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!