Finally... we have a normal life again!!

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OK… it’s been aaaaaaaaaaages since the last update. No apologies though, coz it was simply too busy and hectic. Don’t even remember when the last update was… nearly 2 months ago I guess. Well, a lot has been happening in the Big D since then…

Djeez… where to start! Well, we have moved into our new place about a month ago now. And we are absolutely loving it! It’s in a great neighbourhood, lots of trees, and a very “village” like feeling make us almost feel like being back in Barendrecht, haha!! It is true though, it feels like a very small community, not what we were expecting at all from a city with 6+ million people living here! It’s a lot more comfortable than our “holiday apartment” in St Kilda (one of Jackie’s friends stayed with us for 2 weeks, and she felt like it was a little “Centre Parcs” apartment… rest assured Kaat, much different now!!) with our own garage, large kitchen, VERY large bedroom, bathroom with tub (bring on winter!) and even a large walk in closet for our clothes… all that for a substantially lower amount from what we paid in St Kilda. The area is great too. Walking distance to pubs (The Londoner around the corner, The Gingerman with 50+ beers on tap (amongst which many of my favourite Belgian beers), and 2 Starbuck’s for Jackie too :-)…) restaurants and shops. Only problem is that it’s 40 degrees every day so walking somewhere is quite a burden… then again, evenings are ok’ish (still 35 degrees) so good to be able to walk everywhere. Very un-American though, I think people find us crazy not driving the car, haha!! It's funny though, we seem to be setting another few hot weather records here just like we did in Melbourne. Nearly 60 days this year over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (40 Celsius) this summer and we still have a few weeks to go... Restaurants are nice too, not as great as Melbourne (unfortunately…) but they have some good options. There’s a great sushi place close by, a decent pizza place, and lots of Mexican restaurants!! And they are a real find… when we went to Mexico 15 years ago (ouch… we are getting old) we absolutely hated the Mexican food, and now we’re loving it! Ok, Jacqx still doesn’t like the black bean puree which does look like something left behind by a dog who ate a few dead rats… but apart from that it’s great!! Of course, the frozen margaritas are more than that, they are simply f***ing fantastic, haha!! Another great find is the ceviche… we had had years ago, but was kind of bland. The Central American version though is absolutely to die for… fresh fish, lime juice, hot chili’s (and when I say hot, I mean hot… habanero hot that is, not for the fainthearted), coriander, and just let it sit for a couple of hours and eat chilled… yum! Great summer dish, trust me, especially with one of those FF frozen margaritas, haha!

Ok, so house is thumbs up, area is thumbs up, food is thumbs up (although you have to be very picky. It is easy to eat too much/ too fat/ too everything here too if you don’t pay attention. We thought there were fat people in Australia, but it really is nothing compared to here.. the worst we saw is probably a lday in her 40’s who was so fat she couldn’t walk anymore and had to drive an electric cart (like old people typical drive) t get around because she simply couldn’t walk anymore because of her weight). Oh wait, forgot about the pool… the estate (it’s quite large, altogether I am guessing at least 1,000 houses/ apartments) has a lot of common features for all residents to use. We have a gym on-site, which is ok’ish for a quick 45 minute workout for me once a week (Jacqx is the gym fanatic so she needs more to get her kicks!) and then a smallish pool around the corner too. The pool is not big (maximum 56 people allowed) but the few times I’ve been there it was very quiet with a maximum of 10 people, so great to have at your disposal too for a lazy Sunday afternoon with a couple of Coronas (yeah... nearly forgot, one of the best things here is the fact that beers are so cheap here! I was used to paying $16 for 6 standard beers in OZ, whereas you can get 12 beers for about $14 here… we even found the Ozzie beer that I used to drink often (Coopers Red) for much less than the prices that we had to pay in OZ… unbelievable). Then another bonus is the running track, although better called “Torture Track” with a 12.5km length in 40 degree heat! It’s a nice track called the “Katy Trail” which is about a mile from here. It’s in the centre of town, but they have done it up really well, with trees and parklands so that you don’t really have the feeling you’re in the middle of town. It’s steaming hot though, so you need to go at either 7am or 7pm, with 7pm still being a torture with temperatures still hovering between 35-40 degrees.

We still had to spend a lot of time in the first few weeks to get organized. As you are probably aware we jumped on the plane with 2 suitcases of 23kg and that was it! Not nearly enough to have a life as you might appreciate! So the first few weeks we spent a lot of our time in the local IKEA getting our furniture. What a great place that is, just walk in, load up your cart and you have a life, haha!! IKEA is quite far away from where we live (up in North Dallas, about 45 minutes from Uptown) but the upside is that the only people we know (a good friend from one of Jackie’s childhood friends married an American girl and is living there) actually live close to the IKEA. So we combined work with a bit of pleasure, and met up with them a few times there. That proves again how important it is to know the locals, as we discovered a great Salvadorian restaurant with great food, and the BEST frozen margaritas in town! The food is fresh, spicy, tasty, healthy, absolutely perfect. And the margaritas are… well, massive is the word… it’s a very large glass with frozen margarita and sangria swirl, then topped with a “little” shot of grand marnier… makes you go “ouch” at the first sip, but it’s all good from there! So Dennis and Jenny (the couple we met up with) are really fun guys, they met in NL when Jenny was working there, and then moved back to the US with their daughter. It is great to be able to have them and learn about the US, and also speak to them about the differences between NL and the US. On top of that they are just a really fun couple, so thankful we got to meet them. They actually invited us over to a bbq a few weeks back. And we know that we told you that people in OZ live in big houses… well, that was until we came there….. the size of this “thing” was just unbelievable… and it was a standard house!! The thing was just ginormous… separate TV theatre (of course) large spiraling staircase from the living room to the second floor, few bedrooms, playroom for the kids, just too bizarre… and the prices here are insane too. With the conversion rate we could likely sell our place in Barendrecht and move straight into a place like this!!! Yes, the US housing market definitely did crash and is in trouble….

What else… yes of course, bureaucracy!! Don’t even get me started… what a mess this country is. I can see why they think Europe is all “socialist” as they simply don’t spend money on anything! Infrastructure is terrible (roads, water, you name it), you heard all about the driver’s license drama in the last update (Jacqx has passed her test as well by the way! After we had secured the lease on our “Yank Tank” and got our insurance we thought we were all sorted. Until we received an email stating that Jacqx was on a foreign driver’s license and needed to obtain her US license within 30 days or our insurance would be cancelled… well, you should have seen her face when she heard the news and realized she had to queue up and everything when she was hoping to get a few quiet weeks!! Luckily she passed in one go with a very small amount of errors in the written test, and a 10-minute spin for the road test!) but there is also the drama with the financial institutions… I did mention that without a Social Security Number you don’t exist in the US… well here we go… after I got my SSN (I almost kissed the lady behind the counter when I finally got it… if only for the fact I didn’t have to line up with the other people queuing up at the Social Security Office… I wouldn’t say I felt threatened or anything, but based on the stories about Americans and guns and the types of people around me, let’s just say I’m glad I could queue up after sunrise) I thought that would be the end to our car lease drama… they only needed the SSN! Well... how wrong I was… when they received the SSN we were told that the lease couldn’t be approved as we didn’t have enough credit history…. Well... what were you expecting?!?!?!?!?! Receiving a new SSN and being surprised about not having a credit history… anyway, we were glad to have great people at the car dealership who actually let us take the car that Saturday so that we could return the rental car, with them arranging the details with the lease organization. It got sorted in the end, but of course only for a fee… we had to pay a few dollars more each month to “reduce the risk” as we only have a temporary visa and no credit history… not happy of course, but when comparing the total amount with the amount you’d pay in NL we didn’t even bother refusing to accept (we did use it as a negotiation tactic though and were able to get a good deal on the maintenance of our car though!). Anyway, we have the car and are absolutely loving it… the best car we have ever driven (at least it has by far the biggest engine we ever drove!!) for around 25% of the price we’d pay in NL… it is just insane, add to that the price of petrol of about 60 euro cents per litre and you can understand why the US is the world’s largest polluter. Anyway, bureaucracy doesn’t end there… I realize that banks have to be very careful with credit cards and accounts and such. Hence you get a passcode on your account and such for when you need to activate your credit card. So I was slightly annoyed (ok, I admit, I was frustrated) when I tried to activate my card, told them my passcode, but was unable to tell them the temporary work phone number I had indicated when I applied, but had removed from my account immediately after… so I could give them all information such as SSN, address, name, date of birth, but not a phone number that was no longer valid and had been removed from the account a month ago… anyway, it took me 30 minutes to finally be able to get the fraud department to agree to activating the card… it’s the same to every institution you speak to, you get call centers, they are all in India so you can hardly hear them, they have no authority to make any decisions, you get connected to other departments, they connect you to other departments… it drives me mental!!! I spent at least 4 hours on the phone (trust me… am not exaggerating!!!) with Toshiba to find out how I could return the memory for the new internet laptop I had purchased… and the only reason for even picking up the phone was because I received no response to my email after 2 weeks to which I should have received a reply within 24 hours!! Anyway, let me end this topic as it’s doing my head in… Americans and bureaucracy is not a good mix.

Then the only thing left is work… things are going really well and it’s probably been the best decision we ever made to come down here for my career. I had anticipated things to be slightly more interesting and challenging than in Australia. But this actually surpassed my expectations. I have been working on 5 different customers since being here for 2 months, probably the same amount as in Australia in a year. Moreover, each of these accounts are really well-qualified clients, they are managed properly from an account manager perspective and we actually stand a good chance of winning the account! Makes for a much more stimulating environment, and on top of that I am learning so much more than before. I sometimes feel like a sponge just soaking up all the experiences and situations I am in. the other thing I realized is that I am not only the new kid on the block, but also the baby on the block! My next nearest colleague is in his early 40’s with my oldest colleague retiring in half a year. So another great environment for me to be in, these people have so much knowledge and experience I can learn from, it’s just great to be here and am forever grateful to have this opportunity. This will bring me so much going forward... the first few weeks were extremely hectic, was travelling every single week for 4 weeks, and in the end I was simply wasted. The last demo I did at the end of that period was a bit of a challenge, and I do think I messed up and could have done better if I were in a better zone. Then again, these things happen and don’t feel I can be blamed, it was the situation with making the move and then landing in this crazy situation where we had a lot of customers we needed to do stuff with. Since then I have been working from home for 3 weeks, so feel so much better. Also feel better at home, as with all the travel and organizing our new apartment and such Jacqx and I didn’t have much time to appreciate our new life. We spent the last few weeks catching up though, and we feel on top of the world now!!

Flying out to Los Angeles tomorrow morning, so couldn’t have come at a better moment. I have to see another customer on Tuesday there, and as Jacqx has a very good friend living in LA (whom she hasn’t seen in 10 years) we thought it might be a great opportunity to combine work with pleasure and go there together for the long weekend. We are both very excited to see Roxana, and be in LA… the place that Jacqx fell in love with 21 years ago and still has a special place in her heart. I can’t wait to share this special reunion with her, it’s going to be a very special weekend, that’s for sure! Then we’re off to San Francisco next weekend. SF is my pick… whenever Jacqx brought up the subject of wanting to live in the US, I always told her I’d be ok with that, as long as we lived in SF. For some reason I have this vision about SF and being the coolest place on earth. So when we were picking a place to go for our first holiday (we have Labor Day vacation that Monday) the choice was easy. Can’t wait to finally go to my dream destination, and spend a day and a bit in the Napa valley. Am sure we will have fond memories of Melbourne and the Yarra Valley when we’ll be there…. And of course even fonder memories of Ange and Marco who were always there to share these special memories with us… but the Napa Valley being such a wonderful wine region am sure we’ll have a few vinos to drink to their health!! Unfortunately I have to make a short trip to South Carolina on Wednesday between the LA and SF trip to visit a customer, but I feel good again after having been at home for 3 weeks so bring it on!!

Well, that’s about it for now I guess. Short summary of the past 2 months of our lives, but probably gives you a good idea of what’s been happening down here!! As you are probably aware we did sign up for a Dutch phone number (via skype) that you can call like a local Dutch number from your home phone for nearly nothing. We’re always happy to talk to you, so please do give us a call if only to tell you what you’re having for dinner!!

Love
Jackie and Robin

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