Contract pilot blog

Posted on June 26, 2009 by wwelvaert under Trabajo - Work - Werk

Here in Peru I don’t get a chance to do much aviation work. When I first came to Peru I was supposed to work for SEMAN, part of the Peruvian Air Force, but Alan Garcia decided to reassign some high ranking Air Force officers and my contract fell through.

However, when I’m in the US I always try to catch up on my flying – flying was after all my first career. So I started a new contract pilot blog where I can tell some of my tall (aren’t they all) flying stories 🙂

Honestly, like everything I do, I fly because it’s my passion. I like doing ferry flights, flight training, aircraft deliveries and repossessions.

Landing at LHZ, Louisburg NC

This picture was taken when I was teaching a collegue at GE to fly. The picture may look as if we were flying sideways, but we weren’t. If you look at the top of the dashboard, it’s level with the runway. The picture was just taken at an angle, by a passenger in the backseat of the airplane 🙂

Consulting, CIS, aviation

Posted on September 17, 2008 by wwelvaert under Life in Peru, Trabajo - Work - Werk

This month I’m going to take a big leap of faith and finally start my own business down here in beautiful Cusco, Peru. I have a lot more inspiration than money – but that’s never stopped me before. If all I wanted was a comfy job somewhere I would have stayed with GE…

Speaking of corporate America, watching what is happening in the US tempts me to seek consulting work back in the corporate world. I always felt that some corporate culture in the US dangerously drove people to fudging their numbers. I often had the outside opinion on a lot of issues, which typically got rejected quickly because we all stayed inside a certain comfort zone. I don’t claim to have a silver bullet, but at the same time all the big shot bankers and corporate executives that are now making excuses are the same people who led their companies down the primrose path of self-destruction in the first place.

Ward Welvaert

turnaround consulting
aviation/airline consulting
CIS applications

This ain’t no Cumbia baby!

Posted on August 17, 2008 by wwelvaert under Life in Peru, Trabajo - Work - Werk

I have a “fun job” teaching English at the ICPNA here in Cusco. We had some workshops about using music in the classroom last week… The workshops were really good and the message was as long as there’s educational value the teacher (that’s me) gets to choose the music!!! So I went to the local mall known as “Molino” to buy some pirated CDs (you can’t buy the real thing here in Cusco) and now the ICPNA will never be the same again!!! I think it’s about time Peru got introduced to Lynnyrd Skynnyrd and Led Zeppelin.
Since I’m having a lot of fun teaching and we’re starting to do really good with my website business, I thought it would be fitting here to use this clip from my favorite movie of all time: I think we’re just around the corner from “the light of day”.

BTW, teacher Amparo (my lovely boss), if you’re reading this I was just kidding about that Led Zeppelin thing. We’re only using Neil Young and Paul Simon 😉

Ward Welvaert

MyCuscoTrip.com project

Posted on May 29, 2008 by wwelvaert under Life in Peru, Trabajo - Work - Werk

I started working on a travel portal for the Cusco area (www.mycuscotrip.com), but I haven’t been able to spend much time on it lately, so the site is very much under construction.

A while back Patricia and I took advantage of the great weather to take some pictures of the city to use on the website. This picture was taken in front of the San Cristobal church, a nice place to relax overlooking the city of Cusco, Peru.

The weather in Cusco in the dry season is really beautiful – even though it gets very cold at night. Us gringos have to protect ourselves from the sun because the air is so thin up here in the mountains, so Manchita put on some sunglasses for this picture…

– Ward Welvaert

Love Over Gold

Posted on May 25, 2008 by wwelvaert under Life in Peru, Trabajo - Work - Werk

The job I was hoping to get with the Peruvian Air Force (FAP) didn’t work out, because Alan Garcia changed the Minister of Defense in December. So I’m staying busy with web programming, and I also started teaching English at ICPNA (one of the better schools in Cusco). It’s a lot of fun but next month I’m going to take a lighter schedule. I’m still thinking of starting a business here in Peru, but for now that’s on the back burner…

I got offered a flying job back with a regional airline in the US awhile ago. I think I would have been able to “jumpseat” (fly free) down to Peru on my days off, but I ended up turning it down anyway.

So in honor of that decision, here’s “Love over Gold”.

Ward

Learning Ajax

Posted on April 24, 2008 by wwelvaert under Life in Peru, Trabajo - Work - Werk

I’m updating my pizza ordering site http://hometownpizza.us with a few new features. I learned some Ajax and was quite happy with the result – I can actually change parts of a web page now without reloading the whole page.

Patricia and I went out downtown Cusco a couple of weeks ago to celebrate that I got the pizza site up and running. We had dinner at a really nice restaurant where “Norton’s Rats” used to be and even went out dancing afterwards!!

– Ward