Nate's Adventures

Easter

2008-03-17T13:54:00.000-07:00

I'll be home for Easter! I just got an invite from my mom for Easter Sunday dinner and I just couldn't stand the idea of not going. So tomorrow I'll be trying to adjust my flight to come home.

Nate

homecoming

2008-03-12T14:33:00.000-07:00

It's official. I'm coming home after four weeks here in Holland and then possibly planning another longer trip at a later date. Not much else is new. I met a very new-agy lady in the bar and she talked with me for a bit and then started to talk at me later on. more on that later after I've cleansed my ears and my soul for a bit... keep me in your prayers. I feel like I was able to speak a bit of life to her so lets pray that that life grows in her heart to come to full fruition.

Not much else is new today, peace and love to all of you from our true life source Jesus who loves us! ah, it feels good to say that!

Relief

2008-03-11T12:46:00.000-07:00

I found the Laundromat! woot woot! PARTAY! Never thought it'd be that exciting. But then again there's nothing more relieving than knowing you'll have clean underwear in the morning when faced with the prospect of not! That being said I must admit once again that I'm a lazy American who's spoiled by the use of his car. It was way shorter of a walk than I thought and that's probably the main reason I got lost in the first place. Everything in Europe is tiny . I was riding on the train on the way to Amsterdam last weekend and I noticed that there would be all kinds of space and farmland between towns and then when you get into the town everything is crammed together as if you are in a big city again... except there's not as many buildings.

That and the forests are just friggen WRONG! the first forest I saw just rubbed me the wrong way. I didn't really know why, just that it wasn't right; it wasn't like a forest should be. After a few small wooden areas passed I realized it was because all of the forests were planted, and the first growth trees had been planted in straight lines. Pathetic. sorry, and disgusting. The smaller trees around them were filling in the areas with a more natural random spacing, but the main growth was just... ugh, made me kinda sick.

Amsterdam was cool. It was old, and it was Dutch. I saw the palace, and I saw a really old section of town and then had some beer and a really good Pizza and then had to head back to Eindhoven again. My tour guide was feeling sick for some reason so she needed to head home to bed and I didn't want to get lost in Amsterdam by myself. That sounds like it wasn't much, but keep in mind that this is Europe and food and beer don't go down fast. I figured I'd have another chance, so why not head home and get some rest. No, I didn't see the redlight district. I didn't want to be turned off of sex for the rest of my life thank you very much.

Sunday I went to Ede (pronounced aye-deh) and saw Andrew Shearman and David Fredrickzs. It was really good to see them. I went to David's church, Soma, and then went to his home with Andrew and the fam and ate Shrimp for lunch! It was great! Especially seeing Andrew again, I love that guy! If you wanna read a real good blog go to AndrewShearman.com. Then I hung out with this other group of twenty-somes and watched Oceans Eleven after a great dinner of fries (which they actually had Ketchup for) and these meaty things that remind me of polish hot-dogs. the main course was really the fries though, and I was the only one eating them without a fork! The Husband of the house, Bruce, happily ate with his hands with me just so I wouldn't be the only one. I think he just liked using his hands though. :) Anything to give your wife something to be embarrassed about right? it's good for them.

So back to the question about how long I'll be staying. well, don't know yet. there's been some developments with my Visa not being applied for, so without that I'll be forced to stop working at four weeks. But there's still a chance we'll decide to have me stay. I really don't feel like it's gonna happen though... we'll see!

That is the Question

2008-03-10T12:48:00.001-07:00

So, lets make this official since it is official as of today. I have the option to stay here in Europe for as long as I want to. Months,... years? *shrug* don't know. It'd be awesome because the work is great. But I'm not so sure I wanna leave my Family and friends... I really don't know what to think about this whole thing. Parts of it suck, like not having people to hang out with after work. But parts of it are nice, like the opportunities I have for cool projects.

I don't have the feeling that I'd stay for a year,... and I don't have the feeling that it's necessarily this trip that will be my long term trip.

The questions I have are more to do with what I really want in life. To be or not to be? that is the question. Ha! and that's the first time that question has EVER made sense to me! lol, yeah I know, I can be a little slow sometimes. But really, I guess I'm just throwing it out there to see what my faithful blog readers think about the idea?

So please, if you've read this blog leave me a comment with your honest thoughts. :)

Lost

2008-03-05T12:04:00.000-08:00

So There's about one Laundromat in all of Eindhoven. It's about 1.4 km's from my Hotel, so I decided to drive to get there. well, I forgot my map but went ahead anyways. How hard can it be to remember the general location? I mean, all roads lead to Rome right?

Right.

So on the way I realized I didn't really know where I was going but kept trying anyways. I found the street that I needed to go to and grabbed a bite to eat at a pizza joint on that street. The cook was from Afghanistan! he didn't know much English so we tried to talk some but it didn't work so well. I asked him if he knew about the laundromat, but he didn't know what I was asking. So I ventured out in my car a little ways without finding it. I then realized it was getting a bit late so I wouldn't have time to finish a load anyways.

So I headed in the general direction of what I knew was downtown. well,... thought was downtown anyways. I drove for a while, then realized I wasn't recognizing anything at all, then found a main street which said city centre. followed that and found it didn't go where I though.

Completely lost, but I didn't think I was at the time. I found the 'ring' which is a road that circles the city and started driving around. After driving for a bit I started trying to find one of the cross roads on another map which was in the car from my first day so I could head for the center of the city again and towards my Hotel. I thought I was on the south side of the City so I was searching for one of the main roads which were visible on the map only to see a sign that which read "DAF Museum" on the side of the road. This of course meant that I was on the completely opposite end of the city from where I thought I was. I felt really cool about that! About another two blocks and I was back to the road that I take back and forth from DAF. Three more minutes and I was in the Garage, and another four mintues and I was in my room heaving a sigh of relief and signing on to Blogger.com!

DRIVE!

2008-03-04T14:27:00.000-08:00

So I must say, I really like the drivers here. They actually drive! Not like us Americans who talk on the phone, eat fast food, text, and generally don't pay attention to the roads. As usual we're always trying to distract ourselves from what we are really doing and what is really important like driving! so because of that we have to lower the speed limits and drive passively! okay, okay, I'm on a rant, but it really is different here and all the drivers really are paying attention to driving when they're driving.

Work is going well. To be honest it has been a bit boring sometimes. Since I'm new to this team I'm working my way into the whole mess slowly, and well, i should say it feels quite slow. Part of the problem is getting me integrated into a project which has the right skill level for where I'm at and where I'm going. I got a project that I'm really excited about assigned to me today. It starts tomorrow and I'm expecting that I will continue to have favor in all that I do!

I met with a friend David Fredriksz for dinner and then saw John Rambo with him. It was great. We had a good talk over dinner with a few beers and then watched a mans movie with all the blood guts and gore you could ever wish for! It was actually a pretty decent movie with an ending that was better than I had expected. Of course maybe that's why it was decent, because i didn't expect much. I mean, the guys like sixty or something right? And it completely validated what one of the Dutch guys here was saying about how Americans are sadistic in our enjoyment of violence. Yep, can't deny it. I enjoyed that movie.

Nate

When in Holland...

2008-02-28T11:18:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-27T10:17:00.001-08:00

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

2008-02-26T14:21:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-24T21:54:00.000-08:00

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!