Moving..

So, I've been moving for the last few days all of 2 blocks, this is quite possibly one of the most awkward distances to move. Far enough that you need a truck, but not far enough to justify a proper "pack and move" day for budget purposes.

In the end we did hire a company to come and just move all our crap, managed to get most things in boxes to make the move a bit smoother, but some things are still proving awkward and now we have a new challenge.

The new place is huge compared to the last.. about 800 more square feet of hardwood floors and surrounded by windows. Nicely it's quiet, sound proofed and unlike the last palace of grim not right next to a bloody freeway, negating the purposes of the decks. I'll take some photos and blog the place as soon as the moving adventure is complete, but until then I'm slaving over boxes and the wreckage which is my study.

Today we have to move the plasma screen.. erggh.. weighs a tonne and no doubt will lead to an argument of some kind or it getting dropped... hmm... if I drop it, or cause it to be dropped, maybe I could justify a posh new Samsung LED thing.

I've been informed today I'm moving bathroom things, and yet more boxes that I'd pretended didn't exist.

I wish I didn't like expensive things.. otherwise I could live a sort of nomadic lifestyle with spartan living and few possessions, unfortunately I'm a shallow miserable creature that needs shiny baubles to remember why I work..

Back to the boxes..

Lee's brain can't be with you right now, please hold, your conversation is important to us...

So last night, I was up until very late chatting with the missus, and then I was up until very very late not being able to sleep.. which added up to a difficult start to my first "real" day in the office here. That means I'm zoning out right in the middle of meetings - fun! I'm convinced that most people I've met with have been wondering if I'm really paying attention or not.. with any luck I managed to say "mm.. yes... yes.. mmm.. aha" in all the right places so they thought I was with them at least some of the time.

I can't even resort to caffeine induced hypertension, simply because I can't bring myself to drink the coffee, furthest I've got is a capuccino. When I lived in Europe I adored the coffee here, and hated everything in the USA. Now I can't stand the stuff, it tastes weird and has some strange after flavour to it, I actually miss the burnt low quality offerings of Starbucks!

It really has been a difficult day, and I'm beginning to wonder what I will do with my weekend. The missus has something exciting planned, off into darkest Canada with our friends back home. I, on the other hand, am stuck in Zoetermeer. According to the locals that translates as "sweet lake". This really was the most exciting picture of the place i could find... look... a train!

I haven't seen any water yet. I haven't really seen much of anything. My hotel is like much like the one from the Shining, completely deserted.. any morning now I'm going to walk to the elevator and find twins staring at me! Rather hilariously, in an effort to cheer me up, my girl actually looked on the internet for things to do here, and got a page back that said "no results found". Sounds about right. Everybody has said I should go to Den Haag at the weekend, but I just can't be arsed, I want sleep and a good book.

late for a meeting now.. more ranting to come.

Eurohotel room - weird and wheely

Right, I'm deeply confused.

The bed in my hotel room is very very very strange. As far as the hotel is concerned my room has ONE king sized bed. In reality, this is TWO single bed pushed together.. and yes they do move but they've put side tables by them in an effort to make it look like a single king.

Now here's where it gets even more annoying - they're seperately covered. So what if I was here with my significant other? Not only would we NOT get a duvet over us both, but the moment we both got to the middle of the bed, they would roll apart and result in injury of some kind.

Also, in their divine wisdom, all the furniture you DONT want to move, is on wheels (bed, tables etc.), all the stuff you DO want to move (like chairs) is not on wheels. All this on a hardwood floor.. so as soon as you get in bed, and prop your head on the headboard to read.. the bed gradually wheels itself away and you get left on your back with your head dangling off.

Ridiculous.

Oh and to prove it, there's a picture of my room in the post.

A day in my hotel room

Defied all the rules today about how to adapt to jet lag and timezones, and stayed in my room all day, mostly with the curtains drawn. I know grim and a waste of time, I've caught up on my email watched some dreadful television and generally unwound. I have recovered slowly, my boss joined me in the deserted hotel bar for a beer at about 5pm which gave me some break from my hotel room.

The heating is still broken. I still have no iron or ironing board. I have only 2 english channels. This is already feeling a bit like some kind of hell.

On the plus side, and it's a very big plus, I caught up with the lady this morning via phone after she'd been fleecing our friends at Monopoly! Good girl! If only it was cash!!

The other big plus, is that we've already received the "okay" from the US Immigration services about my visa, so we dont have to do the scary shot-gun wedding any more, that also means my trips timescale is getting a bit more defined.. I will still have time to do the UK and see my dad etc. so that should be good.

Well, bed time for me, more later I'm sure.

Episode Whaterver : The Story So Far

Yes, my blog is back.

As a mechanism to keep in touch with friends and the ones I love when I am far away.. which at the moment, I am.

So, here is the story so far:

I haven't updated this blog in bloody ages. To bring people up to speed, I am still working for the same huge European IT company, clinging to a position as a kind of bumbling strategy type person around the Microsoft side of the business. I'm still living in Seattle, WA. Life has got better, and worse for a whole bunch of reasons. So we'll start with the good stuff first because it kind of sets the scene for why the other stuff is bad.

Firstly, and the best bit is I am settling down at last with a wonderful girl I met in my building when I got back home to Washington in 2007. Many of you might remember my last antics with being stuck in foreign countries etc. Well she's one of the big reasons why the blog died, I actually developed a life :) By settling down I mean actually having a future, which is kind of a big deal for me, but she really is the most important thing in my life - yes, ranked over work, and cars!

Okay, that's enough gushing on the relationship front, the other good thing is that work is going pretty good, we've had some good ideas which should ride us through the economic problem, and that still gives me a nice enough place to live and a good lifestyle.

Right, now to put the cloud behind the silver lining. My employer divested their USA business a while back, which, long story short, has thrown up some visa complications for me. So, I'm now back in Europe for a few weeks waiting to find out what the new Visa position is. Hopefully I'm not going to be stuck over here, away from home for much more than 3 weeks, but you never know. Mercy of the US immigration service, lovely people that they are.

So, the blog is now alive and well, you know the background, and over the next few weeks I will be blogging the horrors and perils of where I'm stuck in Europe, and why I'm so homesick for the civilised world (I apologise to the sacrilege involved in that statement to anybody reading in England.. but seriously, take one look at the lifestyle and tell me England is better!?).

I arrived today, and am staying in Zoetemeer for 2 weeks out of my European tour. The hotel is small, spartan, but okay. The bed is horribly uncomfortable but I'm sure I'll get used to it. As with any Euro hotel, the heating controls are broken, and without starting a previous old rant.. there's no ironing facilities. Flight here was okay, I couldn't sleep so got through plenty of films:

1. Twilight - lots of pouting teenagers and im not really sure if anything happened, but it was set near home in WA so what the hell.

2. Working Girl - Meg Ryan classic, comedy moment but not as funny as it could have been because typically it's something me and my girl would have sat just ripping the piss out of constant. Huge hair! (note picture)

3. Quantum of Solace - Bond, Aston, Nuff said.

4. Day the earth stood still - made it a while in before I wanted to physically harm keanu reeves. Resorted to reading.

Now thanks to the timezone, my body and mind are complete mush. Body is mainly because I'm out of shape, but I forgot the fact I arrive at 7am this morning and then have another hour to get to my hotel.

At least tomorrow is sunday, and that means more rest. Other thing is that I did hear from my woman earlier which cheered me up as well, it's depressing out here. Stuck amongst another language and a very weird country!

I'm sure there will be more to come.. look forward to the ranting! :)

Globalization sucks....

Okay, maybe it doesn't suck.
As some of you know I'm in Brussels (Belgium for those of you geographically challenged, small country in Europe for those of you challenged beyond simple country whereabouts), and because of a meeting on Monday in the Netherlands I'm staying put over the course of the weekend. Yesterday, Saturday, I felt worse than a bag of spanners and decided to stay put in my hotel room, nap and catch up on email work etc. Today, being Sunday and reasonably fine outside I decided fresh air and shopping would do me some good.

So, I perambulated my way around Brussels city center with map in hand and camera for true tourist effect. I hada nice clear mission to get some presents for friends back home, including something unique and interesting and "belgian" for my beloved.

Unfortunately, and here's the reason for the title of the post.. the USA has got so great at not making anything itself and simply importing stuff, that all the best stuff I can get back home in Seattle. Godiva for example.. there was a big Godiva shop in Brussels, being Belgian chocolates you'd better expect it to be, but, it was no bigger than the one in Bellevue Square, two blocks from where I live and sold all the same things at pretty much the same price. Fashion, jewellry, chocolates, everything.. uniquely belgian, widely available at home.. grrrr

Eventually I gave up, grabbed a taxi and in terrible terrible french asked for somewhere that would have stuff I can't find at home (I probably said something completely different).. anyway, worked out, the guy took me to the dead posh boutique mall.. I managed to find various gifts and extortionate prices, but at least I'm done.

Anyway.. I hate globalization.
Hmph.

Sundays, and the Long Dark Teatime of the Soul.

Next to Tuesdays, Sunday is one of my lease favourite days. I don't know what it is but you can always tell when it's a sunday. I'm sure there are people cut off from the world, with no calendar, trapped on some tiny island somewhere with no hope of knowing what time or day it is.. and they'd still know when it was sunday, just something in the air. Douglas Adams once referred to Sunday at around about 3pm as the "long dark tea time of the soul" and I'm inclined to agree. There was a character in Hitchhikers, an immortal who travelled the universe insulting people because Sundays had driven him mad and there was nothing better to do. When you've had as many baths as you can take, watched as many terrible black and white WWII films...

In my case, today does at least have a purpose, it's just one that I despise. I'm going to Brussels this week, nice city but sadly all business and my chances of seeing the place are nil, following that I'm in Amsterdam. Plus side that does mean I get a weekend in Europe at a loose end without any idea where I really want to be.. im thinking maybe car hire and Southern France or Northern Germany (big difference I know..). Anyway, that does mean Sunday is lost to last minute "Oh crap I haven't prepared any slideware" and packing my suitcase. Packing for a week is a novelty for me, I'm usually stuffing any old junk into a suit case for only a handful of nights, this time I'm going to be away for 8 nights!

No doubt horrible ironing boards will be waiting for me.. and numerous travel disasters (I land in Brussels on a Tuesday!). So wish me luck...

Valentines

Well, this is a surreal day. Normally my most hated day of the whole year.. started off with the ability to go horribly, two big presentations consecutively with the first one at 6am! But, both have gone okay. Some odd and slightly confusing feedback where seemingly the point was missed by several people.. so I might not have done such a great job there.

Anyway, heard from some old colleagues through LinkedIn which is always nice as well, got some good connections back that haven't been there for ages, and that's kinda cheered me up.

Scrawled cutesy message on bathroom mirror as well for my girl, so I've made some effort with Valentines, and I did take her to the ballet on Sunday!

Given I was thinking this Valentines 2006, this is quite a change.. maybe indicative of progress of my life? Who knows! Either way it's still a victory over common sense. We're making our own small protest to the day by staying in, having a quiet dinner and ignoring the insane consumer driven masses..

So.. V day report over!