Global Gateway

I actually detected the sink garbage disposal weeks ago but I feel the need to write about it. Everyone that doesn’t know what it is, think about a fruit and vegetables shredder in a sink which can be activated by a switch. In the US there doesn’t seem to exist a bio-waste container. Everyone throws bio-degradable stuff in the sink and makes it disappear by using the garbage disposal. It’s fun to play around with it. Don’t put your fingers in there! For geeks: Should I ever have a stale French bread which I want to get rid of, I will definitely use it in the sink and pick up the bread crumbs. Afterwards I would fly to Lima, use the crumbs with the ancient bird feeder and attract a sparrow. You can’t follow at all? Have a look at the old-school game Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders.

When you work in software development you might have heard of the Hollywood principle. The basic message of this principle is “Don’t call us, we’ll call you!”. This is what actually happens to me at the moment. Mid of last week I put my resume in Monster.com. Around two hours later recruiters started to call to let me know that I might be a good fit to a position they offer. I really didn’t see that coming. Unfortunately half of the positions are governmental jobs that require being a US citizen. However, there’re still a lot of vacancies that I may a apply for. You can’t actually compare the German and US job market. It’s unbelievable how fast it theoretically is possible to get a job. You could even schedule an interview for the next day. Normally companies seem to start with phone screen interviews. These interviews don’t take longer than 20 minutes asking technical questions about your background. Since last week I manged to have one phone screen interview and one face-to-face meeting with a recruiting company. Let’s see how this will turn out. How exciting! I didn’t even do much to get in contact with the companies…

Last weekend Sarah and I visited her parents in Minnesota. We are so lucky to live near Reagan Airport. It’s either 5 minutes with the subway or 5 minutes with the taxi. The flight took us around 2 hours to get us to Minneapolis airport. While Sarah and her mom went shopping, my dad in law decided to give me an introduction to golfing. Aside from all the prejudices I had about golfing, I really wanted to try out the sport. In Germany only rich and wealthy people or managers use to play golf. After explaining me the technique and showing the different clubs, I was ready to start. We bought around 200 golf balls and hit the driving range. You may ask yourself why it’s called driving range. No, has nothing to do with a vehicle. It is the name of the longest wood you can use, a driver. Hitting the ball is all about relaxing. This is not what I did. I tried too hard. After hitting 100 balls I had enormous muscle cramps and blisters all over the hand. Furthermore, swinging the club is more exhausting than I thought. I came to the conclusion that I not yet had decided whether I like golfing or not. I guess I have to play on a golf course first.

When I look out the window I must say that we have great weather. Today it’s going to be around 27 degrees Celsius. A little bit cloudy but warm enough to jump in the pool. The condominium has an own pool opened to all residents for free. The only problem is that I’ll have to wait for it to be opened until end of May. Hope our wireless router will be reachable down there. With a little bit of luck it will.

What I really try is to keep up my day-to-day routine. I even get up before Sarah does and start preparing breakfast. The main reason for that seems to be the time difference between Germany and the US. It seems that I didn’t catch up by now. However, together we have breakfast watching German news over iTunes. We prefer downloading the most popular and high quality TV show Tagesschau and additionally N-TV which is more up to date because they even have an afternoon show. Give it a try, download the podcast and enjoy even without paying GEZ (in Germany you have to pay a fee for legally watching TV).

Yesterday Sarah still had a day off so we decided to do some paperwork. First of all, we went to the bank to add me to her account and get me a debit + credit card. After waiting for about half an hour we got our turn. The bank employee was friendly and we got through the formalities quite smoothly. Now I’ll have to wait another 14 days for my cards to be delivered by mail.

Afterwards, we straightly drove to the DMV which is something like the department for driver’s licenses. The state Virgina accepts the German driving license to be transfered to an American one without having to take a test. Great! Unfortunately, we noticed that I had forgotten my glasses so we had to drive all the way back to our apartment to pick them up. That was basically OK because we only need 10 minutes by car to get back, if you know how to get there. The design and lay-out of the streets are awful in Virginia. You never know where you actually go because the signs don’t say. I definitely think about buying a portable navigation system for the car. However, I picked up my glasses and we drove back to the DMV. When we entered the building I felt like this could be one of Germany’s public authorities. There are a lot of counter, you are being assigned to one of the counters by the number you got at the front desk and you have to wait a while. This is what we did. Did I forget something? Yes, in Germany the officers are normally unfriendly. Let’s how this is like in the US. When our number was called we both went to the assigned counter. The lady was a little bit unfriendly first but after asking her boss about one of our papers we handed in, she became much more pleasant. I don’t know why. Anyhow, you have to bring many papers to prove where you live, that you have a bank account and that your official document like passport and social security number are at hand. All my papers seemed to look good. I only paid eight dollars for getting my driver’s license. Yeh! After they took a photo I got my license right away. That was easy.

At around five we had another appointment with the building manager to sign the rental agreement for me. Sarah and I had to sign at least 20 different papers. You couldn’t even read what you just are going to sign. I never saw such a bulky contract in my life before.

It all started in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. When I wanted to check in my bags on of the flight company employees noticed that one of my bags was overweight. I really tried to pack every that could possibly fit in. This apparently resulted in a total weight of 37.5 kilos. My private weight record for one bag. Nevertheless, Continental’s weight limit for one bag is 32 kilos so I had to unpack some of my stuff which had to carry with my hand luggage. Too bad.

On Saturday I finally arrived at Reagan National Airport in DC. The trip was quite exhausting. There were no good movies available on the plane and I didn’t get free alcoholic drinks to ease my fear of flying. Flying isn’t fun anymore. As with many of the previous flights to the US I had a delay of multiple hours. However, this time the flight company managed to bring my luggage to the destination without losing it.

Sarah picked me up with the car her parents gave us (thanks again Jan and John!). It’s a little Nissan which actually helps us a lot when we need to handle heavy or cumbersome shopping goods. After around nine weeks not seeing each other “live” (we used Skype to ease the pain) I was happy to see her again. She even organized real Champagne to celebrate my return and the upcoming time we’ll have together. I guess I made it till ten in the evening before I went to bed.

What I saw of the apartment and the area we live in, I must say that I’m very delighted. The room we have is nice and spacious. The hallway actually looks like a hotel. Not to forget the pool and fitness club which we can use for free. Sarah was very busy buying furniture and appliances. This is a very good start. Everything is set up and seems to fall into place.