Free Food Friday & the Paesano Discount

There is no better feeling when one is on a per diem than to get a free meal! Now we normally have breakfast at our hotel every morning which I am told has been discounted from our per diem cards. Some people here don't like the breakfast here but I'm okay with my coffee and bagel. That's what I would have at home anyway! Your other choices are "fresh" canned fruit salad, bananas (or apples or oranges), cherry sauce (supposedly for the unsweetened yogurt) with your choice of raisins granola, etc to further embellish the yogurt. Then there is the typical cereals (ie. bran flakes, froot loops etc) and a giant vat of instant oatmeal. Powdered scrambled eggs round out the warm breakfast items although if you didn't mind waiting you could make your own fresh waffles. I just hope my per diem doesn't discount $15.00 for my bagel breakfast because I think I'm missing a daily eggs benedict! Now my roommate Laurent is really getting ripped off because his daily breakfast includes a plate of cherry sauce that he forks into his mouth. Anybody that sits with him for breakfast always looks at him with the "What the..." face.
So today we are told that the chefs would be attending our venue to put on a luncheon for VANOC (Vancouver Olympic Committee). One of the questions the speaker at this luncheon asked was if this was the first time that everybody had eaten at our massive dining tent. None of us on the Bell team put up our hands because we were already guinea pigs the first day the chefs tested their equipment at our dining facility. We now know first hand that the athletes will be eating very well.

There was a little mishap this past week and unfortunately Laurent was in the middle of it. I can't say that it was the last straw but just another item in a laundry list of issues we were having. Because we were tired of waiting for Laurent to finish his texting and emailing to get back to work after lunch we decided to let him walk to the area that we were working. In retaliation Laurent decided that he would try to hold on to at least one vehicle key. Not quite sure if he was texting or what but he didn't realize how close he was and backed into a garage door of one of the units. There was minimal damage to the door but the force was enough to damage the drywall on the other side of the door. (All the garages were made up to look like bedrooms so most garage doors were covered on the inside with drywall). I'm not sure if he isn't sleeping in the condo because I know I have caught him dozing at work. He just seems out of it and he still has that damn cough. None of us could believe that he got stumped at the TR2 with a phone that was double corded to a switch. Our whole day is spent putting phones in. None of us have ever put a single phone into two data jacks! I think he should stop running outside in his underwear! At any rate, we all had enough of it and letters were written, meetings were had and at 11:30, Laurent was voluntold to stay home after Christmas. It wasn't easy for any of us to be involved in getting somebody "voted off the island" but we lost all confidence in him. We were babysitting him more than counting on him. Life's too short!

The nice thing about having VANOC around is that they bring cool Olympic Stuff with them. We all got a chance to touch the Torch and pose with it. I'm not sure which torch it is but we started a rumour that it was the final torch that lights the Olympic cauldron. As I ate lunch (turkey, ham, scallopped potatoes au gratin, carrots and caesar salad), I wondered where all these people came from. In our own little Whistler Athletes Village world, we are aware of about fifty people. I will say that our fifty Whistler people were duplicated by fifty Vanoc Vancouver people that wanted to come and visit this site. I know the rest of the people had to go through some kind of security so they must have been invited but I swear it was like bears to a picnic. These guys could smell the food from highway 99 and they jumped the fence! I didn't see any security staff at the tables, so I think this throng took them out. We'll know for sure when the "missing persons" reports come in! Nobody came out of the security check when we left the venue for the end of shift so they were missing at that time!


Our evening dinner of pizza (and byob beer) was supplied by our Bell management, I think. The aroma of twenty one boxes of pizza in our "Love Lounge" (as Bill puts it)was totally enticing. I might have been walking into somebody elses party but it was like I had blinders on. Pizza! Beer! Pizza, Beer! Must have! Now! I know I had a large lunch but what's the harm in one slice of pizza. Okay two! Three! It wasn't like I was at the trough! My good buddy Jeff admitted to four slices and I'm sure he went up for seconds at lunch! The beauty of free meals on a per diem card!

With all of these "parties," there was an inkling that Christmas was coming. This week wasn't any different from any other work week. We installed countless administration drops, phones and Panasonic TVs. We would go home, eat, have a few laughs in the Love Lounge, sleep and do it all over again the next day. But in all that mix we got ourselves a couple of boxes of Christmas lights which were meant to decorate our trailer. While we were down in Squamish (which we all call Squeamish now), we happened to see a vehicle which was decorated with very similar lights. We had to do it too! After all, we work with DC voltage all the time! It's nice to get smiles from people as they watch us go by (and not because of the weird occupants of the Christmas Patriot). As I write this now, we are the only trailer at Whistler Athletes Village to be decorated for Christmas!

Everybody knows that Christmas brings presents and presents require shopping. I thought I had met the best bargain hunter/negotiater when Laura and I were on the beaches of Mexico with Dani from Jazzercise. She was the inventor of the "quarter turn manuever" which was her feint to have the shop keeper reconsider and lower their price or lose a customer. Compared to what Joe can do, I think Dani's negotiating was easy because the shop keepers and beach vendors in Mexico were used to bartering. Joe walked into a shop in Squeamish, assessed the situation and walked out with what he calls the "Paesano discount." Now before you start thinking that's a different name for a five finger discount, think again! It turns out that one of the ladies behind the counter is a sergeant at arms with "price not negotiable" practically diplayed across her forehead. Joe gathers intel to find that the other lady is actually from my province of Campobasso or in his words a "paesana." That was enough for her to not only get Joe the discount but to get all his friends the discount too! The last time I shopped there with Joe was this last Friday night. We went on a midnight madness type thing where the store advertized a 25% discount on all items. When everything was said and done, I calculated that I got a 66% discount! I'm not sure what the rest of the guys got but we brought a total of six shoppers! Jeff was just shopping name brands like American Eagle, Aeropostale etc. He didn't care what size it was, he just threw it over his shoulder! That really was a good Friday!!