When in Holland...

Do as the Dutch do. Eat the food they eat, Drive the cars they drive, or better yet: don't drive a car, ride a bike.

I've added two new pictures. One is of the VW Touran which I am driving. This is actually a good size car for Holland. especially for one person! I was bugged today about how my boss' boss rode a bike when she was here. It was a hint: DON'T BE SUCH AN AMERICAN! YOU ONLY LIVE FOUR KILOMETERS FROM WORK! TRADE IN YOUR CAR AND GET A BIKE LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE! see? very subtle.

The second picture is of a Dutch meal. Notice the bread, butter, meat, cheese, milk and fruit. The sandwiches are to be made open faced and eaten with a fork and a knife. There is to be no 'salad' on your sandwich and I didn't notice other toppings in the cafeteria, so why get them for home? I think you can get them, but I'm guessing they cost extra, just like Ketchup would at a restaurant.

I woke up at 4:30 AM this morning and couldn't get back to sleep. Hopefully that doesn't continue to happen. My work is getting interesting enough that I was able to stick to it for ten hours today in spite of my being tired. Keep in mind the time zones here. I start work at the time I would usually be going to sleep. So a nights sleep here falls into the place where an afternoon nap would usually fall.

Brian asked that I elaborate on what I'm doing here in Holland. Well, there's a set of engines going into trucks in a few weeks which are called QV engines. QV is short for Quality Validation. Interestingly enough, the engine tuning maps for the latest and greatest hardware which has been added to the engine are not complete yet. So, I am at DAF to help share the engineering load for that project since DAF is shorthanded enough that the production release date would be delayed if they didn't get some more temporary manpower. 'I am that hero.' please, please, no more autographs!

My Home for a month

I've uploaded some pictures of my hotel Studio which will be my home for a month. It's a small room with a single bed, kitchen consisting of a sink, fridge and microwave, a small guest seating area (two seats), a table large enough for my laptop and a bathroom with shower. The elevator didn't work the first time around so the receptionist and myself carried all of my luggage up to the fourth floor. He carried my large suitcase and horribly enough I didn't have any cash smaller than a 50 Euro bill and I didn't want to give that to him as a tip. I'm bad, I know.

The Hotel is a few minutes walk from downtown Eindhoven which I have yet to visit. I don't know that I will tonight because I'm a bit wiped... but who knows.

Work was interesting. I'm having a hard time learning all the dutch names. The dutch pronounce our name (Kaemingk) differently than we do. they don't pronounce the long a, so I'm not sure if us Americans just love our long a's and we changed the saying or if the Dutch got it wrong... maybe I'll have to visit the Kaemingk store and ask. :)

Holland

I'm in Friggen EUROPE!

So after ten hours in a plane I land to find that I'm more at home than I thought I would be. It was raining! the wind was crazy too. I sat next to a wonderful lady from South Africa with three daugters back home who was in Seattle for continued education as a counselor. Also, she was a childhood friend of Dave Matthews; yes, the rockstar. You can imagine we had lots to talk about. I got a VW Tourvan Diesel with a six speed for a rental and proceded to leave Amsterdam in the wrong direction. After driving for about twenty mintues I realized that the directions I was given by the car rental guys were crap and that a pitstop was on order. Luckily one of the gas station attendants spoke english. She was very friendly as well as the truckers who hopped in to try and find where I needed to go. After we figured it out she taught me how to say "left lane" in Dutch which I proptly forgot and proceded to poke fun of me while I was leaving. I sure enjoyed that! Another hour and a half later with one or two stops to look at the maps, a lot of cursing about how badly labeled the roads are and a severely bad job driving through some intersections which I'm sure violated some law or another I arrived at DAF. I was then kindly heckled about not knowing Dutch while in the Netherlands by the guard and sent on my way.

The place I'm staying tonight is called DAF House. It is six rooms that they keep up here on campus for visitors and it seems that they're always filled. I am being kicked out tomorrow night so I'll be making hotel reservations for the next few nights and then I hope I'll be able to get some long term housing like an appartment!

Now all I have to do is figure out how to get to sleep.

How it all started

It all started with a request from DAF to help with a production release project. The other engineers which were more qualified than myself were un-available. So I went home Wednesday after my managers informed me that I was their choice to go but it was up to DAF whether they would need me to go. I arrived at work on Thursday and got the good new that I would be going to DAF for at least four weeks! WOOT!! I was excited. they asked if I'd be able to leave Saturday (yes, that's two days to prepare) and I said "Sure, why not." fortunately for me my manager had the foresight to change the departure date to Monday when he realized how rushed I was to prepare for leaving for such a long time. I closed up some deals with re-financing my house that Friday and took the weekend to visit with family and friends. Now it's Sunday night and I'm just about done packing, all that's left is a load of Laundry.

This trip is very significant for me. For those of you who know me, you know that I've been restless the last little while; something in me wants to go on an adventure away from what I've always known. well, it's amazing how God works because this one just popped into my lap! None of my other options looked right and my motivation for those was escape from my frustrations. I made the decision to stick it out because that's what I felt was the right thing to do. Now I see how it all works out for the best! I'm on my way for an awesome adventure traveling around Europe for a month and it's all paid for! WOOT! I know I'm going to come back a different man. Just watch and see! I can feel something is really going to change!