Having a really nice time

So I'm in Raleigh again, not for the 1st time....I was here in the summer for a quite traumatic visit.
But this time it's all been rather lovely!

Firstly, it's a lovely town and has a very high quality of living. On previous visits, I was a bit confused by the town layout, I didn't think there was a "proper" town centre and wasn't sure where to head for when looking for 'town'. I'm not good in a place if I've not done reasearch, I feel quite disorientated without maps and prior knowledge (it's a failing, I know): this time I did a bit of digging, and discovered that the old centre of town was boarded by North, South, East and West streets. So, on Sunday we drove into town and then stopped & parked when we crossed West St. Instantly we were in the centre. There was a capitol building, and some museums, so we were able to do some culture - the sport hall of fame, arts, civil rights history through the eyes of one reporter. It was very interesting. Even though this is my 4th visit to Raleigh, I felt that this was the first time I got my head round the history of the place.

Anyway, we're here because SMA Microsystems, an IBM Business Partner are here, and they've been hired by Arcadia to set up their new store (for New York) to prove it's all going to work when they open in March.

So I'm back in the Marriott - it's directly opposite a huge shopping mall (7 or 8 lane highway to cross though!) but it's very handy for the airport and really good for the work location which takes us all of about 15 -20 minutes in the mornings and evenings.

Work has been engaging but has gone well. I've been able to test loads of the system. It's great. Normally I spend all my time documenting things which are wrong!

It's still hard work tho. Awake most mornings at 5:30 grabbing my emails, aerobics at 6-6:30, shower and down for brekkie at 7:30, leave for work at 8. Arrive at SMA at 8:30, an hour or so to get the 2 systems up and running, and check and answer emails and respond to queries and requests. 10am we go on the call with the UK team (it's 3pm for them) and discuss our yesterday activities and their today activities! Confused....?

Each day this week we've had quite large brekkies and haven't really had lunch so we've been doing full on 9 or 10 hour days without a break! At 6 - 6:30 we head back to the hotel and either step out to the mall for dinner or have a few beers in the bar. I think they're getting their money's worth out of us, that's for sure!