My body told me it was time to wake up at 2:30 AM, too bad I gone to sleep an hour and half earlier. After a bit of a work session from 2 to 4 in the morning, I was finally able to get back to sleep and get a few hours to make today tolerable. Jay & I had a breakfast in our hotel, and took walk around the block in Odessa which is pretty darn fascinating.
Irene and Alexi pick us up at our hotel at around 12:30pm and we headed to the Sigma Ukraine offices about 15 minutes away. Their offices are very impressive, with 3 to 4 teams working on several complex development projects. They make us of the space in a very efficient way, with lots of small to medium-size meeting areas, and some pretty good size rooms for teams of 5-6 people to work and collaborate. Coming from our offices, where we can’t seem to stop talking all over each other and interrupting each others conference calls, there’s something to be learned here.
We received our agenda, and are pretty much booked for every working hour between now and the end of day Monday. Some pretty impressive organization and a lot of things to cover for the project working on with them.
We headed off to lunch at a restaurant on top of the Luxury shopping center near victory Square in Odessa. The whole team enjoyed from this great rooftop perch. I had my first taste of Ukrainian borscht, which was quite good and lived up to the expectations, since I’ve been hearing about it since Jay’s trip last winter.
Back to the office for an afternoon full of meetings and reviewing details of the project.
Overall have been enjoying learning about the Ukrainian way of life & work. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but things seem much more European than I would’ve guessed. I guess that’s why we are in Eastern Europe. Duh. Lots of western amenities, good food and some great hosts are making this a great trip.
Off to dinner, at Tavernetta, near the city center. Good Italian faire, with great hosts Alexey, Alexander, Irene & Serge. I was introduced to the Ukrainian sport of Vodka. This pretty much sums it up for me: They measure it in grams, a unit of wieght, because it is a thing, not just a liquid.
