Per Aspera Ad Astra: From Peru to Space

I’ve decided to copy Mike’s post and tell the world one of my days. So, here it is

7.30am
Woke up, updated myself on national and international news and turned on both computers. Grabbed my breakfast and sat for one hour checking email, reading space related news and planning the rest of my day.

8.30am
Water, soap and clothes.

9.00am
Drove to the city center. I had to pick up a couple of seals and order some invoices for La Vicca (my family chocolate company). While waiting for my invoice, talked to a publishing company. I asked them if they were interested in publishing JL’s and my SF stories. The salesman wasn’t very sure about it. Finally he accorded to talk to someone who had the authority to decide. I left them my cel phone number.

11.00am
Went home, picked up my debit card and went to the Jockey Plaza Mall (you can find all the banks there). Payed two bills and returned home to leave my debit card (I don’t want to be kidnapped with my debit card. As you can see, you have to think about those things when you live in the third world)

12.00pm
Went into Indecopi’s webpage to grab some information (http://www.indecopi.gob.pe/). If you want to register your brand inPeru, that’s the place to go. Printed the required form and filled all the spaces. Unfortunately I still needed the original logo of La Vicca, so I sent an email to Elizabeth asking for it.

12.30pm
Wrote an email to the X-Book project members. I can’t go into the details about the X-Book, but I can say that we have formed a group of 8 Peruvian writers for publishing a SF book with one of the biggest editorial houses in Spain. We are still in the evaluation process so we have a lot of work to do.

12.45pm
Started proof writing one of the X-Book stories, but left it unfinished, had to eat.

1.15pm
Food: Chicken & potato, with lots of aji (the real aji, not that tasteless stuff that you find in US Supermarkets)

2.00pm
Went to ADEX (http://www.adexperu.org.pe/), the foreign trade association of Peru. Finished my subscription process and went to talk to the office of the Swiss Import Promotion Program. Alas, I don’t qualify since I don’t have the machines installed yet. Pity.

3.30pm
Came back, chatted with Elizabeth about the logo and received a call from a friend regarding the weekend plans. Hey, even I need to have a break!

4.00pm
Grabbed an orange juice, a packet of cookies and a big glass of water, damn it’s so hot down here! I am decided to finish writing my story for the X-Book. After one hour, I wrote like 1000 words and left it there.

5.00pm
Two hour physical training while hearing ‘03 programs of The Space Show.

7.00pm
Soap, water & clothes

7.30pm
Food: Peruvian tuna with chopped aji, and a big salad.

8.00pm
More writing. Sent one email to Seth regarding the web translation and continued with my story (named “Programming Copernicus”). After one hour I concluded that I didn’t like the direction that the story was taking, so I erased like 1000 words and started again.

9.30pm
I took two dozen chocolates and went to German’s house to make a previously accorded delivery. His conclusion: exquisite!

11.00pm
Arrived home and posted this entry while hearing Astor Piazzolla.

11.15pm
Zzzzzz…..

*This entry was originally posted in Liftport’s blog.

Well, finished with the Spanish translation of the webpage. Now we only have to wait for Seth to post it online and see if we have done a good job.

I must add that we have translated only the main parts of the LPG site. We haven’t included the forum, the blogs or other webpage news since we would never finish translating them.

I hope that we soon find translators for French, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian, well, you got the point. After listening to Elon Musk’s opinion about the SE (see Mike’s link in his February 8th post), the conclusion is that we have a lot of work to do regarding the popularization of this project.

BTW, thank god that I don’t receive spam in my LPG email account. Although I have already been receiving spam in my gmail account, argh. And speaking of accounts, I plan to reduce the number of them. Last week I had like 8 of them but I have whacked two already. I think that the next one will be my hotmail account.

*This entry was originally posted in Liftport’s blog.

I don’t care the long hours, the non existant salary (yet) and our cheap CEO. This pays everything:

“Mr. Cuba,
Thank you for the Interview, It has been a lot of help in my math project, and the quotes have helped me with an English project too. Good luck

Sincerely,
Eric Trine

P.S. I haven’t taken Spanish yet but I plan to.”

Good luck Eric!

* This entry was originally posted in Liftport’s blog.

Almost a year ago I posted an entry named “A rant on time”, regarding how companies, big and small, could forget that they exist for their costumers. It isn’t rocket science, just a bit of common sense.

Now for the second part. On Monday I sent 3 emails to different providers. I wanted to know the available sizes for stainless steel tables and their prices. Only one answered on Wednesday and asked my phone so she could talk with me. At the end, she spent US$2 calling my cell phone asking things she could have asked via email. Sigh. The worst part is that I am still waiting for the price.

Since I couldn’t wait any longer, I decided to use the phone and spend US$1 in calls. In the first company they gave me excuses like “he isn’t here” or “he’s had a lot of work”. Why should I care? Anyway, they passed me this guy who took an aggressive position. Hello! I am possible customer! Another sigh. Anyway, he promised to send the price later in the day.

The second company excused itself, “he’s been out a lot”. Again, I don’t care. They promised to send the price and they did, it just arrived (quite expensive btw)

When I called the third company I was tired of telling them that they sucked regarding to emails. Fortunately, the guy who picked up the phone took all my information immediately and promised to send the price later in the day.

I don’t want to end like grandpa Simpson, sending letters telling them that they suck big-time, but it seems I will have start to do it. Why? Because for some reason, I have this image of myself, 40 – 50 years old, traveling in a zodiac in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, trying to fix a blunder from a LPG 3rd world supplier. Grrr.

Well, sorry people. Next time I will (try) to post something merrier.

*This entry was originally posted in Liftport’s blog.