Greetings from Ohio!

There is so much to talk about. Alas, so little time.

I am settled in. My apartment is lovely, and I have the impression that I will have fun in it. I was shocked by the sheer amount of stuff that I have - my belongings were packed into over 107 boxes. Most of these contained books, clothes and knick-knacks like figurines. Consider that I do not have a bed or a sofa, yet it will take me probably another week before I get rid of the last of the boxes. I moved in on Saturday May 1st at around 10am, and despite warning the movers not to bring my belongings until at least 11:30am that morning, I was shocked to turn around at 10:15am and find a truck outside the apartment complex.

I drove from New Jersey to Ohio. The decision to drive was not an easy one. I hate driving, mostly because of the aggressiveness and impatience of the vast majority of American drivers. I drive a little Honda Civic, a car that I'm certain real enthusiasts scuff at. Relative to the gas-guzzling SUVs that litter American roads, it's a small car. So I'm always really cautious when I drive. The main reason I bought the car (and I am rather ashamed to admit this), is that when I test-drove it, I was really impressed by the shiny electronic speed-indicator. It's a bright, shiny toy of a car. A car for kids, is what I call it, and every time I see the electronic display, I can't help smiling. It's the sort of thing a kid would love, and I was enamored with it from the moment I saw it. Now it also helps me a lot, since the speed indicator is right in front of me, so when I am on the highway, I always know what speed I am going at. It's got an automatic transmission, and I think it is a 4-cylinder (not sure, which is embarrassing, since I am an engineer!). The other option for me was a Toyota Corolla or a Hyundai Elantra. I was advised by my sister that the only people she knows who own Hyundais are South Koreans, who come from the country of Hyundai, and when I drove the Corolla, I didn't think it drove as smoothly as the Honda, and I certainly wanted a car with a shiny display. Thus I ended up with my little wine colored Honda Civic LX...

Back to the trip to Ohio.

I made the decision to drive because I have a lot of important documents which I couldn't squeeze into my carry-on luggage, and which I did not trust the carriers to move, especially as the first line in their disclaimer was "This company is not responsible for the loss of any important documents".

o_O

Say what?

So I decided against buying a plane ticket, something I had left to the last minute and which would have cost an arm and a leg anyway.

The trip is a 7-hour ride if taken at once. Since I am not a big fan of driving, especially not in long stretches, I decided to split the journey in two, stopping over at Johnstown, Pennsylvania for a day. This added about 90 minutes to the trip. I booked a nice hotel (I think it was a Hilton, I forget). The most recent time I had booked a hotel was during my apartment-hunting trip to Solon, Ohio, where I had made the mistake of booking the cheapest hotel I saw on the internet. It ended up being a motel (Red Roof Inn), and one of the most depressing and frightening places I had ever been in. Indeed one of my pals from my previous job laughed at me when I told him that I was at a Red Roof. He said it's well known for being a hang-out of prostitutes and pimps and druggies. I perceived a faint smell of weed when I first stepped into the motel room on the day, and considering that I had to spend 3 nights in the ramshackle room, it was a very depressing feeling. The sheets were filthy, the door mysteriously locked and opened of its own free will, a fact that resulted in a terrifying episode where I was actually locked in the room because the door would not open from the inside. Eventually I called the front desk, who sent their manager over, twice, to open the door. As I was about to leave the following morning, I requested a different room and promised to swap when I returned from my apartment-hunt. Alas, after 10 hours driving up and down the Cleveland area listening to real estate agents convince you that their apartment complex is the best in the area, I was too exhausted to fight that battle with the motel and spent the final night in the horrible motel. It was a depressing experience.

Where was I?

Yes, so when I decided to book a hotel this time, I read the reviews, I verified that it's not a motel, and generally did my homework before jumping in blindly!

Anyway, I whipped out a map of the North-East and Mid-West and decided upon the town I would stop in. The decision was simple: Johnstown, PA. You see, much of Western Pennsylvania is... well.... it's rather empty. There is farmland, there are cows, there are tunnels, there are mountains...there are rednecks (lots and lots of them) and then smack in the middle of this barren nothingness, is Pittsburgh. I know this area relatively well, as I spent the summer of 2007 (a brutally hot summer, mark you) traipsing the length and breadth of Monroeville, a suburb of Pittsburgh, working for a huge but relatively unknown company (think BASF - that kind of company) that makes Organic Light Emitting Diodes.

Anyhoo, when I glanced at the map of Pennsylvania (which lies between Ohio and New Jersey), Pittsburgh and Harrisburg were the first cities to jump out at me. I flirted with the idea of calling my old boss from Monroeville and meeting him for lunch or dinner on my stop-over. That all seemed attractive until I set eyes on that word on the map: JOHNSTOWN!

For those who do not know, Johnstown Pennsylvania had a huge flood some time in the 19th Century, one that would come to define the town for the next few decades. (Details can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnstown_Flood)

It essentially wiped out the entire town. I had studied this as a senior at Princeton, where I had sat, riveted in CEE 263, as the instructor went over the details of the horrific destruction that had befallen Johnstown. For years after that, I had wondered about the town, and dreamed and dreamed of being able to visit it one day.

Well, here was the golden opportunity, so I packed up my belongings, entrusted most of them to the movers, but the really critical documents like birth certificates and visas and things, I decided to move on my own, in my own car. I programmed my GPS for Johnstown, PA and drove over in about 6 hours. It was a thankfully uneventful journey, and allow me to add at this point - Western Pennsylvania, despite the redneck problem, is a really beautiful place. I drove past rolling hills and pristine forests, through the most charming tunnels burrowed in the mountains. It was a distractingly beautiful drive, and Johnstown, oh Johnstown was everything I imagined it would be. The history, the culture, the lay-out. Without any question, the layout of the town is the most attractive I have ever seen in the United States. But the trip to Johnstown is a story for another day.

Back to Ohio.

My job is lovely. First, I got my sign-on bonus of $14k, some of which has gone into my credit card bill. The rest of that will probably go into paying for my ticket to Nigeria in August, and possibly my sister's move when she graduates. I work at an awesome plant - it's a massive, massive plant, with about 1000 people, but they are all really lovely, and the stifling and suffocating atmosphere at my previous job is so far not present. I am not on the floor nearly as much as I used to be - indeed I am hardly ever on the floor, which is a good and a bad thing. The biggest difference between this job and my previous one is probably the competence of the people. My previous job had a relatively quiet plant manager - he was really into the touchy-feely stuff that company is enamored with. There was also a very young Operations Manager who knew absolutely nothing about soup making. Her heart was in the right place, but I just could never shake the impression that this was a woman who had somehow had leadership thrust upon her. She just could never convince me that she was competent. Next we had a Quality Manager with her head in the clouds, a CI Manager who had no training in Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma or anything of the sort, Engineers who were so far up their own arses they could lick themselves out, Business Unit Managers who climbed their way up by kissing butt, a Sanitation Manager that casually googled answers to critical questions about food sanitation, and a non-existent training department. No wonder the plant was such a mess.

This plant is radically different. First, this genre of food is very different from soup: it's less dangerous. In soup, there was the omnipresent fear of mistakenly killing a consumer by not fully thermally processing food (a very real danger, that!). Here, the consumer cooks the food after he receives it, so it's an entirely different kettle of fish. In addition, there is a lot of experience and competence in the plant. I sat with the Plant Leadership Team during my first week, and I was absolutely flawed by the level of knowledge these people have. The Plant Manager has been the Plant Manager at 2 other plants in this Division and with this Company. The HR Manager has been in HR for over 20 years. The Plant Controller, who sits on an annual budget of 1 third of a billion (yes, you read right, over $333 million per year) and sales of over 3/4 of a billion (yes, $750 million), is a seasoned money manager. The two Operations Managers came from this plant and know enough about the processes that take place to make sound decisions. I cannot stress to you how impressed I was with the level of expertise in the plant.

More than anything, the engineers here actually do Science. There is Engineering Statistics! Capability Studies! Six Sigma! Yes, yes, yes! I heard the words standard deviation again! I was in a plant! In Industry, thank you Lord!

This company is one that has never taken the Science out of Food Manufacturing, and for that reason, I am incredibly grateful. I will talk some more about my plant in the near future.

There is so much to talk about - it's such an awesome place.


Meanwhile, my senior sister is getting married, and it appears that there is a gulf between her vision for her wedding and the size of my father's pocket. My father is not wealthy - far from it, and more than that, he is the worst manager of money mankind has ever seen. She wants a 2 million naira wedding. He insists that he cannot even cough up half of that. My eldest sister suggested postponing the wedding or having a small wedding in London, where the groom lives. I haven't said much about it, largely because I have few feelings about it. I really hope this all turns out well.