31-VII-2007.
Working day in SFBC. Finally seeing a customer. They're just about six blocks from the hotel, easy walk. Breakfast at Pete's, across the street, with David getting the orders, Jan the coffee and me taking our backpacks and lining them next to a table I liked.
Meeting the staff. The jewish doctor (soon to be father, the old fashioned way), the chinese doctor (Jiang - she talks excellent english but inserts a vowel between any two consonants, sometimes disataraceting), the korean intern (nice girl, not hired by the hospital but rather by some data/process analysis firm to just... well take notes of the flow), the big black guy who is our liaison officer (Nick, that is), the arab looking lady with froggy eyes and olive skin who claims she's actually black, and at times the indian lady doctor who is in charge of retyping everything to send to SHET. That's pretty much the folks we'll be seeing these days.
Long conference in the red carpet room*. Lots of whiteboard drawing, designing future development etc etc. A testing customer who enjoys this special status and tries to get whatever's possible out of us. I had to dive into Crystal reports to try to redo a complicated graphic report... nice, considering this is just about my first contact with it - Jan ran me through a fifteen minute crash course. Still managed to get something done.
In the afternoon, went near the place where the Alcatraz ferry leaves (the island itself is sort of visible on the horizon, behind the warehouse), to negotiate (again) with the same fat guy (really fat, can't sit with his knees together) who owns another clinic. He appeared in negotiations so many times, must have formed a habit. (he did buy eventually, few years later)
Dinner with all the above staff, plus the guy who hired the korean girl, minus the chinese and indian doctors. Nice and fancy, with rather imaginative decoration. The bar seems like it was poured from a single slab of glass, windows at tilted angles. Seafood mostly (aka morsketina, see house dictionary), good. And I think californian wine - not bad but I really don't remember.
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* it's not red, but once was and the name stuck
Mentions: 06-VIII-2007., David Berton, house dictionary, Jan Brenkelen, Jiang Wong, Nick Scage, SFBC, SHET, in serbian