dimanche 22 février 2009
Circumvening employment rules in Peru?
Yesterday, while discussing with a bunch of peruvian friends about the problem of ensuring an employee doesn't run away after a 3 months training period (which just happened for the company I'm helping set up), I realized the possibility probably existed (because of the same lack of rules that prevents signing a contract with responsibilities on *both* sides) to offer a salary with a bonus at the end of the working period. Something like a basis of S/.1000 and a monthly bonus of S/.500 which is kept aside and only paid at the end of the employment term (6 months, one year, whatever), and not pay it if they leave before then.
This might be the only way to make people think before they leave.
Because come on... it's not fair to work in a nice job for 3 months, just time for you to know exactly how things work and become efficient, and then run away to another company which pays 10% more (and which doesn't have to train you).
lundi 2 février 2009
Surfing the (rocky) wave again
A little 5.8 earthquake shaked Lima again today (and again, the epicenter was around Ica, poor guys). Surprisingly, I didn't feel it. At the time, I was out getting the keys to my new offices, but my employees were quite scared (very few of them ever felt an earthquake from a building's 6th floor) and told me about 10 minutes ago.
The USGS report can be found here: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2009cpa1.php
It's funny, it didn't happen for so long that I had almost forgotten about that permanent threat. When happening like this (above 4), the first is generally followed by a few repetition waves. Let's see what this week tells us about that.
Damn, and now we're moving to the 9th floor... More fun to come, I guess.
dimanche 18 janvier 2009
Double Uncle
I'm a double uncle now. Joanne, my new little niece, was born today (far away from here) at 5h45am. Apparently everybody is well.
vendredi 16 janvier 2009
The Huachiman
The "Huachiman"... how many times have I heard this expression now? No idea, but it still makes me smile every time. First, I thought it was some kind of savvy old man, but in fact it's only a localisation of the term "watch man". There are plenty of these guys in Miraflores, so you might hear the term frequently, yet you never quite catch why they don't simply call them "guardia" or something...
vendredi 2 janvier 2009
Short live the Cuy!
On my latest trip inside Peru, I went to San Vincente de Cañete (other article to come soon, hopefully), and got invited to eat cuy (guinea pig) in a cuy farm.
I took very explicit pictures of the cuy in my plate, so for the faint of heart I decided not to show it here (I'm trying to figure out the best way to show it to non-faint-of-heart only).
Anyway, a cuy farm is something like this (see me standing next to my next meal):
Apparently, in a matter of 12 weeks, there's a complete new cycle of cuys, so all of these 900 cuy actually are born and killed in 12 weeks time (and then it starts all over again).
The cuy has a taste of something between chicken and rabbit, but is quite difficult to eat (not much meat), which makes it an expensive meal for high-standing parties.
