Ah, almost the weekend! Not that it really matters for me, as I’m working all the way through it! It’s around halfway through the huge ADVAC conference that I mentioned in my last blog, and wow, when they said huge they meant huge! The last few days have been hectic but rewarding.
I didn’t realise say much about it last time, but here I will explain a bit more about what ADVAC actually is. It’s an Advanced Vaccinology Course, mainly dealing with infectious disease and vaccination in developing countries, with selected participants from all over the world taking part. Each day there are seminars and lectures organised (in English, all the participants must speak English) the conference room discussing a different topic. I have got the faintest clue about what any of it means (far too scientific for me!) but it seems pretty interesting.
What I also didn’t realise is that the job I’m doing under ADVAC for these two weeks is an actual job people apply for – an “ADVAC assistant” as it were haha. When the staff at the reception told me that I’d be helping out with this conference, I didn’t think it was an actual job; on the first day, Katia, the lady organising it, gave me a job spec with the different criteria and qualifications you must have. I think I met like two – and one of them was fluency in English – done – but I’m doing okay with it. The job mainly involves tending to clients queries, which are always ridiculously varied, so far ranging from trying to find sanitary towels and paracetamol for a lady to reprogramming room keys for clients, organising numbers for meals, and printing all documentation for the conference, and wow, is there a lot of documents!! Just today, in one morning, I have used 1 and a half cartons of paper, each with 5 reams of 500 sheets inside ... basically, A LOT of paper!!! Printing and photocopying initially sounds easy, when I heard that was what I’d mainly be doing I was like, oh yeah eassssy ... but actually, it’s a lot harder than you might think – dealing with blockages, industrial size ink cartridges, staples, the different types/weights of paper etc ... but everything’s going well, and I’ve made minimal errors – and when I have made mistakes I’ve made sure to recycle the paper!!
For me, one of things that has been the most exciting is meeting and talking to people. Every day, I meet people from every continent, its amazing; USA, Canada, Singapore, Japan, Colombia, Lithuania, Mali, South Africa, Guatemala, Cuba... the list goes on. I’ve actually become friends with the guy from Guatemala – he comes to see me each morning to print out his documents for the day, and the guy from Cuba always shouts, “Jennifer! ‘Ow are yoo?” when he sees me. If I told him I spoke Spanish I’d never get rid of him! Another hilarious thing is that so many people have told me how nice my accent is; as much as I’ve tried to tone it down so that people can understand me, the Geordie still shines through!
It has been pretty exhausting though. I’ve been doing really long hours – 7.30 til 2.30 each day, no break. Yesterday I even stayed until 4, I had to mind someone’s French children while they went to a meeting, so I sat and watched 101 Dalmatiens with them – not as good in French! You have to be prepared to try anything, and deal with any query – I think my time at Waitrose has also helped with this, helped me learn how to deal with clients and facing problems. Yesterday morning, 5 minutes after I’d started my shift, a Romanian woman came running up to the reception desk, panicking that her laptop had broken, she was writing a book and hadn’t backed it up, she hadn’t be able to sleep with worry, could I help her. I had literally no idea, and asked all the typical IT Crowd-style questions; “have you tried turning it off and on again?” “is it definitely plugged in?” I went with her to her room to see if I could do anything. When we got there, she switched it on, it started up but froze on a black screen. She looked at me expectantly, if I could do anything. I basically just clicked the mouse, pressed a few random buttons, no idea at all, when suddenly it started working – she screamed and hugged me!! She couldn’t thank me enough. I still didn’t even have a clue what I’d done! Later on that day I saw her again at lunchtime and she had told her entire table about what I’d done – now everyone sat with her thinks I’m great at fixing computers when all I think I did was press escape! Either she was just a little bit dim with computers, or I got really lucky!
I’m finished for the day now, just been chilling in the sun with a book I found in the villa. Internet access has been limited lately, because the conference, I can’t really use the computer room or be in the hotel in my spare time. I can sometimes pick up the wifi outside, but it’s not great, so I’m limiting my use of it. You don’t realise how big an influence the internet has on your life when you haven’t got 24/7 access to it, its quite hard, especially when I’ve had work to do. Thankfully, my Intercalary Project is all finished and handed in thanks to my lovely dad on Wednesday, so that is one less thing on my plate! Now I can just concentrate on the job, and the printing printing printing ....
