First Day at Work

Surprisingly enough, the expected hangover seems to be absent at the time when the alarm rings. An ungodly 7:30 AM. The stiff mattress syndrome is starting to take its toll though, as I suddenly become aware of constantly having woken up in the throughout the night. Anyway, no time to waste since I am supposed to meet Jonathan at 9.

Anthony is kind enough to leave me a note with the bus numbers that take me downtown. I get to the bus stop but none of them arrives, so I finally hail a cab and confidently say “Chechidze tri”. The driver asks me a couple of questions and, after receiving no answer, resigns himself to driving. I get dropped off in front off the Italian Embassy. The address turns out to be “Chechidze sami A,” with GFSIS actually being the same building as the Embassy. Which can only be a good thing, I imagine. The first confirmation comes when I discover the espresso machine – which is normally the equivalent of the Antichrist to any proper coffee lover. This time, however, the mechanical beast delivers fresh ground, rich tasting coffee in several varieties which make a very realistic approximation of their original kind. I am elated.

Back to business, though. I arrive with uncharacteristic puentlichkeit at 8:59, for my 9 AM meeting with Jonathan: a very laid back and sharp American guy around his forties. He gives me a quick briefing about GFSIS and then proceeds to show me around the building. As promised, he attempts to introduce me to the staff members. However, the only real person I get to shake hand with is Mari, a lovely lady who works as a secretary. All other members of the staff seem to take a quite liberal approach to “normal” working hours. Jonathan says people start to roll in around 10 AM. That works fine for me.

A few words about the working environment. The building itself looks modern, fully air conditioned and with a lovely terrace for avid smokers like me. The intern office is filled with state of the art computers hooked up to broadband internet. I get even more excited when I find a folder called “Background Documents” on the shared drive, containing thousands of various papers, government documents, reports et al., which pretty much make up the whole literature ever been published about Georgia and the Caucasus.

The other interns start arriving around 10. The last two get into the office at 11:44 AM. There are a few American girls, one doing a Masters in Belfast. She asks me if I work with Nick Wheeler or Will Bain. I refrain from mentioning anything about the latter faculty member and I pretend to be flattered she knows the names of our illustrious professors. I also talk to Alex, an English guy from London that seems pretty chill and laid back. I later find out he is 22 and taking a year off to get some field experience before applying for the Foreign Service. I suddenly feel old.