Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Heading Home

Day Two of the conference consisted of intense workshops that took up the entire day and I was feeling it. I was up late on Monday night working on the proxy, getting little sleep and then had to be downstair. It was painful. I looked around and all my colleagues were feeling it. After the conference, we had dinner at a local Italian restaurant and rolled back to the hotel at 11 p.m. Of course, I was up late again until 2:30 a.m. working on changes to the proxy statement.

Today was Day Three and the end of our conference. Thank goodness, it was relatively light. We finished up and stampeded out of the hotel for a guided tour of Budapest. Mind you, we had to work on this tour. Throughout the conference, we had designated seats. We were rotated and had to sit with different people for meals and at the conference workshops. I understood the reason was to have you get to know your colleagues and meet everyone. It reminded me of being at a wedding. You didn't know who you were going to get and you weren't allowed to switch seats. To do so, you got called out and then chastised. Ouch.

For the tour, we were put into groups and we had to search for clues throughout the city. Sort of a Survivor game against all the teams. It was cold and it was windy. Two of the teams dropped out. My team and I finished everything. It was nice to see the city during the day, we did a lot of walking and we even took the train. I wished we had more time to explore the city. Part of the assignment, we had to learn a nursery rhyme and repeat it in Hungarian and recite it to all our colleagues. OK- we all learned what we needed to learn and was constantly repeating it under our breaths. The locals thought we were insane.

Afterwards, we had our farewell dinner to close out the conference at Spoons,a floating restaurant. My team and I were able to repeat the nursery rhyme in Hungarian. We did OK. Twenty seconds after it was over, I couldn't recite it even if you paid me. My colleagues and I have spent an awful lot of time together the last few days and we have definitely bonded. Three intense days locked in a conference room, team building exercises and three meals together...you either have to accept the fact that you have to like them or throw in the towel. Luckily, I like them all and we had a great time tonight at our farewell dinner.

So, I have decided not to sleep since I will be leaving for the airport in about an hour. I packed my bags and decided to take a last look at the proxy and sit by the window and watch the snowfall. It is quite pretty to see the snow blanketing Budapest. My last image of the town before I head out. I figure when I get on the plane, I'm probably going to pass out. It will be nice to be home in time for dinner tomorrow and spend some time with the boys. I'll be packing up and leaving again on Monday...this time for Atlanta.