Matt's Meandering Musings

So we're relocating to the boston area.  I've accepted a new job there, and can't wait to start.  We spent the last week of August NWof Amsterdam, on the Dutch Coast..I just posted a few pics.

 

Looking forward to seeing yall in Boston :)

 

Matt 

I don't usually put up on my blog random junk like this, but this time I couldn't resist.

 

This guy has crazy juggling ability.

 

 

 

 

It's official, we've had a new addition to the family...

 

Taylor Benjamin Young

Good Friday, 06-April-2007

52cm, 3.23kg

 

He, and his mother, are doing great!

 

Sorry for the delay in posting, it's been a busy few weeks :)

 

He was born at the Universitätsklinikum Aachen, the largest single-building hospital in Europe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinikum_Aachen).   It has to be the most interesting structure I've seen in a while.  It's MASSIVE, and is like a cross between Chemical Plant and Willy Wonka's factory.  The inside looks like submarine from the 1970's, walls awash in synthetic lime, red, and yellow wall panels, carpets, etc.  It was built after WWII, so it was meant to survive bombing and earthquakes better then a conventional structure.  The bottom 3-4 levels are basically a massive bomb shelter.  Incidentally, this is where babies are born.  Most of the heating, AC, power, etc...all the "stuff" needed for a building is located on the outside of the building, rather then inside.  If the building were to sustain damage, it's much easier to fix if it's all on the outside...'eh?

 

Click on the pics below.  The place is seriously trippy.

 

Anyway, the staff there were very cool.  It's been a different experiance to have a baby in Germany.  We stayed in the hospital for a week, then came home, and a midwife comes every other day to check up on Gale and the Taylor.  It's all part of the process.  Cool :)

 

We're still struggling with getting him registered with Deutschland, and the States...it's safe to say that we're up to our eyeballs in forms. 

 

I'm back to work now, we have family staying with us helping out, so I'm saving my time for when we're alone.  I'm going to post some pics shortly...more later :)

 

One proud Vater,

 

Matt

 

 

 

 

This will be short. 

 

I don't understand why in the name of all that is holy and good, do people still make user interfaces that block the main UI thread on a network operation.  It's utterly stupid. 

 

There I feel better now, that is, until I have to start using product studio, and well, explorer.exe on a high-latency link.

 

*ugh*

 

 

Ok.  It's official.  I suck at blogging.  It's a time thing...Ich habe nicht.

 

Little-O just turned two, and we've been living in Deutschland since März (March).  Work is going well, it feels very much like my job in a tech startup, prior to Microsoft.  This, as is everything, is a nuanced thing.  There are some aspects of it that I absolutly love, namely the complete freedom to to just DO STUFF and ask for permission later, the cool feeling of working with a small group of people, against insurmountable odds...  The downside is you really have to deal with a lot of ambiguity (hard to avoid that...and not really a bad thing, but a substantial thing nonetheless).  In addition, hand in hand with a small setting is the loss of anonymity.  In Redmond, there are tens of thousands of people working there.  You can go to another building that you've not been to before, camp out in a random conf. room for a few hours, try a new cafeteria, and still be connected to CorpNet, with a printer nearby, etc...  It's cool though, I just do an analagous thing now (I love wifi).

 

Adjusting to life in Germany has also not been without it's adventures.  It's more then a physical location issue, it's about immersing yourself in a culture that is completely different then the one you know.  It's by definition outside of any notion of a comfort zone.  What do you do when your 2 year old daughter asks you a question that has a few German words in it, and you realize that you don't understand her?  When you need a little space and don't call someone back promptly, the assumption from the other end is that either

 

a.) your answering machine is broken

b.) your brain is broken

c.) something horrible has happened to you

 

While the thought is touching, the end result for a, b, or c is the same - increasingly frequent calls.  Then there is the need to let go of your pride often, I know that probably sounds arrogent to put into type, but think about it for a sec...  Germans will help you, because they are cool, and you need it.  However, while correcting my German is helpful, I don't persistantly correct their English...god knows I've heard some interesting variations of my mother tongue, but usually I find this entertaining.  I try to focus on understanding what they are saying, not really getting caught up on the vocal packaging.  I'm certainly not suggesting that I'm a grammitical genius or anything...check out the words above you if you doubt this :)

 

There is a whole lot about Europe that I absolutely love.  It's usually faster and shorter to walk to things instead of driving.  There are cobblestoned streets everywhere.   Everything is constructed from stone, and isn't considered old until it's pushing 500.  You can sit outside, a lot.  In the Land of the Free, try having a beer on the sidewalk sometime.  The local authorities tend to frown on that sort of thing.  I suppose the grass is always greener, folks here tend to think of america as a place where everyone can have a back yard...it's pretty much true!  I won't delve into politics, as most of europe, if not the world, differs greatly with the US when it comes to how the world should operate.  In many ways I agree with them, in some way I don't. 

 

I've also come to really appreciate some things about the US that I took for granted before.  They make me proud.  I can usually get whatever I want, whenever I want.  Dining room chairs don't take 9 weeks to purchase, things are open after 8pm, and generally, the customer is always right.  It doesn't matter if I didn't exquisitly plan my attempt to purchase *whatever*  "I'm here  now, I have cash, lets do this...and while we're at it, lets try to make me want to come back next time..."  One thing that is also merely a cultural difference that my cerebral self can deal with, but my human self has issues with is how you interact with random people.  Thanking people at the checkout line, saying have a nice day, etc... might be frivilous and shallow, as I don't have the requisit background relationship with someone that would permit me to bless them with my good wishes from the deepest part of my soul, yet they are nonetheless nice to hear and say.

 

I'm travelling to Redmond next week...I've been back to the States once since coming here, and it was sooooo tiring.  It was great, but there are these little things that your brain forgets how to do.  Hearing english all around you when you're not used to it can be incredibly tiring.  You forget how to parse the input...you brain is instead focused on understanding a completely new form of verbal communication.  Walking into a drug store to purchase shaving cream suddenly seems overwhelming, which of the 30 different kinds would you like?  Is it on aisle 42b, or 54f?  You also realize how much pavement there is everywhere...the streets are so WIDE...yet people drive so SLOW.  The first time I came back I left the airport and got on the highway.  I sped up to about 100 mph when I suddenly realized that you can't do that here...and here I was getting ready to shift again to get to highway speed :) 

 

All in all, I'm happy we're here.  Little-O has her KITA (daycare) 2 blocks away, in march when she's 2.5, her kindergarten is 1 block away.  We live in a small village setting.  NL and BE are both 10 mins away, I can use my french, english, beginner's german, and acting skills (when language fails) every day.  I'm not sure where we'll be in 3+ years, but for now things are going well.

 

more later...I must make regular time for this.  I miss friends, I miss family, I must have some sort of output.

 

If you know me...write me please...I really need it.  If you don't know me, it's always cool to meet someone new!

 

matt

 

 

 

 

So we've been here in Aachen for a month now...it's official.  We landed exactly 4 weeks ago!  We're still waiting for all of our belongings to arrive...so I suppose if one were to be specific...we are still "experiancing the relocation process."  I'm writing this on the kitchen table from my laptop, connecting to the internet through my phone.  Holy crap some of our stuff works pretty well.  UMTS is a godsend.  Anyhow...after a few weeks without a keyboard and an internet connection (other then work), it feels nice to be able to mail friends, and update my blog.

 

So anyway...this kitchen is actually not my kitchen.  It's a furnished apartment that we've been living in, while all of our belongings are dancing along the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.  It takes 6 weeks on average...we've been here for 4, and without our stuff for 5....  That means that in theory next week we get our stuff back!  While I'm happy that I'll have more then one pair of shoes, a bed that doesn't suck, and kitchen knives that actually work, what I'm really looking forward to is moving into our new apartment.  The kitchen is complete, washer-dryer is in, and it has a tub.  We've been going there every other day for laundry and baths for Olivia.  That little girl is amazing...more on that later...

 

We've been having an excellent, exhausting, fun, scarey, exciting, confusing, _____, _____, _____ month  (the blanks are like those Mad Libs you used to do when you were a kid...come on...you know who you are.  Insert any random emotion you can think of, chances are we've experianced them in the last few weeks :) ). 

 

I am sooooo glad we took German lessons before we came here.  It's not like I'm fluent, or even speaking well, but just learning numbers, simple conversation, etc... has helped enormously.  I can't wait to get back to learning German in earnest.  I have been getting better, picking up random vocabulary, but it's humbling to know that you don't know a lot.  I know that there are 4 cases, I can only remember three of them, and I can't remember any of the rules.  I can however get a haircut (did that today!), order food without resorting to the ole' trusty "point and guess" method.  It is very tiring though, everything is in German, and whether or not I want to...when my brain sees something written in the same alphabet as is used in English, I attempt to translate it.  When I hear something, I attempt to parse it.  It takes cycles to do this, so by the end of the day I feel like my cranium is filled with mashed potatoes.  I didn't experiance this when I was in korea, japan, or tiawan because it's all glyphes.  My brain would look at the characters and say "yeah...whatever..." and ignore them.  All that long paragraph said...I'm having a blast.

 

When speaking to someone in a shop, or wherever...someone i don't know in Aachen...I always try to start in German.  I'll look up words and put sentances togther in my head before I start...so at least I can make an attempt.  Usually people will try to do German, and most of the time it will devolve into a situation where I clearly don't have enough German *yet* to be useful.  I don't care though.  I figure I need to try, or I should not think about living here.

 

When olivia starts going to school, if it's here, I need to know German.  I refuse to be a parent that cannot help his daughter with her homework because "Daddy doesn't speak German..."  The only way I will keep up with her is if I start now, in earnest.   I know I'll get there...it will take time and effort but it will be cool.  Olivia's only 17 months old now...she'll grow up bi-lingual.

 

This is getting long and meandering...but if you're still here with me...Aachen is amazing.  I'll have to write about it a lot in the weeks and months (and years) to come.  We really want to meet people here, part of the desire to learn the language is to meet people.  Olivia needs other kids to play with, we need friends to relate to.  We have GOT to find a babysitter...

 

Wow.  So it's now 1:08 am, and I'm about 70% done packing up my office.  I find myself taking a short break, and going through gale's site, looking at pictures of olivia, gale, and our live in the northwest.  It's hard not to get a little teary-eyed (ok so I'm a softie) looking at our life here.  We're going to leave it for another...on the other side of the world.  While I try to keep a strong, brave face, and an attitude that "it ain't no big thang", deep down it's terrifying to pack up everything and depart for an as-yet undefined existance in a country where english is NOT the primary language.  It's a big, big deal, and it's not easy. 

 

Sometimes I wonder where this drive, this wanderlust comes from.  Perhaps nomad's were my distant ancestors.  I think it will be good for us, good for Olivia.  We can always move back if we don't like it there, but I think we're going to have a blast.  I have a feeling when we get there...and are actually there...it's going to be amazing.  The last 2 months have been an endless stream details.  I almost can't imagine what it's like to not have all this junk bouncing around in my head!

 

Yet...that knowledge doesn't really make it any easier to actually clean out one's office.  I am such a packrat.  I have like 6 boxes of books.  I have another 5 boxes of random crap that I'll leave for folks to plunder.  I'm running out of gas...it's been a crazy week.  The most important little girl in the universe is at home with a fever and an ear infection (both ears). 

 

Time to buck up, have another diet coke, and move some stuff.