Posted Photos from Belgium TripNouvelles photos de mon voyage en Belgique

Following my description of my trip to Beligum, you can now find new photos from my trip under the Travels section of the Photo Album. The first few were taken near the hotel where I was staying. The next group were taken at the Astérix exhibit that I visited. Finally, the rest show the Grande Place in downtown Brussels. More photos to come soon.
Après avoir décrit mon voyage en Belgique dans mon dernier message, vous pouvez maintenant voir des photos de mon voyage dans la section Voyages de mon album photo. Les premières photos ont été prises près de l’hôtel ou je séjournais. Le second groupe provient de l’exposition d’Astérix que je suis allé visité. Finalement, les dernières photos sont de la Grande Place.

A week in BelgiumUne semaine en Belgique

Yes, I’m on the road again, this time on the other side of the Atlantic in Belgium visiting a prospective customer. This is my first time flying Air Transat and I must say that I was very pleased with the service althrough the space for the seats is a little small. This is the first time that I see a company customizing the background of the flight plan display software that runs in the main cabin. It adds a nice touch to the package.

I am staying in the small town of Waterloo, about 20 minutes south of Brussels driving, right next to a big hill called “La Butte du Lion” which was raised in honor of one of the wounded generals during the battle of Waterloo in 1815. Because of this famous battle, many things around here refer to Napoleon or other historic figures.

My main beef with this place is the lack of organization of taxis. On the first morning to go to work, I went to the front desk and asked for a cab. The lady looked at me a bit doubtfully, saying that I would be lucky to get a cab. Thankfully, one came by and I managed to get to the customer site on time. When I got back to the hotel that night, I reserved a cab for the next morning to be sure that I would arrive on time. However, that cab arrived late so I missed my appointment with the customer! I was really not impressed.

Once the week of work was completed, I got to go visit the town on the week-end. The main thing I saw was the new Le Monde Miroir d’Astérix exhibit. They had many nice displays and a lot of nice toys that were made over the years. I also visited the Grande Place of course and enjoyed a nice beer over there. I also got myself a beer glass from a great beer called Kwak. This will sit nicely in my collection.
Eh oui, je suis en train de voyager une fois de plus, cette fois-ci de l’autre côté de l’Atlantique en Belgique pour visiter un client potentiel. C’est la première fois que je voyage avec Air Transat et je doit dire que j’ai été bien satisfait du service. Par contre, les sièges sont un peu étroits. C’est aussi la première fois que je vois une compagnie prendre la peine de modifier les fonds d’écrans dans le logiciel affichant la position de l’avion tout au cours du vol. Ça ajoute une belle touche au tout.

Mon séjour se déroule dans la petite ville de Waterloo, à environ 20 minutes au Sud de Bruxelles, tout près d’une énorme butte nommée La Butte du Lion, qui a été érigée en honneur d’un des général blessé au cours de la bataille de Waterloo en 1815. Plusieurs monuments ou autres bâtiments ont des noms inspirés de Napoleon ou d’autres figures historiques à cause de cette bataille.

Bien que l’endroit est bien plaisant, la désorganiation des taxis est vraiment ennuyeuse. Lors du premier jour de travail, je suis allé à la réception pour demander un taxi. La dame m’a regardé avec un regard perplexe, me disant que j’allais être chanceux si je réussissais à avoir un taxi. Heureusement, un taxi est arrivé rapidement et j’ai réussi à me rendre chez le client en temps. Lorsque je suis revenu à l’hotel le soir, j’ai réservé un taxi pour le lendemain pour être certain d’arriver à l’heure. Même avec ces précautions, le taxi est arrivé en retard et j’ai manqué mon rendez-vous avec le client! Je n’étais vraiment pas impressionné.

Une fois mon travail terminé, j’ai pu passer un peu de temps à visiter le centre-ville. L’attraction principale que j’ai vue était la nouvelle exposition Le Monde Miroir d’Astérix. Ils ont crée de très belles pièces représentant les personnages et ont une grande quantité de jouets sortis au cours des années. J’ai également visité la Grande Place, évidemment, et en ai profité pour déguster une bonne bière. Je me suis également procuré un verre de bière d’une excellente bière nommée Kwak. Ça va être un bel ajout dans ma collection.

Walking Buffet and other observations in Brazil

The grill was anything but boring. It is a type of special Brazilian restaurant called a Churrascaria. It’s sort of a buffet, except that the food comes to you instead of you walking around filling your place. Waiters walk around with a metal spike on which a piece of meat is presented. At your table, you have a little indicator that you can set to determine if you want the waiter to offer you some meat or if you already have enough. If you want to try the meat out, the waiter will slice off a piece right there on the spot. Many of the meats are various parts of the beef, but they also had porc, lamb and chicken among others.

The rest of the week was very relaxed. I found a souvenir store in a nearby shopping mall tuesday night where I was able to find souvenir to fulfill most of the requests that I had. I also found a nice dress for Évelyne at a decent price (most shops with baby clothes that I first saw had horribly high prices. I can’t wait to fly back home friday night.

First day of class in Brazil

Stupid alarm clock… I use a small travel alarm clock on my trips. I made sure that it was working last night since there was no alarm clock supplied with the room. However, this morning, it decided not to ring at the designated time. I woke up about half-an-hour late realising that time had passed by and had to get ready very quickly to meet my colleague for breakfast. I guess this will be a good excuse to replace it when I get back home and to get a wake-up call from reception tomorrow.

Today was the first day of class. When we got to Embraer this morning, we ran into a bunch of guys from Air Canada. What are the odds of meeting a bunch of fellow canadians down here? I chatted with them a little while waiting for security to get cleared out for us to go in.

The class was quite full with twelve student, myself and my colleague for a total of fourteen people and eight computers in a room no larger than my hotel room. The student were quick and understood all of the topics covered very quickly. I was expecting to have to repeat myself more than I did.

I got a bit of a visit of the hangers at lunch time. It was very impressive to see all of the aircrafts that Embraer can be working on at one point in time. I could see them from the beginning of the assembly to the finished product. Some of the airlines that could be seen were American Airlines, Air Canada (of course), United Airlines, Continental Airlines and a few others. Apparently, about 90% of Embraer’s business is with North American airlines.

besides their efficient methods to build planes, it was interesting to see the soap dispensers in the men’s room. Instead of having individual dispensers at each sink, they had a central reservoir that was linked to all of the dispensers, ensuring a large supply of soap is always available. Why don’t they do this back home?

Tonight will be another quiet evening. We don’t have a car and there is not much in terms of restaurants or things to do around the hotel. We’ll try the grill located near the shopping mall. If that does not pan out, we’ll probably just end up at the food court.

First thoughts from Brazil

I am currently sitting in a hotel in Brazil as I am writing these lines. I’ve been wanting to document some of my travel thoughts for a while and decided that using my blog could be a good way to do it.

I am here to give a class to engineers at Embraer, the aircraft manufacturer that often competes with Quebec-based Bombardier on many contracts with major airlines. I will be showing them how to use VAPS, our software to create cockpit displays.

The trip went well but was very long. I first had an hour and a half flight from Montreal to New York (ironically on an Embraer jet!) and then a nine-hour flight from New York to Sao Paulo. The flight from New York left at the end of the evening so the bulk of the flight was overnight. I got to sleep pretty early on. However, we hit a lot of turbulence around the Dominican Republic that lasted for more than an hour. The plane had to alter its course to try to find calmer skies. I slept a bit after that but did not clock in more than three hours of sleep.

I was a bit of a mess when we landed, quite tired. The customs was a big ordeal, having to wait about an hour to go through. Once that was done, I was greeted by two employees from our Brazilian distributor who drove me to Sao José dos Campos, a large city between Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro. It was quite a long drive from the airport, with most of the view being of green hills and small houses in which very poor people seemed to live. Now, I’m starting to understand why I was discouraged from travelling alone.

We passed a few people wandering on the side of the highway. Turns out that buses pick up people directly on the side of the road. Different. We stopped for juice and snacks at a small roadside restaurant/grocery store. To keep track of purchases, they give you a card with a barcode on entry. They then use this number to enter anything you order. Once done, you go to the cash where they scan the number to tell you how much you owe.

We arrived at our destination shortly after, only to find a large Wal-Mart Superstore and a McDonald’s across the street. I was not quite expecting to see them here. After a small nap, I went to take a look inside. Overall, it’s pretty similar to the ones we have in Canada. However, I was a bit surprised to see a beer and wine section in the back of the store. The way they handle cues for the cash registers is also quite nice. They just have one waiting line with a number display that indicates when a cashier is free. This way, if there is a snag at one of them, people don’t get stuck having to wait. Very efficient. They also have clerks on roller-skates with helmets to run errands around the store for the cashiers, checking prices and things like that.

I’ll take it easy tonight, just having dinner at the hotel restaurant with Alexandre, one of the employees from our distributor who is staying with me at the hotel and will be attending my class. I hope that the students will have a good understanding of english at the class tomorrow. Otherwise, it will be a long week. I’ll try to add more posts regularly through the week.