Hi y’all !

I have been away for a couple of months but now I try to give regular updates again on what my experiences are here in the South of the US and surroundings.

Since I wrote last time in January, a lot of things happened and it will be too much to write about. The main reason for not updating this blog regularly is (of course) busy life, too much work and a slightly growing aversion of spending all my time in front of a computer.

I will especially try to focus on my life among Americans (but actually more among other foreigners), my trips (quite some trips in the meantime), and the non-work related items.

I could talk about work for hours and hours but I don’t want to bring you to the border of boredom.

A couple of things I want to mention though. The crisis has really had an impact on working life so far. If there is a hiring stop, it is not easy to fulfill the goal of building a team.

That is why the high workload, stress and business trips made it difficult to settle down and make your place feel like home, especially during the first months. But it hasn’t all its bad sides: I interact with different kinds of people, there are many interesting new aspects of the job and I learn the female art of multitasking. And  soon things are about to change…

The last two months things have already slowed down a bit and I really start to feel settled now. I like the place I live in and the neighborhood is green and beautiful. In my garden I had the chance to have a couple of barbecues à la Belgique. At the bottom of this part I attach some pictures of my place and my car. So you can see: a peaceful place where you are always welcome J.

The big investment plans for Obama are supposed to bring work in the US and this promises to be very interesting for Atlas Copco. So far it doesn’t seem to have a lot of effect. It is very easy to fire someone in the US. One moment the employees are working in the company, the next hour they are packing their stuff and leaving. There are several companies who don’t even give contracts to the people. So it is all based on trust, something that can be broken by any of the parties at any moment. This is both the strength and the weakness of the American economy. People are not very committed to their employer because they can be fired at any moment. On the other hand, they are very mobile and can cross the whole country if they get paid more in a different place. Or, after having gained some experience, they start an own company and become a competitor of their former employer.  

This is it for now. The story is still quite far from up-to-date but at least you get some news from me again and you can see I am still alive and kicking J…

I hope to be able to update my blog with some more news the next weeks but coming weeks = visit of my parents, three rather hard working weeks and going back to Belgium for 10 days !!!

Matthias