This was originally intended to be a post after the first
successful day at the IAEA; however, apartment hunting and a long day at the
office sapped the energy right out of me.
So, instead, this post documents two successful days working in Vienna!
The Vienna International Centre is the home of the IAEA and
other UN agencies. It is a large,
seven-building campus located immediately off the subway line, on the banks of
the Danube River. It’s tough to
describe, so I’ll try to upload a picture here:
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| The VIC, with the Subway station in the foreground [View looking Northwest] |
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| Google Sketchup is fun |
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| The rotunda, with all the Member States flags, around the Memorial Plaza |
Inside the office floors are like some kind of horrible
optical illusion. As I look across my
hall, I see another concaved hallway. “No
problem,” I think, “that hallway takes me to the stairwell I need. I’ll just cross the hall and turn left.” Except, crossing the hall and turning left, I’m
actually in a different third of the
building then I need for that stairwell!
ARG! What sick, demented, horrible
person designed this place! I thought
Europeans, and especially central (think: German) Europeans were known for their
views on efficiency? Where’s the plain,
unadorned rectangle? Now THAT’S how you make
good use of space.
Anyways, I’m working in the Incident and Emergency Centre,
which has a difficult act to balance. On
the one hand, it’s an international operations center, which sounds
straightforward enough. Except they
actually have exactly no regulatory authority or jurisdiction to do
anything. They can receive information, process
information, assess information, and share information. Lately, they’ve been asked to conduct
independent assessments and publish recommendations based on data from
emergencies or incidents; but that function is still so new that they’re only
just developing the infrastructure to do it.
I’ll be designing a workflow management system to help them with the
first part – dealing with all that information – as well as other functions
they need to stand up and operate smoothly.
Should be a fun challenge!
I hope to have an apartment soon; I’ve located one – and exactly
one – apartment with air conditioning, and it is allegedly located in a good
area and just across the street from a subway station that can connect
me to work in about 10 minutes. If the
visit goes well, I’ll hopefully have news to report in my next update. If it doesn’t go well … I may not have much
of a choice, really! This is no time to
be picky …
Getting into an office environment and meeting people has
been great. As I may have mentioned (but
don’t think I did), the last few days of not working in Vienna had me a little
down. Just a bit lonely I suppose. But, past trips and experience helped me to
realize right away that it was just some muckity-muck that needed to be slogged
through, and not indicative of any bigger problem. In general, the folks in my group are
experienced and care a lot about protecting people during an emergency. It’s a group with tons of cultural and
geographical diversity, with employees from all over Europe, Russia, Canada,
and only one or two other Americans. Of
course, I’m hopeful that the Canadians and Minnesotan can help me find good
places to catch the NHL playoffs over here, hehe.
I hope to get around to other parts of the city soon and
ideally to get OUT of the city in the next week or two. Do some traveling. Take some pics. You know. No big deal.
I said it in previous posts but Vienna is a great city. Clean, safe, historic, green. I’d recommend visiting to just about
anyone. I have a view towards the West
over the Danube River (obscured by buildings) that looks out towards a set of
hills that border the city, and it’s just a great scene. Of course, it helps that Vienna seems to only
ever be 55-75 degrees F with hardly any rain.
Folks here tell me that won’t last … hence the desire for A/C! Hopefully I’ll have some cool news to report
soon!
Groan all you want, it’s a classic pun …
