In my eternal quest towards knowledge accumulation (why? I am not sure.), I decided to read some presentation about the mineral law legislation in Brazil. I figured I could get some useful data out of it, to better understand how things work in the country. The presentation was in Portuguese and by the time I got to slide number 4, I still had no idea what I was reading about despite the fact that I deciphered all the words I didn’t know with my faithful Google Translate. I was also wondering why did the power point look like it was produced by a high school student in the late 90’s? By that time, my colleague arrived to work and said: “Why are you reading this government presentation, it’s such crap and says very basic things in a super convoluted way. ” The rest of the presentation was processed in 5 minutes was put to rest in the garbage bin. Lesson learned: when faced with a government produced presentation, don’t try to understand anything – read the title, refer to Wikipedia and move on with your life.
I then proceeded to read some more forecasts about China growth story, got bored and decided that I need to find another way to add value. And so I spent about 30 mins making a new employee guidebook, trying to help future generations of innocent newcomers avoid some of the pitfalls of my disorganized process . Example: “Recommendation 1: welcome new employee and get them an entry card to the building so that (a) they know what floor they work on (b) they are able to reach that floor”. Or: “Tell the employee about the customs inventory list requirement before they actually pack and ship their stuff to Brazil.” I think I’m going to start a relocation company or come up with the next six sigma framework for this industry… No wonder my french friend always tells me with so much disdain: “you Americans, are just SO practical.”
Grobetrotter 