Now that's a REAL castle! *snerk*
Anyway, it was no big deal going back to the States, I had no problem readjusting. Naturally there wasn't enough time for everything, but that's just the way it goes. Almost right away I felt like I had never left, and Europe was a distant dream. This is probably due to how much I've traveled in Europe, instead of settling down in a town somewhere. If anything I just adjust faster these days to a new country, so back to the ol' USA was no problem at all.
I brought along my Belgian pal Gery, who was very impressed by Seattle, and also by the climate in San Jose. He's really never experienced warm weather in a dry place before and he thought it was just perfect. Now that I've been in Belgium during really warm weather I can see why - the humidity is much more than I'm used to.
When I got back to France I had to turn right around and go back to the UK to finish a project there, although there was a problem and I ended up being able to work on it from Nice, which meant I spent a whole week there - that's the longest I've been in France since I arrived in Europe! And I met the rest of my department - I didn't know some of them. These days, the Professional Services department of OSI Europe has eight people. Apart from me, everyone is male, and they are a really nice bunch of guys. We had a quarterly meeting and we went out for dinner, which was one of these huge ordeals with several courses, and I had quail. The quail was odd, and very small and fiddly, and trying to eat it with knife and fork was really beyond me; I chased it all over the plate, managed to rend it into shreds more or less and eat most of it, and then I looked over at my boss's plate across the table, and he just had this little pile of shiny, polished bones left. How did he DO that?!
Anyway, I also spent some time back in the UK, and then moved on to my next project, which is in the Hague, Netherlands. Also I've spent a weekend in Copenhagen, shopping with my pal Sharifa, and one weekend in Belgium for my birthday (August 11) hanging out with the guys in Leuven. At this point, I'm overstressed from my project and I really need a weekend without trying to go anywhere or do anything in particular, and I managed to get myself a nice apartment, up near the beach resort of Scheveningen (SKAY vuh nihngen). So maybe I'll go for a swim in the North Sea this weekend, if the weather is okay.
I think I'll write about the Hague when I've been here long enough to have a sense of it - so far I can tell you that it's not the capital of the Netherlands, but it is the administrative center, and it's a very cultural place. Also good shopping, even open on Sundays, which is refreshing for me. And since I've had a couple of rough weeks, I'll plead for you all to send me some good news from home, I hope you've got some to share. Then I'll have lots of nice emails to read. And there are some snaps of the USA trip and the Copenhagen trip at my web site: http://geocities.datacellar.net/minsq/
Love,
=====
M i n s q
"Spend all your time waiting for that second chance
For the break that will make it okay
There's always some reason to feel not good enough
And it's hard at the end of the day."
- Sarah McLachlan, "Angel"
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