Good morning faithful readers of my posts and followers of my blog.
It continues to impress me very much, when I watch how my posts soon after publication start to attract readers all over the world. It`s a little bit like when You watch people switch on the lights of their mobile fones during a music concert in a dark concert hall. My yesterday`s post gained it`s first readers at so different and distant places as Rio de Janeiro, Bonn, Passau, Hannover, Tunis, Munich, Mogi Guaçu, Campinas, Cologne, Piracicaba, Berlin, Istanbul and Curitiba within a few minutes after publication. But for sure, during the course of the day readers on other continents and in different time zones of the globe followed. And it is amazing, how such a process increases steadily and how the readership increases constantly. One of my analytical interests is, to discover, how this is linked to the titles, subjects and pictures of my posts. There must be a certain pattern. I will definitely keep You informed upon my discoveries and conclusions about that.
But at first le me congratulate us – me as the writer and You as the readers of my posts. Today we have completed the first four weeks of our uninterrupted daily joint activities and of my blog project. This makes me proud and happy, because I was not really sure, when I started my blog 4 weeks ago on thursday, June 18th, whether I would really be able and remain interested and motivated for the daily continuation of my posts. Maybe You rember my motto “after action – satisfaction”, which I have repeatedly mentioned in my first posts. This is exactly what we should practice triumphantly tonight!
At the same time today it is exactly 18 weeks ago, that I have arrived back home in Sao Paulo on sunday, march 17th, from my holiday trip to Paris. I had travelled to Paris for two weeks with the intention to improve my french language skills. Originally my plan was, to stay there for three weeks, but due to the dramatic development of the Covid-19 crisis, I decided to shorten my stay in Paris and to return home to Sao Paulo one week earlier than scheduled.
My time and my studies at Paris started perfectly. I stayed in a fully equipped flat at Montrouge in the outskirts of Paris and travelled every day by Metro to the center of the city, where my reputable language school “Alliance francaise” was located.
Alliance française is an international organisation that aims to promote the French language and francophone culture around the world. Created in Paris on 21 July 1883 by a group of illustrious French people including the scientist Louis Pasteur, the diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps, the writers Jules Verne and Ernest Renan, and the publisher Armand Colin, its primary concern since then is teaching French as a second language.
Together with other students from Brazil, India, Pakistan, USA, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Portugal and China I attended clases from 9am until 1pm from monday to friday and in the afternoon I had every day 3 additional hours of individual grammar and conversation trainings. In the evening I did my homework exercises and recapulated once what we had learned during the day at school.
My discipline was hard as steel and before I had started this holiday activity, I had already firmly decided, to confront and immerse myself during the whole time of my stay in Paris totally and exclusively into purely French language environment. I read only French newspapers, I watched only French TV and I listened only to French radio stations. I love such challenges. The weather was ideal for my enterprise. It was cold, stormy and almost uninterruptedly raining during my complete time there.
When I left Sao Paulo at the end of february for Paris, almost nobody in Brasil was still talking about Covid-19. During my first week in Paris, the coronavirus – mainly due to the dramatic news about the increasing number of deceases in Italy – started to irritate the people in France and other European countries and became the predominant subject in the newspapers and on TV. But live in Paris continued still unchanged. During the second week of my stay everything changed quickly and dramatically. Covid-19 outbrakes in some regions in the north of France appeared and also in Paris more and more calls for protective actions to be imposed by the government became loud. After having watched the dramatic evening speech and appeal of the French president Macron on TV on the evening of thursday, march 12th, it was clear for me, that I should not waste any more time in Paris and fly home as quickly as possible. The public schools in France started to close and it was obvious, that many more and much more drastic and restrictive actions were about to be decreted by the authorities and that Alliance française would have to close soon as well.
I finished my classes at Alliance france on friday, march 13, enjoyed a 20 km foot walk through the main touristic quarters of Paris during an ice-cold, but thank God mostly dry, day and left France at night homewards again to Sao Paulo. During all this time I was wonderfully fine and without any health issues.
When I arrived back home again in Sao Paulo on a sunny and warm sunday, it was absurd for me to see, that nobody in Brazil still took Covid-19 as a really existing dangerous ameace. Watching TV, the crowded beaches in Rio de Janeiro, the full soccer stadiums in Sao Paulo and the streets, parks, restaurants and bars packed with unsuspecting masses of people in all cities shocked me.
After 3 days of living at home with my familly I started to suffer the starting of a strong dry cough, which became quickly stronger. Concerned about this, I went to the Sirio Libanes Hospital, one of the best private hospitals in Sao Paulo, for medical examination. Several immediately performed medical examinations proofed during the next hours, that my lungs were clean and that all other suspected illnesses could be excluded. Alone the result of the Covid-19 test was still outstanding.
I was released for going home, where I entered into a strict quarantine regime with total seperation from all other members of my familly. After three days I received the positive result of my Covid-19 test. But I did not suffer any serious symptoms like fever and breathlessness. To be true – besides the ongoing dry cough and sometimes a little head ache – I did not feel anything else unnormal.
I remained for in total three weeks in my strict quarantine regime at home during which my doctor maintained frequent contact in whatsapp with me and accompanied my development. And finally after the conclusion of the three weeks, I became released to normal life, which meanwhile ment for all of us social distancing, wearing of masks etc. And after two more weeks another examination proofed to my whole familly`s great satisfaction, that my body had in the meantime produced lots of anti-bodies. By the way – Covid-19 tests proofed also, that none of my familly members had been infected.
My doctor firmly suspected, that I had not caught the Covid-19 infection during the two weeks of my stay in Paris, but on the airplane during my flight home from there to Sao Paulo. Who knows….?
Immediately after my return from Paris we set up our internal “Covid-19 Committee” (myself, our VP Administration, our VP Operations and our HR Director) at our company Vulkan do Brasil and we established the first strict protection measures against Covid-19 incl. sending almost seventy employees into home office, isolation of the work cells in the factory, distribution of our workers over additional shifts, obligation for all employees to wear masks provided to them by us and several others measures.
Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 crisis in Brazil our internal committee controls attentatively the whole situation within our company and takes all necessary corrective decisions. We are very happy that we did not have a single known case of infected employees until today and we are very proud on all our employees because of the high discipline, with which they respect and follow all the strict protection measures and rules, which we have implemented in the meantime.
All our company activities and business processes continue completely unharmed by Covid-19 since Covid-19 started and we have not lost a single production hour since the beginning of this year until now. This has already become another success story for Vulkan do Brasil. We are crossing now our fingers together with all other people in this as beautiful as suffering country, that hopefully the worst – after meanwhile the death of more than 75 thousand people due to Covid-19 – will soon have passed and that our live and economy may return more closely to what we altogether consider as normality soon. In the worst case we`ll have to wait for this until vaccination for our whole population will be available, which might only be during the next year. But no matter when ever and how this will happen, we at Vulkan do Brasil will always take care in the best possibly way of our employees, customers and our business.
Hope this was of Your interest and gave You some insights about how I treated personally and how we in our company deal professionally with this kind of challenges. I wish You a great and successfull day and hope, to see You here in my blog again tomorrow. Take care !
4 Responses
I met Klaus in México on a business trip some years ago, after all day of action we went for satisfaction with all the other peers, we drunk a couple of beers and I had a conversation with Klaus. After some minutes chatting with him, I was fascinated about his way of being and I was very impressed about all the things he has achieved in his life. Now with this blog he is sharing with everyone all his experiences and stories and I can only say, that I really enjoy reading your blog everyday! thank you very much for this contribution! greetings, Mauro Francés
Wow, Your very nice and highly appreciated comments make deeply satisfied and personally impressed, Mauro. I guess I remember who You are and where we met, but please help me further. I have been participating in so many public and company events as well as industry delegations to Mexico and all the other Latin American countries during the last years, that I lost control of all the wonderful contacts and experiences I made during all these activities.
It was a business trip in November 2016 organized by the VDMA. Topic "petrochemical industry in Mexico" I´ll send you a picture of us in that trip. BR, Mauro
Wonderful. Please sent to klaus.hepp@vulkan.com or in whatsapp to +55 11 97503 9323