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Interview: Working abroad during the pandemic | Diego Pacheco
Mercury has launched its new series of interviews with our people, as they work through this unusual and unprecedented time in our history. Our second interviewee is Diego Pacheco, a Graduate Engineer based in Amsterdam, Netherlands on a Data Centre site.
What is day to day life there normally and how has it changed since the pandemic began?
In a few days, it will be one year since I began working in Mercury as a Graduate Engineer on a Data Centre project close to Amsterdam. So far, It has been a huge pleasure! When Covid-19 started in Europe, it was my last day of rotation. Mercury gave me the full support I needed as the situation was a bit scary. I kept in contact with my Line Manager and the Senior Project Manager and their support was amazing. I genuinely felt like Mercury was looking after me.
My daily activities have changed a lot since the beginning of the pandemic. There is a huge number of new regulations to follow on site – videos and material have come from Mercury almost daily. As things became more difficult to fly on rotation due to the risk, I decided to focus fully on my work and kept working as hard as possible – honestly, it wouldn’t help much being stuck at home.
How are you staying in touch with friends and family back home?
I’m Brazilian, and when I’m not in the Netherlands on the project, I’m usually based in Italy. By now i’m used to talking with my family and friends over the phone. It helps but it doesn’t takes the missing, or „Saudade“ as we say in Portuguese, of those you love away.
I had a trip booked to Brazil to spend my birthday with my family but due to Covid-19 I couldn’t make it. It was an interesting feeling for my family to sing happy birthday on the phone but I couldn’t complain, it was nice. The people on site prepared a nice surprise for me and brought cakes on my birthday, it was really good. In the end, I actually had a really good birthday!
What’s day to day work life right now for you and your colleagues?
Work on the project is going great. We’ve kind of become a huge family (with the occasional disagreements even included!) and I believe the people on site are getting along well. I live in a shared house with another engineer so I don’t feel too alone, as he’s always there to talk and share some good laughs!
The site is running in a different way – new procedures, a new style of meetings, a different way to behave. It was strange at the beginning but we got used to it pretty quickly.
It might be difficult to return to the old normal, we might ultimately live in a ‚different‘ normal, after all of this.
Mercury | Working Through the Pandemic | Interview Series
Read our previous interview with Elena Martin, Commissioning Manager in Frankfurt here.
We will be regularly releasing new content in our Working Through the Pandemic series, with our staff across Ireland, the UK and Continental Europe. Stay tuned for more content over the coming weeks!
