Failing is not an option…

When I got the news that a mexican company has ordered consulting services from the OTRS Inc to be performed in Mexico City I was thinking about all the rumours & facts about that city:

• Population of 19 Mio.
• Elevation of 2,308m
• pretty high criminality:
  • “Definitely you will not take a cab!”
  • “Everyone is just behind your money!”
  • …

The experiences that I made were quite different:

Mexicans are the most friendly people I ever got in contact with! It is an absolutely pleasure to work with them, esepecially with everyone at Dux Diligens S.A.

Dux is providing high quality IT services like Consulting (ITIL oriented) to its customers thorughout Latin America. The specialists arund Alejandro Torres will even become an OTRS Inc affiliate to not only take advantage of the big players in the IT Service Management Application market but to use OTRS::ITSM the first OpenSource ITIL application in the world.

— Thank’s to everyone at Dux, I will most posititvely return —

To be honest I never was in the north of germany ever before – people there really talk funny…

The customer booked me a hotel near the harbor of Kiel. Sure, I should have been alerted because I found out pretty fast that the hotel is located right in the middle of the red-light district of the city.

The hotel itself is much more than a youth hotel but a hotel. So it is impossible to get shaved in the bathroom due to the lack of space.
Sleeping is almost impossible because of the bunch of guys partying on the street and in the clubs.
When it gets quite (4 am) you can sleep for like 2 hours because at that time the traffic will jump in…

Moral
— Do not never ever let your customer book a hotel for you —

Usually there is one certain hotel I use to stay when travelling to the Silicon Valley. Unfortuantely it came to a point where I checked in at a hotel near the Santa Clara Convention Center: Candlewood Suites, Santa Clara.

Doing so really helped me widening my knowledge:

• Oakland holds the most frequented freight deport on the West-Coast
  I can tell because rails from and towards this deport leading like 10ft from my hotel room
• Candlewood Suites is serious with saying “extended-hotel-stay” in their claim because there is no room service if you are just staying 8 days. Damn, just one more night and I had been served with fresh towels and lines and someone had cleaned my room.
• A good fridge needs to become everything frozen that you put in. Therefore the fridge needs to cool down its temperature on a 365/7/24 basis which leads to a always running cooling unit.