Going Dutch - An American Family in the Netherlands

Today was quite a silly day.

I overslept a little bit, putting me in the mindset to rush. I also thought the train came 10 minutes before it actually did, so when I was in the garage and discovered that I'd forgotten my gloves, I figured I could live without them for one day (right?)

The ride to the train wasn't horrible. My hands did get a bit chilly, but I'd had far worse before Christmas. I only realized that I was wrong about the train time when I could see the platform. So I went back to the AH To-Go to get my typical breakfast of a chocolate croissant and half a liter of 2% (halfvolle) milk. I usually eat and do the sudoku while waiting for the train, but since I was running late, I figured I'd wait to eat on the train.

So, of course, the train was 15 minutes late. I was planning on doing some work on the trip, so I picked a corner seat where I could sit with my back to the wall so no-one could look at my computer over my shoulder. I ate and did the puzzle before starting work. By the time I'd finished, we were pulling into Amersfoort (our first stop) where they announced something about a "mechanical problem", so we all got out.

Well, that was only the beginning of the fun. I usually get to work by 8:30. Today, that was 10:30. All in all, I watched 4 trains get canceled and ended up diverting about 30 minutes (+20 minute wait time) out of my way to get back to where I needed to be. Most of that time was spent standing out on platforms (or moving between platforms based on the Dutch announcements on the PA system. Needless to say, my hands were pretty cold by the time I go to work.

As I was getting ready to leave work, I noticed that it was raining hard and sideways. The wind was strong enough to make the walk to the station a challenge. Fortunately, the train was working fine, but the ride back from the station made me appreciate both the gloves (by their absence) and the gears on my bike. The rain was so cold that I got a brain freeze from the water hitting my face. I guess these are some of the strongest winds in many years. Hopefully nothing will get seriously broken on this house.

Mom, you may not want to read this next part...

I've been struggling with the question of bike helmets. When I first got here, I had neither bike, nor helmet, so no problem. Soon, I was given a bike, and if you have a bike in the Netherlands, you're somewhat obligated to use it. That and it cut my travel time to the station by about half. But I still had no helmet. No one else here wears a helmet either, so at least I wasn't attracting any attention.

Well, then M and the kids came over. Now I had to be careful, since I still didn't have a helmet (that had been shipped in the air shipment) but we didn't want the kids to get the idea that riding without a helmet was ok. Given how early (and how late) I commute, that wasn't really a problem either, since I'm gone before the kids get up and it's pretty dark here by the time I come home, so they haven't ever seen me on the bike.

Well, then the air shipment arrived a couple of weeks ago. I was off to Germany and Belgium for the first week, so I could delay the entire question for a little bit, but eventually I needed to ride to the station, and there was the helmet. Now, I need to say that I'd really gotten used to riding without one, and as the new guy in town, I didn't (and to some extent don't) want to stand out like a sore thumb, so I didn't use it for a week or so. I spent some time talking with M and with my Dutch colleagues about the whole thing, and eventually I decided that I like my brains in my head more than I care about looking funny. So far, it's been relatively painless to carry the helmet on the train and to work, but I have had a bit of friendly ribbing from my co-workers. "How fast do you ride anyway?"

It turns out that the Dutch are basically born on bicycles, so from the time they're small, they know what they're doing. They don't ride very fast, there are separate bike lanes everywhere, and since the laws are written to favor the cyclist in any accident, the drivers are extremely careful in watching for bikes. Because of all these things, they don't feel like they need helmets. That said, one of my co-workers was telling me how nothing bad ever happened with bike accidents and the next day his aunt had an accident on her bike and has been unconscious since. Stupid karma strikes again.

So I've gotten a few looks, but the helmet does a decent job of keeping the rain off my head and it makes me feel a little safer, even though it's old enough that I'm not sure how well it would protect me if I did take a tumble. I'm also not as used to riding in bike traffic as the locals. Where I leaned to ride a bike, the biggest thing I had to worry about was the loose gravel at the edge of the gravel road. So I'll wear the helmet and put up with the looks.

I feel like something is starting to shift in me and my mindset here. Introspection is a fun pastime for me, so it's interesting to try to figure out what's going on.

First, there's work. I'm really starting to understand what my job is about. That's a very good feeling, and I'm seeing myself actually contributing in meetings and planning ahead for things my colleagues will need before they ask for them.

Second, there's our house. Our stuff is on the way and should be delivered on the 11th. Not soon enough, but sooner than it could be, so we're pretty happy about that. Our broadband and phone are up and running, and all of our utilities are on auto pay. M has figured out how to find most of the foods we need to make our staple meals and the kids seem to like school. We still have our ups and downs, and there's a lot to do to get really settled, but we're well on our way.

Third is our legal and bureaucratic challenges. I'm legit now. A card carrying legal alien. M and the kids are apparently only a trip to Utrecht away from being legit as well. We'll try to set that up for the next week or so. There's still a lot to do here as well, since we have taxes to pay in both countries for 2007 and various financial things to settle out including the every present list of addresses to change.

So, I guess, it's feeling more like home. We still need to plan some trips and I need to work out how much time off I really have and when I can take it. We should make some friends outside of my work, and we need a car. But we're on our way. I've known that this would be a good adventure, but it's feeling more like it at the moment than before. There are more downs to come with the ups, but for now, I'm content.

A friend of mine pointed out that I wasn't posting much about M and the boys on here. I mentioned early on that M might occasionally post here, but that seems more and more unlikely, since she's got her own blog. I won't link to it here for privacy reasons, but if you're interested, drop me a note and I'll pass on the address.

The boys have been doing pretty well in school as far as we can tell. The Older is excited to go every morning and has already had one play date, but he tends to be a little sad in the afternoons and wants to come home. The Younger is the opposite. He doesn't want to go in in the mornings and is nervous about playing with the other kids in the playground before school starts, but in the afternoons, he runs and plays and generally doesn't want to leave.

We don't really get enough information from the school to know what's going on in their classes. I suspect this is because we've come in in the middle of the year and that things will improve as we go on. For the moment, we have to keep asking the boys if anything is due tomorrow, or if we're supposed to sign/read/bring in anything that we didn't know about. The Older had M buy a big sheet of black construction paper for some project at school. Today, she asked him if he was supposed to do anything with it, and it turned out he had a big project due tomorrow. Fortunately, he started early enough in the day that it wasn't too much of a problem to get it done, but we could easily have found out just before bed. In some senses, this is just a contrast between the constant communication that we used to get and relying on the kids to tell us what's going on. I think this way has some clear advantages, not the least of which is making the kids more responsible themselves. We just have to keep our eyes open during this transition period.

M is also adjusting. She's managed to get into a routine of taking the kids to school and picking them up again. She takes our double jog stroller, a bit of a rarity around here. The path is 2.2 km (about 1.4 miles) each way, so she's running close to 6 miles a day. Of course, it is often more, since she stops by several shops (AH, Hubo, etc.) to find us food and supplies. I've been encouraging her to check out cargo bikes, but she wants to wait until she has her helmet before trying that out. She says she's been enjoying exploring the town, but I know she'll feel better when she's had time to tackle some of the longer term projects she's been looking forward to.

As far as the rest of our lives our concerned, we have a place to live with all the utilities and we now have a home phone, internet and cable TV. We need to look for a car so we can eventually start touring Europe, and there are numerous things that need to get done, like turning off our DSL and cell phone services and changing a bunch of addresses back in the US, but we are definitely functional at this point. We'll feel a lot better when we have our own stuff and the rental things are gone, but that should only be a few weeks from now.

This coming weekend, we're headed to the South of the country to visit the friend that I visited back in December. He and his wife and son are wonderful hosts. We owe them a dinner here, but at the moment, we only have six rental forks, making it a bit hard to be good hosts. I'm sure we could get by with that, but it will be much easier when we have a real table and our real cutlery.

I spent a bunch of time on work today. I cleaned out my in box and got a rough plan together for my business. This planning phase has to be done by the end of February, and it's taking more time than it should because I'm new and because I'm dealing with someone else's plan. I'm pretty pleased with how far I've gotten, all in all, and I hope that once I get the plan in place and agreed to by everyone that I won't have to be working on Sundays.

My goal for this week is to complete an experiment. My plan is to be in bed by 11pm every night and see what happens. I don't know if I'll succeed, but I bet it will make me happier and more functional overall. That only gives me an hour to finish up what I want to get done tonight. Wish me luck.

I'd written a detailed accounting of the day, but due to a badly timed modem unplugging, I lost it. So, poop.

Here's the quick summary (I don't have the energy to re-create what I had.)

Yesterday, I was at the R&D site. I got a call from our bank saying I needed to get my SOFI number as soon as possible, or they'd put a hold on my account.

This involved going to Utrecht to pick up my residence permit and taking that permit back to Hilversum. There was no way to do it yesterday, so I cleared my schedule for today and planned out the route.

I had an appointment for my yearly review at 8:30 this morning, and I didn't want to move that. It all made the timing very tight, since the Geemente (town hall) in Hilversum closes at 1 pm.

In the end, my boss moved the meeting, I made it to Utrecht and Hilversum with time to spare (and even registered the birth certificates that were out of date - see Jan 10th) and I was back in the office by 12:30 to meet with my boss.

The performance review went quite well. That's no surprise, since all the feedback came from my previous boss, and he's the one who sent me here. He even had several points for improvement that I need to focus on in the next years, so that's good as well.

I headed home early, since I needed to get the SOFI (now Burgerservicenummer - BSN) to my bank. It turned out that the branch we usually use was gutted for renovations, so I had to bike across town (not that big a deal over here) to get to the other branch before they closed.

After I got home, we realized that we were out of some things we needed for dinner, so I headed out to the AH. I carefully bagged the groceries so there were two bags of non-fragile things to put on the back rack of the bike while I carried the bread and eggs in a bag on the handlebars.

All in all, it felt pretty good to navigate all of these things by myself, and now I'm legitimate as far as the Dutch governments' concerned, so that's good as well. Now we just need to get the same done for M and the kids.

Ok, there's more to do than that, but you get the idea.

It's been a bit of a down week for us, or for me at least. I suspect this is just part of the normal ebb and flow, but I need to do something to bring things back up again.

Nothing in particular has happened, although I found myself wanting to go home (back to the States) once I got back from my trip last week. I think the strangeness of being in yet another new country, five straight days out of anything now familiar and being away from M and the boys wore me out a bit. I enjoyed the trip and learned a lot, but I was really done when I got back. We didn't do a whole lot on the weekend, and by Monday, I was behind in my sleep and feeling behind in my work, even though I spent a couple of hours on Sunday cleaning up my e-mail in box.

Today I met with a colleague from the US. He's the one I talked with back on the 3rd. We had a good (but too short) chat on how things are going and it's amazing how similar our paths are at the moment. I'm struggling with a new job in a new country, and he moved from R&D to Marketing. It's a similar culture shift in some ways, and we're both working on finding our own way of doing a job we know little about. It's very comforting to have someone in the same spot as well.

Work was better today. The colleague I had the frustration with and I sat down and solved a big problem, so that felt good. I'm feeling like I'm starting to see where the pile is, and I realized yesterday that I've been getting too focused on details that are someone else's concern. I need to set good priorities for myself, and that may mean some smaller things don't get done, at least not by me.

I got home last weekend to discover a letter from the IND saying they have my residence permit ready for me, but I need to go into their office in Utrecht to pick it up. Not a big deal, but yet another part day off of work. I have two months to pick it up, and we're tempted to wait until M and the boys' permits are ready so we can make one trip to pick them all up. On the other hand, once I have the permit, I can start doing things like buying and registering a car, so we'll have to think about that a bit.

Well, I'd better get off to bed, since it's been too many late nights in a row now. I need to get up and catch the early train to the R&D location. I have an all day workshop that I'm running, and I'll have to be at least partly on my game if that is going to go well.

I made it back from my three country tour of Northwestern Europe. It was a long and tiring week, but a very useful trip, at least from a work perspective.

First, I have to say yet again that the TomTom is a cool tool (and toy, I suppose.) It kept me honest, speed wise, for the entire trip (all eight driving hours of it...) It pointed out traffic cameras (including red-light cameras) and generally kept me on track. It did show the wrong speed limit in a few places, especially when it thought there was construction that had moved down the road a ways. It also had my first hotel in Cologne in the wrong place, but it got me close enough to find it with only a little help, so it really did its job.

Interestingly enough, I would typically have googled and mapped every stage of a trip like this and armed myself with detailed printouts for every leg, be it walking or driving. Somehow, having the TomTom made me more "reckless." I didn't look at a single paper map before or during the trip. It was nice to just jump in the car and go and see that it could all work out fine, but there were definitely times when it would have been useful to have some idea of the larger scope of the trip. TomTom gives you the next step (turn left ahead) but you don't ever really have an idea of the bigger picture (head toward Arnhem, cross the German border and drive south for an hour.)

I was in Cologne for consumer focus groups. You may have taken part in a focus group and know a bit about what goes on inside the room. Here's how things go from the perspective of the company doing the research.

First, we have some idea for a product that we want to test with consumers to see what they think of it. We spend quite a bit of time before the actual test creating ideas and writing down descriptions of the ideas and generally arguing about what we think people will like. On the day of the test, we double check everything we've done to make sure it's as good as we think we can get it. This involves even more discussions and disagreements.

During the test itself, we show the ideas to 6-8 people who have been carefully chosen based on their answers to some questionnaire. Usually we're trying to get people that match the profile of our intended customers. We listen with rapt attention to every word these people say trying to determine what they like and don't like about our ideas. After the session, we discuss again what we heard and what, if anything should be changed about the ideas we're trying out.

This goes on for a couple of days. Usually the last session ends about 8:30 and we spend an additional hour and a half talking about what we heard and what should be done on the second day. Oh, and the whole time we eat. A lot. By the end of the second day, it's likely we're making fun of some of the participants, but keep in mind we're pretty punchy at that point.

My impressions of Cologne are very limited, since I spent most of my time there indoors. The site was located near (or maybe in) a large shopping area. I got to see a few church steeples, but nothing up close. The city felt friendly enough and I'd like to go back to explore more, but I don't have any specific things I want to see.

On Tuesday night, I drove to Leuven, Belgium for a two day business meeting. Since I drove in the dark, I can't say I saw much of Belgium. Leuven itself is a lovely old city. We had a wonderful dinner at a nice little restaurant in the center of the city. I was also impressed by the Belgians I interacted with. They all (or most of them) speak Dutch, French and English (and sometimes German) fluently. I had the desire to rush out and learn a bunch of languages to catch up. I think I should be happy if I can eventually manage Dutch.

The hotel I stayed in was quite a way outside of Leuven. It seemed to be on a farm. It was on the outskirts of a small village and it must have been built in the 80's (judging by its decor.) Unfortunately, they had only smoking rooms, so my allergies were messed up a bit, but it was adequate for two nights. I was glad to get out of there though.

I drove back to Cologne on Thursday night and joined up with the second set of focus groups already in progress. I was working with a different set of people this time around, so it was interesting to see the different styles between the two sessions.

I drove back to Hilversum Friday night with two co-workers. On the way back we discussed Dutch and American stereotypes. It's interesting to me to see how we're viewed by other people. Gun ownership was a big point of discussions with them being quite surprised by how available guns are in the US and also how the rules are different from state to state. I'd never thought about it from the outside before, but historically, the difference makes a lot of sense. When Europe was being settled, guns didn't exist. By the time guns were relatively cheap and available, the governments in Europe were well in control and there were fewer compelling reasons for personal gun ownership. Meanwhile, guns were relatively cheap and available when the US was being settled, and they were needed for hunting as well as protection against natives, other settlers and wild animals. In many ways, the American settlers must have viewed their guns much as we view our wallets while the Europeans have never viewed them that way.

At any rate, it was a good, interesting conversation, but I'm glad to be home. There's lots to do here, including dealing with the pile of mail that appeared over the week. Apparently, my residence permit is waiting for me to pick up, and some additional registration forms came for M and the kids, so those all need to be dealt with. For now, I think I'll just head to bed and get a fresh start tomorrow.

I spent the day doing work-work while M and the kids sorted the giant tub of Lego that came in our air shipment. They were well distracted beyond lunch and dinner, and I had to remind them what time it was on several occasions. This prompted an outcry when bedtime was suddenly announced, but after a bit of recovery, the kids went down fairly easy.

I feel like I'm WAY more on top of things at work after today's efforts. I'm looking forward to this week on the road since it will be jumping into the deep end of the pool with several of the key people working with me. I expect that I'll feel much more tied in by the time I come back on Friday.

On the other hand, I'd also like to be sitting down with key people back here and planning, planning, planning. So I'm a bit torn. I also hate to be away from M and the kids for any length of time, so that's not so good either, especially since they're all still trying to find their footing here.

It's too bad that I won't get to see much of Cologne or Leuven, since I'll be inside most of the time the sun is out this week. I'll need a good run and several walks with the dog and family to recover from all of the darkness. At least I should be able to get good chocolate in Belgium. I'd also better stock up on cash, as I don't know how well my cards will work on the road. On the other hand, I shouldn't need to spend too much, since the meals will all be with people in groups. Hm...

Well, I'd better go pack and plan my morning. I don't need to be in Cologne until noon, so I can sleep in a bit. It's 2 and 1/2 hours drive, and it should be fairly easy. I'll probably plan to leave around 8:30 so I have an hour leeway to get settled in before the workshops start. I'll blog again next weekend.

I'm starting to find the humor in all of this. Hopefully I can stay in that mindset. At least until M and the kids are deported when their 90 day visitor's visas expire...

We went to the bank Friday morning to see if we could change our account to a joint account and get her a bank card of her own. The bank was empty and very helpful, so there was a bare minimum of waiting. It was easy to get our address changed, but we were informed that as of November 1, they are not allowed to add new customers with an address in the US. Huh?! I opened my account in the middle of November, and wasn't this just an addition to an existing account and not a new account? And what the heck anyway!!! Apparently they made a mistake when giving me my account, but I wasn't about to push that point right then.

The woman helping was nice, but gave us that typical Dutch "I'm very sorry, but I'm afraid I can't help you" line that I've heard OH SO many times since I've gotten here. From what she said, I suspect that the US has changed it's tax rules to prevent people from hiding money in foreign accounts, so our bank (which also does business in the US) wants to make sure they are complying with the new rules (and so have put new accounts on hold) and doesn't really care about inconveniencing it's customers in the meantime.

I asked if I could get a second card under my name for M to use, and the woman said, "Yes, of course, but that is at your own risk." Now, M and I have been married for more than 10 years. She owns half of all of our collected stuff (by law) and we have no intention of getting divorced anytime soon, so how is this any risk to me? I'm not sure, but I think it's an interesting glimpse into a very different mindset.

I dropped M off at home and headed off to the R&D site. On the way, I called the ex-pat services desk of my bank to see if they could help us. The woman I reached was shocked and a bit outraged that our branch couldn't help us. "That should be no problem at all!!" She put me on hold and called our branch to see what was going on. When she came back on, she confirmed that the new rule was now in place, she didn't know about it until now (great, now I'm making it harder for others...) and that she was very sorry but afraid she could not help me. *Sigh* I suspect this will not be an issue in a couple of months when the bank has sorted out it's "issues," but right now it's annoying. At least M will have a bank card she can use in a week or so.

In that same theme, when I got to work, I discovered an e-mail from the company transfer people. They were surprised/in denial about M and the kids not getting registered and insisted that we couldn't possibly need to go through an extra step in the process. *Sigh* As I expected, they aren't up on the current rules. A co-worker of mine told a similar story to ours the day before we went in to register, so all in all I wasn't too surprised by the way this has come down. I suspect we'll end up taking this on on our own. Not the end of the world, and I'm sure our housing specialists will help out (more out of sympathy than anything else...) but it's frustrating when the people whose job it is to know, don't know.

Work was somewhat productive. I still had too many meetings, but in the process, I seemed to have patched things up with the co-worker I mentioned on Monday. She and I agreed we needed to meet with her counterpart at the R&D site and work out how the three of us would deal with things going forward. When I started talking to her, she clearly just wanted to get off the line, but by the end, she had warmed up and I think we're back to a useful working relationship. I was very clear with her about the need to let me know ahead of time when she would want information from me. That's all I really ask.

I also picked up my bag of stuff (a Christmas gift to everyone at the R&D site). It was a strange mix of things, from blood wine and some kind of hard liquor to something like rusks, jam, various candies and cookies, and some things we couldn't identify. Various of my Dutch colleagues commented that it was a very strange mix of things, with lots of local (meaning very regional to that part of the Netherlands) things and even they didn't know what they all were.

On the drive back home, I called the cable company to see if I could finally sort out our missing modem problem. The technical guy I talked to was very helpful, and they decided that to fix things, they would need to send an technician out with a new modem (clearly ours isn't working at all...) It's a clunky fix, but it will work, and that's the point. So, hopefully, by Wednesday at the end of the day, we'll have our real broadband up and running. I'm not holding by breath, but we'll see.

Next week, I'm off to Cologne and Leuven. I'll add two more countries to my list of European counties I've visited, tripling my current total. I'll leave looking up where these places are as an exercise to the interested reader, but as a hint, they're each a two hour drive away from Hilversum and from each other. That will make it a long (and tiring) week and I'll be off the air until next Friday night at the earliest.

In preparation, we're all going off to stock up on groceries for the week. We'll replenish M's cash supply to tide her over until I get back, since even if she gets the new bank card, she needs me to activate it. We also need to get back to making our lives function. We haven't monitored our finances for more than a month, and although I know we're up to date on paying our bills, that may not be true in a week when I get back, so we need to do something this weekend on that end. It's also time to update the colossal list of things to do and knock a few more things off it.

We went to register today, with more luck than we could have had, and less than we wanted. The process was fairly painless. We showed up at the town hall at the time of the appointment with our pile of papers two inches high. Thirty minutes later, they called our number and we handed over almost everything, they checked, double checked, accepted, rejected, re-directed, stamped, signed, copied, re-copied, collated, stapled and billed us. In the end, I was registered, M and the kids need to get an appointment with another agency (maybe, we have a disagreement between my company and the town hall, but I think the town hall wins) and two of our birth certificates were rejected, because although they are properly "legalized" they were issued more than a year ago, which, somehow, makes them only partially valid.

Here's the upshot - Since I got registered, we can get our stuff cleared for customs (or so we hope...) and I can fully set up our bank accounts, etc. We have something functional now, but more can be done once we have my official tax number (the Dutch equivalent of a social security number.) That will come in two weeks when my residence permit has been approved. In the meantime, M and the kids need to go through some, as yet undefined additional step to become registered. Oh, and we need new versions of those birth certificates so we can finalize the whole process at some point in the undefined future.

All in all it could have been worse.

Since we had this appointment in the morning, I decided to drive to the R&D site for work. The day was mostly uneventful, but it reminded me that I really have a lot to do for work and the bureaucracy really gets in the way. I've had 9am meetings with various agencies most of the mornings this week. Tomorrow, it's the bank to try to get M added to my account and get her a bank card of her own. I'll be away on business all of next week, so it would be ideal if it showed up mid week so she could better function without me. If it doesn't she can fall back on our US bank card, but turning dollars into euros is not the wisest financial move right now.

I'd also forgotten how I hate long drives, especially by myself. The dive is 1 hour 30, almost exactly the same as the train ride, minus the 10 minute walk/bike ride at each end. I took my TomTom along for the day and it was wonderful, happily guiding me to our various destinations (town hall, kids' school, R&D site, home) even when I took a wrong turn here or there. It also kept an eye on my speed, beeping when I was more than 10kph over the limit. I'm not sure what the "real" speed limit is over here, but I don't think they are "allowed" to patrol in police cars. Instead, the country is filled with photo radar speed traps, except that their locations are public knowledge and can be downloaded to TomTom, making them less than effective.

I stayed a bit late at work, catching up on some things with a co-worker. I ended up getting home about 7:30, and M had dinner (Hamburgers!) ready. After dinner, I took over wrangling the kids and cleaned up dinner when M hid in the bedroom and surfed the net. She needed the break, and I needed the time with the boys. We read another chapter in their current book and played a few rounds of cards before they headed off to bed.

And that was about that for the day. I'm going to head that direction myself, since the late nights this week have been taking a serious toll on me. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed at work, and I think it's largely because I'm not as rested as I should be. That, and my in-box is over stuffed. But there's nothing new in that, I'm afraid. Its a bit comforting that some things are the same everywhere, but I wish that wasn't one of them.

Not much to say today, but I wanted to share the worst part of my day. Sorry for that.

Last week, a co-worker asked me a question. Now, this is a question I would have been able to answer if I'd been doing this job for a little while, but as it is, I needed some time to pull the information together. On the other hand, I had a pretty good idea what the right answer was, so I told her what I thought, but said I'd go check it out in detail.

So, today, at 5:15, she stops me in the hall and says, that she needs the information tonight because she's giving a presentation tomorrow and she needs to send it out in advance, and no, it can't wait until morning. Now, I'd had a few other things that needed to get done, so I hadn't taken the time to really dig into her question, but I'd started the process. I got the impression that it wasn't that urgent, I had to do it anyway, and since I didn't know exactly who to ask, it was going to take a little time. So I couldn't give her any better answer than I did a week ago. In fact, the people who could had already gone home for the day, so there was no way to get her the answer in time.

Now, I understand how it feels to have to have something due and not be able to get the information you need, so I wasn't surprised when she seemed a bit put out, but she hadn't mentioned this deadline before, or I would have pushed a lot harder to get everything done for her. As it is, things should be fine, but if the business starts asking detailed questions tomorrow, she will go down in flames and we'll both end up looking like we don't know what we're doing. To make matters worse, I wont be there to lend credibility to my "gut level" story.

All of this somehow makes me really mad. I hate it when I can't help someone, especially when I need to work as closely with her as I do. I think my working relationships with her is already strained, since I've asked her a few times for help in getting information I need, but she doesn't seem to know much better than I do how to get it, but I don't want to turn around and hang her (and to some extent myself) out to dry just for some stupid sense of revenge. I wanted to be able to hand her the right information, and as I said earlier in this post, by all rights I will be able to when I up and running.

So, yeah, that sucked.

Tomorrow we go to get ourselves registered. Wish us luck. I hope we've filled out the forms correctly, or we'll have to go though this again.

Soooo much paperwork...

I got this morning and got ready for work. On the way, I took a side trip to the Gemeente (city hall) to pick up the forms we'll need for Thursday morning's meeting. The place opens at 8:30, but I got there a little early to avoid any lines. I was first to get a number (they use the take a number system all over the place over here) and took a seat to wait. By 8:25, there were 3-4 of us waiting and they started taking people. Specifically, people not me.

I waited patiently while the first 10 or so people went in front of me. I figure it might just be that someone in particular needed to deal with the immigration issues. After 10 more people I though maybe they didn't start dealing with immigration until 9 (the time originally given to me as the opening time.) At 10 to 9, I was called. I explained my situation and was told "You waited 30 minutes just for the forms? Then I'm very sorry, that's not the way the process is supposed to go." I thought about asking for my 30 minutes back, but instead settled for the forms I needed. I also got the form to allow us to pay tax for owning a dog. I thought I needed to pick up a custom form as well, but I was assured that we'll get that one on Thursday. To make sure, the guy wrote down (in Dutch) the name of the form and signed his initials so if we have trouble on Thursday, he might be around to help out. (The way things have gone, it might well be his morning off...)

I then rode to the train and got myself a monthly pass. I'll be getting a yearly pass soon(ish) but was told that buying a month now was probably a good idea, given that it will take several more weeks before the yearly pass is issued. To get the pass, I had to present a passport photo for the "NS ID Card." I was handed a wallet sized slip of paper and asked to fill out the back. They then took the passport photo, cut it down to size a bit, and stuck it into slots in the front of the card. Seems really easy to forge to me, but what do I know.

Work was short and uneventful. I had a couple of worthwhile discussions with my colleagues, including the guy I'm replacing. He's moved on to another spot, but he wanted to take the time to give me a bit of a brain dump on how he sees the business and where things should go. We have a lot in common in terms of our ideas for improving things, but he's more pushy and I think he burned some bridges that way. It was good to pick his brain and get an idea of where to focus, but I can't run things like he did (nor does anyone want me to), since that's a large part of the reason he moved on anyway.

I also printed out even more paperwork. We have a customs form to fill out, but we need that form we're supposed to get on Thursday before we can send it in. I also printed out forms for voter registration. Apparently we can vote in all of the elections we could vote in before we moved. That's a good thing, I guess, but it does seem a bit weird to be voting on city and local issues when we're thousands of miles away. But I guess if we can't vote here, we might as well vote there. It just means we'll have to keep up with the local news through the internet.

And that was the day. I'm sitting here blogging instead of dealing with the huge pile of papers. I'd better get started, since I suspect I'll have a ton of questions regarding things like "when exactly did you move to the Netherlands." Um... October 28 when I first came over here? December 5 when I first applied for residency? January 1 when we all came over for "good." My main fear is that if I pick the wrong answer, they'll send me away with a new form to try again. Any delay on Thursday means a delay to getting our things (since we need that customs form.) It doesn't help that the guy at the counter said "welcome to Kafka" as he handed me the forms... Well, nothing for it. Off to the forms.

Today was a non-productive day. We got up late, ate breakfast, M went back to bed for a nap, the kids and I watched cartoons in Dutch and I downloaded the maps of Western Europe for my TomTom. I managed to call the help desk to try to re-order the installation package for our internet, but was told that they wouldn't do anything until the original package got back to them... Bleh.

When M got up, we made a big run to the AH to stock up on lots of stuff. There was an oliebollen stand in the parking lot, so M bought some for us (Yum!) We weren't sure the pre-made pizzas that we'd picked up would freeze, so we ate some of them tonight.

After that, we all helped clean up the kitchen and dining area. M and the younger emptied the dishwasher while the older and I wiped the table and swept the floor. This is a new ritual for us, and one that we (M and I at least) are enjoying. It's nice to work together as a family and it feels much better to have everything neat and tidy in between meals.

After dinner, the boys and I played some cards before we got them up to bed. They went with surprisingly little fight, since I'd set the expectations pretty clearly at the beginning of the game. Then I lay down with them until they went to sleep while M worked on her computer and the colossal list of things we still need to do.

My excuse for staying up this late is that I "watched" the first game of the playoffs over the internet. Actually, I chatted with a friend and hit refresh on www.nfl.com repeatedly. I'll probably end up weaning myself off of US sports over the next few years, so this might be the last time I pay any attention to it. Yeah, that's the ticket. No more staying up late for me now that football's out of my life. Right.

What a difference a day makes.

Today was a much better day, but I sure wasn't sure it would be when I was still awake at 6am. I ended up sleeping from 8pm to midnight and then again from 6am to 10am. Not the blazing start to the day I wanted, but given that I was working from home, not the end of the world either.

After my first cup of coffee, I worked up the courage to go over and talk to the neighbor about our installation package again. This experience was completely different than the last. She was apologizing almost before the door was open. Apparently she had had a visitor and was trying to do two things at once. In her rush, she spoke Dutch to me instead of English. She explained (in English this time) that she had had the package, that is was in fact from UPC (the internet/cable/phone company) and that she'd given it back to the mailman when I hadn't been by to pick it up in a week. She apologized for that as well, but I pointed out that last she new, the house was still empty. She didn't know where the package had gone, but later brought over a phone book with the number for post office information.

I took a break from work and set off to our local post office to see if the package was there. It wasn't, but I stopped for a few things at the AH down the street. When I got home, the older was still asleep, so I started breakfast and woke him up. The boys had poffertjes (out of a bag from AH) and we all had bacon and eggs.

After breakfast, I went up to start working. I managed to slog through a bunch of e-mail, but had some trouble getting into the meat of the work, so I decided to head off to the town hall to get the documents we need to register. I had been told that the place would be open until 4, but, of course, it turns out they were only open until 1, and not open again until Monday.

On the way back, I stopped at the post office and bought some stamps. It turns out that mail to the US costs €0.92. It's $0.90 going the other direction (for those who decide to mail us...)

Back at home, I finally got down to work in earnest. The main problem I've been having is that I'm responsible for a yearly plan that someone else created this year. To make matters worse, reality no longer matches the plan, so the plan needs to be updated, and no one has done that for the last 3-4 months. I spent the afternoon going line by line through the plan and figuring out what needed to be updated, what information I already have, and what I still need to get. It's not even close to under control yet, but it's a lot closer. It's nice to finally feel like I'm making progress.

I worked until dinner and a little bit afterward, which, unfortunately, left M to make dinner and start moving the kids to bed. She handled it with her typical skill and patience. I did take a complete time out for dinner and the clean-up afterwards and to help with the bedtime ritual, but I always feel a bit torn when I'm working and being at home. At least tonight I was able to completely unplug from work and spend time with the family at dinner without working at the table or feeling like I needed to rush back to it. Maybe I'm starting to be able to separate a bit. That is certainly something I could stand to learn from the Dutch.

So, all in all, a better day than the past few. I think we're getting closer to the right timezone, and I feel like we're starting to settle in. The boys start school on Wednesday, and work next week should be a bit more normal, so we'll see then.

Temperatures running around 1-2 degrees C. Thats only low 30's for you Fahrenheit types, so my relatives in the Midwest are laughing now. I was warm on the way to the station, partly because I was riding my bike and partly because of the lovely new gloves I got for Christmas (thanks Grandma!), but when I stepped off the train to walk to work, the wind cut right through my rain jacket. I should have worn my fleece underneath. I'll know better for the rest of the winter.

Got up way too early today. Apparently I've forgotten how long (or how short, really) the bike ride to the station is. I got there a good 20 minutes before the train came and sat in the unheated enclosed shelter shuffling through one of the free Dutch newspapers and feeling very much out of place.

It's amazing, really, when I left a little over three weeks ago, I was starting to feel comfortable and at home here. Now I'm having that same, out of place feeling I've had every time I've come to visit. Hopefully it goes away faster this time, since I'm not enjoying it. Getting back to work will help, but it's not that simple.

Work was a slog today. I had a pretty empty schedule, so you'd have thought I could have gotten something done, but I couldn't get any traction on my work. I've realized that I need to start setting some priorities and figuring out what really needs to be done, and what I really need to delegate to others. It doesn't help that the guy I'm replacing was a control freak and basically destroyed his health by knowing everything and being everywhere.

It also didn't help that most of the people I work with were still on holiday this week. I did have lunch with a set of co-workers, but I really need to have a few "what are we doing here" conversations with peers that have not been available. I'm going to work from home tomorrow and try to start setting those priorities. We'll see how far I get.

I did have a very good conversation with a colleague in the US. He's in a similar position to me in that he's changed jobs in a significant way recently and he's trying to find his way as well. It was good to know that someone else had similar issues they were dealing with, but my phone cut out at the end of our conversation, so we didn't wrap things up well. We've scheduled a regular weekly call, so I think that will help quite a bit.

M and the kids had a so-so day today. They didn't get out of the house much, and I don't think that helped their jet lag. I know I was dragging by 4pm (and now you see I'm up again at 2am!) The younger was out cold when I got home, and we had to wake him up for dinner. I missed M's message to pick up a few things on the way home, so we couldn't make the planned dinner and ended up throwing together some soup, leftovers and chicken nuggets. Not as nice as yesterday's meal, but at least it got us fed.

After dinner, I went up to blog in bed and the younger came up with complaints about his brother. I let him lean up against me, and soon we were both asleep. I got up again at midnight when M woke me up to get ready for bed and now here I am. Lack of sleep doesn't help the adjusting problem.

Neither does the fact that I feel like we're pushing a boulder up a hill. We found out today that there's yet one more thing we need to do to get our stuff from the US. When we register with the town hall (which will happen next week, IF we get the signed rental agreement back from the owner, who is in Malaysia) we also need to get a form saying that we live here, we've registered here, and our stuff should be able to come here tax free. I started asking the "is there anything else we need" questions, but it always feels a bit like people are reading from a list of requirements, but they only bother to tell you the first 1 or 2. Somehow the later ones get forgotten.

I've also realized that I probably need to go back over to talk to our neighbor and find out where our internet installation box got sent. If I could get M real broadband that would help her a lot in feeling connected with the rest of the world. This WILL get worked out, I'm confident, but in the meantime, it feels very frustrating. As I've said before, in a month, I'll laugh at myself when I read this post, but now I need to go to bed to start breaking the "too tired" cycle.

Phew! What a busy day!

We got a late start this morning, since we (well, me in particular) felt the need to sleep in for a bit. We finally ate breakfast around 10, and after a bit of web surfing and a couple of phone calls to find out where to go to get what we needed, we were off at the crack of noon.

Our first mistake was not going directly to eat. Our second was forgetting Kleenexes. Both of the boys have runny noses, and we required a stop a Domino's for paper towels to tide us over until we could get the real thing.

We started out at a small hardware store getting keys cut and a few other odds and ends, like nails to hang pictures, a hook for the back-door keys and the like. The younger also had to use the toilet (despite the reminders to go before we left...) and the store keep was happy to oblige.

Next was the pet store to get collar tags with our address in them followed by a drug store to get real Kleenex. We also hit the Phone House, where the very nice woman helped us get a phone for M. We opted for pre-paid until we figure out what contract we want to be on. We're still not sure how much that phone will be used to call internationally, and how much it will be used to just call me and the public utilities.

Lunch caught up to us while M was shopping for slippers in a department store. (Apparently she thinks that radiators don't heat the floors well enough.) There was a little cafeteria built into the store, and a few things (pies) caught the boys eyes. So we sat and ate. I have to say, I think the quality of the food here is a bit better than in the US. A similar cafeteria would have either been more expensive, or more cold cuts on white bread than this place was.

Planning ahead, I'd found a store that would sell us a European converter that would work with our wireless router. It was in the mall next door, so we headed there next. Both boys then needed to make another rest stop, and we discovered yet another interesting Dutch custom, paying for semi-public toilets. This one had the standard fee of 30 Euro cents, and I still can't imagine that the fee comes close to covering the minimum wage of the guy collecting the fee. On the other hand, the place was cleaner than most US mall restrooms I've encountered, so maybe there's something to this.

Next we hit the Albert Heijn to stock our larders. A good three grocery bags full later, we headed off to pick up what I'd hoped would be our cable modem. At this point, the boys were at each other's throats a bit, so we had to separate them while carrying the day's purchases. M somehow kept them busy while I waited in line to discover that the modem was instead the digital TV box, leaving us without real internet, but with more TV all at once than we've watched in the last seven years.

I spent a while on the phone with the cable internet help desk looking for the installation package, but got very little satisfaction. Two different people told me it had been picked up today and they were confused when I explained that I'd picked up the other package today. "Are you sure?" Finally, someone told me in that "please go away now" voice that they were SURE it would come on Thursday or Friday or Monday at the latest. But probably Friday. Now I'm worried that the package the neighbor sent back to the post office was the installation kit, and it's somehow lost in limbo. I may have to make another trip over there and find out exactly what she did with it.

The side-effect of sipping the internet through a straw is that M cannot blog through her normal channels. She may throw a comment in here for continuity's sake, but we'll see.

In the meantime, we had a pretty successful day, and I'm confident that M can manage on her own tomorrow while I head to the R&D site. At the very worst, she has a phone now and keys to the house and can call for advice if needed. I'm not sure how useful I am for that yet, but at least I know people who know Dutch and can help sort things out.

Here's hoping for broadband by Friday.

So after a nap...

Let me tell you a bit about the trip. We'd cleverly rented a Chevy Trail Blazer (not our style of car, if you know us at all) to make sure we had room to haul everything with us. In total, we had:

3 large suitcases
2 rolling suitcases
1 small suitcase
3 back packs
2 computer bags
2 camera bags
1 purse
1 cat carrier with cat
1 dog
1 large dog crate
2 booster seats
2 kids
2 adults
1 grocery bag of various stuff (snacks, cat bed, etc.)
4 jackets

Everything fit in the trailblazer with only a little crowding, but we underestimated how much time it would take us to get everything out of the car, onto the luggage carts and up to check-in. With all of the finagling and signing of papers to get the dog on the plane added to the 9 carry on bags and the time that took going through security, they were giving the last call for the plane by the time we got to the gate. Of course, there was another 30 minutes (and several other people boarding) before we finally took off, so it wasn't as bad as it sounds.

The flight was fairly uneventful. The younger slept for a good portion of the flight, but the rest of us all slept for less than an hour. Everyone was awake for getting off the plane, so everyone could carry their share, making things a bit easier.

I was a little nervous about going through customs/immigration, since they'd asked to see our residency application when we were loading the dog. Of course the US agents couldn't read the Dutch form, so I'm not sure what they were trying to do, but it made me wonder if they'd ask for the same in Amsterdam. Of course, there were no problems, but they did ask to see the health certificates for the dog at customs, which temporarily separated M and the rest of us as she had to stop to show the forms.

In Amsterdam, they had us in a Renault station wagon. It is big enough to take all of the luggage, but the crate had to be tied on top for the trip to Hilversum. With only one or two stops to re-tie the crate, we all made it here safely to discover a HUGE pile of mail from the past two weeks. About half of it was junk, but the other half was split between Christmas letters (a nice surprise!) and bills/official notifications (all in Dutch, of course.) I really need to learn to read Dutch as soon as possible, but I was able to identify the residency permit acceptance letter we've been waiting for, so now we can go get "registered" at the town hall.

There was also a hand written note from a neighbor saying that a package had been delivered to her house for us and that we should come by as soon as possible to pick it up (there was a matching note from the post office saying the same thing...) So, I went over to pick it up. That was a bit of an awkward experience. I told the older woman I didn't speak much Dutch, and asked if she could speak English. She (of course) could speak English, but the proceeded to talk to me at length in Dutch, and (in what I'm coming to believe is typical Dutch fashion) not stopping to let me say I couldn't understand her. Apparently I need to be more forceful in my interruptions here. She managed to communicate that she's sent the package back to the post office, but I suspect it's the adapter box for the cable and internet, so we'll go by tomorrow to pick that up.

The rest of the day has been spend napping, making dinner and generally adjusting to this house. The dog and the cat are a bit wigged out, but starting to seem more calm. We're all suffering from jet lag (no surprise), and I suspect there will be some fighting before we head off to bed this evening. At the moment, the boys are (mostly) peacefully playing a game, but it's clear tensions are high. I'm a bit worried that they've slept too much today to go peacefully to bed tonight, but we'll see.

In the meantime, I'm starting a list of things to do tomorrow, including the key items of getting M a phone and copying our house keys so we can at least both have a set. Grocery shopping and the previously mentioned trip to the post office are also critical. We've got the car until the 14th (which will be another logistical issue...) and I hope it's parked in a legal spot (in our driveway, but partially into the sidewalk) since I don't need the hassle of fighting a Dutch parking ticket. There are enough other hassles to deal with already.