My office in Manila

Manila is a huge city made up of several different districts. Not to mention that Manila is a bunch of towns rolled into one. It would be like calling Sparks, Reno.....(which some of us do already.) There is about 8.5 million people that live in the surrounding parts of Manila. And boy is the pollution bad! There are a lot of cars, motos, busses and trucks! And everyone is in a hurry and NO one obeys the signal rule....I'm just glad I have a driver because I think I would have died already if I had to drive.

My office is in a part of Manila called Eastwood. Eastwood is a neighborhood of a lot of business like IBM and Chase. The center of town is where all the buildings are for the businesses and for apartments. They have a great big mall about 5 stories with all the shops you can imagine like Calvin Klien, Nine West, and my favorite, Mango! Shopping can be really cheap (if you stay out of the "american" brand stores and go to the local stores) I still can't get use to it. For example, I had brought a few pairs of shoes, but since it is so humid here, my feet have swelled a little and I have a pair that just doesn't fit me, so I went to buy a pair and I bought them for 900 pesos, 900 pesos is like $18 to them very expensive, to me CHEAP! The funny thing, clothes and shoes are really hard to come by in my size....Everyone is so short and tiny that a size 9 shoe is almost impossible to find, you have to walk in the store and ask them, "what shoes to you have size 9's in?"

My office is on the 5th floor of a 20 floor building, it has a great view of Manila except for the fact that you can see a Shanty town across the way. It is a little shocking to think that you are in the nice building and across the way is a bunch of people who can hardly feed themselves, in a lot of ways its a very humbling moment, I'm so grateful to have this opportunity, I'm so blessed to have the family, my love and my friends to be so supportive while I do this!

The office itself is very big, there is about 220 "cubes" in one room and another 200 or so in the other. The other room (we call it the OF) is where MSLI has hired my third party group as their support center. So when you call because your Office 2010 isn't working correctly, you talk to someone in Manila more than likely. The employees are all very very young, I would say the average age is about 20. They all stare at me when I walk in the room and they call me "boss lady" its really funny too because I'm not their boss.

I'm working with a great bunch of people. Anna is based out of Dublin but originates from Poland. She is very very sweet and quite. She is here as a Subject Matter Expert. She is so helpful towards me that I don't know what I would do without her. Iris is another great person to work with, she is from Pasadena California but based out of the Reno office. She has been here for over a year and is here as a Project Manager for the entire Arvato Enterprise Office. She is really sweet and knows her stuff about Manila. She loves to travel and loves to share her experiences and tips on traveling around Manila.

So far work has been great. The days go by really fast here, mostly because I work from 11am till about 8pm....Its been very different with the time change, but I'm getting use to it more and more.

Until next blog.....