Dreaming on a Park Bench

I'm sitting in Schiphol airport, with about twenty minutes to go till flight boarding. Wireless in the (ridiculously tasteful) food court.

Reasons I love being here:
The train system works
For five euros I got a very good bowl of fruit and yogurt and a large glass of fresh orange juice. In an airport. In the US you wouldn't even be able to find either of those.
I bought a bicycle yesterday, thanks to which it took me only twenty minutes to get to the station this morning, and the whole route is gorgeous. I love riding my bike in Eindhoven.
In ten hours I will be in Ancona (thanks to plane and train connections, it's a bit of a long haul).
I got window seats on both flights.
The boys organized a committee to plan my weekend. I love them.

Life is fantastic. Early morning, biking on quiet streets, a train ride, and a well-designed airport.

There are racks of S4 PARs lighting the concourse. Teehee.

Just Another Morning Here

The problem with there being five of us to one bathroom is that I can wake up an hour before I have to leave, and not get into the shower until five minutes before I was supposed to leave.

Life feels really good lately. Work is going well, life at home is really nice, and I'm actually doing something for my brirthday this weekend.

This afternoon I'm going down to the payment office to pick up my pay for June, then use part of it to buy myself a bike on the way home.

I'd been using a bike that belinged to Alan, a former housemate, who'd left a couch, seven guitars, and this bike (as well as some pot that Carel left in the kitchen cabinets and didn't tell anyone about, till Jiri stumbled upon it one day). Jiri and Salvo and I pumped up the tires and checked all the basic controls and it was a perfetly good bike, so I rode it for about two weeks. Perfect. Saved me the trouble of finding my own. Then I got home for work on Monday to find that Alan had finally come for his stuff--no more bike, no more couch in the yard. Time for me to invest in a bike of my own.

Life is good.

Pasta ed Amore

I know it's been a long time. There's a lot to catch up on. Not all of it will be written tonight, because I have work in the morning, but soon.

I've become good friends with Salvo, one of my housemates. He's Sicilian, so I can practice my few words of Italian on him and talk about Italy, we bond over bottles of Italian wine (thanks to the European union it's almost cheaper here that in Italy). He works at Philips, in research, so we meet for lunch or run into each other around the campus, and through him I've fallen in with the young Italian expatriates, a whole group working on PhDs or at their first real jobs, all under thirty (unusual around here), and all Italian, except for Andrew (Maltese, but adopted into the group because his Italian is good). We've been following the world cup together, cheering for Italy. It's so nice tohear the language spoken again, to hang out with Salvo when he's talking to his friends here and back home and understand what's going on.

Tonight, Salvo and I took over the kitchen to make spaghetti carbonara, which was fabulous. We ate together and talked about work and engineering in general--it's so nice to be living with someone else who gets the same gleam in his eye when talking about integrated circuits and programming languages as I must. Two very likeminded people.

Basically, life here is good. The weather has not been great (dreary for over a week = me begging to see the sun again), but today the sun came out for a bit in the evening and broke the monotony. I'm going to Italy for my birthday this weekend, so I'll be getting away from the clouds for a few days at least.

Ah, Italy this weekend. I'm so psyched.

For now, to bed. Work in the morning, work and getting paid the day after, and Italy on Friday.

Czech Alcohol and Good Company

Spent tonight spontaneously drinking and bonding with my housemates. Through a two-hour power outage. We're all from different countries--one French, one Czech, one Italian, one Dutch, and me. The one language we have in common is English, so that's what we speak. Lise's classmate Julien (also French) was over as well, and the six of us sat in the backyard by candlelight talking for hours. Fabulous.

Ohshit.

I woke up with a start this morning, terrified because I'd forgotten to set my alarm. It was 6:35. So I set and turned on the alasrm, and fell back asleep.

Next thing I know it's 9:45, the alarm didn't go off, and I'm late for work and desperately need a shower.

Infinite

There's a path that winds through the strip of woods between Locatellistraat and the creek, and it happens to be the shorter way to work. After spending most of the afternoon nearly asleep on my keyboard, the minute I stepped out of the building everything was okay. The sun was out, the birds were singing, I had the Alkaline Trio playing in my ears. I took the path home instead of the road, and the sunlight was filtering through the trees perfectly and I must've had the biggest grin on my face, wandering along and singing "Blue Carolina" under my breath.

When I got to the turn off to go home, I went exploring instead. Down the path more, through wooded areas and along the bank of the creek, past grass fields prinkled with daisies, to a place where I could see the campus behind a screen of tall, beautiful trees--I can't believe I'm really live here, that this is my life. It's too beautiful to be true. The sun, the music, the path through the woods...it's at times like these that I honestly feel life is perfect.

On my way back, I ran across a little dirt path off through the woods, in the direction of home, and followed it. A hundred meters or so of path with overhanging trees so low I couldn't quite stand straight, then the woods opened up and I was in a huge grassy field full of daisies and buttercups, right across the street (and the median) from my house.

I still haven't stopped grinning like an idiot. Life is so beautiful.

Multicultural

I'm running on no sleep. Incomplete to finish for my data structures course, so after a full (very productive) day at work, I got home last night, panicked for a few hours, and then got down to work and got much more functioning than I thought I possibly could. I should have been working on this project weeks ago, but I started this weekend and avoided really getting anything done for the longest time. It's not done, but it's in, and I saw the sunrise over tile roofs and brick walls, and what I think was a stork flew into the back garden and perched on the wall, before flying off to sit on a chimney to the east, silhouetted against the pink and orange of the sunrise. Every hour from two till morning I heard church bells chiming the hour (my window was open), and around four the sky was lightening and the birds came out, and by 4:30 the sky was pink. On my way into work, when I was on the footpath, Martijn bicycled by and waved from the path three meters over, blurred behind the trees as he rode by. I got to work first because he had to park his bike, and by the time he came in my coat was hung up and my computer was booted, and I started razzing him for being late.

I'm surprisingly awake, considering I didn't sleep. Blame the caffeine, the adrenaline, just being good at staying awake for long periods of time--the first two hours I was at work all I wanted to do was sleep, but I got so caught up in my work that I forgot all about it. And I'm looking forward to falling asleep when I get home, but...I'm enjoying myself. I like work. It's a challenge, a series of puzzles to solve.

Yesterday at lunch there were four of us: Martijn, his Turkish wife, Austrian Matthias, and me. Four people working at Philips, four different countries of birth. Not so unusual, really--multinational company attracts people from all over. I think it was the best lunch I've had here--the four of us joking and making fun of each other, I felt so much a part of everything already. Martijn and I have work jokes, we give each other a hard time...I think I'm beginning to find my place here. I passed his wife on the way in to eat lunch today and we stopped and talked for a moment. I know people. I know my way around. I showed a newcomer how to check the balance on his badge today. There are people who say hi to me in the halls, I know the way from my office down to both exterior doors perfectly, I know where the paths on campus lead. My workspace is comfortable, even if the computer's slow enough to drive me crazy.

Understanding little bits of Dutch is getting easier. Things like putting money on my badge (alone, today--last time Martijn talked me through it, but he was in a meeting), instinctively saying "ja" when the checker at Albert Heijn (the supermarket) asked me yesterday if I wanted my bon (receipt).

Yesterday, I finally got off work early enough to go to the Middle Eastern market down Bennekelstraat, and it's wonderful. Seven or eight varieties of dates, sour cherry juice, three grades of burghul, rosewater, packets of zatar and sumac, a baked goods counter, lemons on sale. I'm going to make a habit of going every Saturday to stock up on food, pick up some more staples. It's a comfort thing, in a way--I grew up with those ingredients, those smells. Being able to choose the right grade of burghul for tabbouleh, buy parsley in huge bunches (not the silly little packages they sell at the supermarket down the street), stand in the spice aisle and just read the labels. (Not only that, it's better food and cheaper. I spent 4.55 and walked out with burghul, parsley, three huge lemons, and a pack of dates--enough food for two dinners and then some.)

Life's good, I'm tired, and I have some faith is my skills as a programmer. When it goes well, it goes really well.

PostSecret

The thing about PostSecret is that so often it feels like the cards could have been written by me. The secrets are so universal, and it honestly makes me feel better to know I'm not the only one.

Not Alone, Just On My Own

My desk looks more and more like someone actually works at it--piled high with planning documents, sketches, logbooks, reference books, old coffee cups. There's a huge purple crocodile balanced between my moniter and that of the guy (what on earth is his name again?) who has the other desk in the pair. Usually in the office there's me, Arno, Martijn, Evert-Jan, Ewout, and Gregor--the only ones I know at all so far are Martijn (because we're working on the project together) and Arno (yesterday he had lunch with me and Martijn). Right now, it's just me. Everyone else is off at some lecture on campus.

Life is falling into a pattern. I wake up around 6:45 (jet lag is an amazing thing--I wonder how long these early mornings will last), try to fall asleep again for a few minutes, grab my computer and talk to Lindsay till I have to actually get up (often a bit longer), get ready, grab breakfast, and walk to work. Work all morning, Martijn and I go to lunch together, talk about life and work over lunch, then walk back to building 46 to keep working. Sometime around six I knock off and head home. Kill time reading, finishing my incomplete, fooling around on the internet...and talk to Lindsay until either he has to do something productive or I have to sleep.


After lunch today, Martijn and I took the time to walk around the lake with Jos and Andrei (two guys from research we ate lunch with). It was cold, windy, and beautiful. We talked about engineering, school, various majors. The nonsensical placement of a four-story parking garage right on the edge of the lake, instead of by the highway.

The Philips campus is gorgeous. Behind the Strip (three different dining halls, a gym, a bank, and a little store) is the lake, with a path that goes all the way around it, including a long section of boardwalk that zigzags over the water at one end. The buildings are connected to each other and the outside world by bike paths that run through what will someday be a forest--right up to the buildings are densely-planted trees with grass growing wild in between. it's not manicured or trimmed--just left to grow natural, and I think it's the prettiest landscaping I've ever seen. When the first glimpse every day of the building I work in is from a narrow gravel footpath through a growing forest, I know something's going right in life.

Speaking of life, it's coming together. I figured out last night that hot water in the bathroom depends on the radiator--the pipe from downstairs runs first to the radiator, then to the rest of the plumbing. I made it to the grocery store after work yesterday and stocked up on dinner ingredients, breakfast staples, and juice, as well was picking up a nice South African pinot (which I opened last night). My allergies are acting up lilke mad, but that's life. I figure tomorrow on my way to or from picking up my first paycheck from the payment office I'll drop by the little drugstore on Hoogstraat and see what they recommend for it. (See, darling? Reduced to the mundane. At least I'm taking pleasure in it now, rather than cursing it.)

I still miss being surrounded by people I love, but I'm feeilng more and more comfortable (and at home) here. Little things like not even noticing the coffee machine had an option for an English menu till today (I just don't need it), navigating the supermarket, saying "I live on Locatellistraat", paying for lunch with my badge. Picking out words when my coworkers are on the phone, or talking to each other. Being able to decipher the general meaning of some sentences and paragraphs in Dutch, a language I'd barely seen a week ago. It feels really good to be successfully navigating life here. Makes me a little more confident in my ability to really take care of myself. There's no one shielding me here, no one interfacing with the world for me. It's just me, my limited understanding of the language, and my (also limited) interpersonal skills. And I'm doing just fine--maybe even better than fine.