Night Owls thread

existential.

I should sleep. But here's a song with similar ruminations to the ones in my noggin.

yea, like Iain said.. wanna share? If it's a PM sort of thing... We  are here for you.

lovely. It used to be like that here too. I am on Maui. ..maybe I'll go live on Cook islands now and visit with your uncle!

stewing things over and unhappy

Anything you want to talk over?

I'm awake. I'm stewing things over and unhappy.

Uhane said:

Polynesia.

I have Cook Island on my to-visit list over the next few years as my uncle (now in his 80s) is a annual visistor for the diving and local life there.

He is a Scotsman like me and his later life wanderings took him out there and he fell in love with it - especially the people who had such a down to earth view on life and a lack of the complications of greed and corruption that seem to pervade so much of the world.

He has even written some books about his travels that cover his time in Polynesia that I enjoyed reading,

Polynesia.

what are you reading?

10pm for me - soon will be time for a shower and off to bed to read.

We are having an unseasonally cold day here with a high of 13C - the norm is in the mid 20s and next week is all high 20s so quite pleasant.

For context it is mid winter - the same as Feb in the UK. I think I prefer it here.

Where are you based?

hello night owls! It is but 3 pm where I am. but - hello!

I covered all of Latim America for the bank - mostly Sao Paulo, Mexico City and Buenos Aires but had occasional trips to New York, Bogota and Santiago where there were a few staff.

I covered all the IT needs back then - mostly pre-internet when all intersite connections were dial up so painfully slow.

More than once I had an emergency happen in Mexico City and had to hop on an overnight flight (12 hours) to get stuck into the issue the next morning - not much chance of sleep as it was a turbulent route.

I did get paid a ridiculous amount of money to do this and worked to upgrade all sites to be remote supportable over the course of a year. It was a fun time - Russias debt default in 1999 caused my salary to double overnight in local terms. Not that I had much I wanted to buy there at the time - everything was on an expense account.

Wow that must have been some experience. 

Is that Brazil or Argentina your talking about?

I was there in the late 90's so quite a different time, but during the default of their currency it was quite a turbulent time.

I worked for a Swiss bank at the time and the number of people they had coming into the private banking offices to talk about shady stuff was amazing - I was setting up some of their IT and security systems so often got to overhear what was being talked about - who had suitcases of US$ to deposit etc.

I remember being called in by the bank and told not to co-operate with the police if we were raided - that was my cue to leave as I had a good idea what latin American jails are like.

Brazil must be an interesting place to live.

Yes Argentinian history is fascinating. Im particularly into the period of Juan and Eva Peron. Evita was a remarkable person 

Hello Former Member, I would love to hear about your interest in Argentianan history - I'm based in Brazil myself but spent some time in Buenos Aires with work in the past - it is an interesting place.

I would love to have that conversation with you sometime! Would make me really happy

Yes, really struggling to sleep every night this week

I would talk to you about our shared interest in Argentinian History but it's quite heavy going for this time of night.  I will hopefully be asleep by 2. Glad to see some else about. Night Owls we are here!

What a lovely idea! It is now 1am and am dealing with yet another bout of insomnia, it is so nice to know I am not alone in this.