I Don't Drink Coffee I Take Tea My Dear

You can hear it in my accent when I talk. I'm an Englishman in ....... Chicago!

Admittedly those aren't the correct lyrics but I have been struggling to get that song out of my head recently. Been a fairly tiring few days in my new home. I'm sitting here in my new apartment in downtown Chicago, looking out over the city. I'm on the 18th floor so the view is quite nice.

The apartment is really nice. It's fully furnished complete with kitchen equipment (apart from a kettle, I have a coffee maker instead). It's located a few blocks away from Michigan Ave (the main shopping street in Chicago).

As I mentioned in my last post I flew out to Chicago on Sunday. My flight landed in O'Hare around 3. After a hour waiting an hour in the queue at immigration I looked for the carousel to get my bags to find the flight wasn't up on the screen. There was a flight with a similar number that also flew from Heathrow so I figured the was a mistake somewhere. However after waiting for a while I noticed my luggage on another carousel. The screens above this carousel had no flight number or anything on it. Bit odd but the important thing is that everything I took arrived with me.

A taxi ride later I arrived at my hotel for the next few days. After settling into my room and more importantly taking a shower I met up with Angela, another employee at UOP (me and her had our interviews on the same day) and Alberto (another UOP employee). We then went to a very nice Argentine restaurant not too far from Wrigley Field. I got back to my hotel at around 11 (or 4 in the morning according to my body clock). Straight to bed for me.

5.30 the next morning I was up again getting ready for work. As the office is in Des Plaines which is a suburb of Chicago we leave early to avoid traffic. We arrived at the office at 7.3o. The day basically consisted of lots of taking and meeting people. Head was spinning a bit at the end of the day. I found out I'm going to be based in Operations for the first few months which is good cause I won't be stuck at a desk. In the evening I explored Chicago.

That brings us to today. Again we left for the office at 6.30. The day was spent sitting around. I wasn't allowed in the pilot plant because I was wearing contact lenses so there wasn't much I could do apart from going to buy my safety shoes. Tomorrow should be more interesting and involved.

That's the quick update. I moved into my apartment today so spent the evening unpacking. It's Halloween this weekend and some of the decorations are quite something.

That's it for now, hope you enjoyed reading this.

Til next time.