ginovandewalle.com

I have had a very full day today. It is now Wednesday evening, a little over half past ten, and I am rounding up today’s day. The alarm clock went off as usual, at 07.00am. The very first thing I see now that the days are becoming shorter, is a magnificent sunrise above that blue Atlantic Ocean. I can see it from my bedroom window, the sun comes up right in front of me. In summer time, it comes up more to my left, somewhere above Spain. I had a nice little breakfast, and at 08.30am sharp, the bell rang, and the cleaning lady came in. As she does every Wednesday. She is always on time, never comes even one minute late. I wonder if she is a true Portuguese woman. As this kind of punctuality is very unusual in this country.

I spent my morning in my home office, working on quotes, making some phonecalls to some customers that are late in paying their invoices (which gives us some problems as well - unfortunately, these kind of customers don’t realise that they are getting a sort of chain reaction in action), the usual administration things we have to do to keep our small company up and running…

It was almost noon when I left my house. I stopped in Faro, at the shopping mall for a quick lunch in one of the many restaurants, and took the opportunity to buy some fruit for in my office. It always astonishes me that it is almost impossible to find fruit or vegetables from first class category. Having lived in this country for a little over five years, I have only seen one supermarket in which the fruit and vegetables ARE first quality. In all the others, and I mean ALL OF THEM, they announce the groceries as “Categoria II”. What a shame!

I had a couple of meetings (both online through Skype as live in the office) during the afternoon, and before I knew it, night had fallen over the Algarve. In the late afternoon, I received a phonecall from the dealer where we bought our company van, two and a half years ago. We had a special platform installed on the back of the van, as the safes which we sell are sometimes pretty heavy, not easy to handle metal boxes. Last month, all of a sudden, the whole thing broke down, with an unexpected cost of € 270,00 to fix it. This guy wanted to know if everything was fixed all right, and if I was satisfied with their service. Now, don’t get me wrong, the people who work at that dealership are very friendly people. They do their utmost to satisfy me as a customer.

Unfortunately, last Monday, I used the platform for the first time again since it had been fixed. And guess what? The whole thing broke down again. Exactly the same damage as one month ago. Somebody did not do a good job last month. When I told this story to the guy at the other side of the line, I could hear how embarrassed he was. He did not have anything to say, and just hung up… What a service. Portuguese productivity, part III. Just incredible.

Tonight, I had a long conversation with a Belgian friend through Skype. We talked about business, about women (men amongst each other…), about the snow in which Belgium woke up last weekend, about the small things in life…

As a matter of fact, it was an almost perfect day today…

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