2, three days a week all in a town where a night out ends at seven in the morning.

A walk through the city

Since my arrival in Buenos Aires over a day ago I have done more of one thing than anything else (excluding sleeping). With my bags not arriving and my internship not starting till Monday, I have been walking a fair amount.

Driving into the city I was nervous. With none of my possessions, I was unsure of how the next 24 hours would treat me. After being shown around my new home by my kind host mother, I found that my program directors had left me a comprehensive map of the city, the Guia "T". After taking a lengthy nap, I opened it, left the apartment and began to walk.

There is something that fascinates me about being in a new town, and just setting off to see something new. A walk down Larrea Avenue would find me at a common American attraction the Golden Arches. Besides for this familiar site, everything else I saw was rich with culture and reminded me of the cities of Europe.

The next day, with good rest and a fresh set of clothes, I set off on a more adventurous walk, which of course began with lunch at McD's. It involved; me slipping on dog poo and nearly wiping out on the side walk, passing by numerous bars, pubs, cafes and restaurants, meeting my host mum and walking past a famous cemetery and then through a huge outdoor market. Ultimately the past two days of walking has made me feel more at home, all in time for my first day of work tomorrow.

Pre-Departure

Tomorrow I leave for Buenos Aires on my first visit to South America. The trip will host a lot of firsts; my first time traveling alone, the first time I am abroad for over a month (6 weeks), the first time I will be required to speak Spanish constantly and the first time I'm living with a host family.

For the six weeks I am in Argentina I will be interning at Bairexport while indulging in Latin American culture. I'm hoping to learn a bit more about finance and business research through the internship, but more importantly meet new people, travel and experience Buenos Aires. I'm truly excited and hope that this blog will serve as my thought pad for everything I experience. After two years in college I've realized that taking risks and embarking on adventures only occurs when you're young, so i fully hope to use these six weeks to do just that.

I'll try and keep my posts short, funny and to the point so please leave comments and feedback.

Saludos,

Hasil