We got a new door for the house delivered today. I ordered it from the same carpenter that made two windows for us in a couple of rooms in the hotel. It is a light color as opposed to the one we have now. The one we have now is just falling to pieces, literally. So there are cracks in it and it just does not do what you expect a front door to do. We will have to have Francisco install it.
Who is Francisco? He is our maintenance man. He came with the hotel basically. He lives in the village is about 42 years old, married to Maria Jesus who also works for us and has his own construction business. When Francisco speaks, everyone can hear him... he is one of those people who just has a booming voice... in fact I don't think he knows what a whisper is.
Anyway, when we first arrived here. Francisco was basically running the hotel for Antonio, the guy we bought from. He came in five days a week for three hours a day. In the beginning, that was good as we needed the assistance and guidance on how things worked here. But we were also working on the assumption that he was telling us everything we needed to know. It wasn't that long before we discovered he was telling us things that HE thought we needed to know, so therefore there were omissions until something happened and it became obvious that we did not know something which we should know. We weren't happy or impressed about that and knew we needed to take corrective measures but what to do without loosing him.... there was no one else available to do this kind of work and we certainly did not have the knowledge necessary to undertake maintenance work.
This of course created a bit of a problem. We really needed to maintain a good relation with Francisco but we did not want him to think that we were running the business the same way that Antonio did which was very hands off. We did run into a very rough patch with him at this point .... we started hearing from people in the village that he did not like Ivan and that he did not want to work in the hotel anymore. It got a bit worse when we reduced his hours....15 hours a week was just simply too many hours for what he does. We changed it to two days a week with six hours. That works very nicely now. The problem at the time was that he had been running the place. He even told us that he considered buying the hotel..... "but my wife would not let me". So he was having a problem coming to terms with the fact that there were new owners who were not only hands on but had ideas of what and how they wanted the place to be run.
Well, I told Ivan that we should not bring up any of the gossip we heard in the village about his feelings... only if he brought anything up should it be discussed. That worked because in the end, he never said anything directly to us and of course is still working for us today. He is the type of guy that likes to have his fingers in everything that is happening in the village. While at times we are guarded with what we tell him, he has been good for our business. He is a bit much at times but I like him nevertheless. One just has to remember who he is and what he does. He can pretty much repair anything we ask of him. He likes to tease Ivan that he is the best at whatever he does including some things that Ivan does, i.e. making liquor.
Yes, Ivan has a still which we set up in the kitchen from time to time to make liquor. Francisco made the still and has one of his own of course. Now, October/November, is the time to make the liquor in fact because of the grape harvest. Francisco gave us a huge container of grape skins which Ivan has been using to make liquor. We don't sell it because strictly speaking it is not legal. But we do let our guests sample it from time to time. Ivan flavors them with lemon, chocolate, coffee, nuts, mandarin and other flavors. Lemon is his favorite, almost like an Italian Lemon-chelo (splg?). It is also very strong so small shots are enough. So that's Francisco.
The weather today.... very wet. It has been raining since last night. It stopped for a few hours this morning but it is coming down again now. When it rains so hard, we wind up with puddles in the bar as the bar walls have leaks. In fact, Francisco painted the wall in the bar last spring due to all the water damage and already it is falling to pieces and looks like c-r-a-p due to this heavy wet weather. (That's the bar in the photo after it was painted in the spring.... looks pretty good in the photo, no?)
It is only a question of time before the lights go as well as that regularly happens here with the bad weather. Fortunately, it is not yet cold.... in fact still fairly mild considering this cloud cover and rain.
