Steel Tango, Part 1

One of the nice things about my job is that once in a while I get to travel to far away places. One of the bad things about my job is I get to travel to far away places. Last week I went to Argentina.

I work for a global corporation that does industrial automation. This is the reason why it is sometimes less-than-perfect in traveling. Most places where they have heavy industry are not the same places where tourists flock. So for instance if I were to travel to the States I would not normally be called into Honolulu or San Francisco or New York City, but more likely Detroit, Toledo or Flint.

So it was this time. I took the 11 hour flight to Buenos Aires, and it would have been great to stay there. I felt very ‘New York’. But, no, I was picked up by a company colleague and whisked to the Argentine Immigration Bureau. It appears that while you do not need a visa to travel to the country you need to pay for a ‘work’ visa to contribute to their economy. There was a French engineer also sent there to solve the problem and we got a taste of Argentine bureaucracy. My company had hired an ‘expert’ to facilitate the process but it still took two and a half hours to receive the stamped sheet of paper that said we could work there.

Once we were legal, we headed out to the site. It was in a mid-sized city 250 Km from Buenos Aires over the flattest land I have seen, and I have been to Indiana. It was interesting, for the first twenty minutes. Then I realized that all cattle farms look alike and the occasional sheep or llama ranch was not enough to vary the view. I dozed on and off until I was jolted awake because we were on a pot-holed dirt road. I was informed that since we were in a hurry (we had a 3:30 meeting scheduled and it was 5:00 PM) we were taking a short-cut. And sure enough 15 bone-jarring minutes later we pulled into a gleaming modern office building, with lovely blooming violet jacaranda trees (see photo, actually the tree in the photo is in Buenos Aires). Just from the sulfur scent overwhelming what I assumed were the floral overtones I know this was the only gleaming modern building on the site.