Handyman's Home

Now let's talk about pedestrian-friendliness. Basically, it doesn't exist here. I tried to cross a major road, and although there are traffic lights, it's pretty much impossible to cross the road on foot. Larger Richmond is very spread-out, there's lots of space between properties and all of the buildings are single-storey. Also, almost every building has a parking lot outside. Cars here are generally huge, and everybody goes everywhere by car. No wonder, if you can't even cross the road without using a car.

I was working at the client's site, and the boss came up to me and told me that I wouldn't have to bring my tie on Friday. Casual Friday, oh yeah! Of course, normally every day is Casual Day at Aia headquarters, except for people who have to deal with clients. I found it very interesting to actually witness something like Casual Friday, which I'd only heard of in stories before. I must say it wasn't really a big difference at our client's site -- AFAICT only the managers tend to dress up in Business Casual on Mondays to Thursdays.

It was also very interesting to see how cubicles work in practice. In fact, it's not as bad as it seems when you hear about them, although I must say that I still prefer the open work areas with 3-7 people per office that you see in The Netherlands. The one weird thing was that half of the people in the building were working without any daylight whatsoever. In The Netherlands, having actual daylight at your desk is compulsory, so it's really weird to be deep in the catacombs of a single-storey building with not even a skylight to tell you whether it's day or night.

(To be continued...)