It is 9 of IBMers in Tangier but only three of us support our client. The “fabulous triplet” consists of myself, Lavinia from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Ryosuke from Osaka, Japan. We basically spend 14 hours together everyday, even though we have only met 10 days ago. Lavinia is our language super star as she is fluent in French – and de facto acts as our translator and communicator – her head is spinning for most of the day – as the languages are flying back and forth. Yesterday we attended a meeting where the main language was French, but at the same time we had French to English translation and French to Arabic translation – and then Arabic to English – and English to Arabic for responses. Poor Ryo was probably doing his own translation to Japanese in his head. We threw in some Spanish just to clarify – phew ! I am getting very good at deciphering what people are saying through body language, emotion and looks !

But back to my team – this is us in the house of one of our client’s VP – an architect. She hosted us for lunch today and it was a feast, as is the norm in Morocco. We are having so much fun – and I am learning about Brazil and Japan much more than I expected. Most of all we laugh so much during the day, and get through the cultural issues and stares together. Ryo is our hotspot – that is what we decided to call him – as he is all about high tech. He has a machine for everything – a translator, a wifi hotspot, iMac, you  name it. He will be building a website and text messaging system to reach the women graduates for our client. He is quiet, yet he amazes me with his delivery – he just shows up with the task done and dives deep until he solves the problem.

It really is a great team – and I love working with both of them! Thank you Lavinia and Ryo ! #ibmcsc