Thursday, August 09, 2007

Chaos in New York (yes, again...but different)

That's just typical... The very first day that you really need to be at work on time, the whole public transport system of New York is down. And with that I mean it was total chaos. Julien and I are working on a pitch. For this we had to come up with great ideas in half a day. Today we had to execute all the ideas that were not killed. We already thought: 'how are we going to do all that in just one day?'.

So this morning I went to the subway and there was no train coming. Once in half an hour a subway train came and it was totally stuffed with people, like sardines in a can. Even though I'm thin as a stick, I didn't fit in there anymore. Then we wanted to get a taxi. There was no taxi anymore and we heard that if we could get one, it wouldn't go to Manhattan because the bridge to it was totally stuck because of all the traffic. Then we went to a different subway station. It was empty! It looked like a ghost subway station. It was dark, there was nobody there and it was closed.

So we went back, held our breath and squeezed ourselves into a subway train full of people. We had to switch trains numerous times, and we even had to leave trains numerous times because they didn't go anymore. The stations were full of impatient travellers as well. And it was so hot that I was sweating from just standing to wait for the next train. We even had to walk the last two stations.

This whole situation gave me so much stress that I tripled the amount of cigarettes I smoked in the morning (normally it's one, now it was three). But I have to say I've been in worse situations before. And it always turns out well. You just need to stay calm, take a deep breath and just see what you can do about the problem. If you look at a problem with a helicopter view, it's easier to have an overview and find the solution.

At Saatchi they were prepared for the fact that we were late, because half of the employees didn't even make it to the agency. Under the supervision of creative director Leo Premutico, who is very fast in making decisions, we managed to make the work very fast and contact all the people that could help us.

It's already the next day now. 12 o' clock. We have pretty much everything finished and tomorrow we're going to finetune all the work. I can't say it was a tough day, because it's the same as some days in the Miami Ad School. With the only difference that we got free sushi in the evening. I even managed to do some sporting in the only break that I had today. I felt really good when I was running at the track on the top of the building. I was looking over Manhattan and ran in the hot sun. It was like all the stress of the morning was sweating out of me. It's now 12.30 and we're going home. Well, the advantage of being late is that the subway will be really quiet.

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