Jeroen Sangers

Although 2 months ago we started working in our new office, the office has been inaugurated officially yesterday. The last week a lot of people have been working very hard to make everything spick ’n’ span. A new gate, small white stones around every plant in the garden, repair the basket ball net, finish the kitchen in our guesthouse. Inside we cleaned everything and I supplied the two vacant desks with brand new HP e-pc’s and Samsung TFT screens. We also created a nice screensaver with the ICG logo.

Before the guests arrived, the mayor of Lleida was shown around in the office and the gardens. I was ‘lucky’ enough that he was waiting for our CEO next to my desk, so I could have a short talk with him.

Present were the representatives of the local government, the biggest clients from Lleida, some other relations and our distributors from Andalucía, Madrid, Portugal and Mexico.

The mayor revealed a memorial stone on the wall, the CEO and the mayor held their obligatory speech, and then we could enjoy the cava, tapas and live classical music in the gardens.

Some people already told me that the new office looks like the house off a mafia godfather. Well, yesterday with this set-up and all the people in suits with sunglasses walking around, I certainly could agree.

After some months of preparations, yesterday the big work finally started. OK, we already did some small things, but yesterday the worker we hired for the big works started.

And he started well! In one day he removed the wall between a bed room and the salon, giving us a bigger living room. Besides this, he is going to close one door, move two doors, lower the ceiling of the kitchen and the bathroom and install the kitchen and the bathroom. Plenty of work for the next weeks…

To celebrate, MJ and I went for a drink at Llobregat.

The last month I have been working in ICG’s international department.

We are a software company, mainly focussed on Spain, but we also sell in Portugal, Mexico, Uruguay, Holland, Sweden, Austalia, Canada and the U.K. One of the things I have been involved with, is to make sure that all product information will be available on our web site in English.

And as of today the English web site is available. I have to admit that it’s not finished yet, but there is plenty of information at the moment. So I would like to invite all of my readers to have a look at www.icg.es/eng/.

Once again I had problems with my e-mail account. It appeared that a lot of messages I have sent the last month(s) have not actually been sent! Or better: they never arrived.

When sending they were accepted by the SMTP-server, but there they have been deleted. The problem is that I am using some forwarded e-mail addresses like mail@jeroensangers.com and jeroen.sangers@fimcap.org. Mail send to these addresses are being forwarded to another mailbox, to which I connect with my mail program.

So far no problem, but I also want to send e-mail using the above adresses. Therefore I change the ‘from’ field in my mail application. But now, a lot of providers don’t allow this, to prevent spam. Usually, the SMTP server will reject your message, so your not able to send it. My latest provider however, accepted the messages, but didn’t sent it further (yes, to /dev/null!).

At the moment I am looking for a new provider. Until that, I will not be able to send my messages using jeroensangers.com or fimcap.org.

(Sorry for this quite tecnical message, but I know that at least half of my readers DOES understand it. If you don’t: just forget it…)

Sant Joan is an important saint over here. At least important enough to have a free day on June 24th. Combine this with the general strike last Thursday, and the result is that half of the country moves for five days to the beach.

Instead of the beach, MJ and I decided to move with our tent to a camping in the pre-pyrenees, next to a lake near Tremp.

As a result, this weekend we have done absolutely NOTHING. Every day we wake up quite early due to the heat in our tent, we ate some magdalenas with a coffee for breakfast, we took a bath in the lake, read a little bit in the sun, took another bath, etc…

After two days of sun it became clear again why they used to call me ‘zwarte’ (black).

The summer has yet to start, and the temperature has risen up to 37 degrees. I’m so happy that last weekend the temperature was a lot more comfortable. Last weekend my parents visited me for the first time since I left Holland, and of course I wanted to show them around in Lleida.

We had a wonderful time together. We showed them the city, the place I work, the house we’re going to live in, the place we’re living right now. They also got to meet the parents of MJ and despite of the language problems they got along really well.

The biggest pieces of old furniture are now removed from our future house, the kitchen and the bathroom have been chosen, the measures have been taken…

This week it’s really going to start. First all windows will be replaced and when that’s finished the workers start removing a wall, making a new ceiling and changing the position of some doors. From then on we can start building our own little house, and with a little bit of luck we can live there after summer. There’s a lot to do, but we’re looking forward to do it!

I have been working now for four days in the international departement, and so far everything goes really well.

The first two days, my colleague explained me all the ins and outs of FrontRetail, one of ICG’s applications. And now I am working hard on the Dutch translation of this application.

Must be easy for me, not? Indeed, not! Translating is a lot more difficult than I expected. Partly because the structure of the two languages is different, partly because I started with a badly translated version, partly because some words have more meanings, but most of all because my lack of knowledge of accounting.

Furthermore things go great. The office is absolutely beautiful (I still have to try out the swimming pool in the garden), my colleagues are helping me a lot and I am helping them (being the only technician in the office). The small problems every new office have like the absence of a coffee machine and an airco that works as a freezer will be solved soon.

I have been working a little bit more than six months now for Ricomack. During this time I have got to know Ricomack and the mother company ICG. I also have been able to transform myself from AIX/UNIX oriented into a generalist, since I have been working with Windows 2000, Windows XP, RedHat Linux, routers, networking, Point-Of-Sale systems, printers, the ICG software, … I have to say that I really like my work, although sometimes the work is not exactly what I like to do (like repairing 10 year old PC’s). But anyway, I feel comfortable in this company.

But last Friday I got an offer I couldn’t resist. ICG wants me to be in their international ‘department’. At this moment this department is operated by only one colleague, who is responsible for both the international sales and support. And that combination sometimes is a problem, because it is hard to support other clients being on an international sales visit. So now I am going to help in the support.

This morning I packed my new PC and went off to the new office. Let’s see what we can do here…

That’s it, it is over now. The Aplec del Caragol has finished. The aplec is a big feast with ’eating snails’ as a central theme. But in fact it is a lot more. It is about eating, drinking, culture, meeting old friends, music, …

On the applec groups of people (collas) spent one weekend together on the festival terrain. There are about 120 collas, with each 50–100 members. Members pay an amount of money, for which they can eat and drink during the whole weekend. Every colla has it’s own space on the terrain, provided with a small bar, tables and chairs, BBQ’s and usually also (live) music. Every member wears the shirt and the scarf of his colla.

Some numbers: besides the 12.000 members of the collas, another 200.000 people have visited the aplec. In all, 12 tons of snails have been consumed!!!

The family of MJ is a member of colla ‘Picarols’ and I was lucky enough to be able to join their colla. Also to my luck, this colla wears white shirts with a blue print as opposed to others which wear white shirts with pink dots, purple shirts with green print…

It was a great pleasure to pass all the collas and watch how every colla has it’s own way of passing the weekend. Another thing which I like a lot, is that it is an activity for everybody. Sometimes three generations of one family are present on one colla.

There is only one backdraw: I think that if your not within a colla, it might not be as much fun. But maybe the 200.000 visiters think different about it… I enjoyed it a lot at least.