Another day at the office...

Today was fairly uneventful from a wow factor perspective. The team spent most of the day grinding through process mapping for the UDOM functional areas....(oh please let us get to the requirements stage soon!). At some points in time it truly felt like the blind leading the blind but in all honesty I think everyone is loving the challenge....sprinkled with a little humour and the odd dose of complete honesty when it all seems too much to take. Basically, we recalibrate and continue on our path of making great progress....its all good! We also managed to sneak in a quick "demonstration hand" of Euchre to get Lucia trained up...this made her happy since she is fairly competitive (translation - she doesnt mess around) in card playing. We also explored some more cultural differences.... ie. What people from different cultures say, what they actually mean and how it is interpreted. For example, in our 4some we all say different things to mean "I understand"...the Indians say "I think so..or this is true", The North Americans say, " I got it...", the Tanzanians say " it's fine...".

Another langauge difference is when talking about having a meal. The Slovakians & Indians will say " I will take lunch at 1pm", the North Americans say, " I will have lunch at 1pm..". Today we had to reconfirm that were were not actually "taking" anything to Mikumi National Park on the weekend...although we agreed to have lunch there.

Culturally speaking....you really need to be aware of the words you are using and how it translates for the people you are working or speaking with.

PS - this is another great shot from the University office, second floor.....what an amazing view of the clouds and the various mountain ranges both near and on the horizon.