Happy New 2014 - no pizza today!

In Sweden New Year's Day is the main pizza-eating day. I guess it is the easy option when you have been up celebrating all night and in need of something with fat, sugar and salt. So, decided it was a good idea to for for a walk.
We live on 38th St NW which abruptly ends at the end of our road. Found out that 38th St NW continues south on a squiggly bit of road through McLean Gardens that was worth investigating.

The walk took us around some well kept apartment buildings, around the new building site "Cathedral Commons", which will be really nice when it is completed later this year. Lots of places to go out and a new supermarket.

The goal of the walk was "2 Amys Pizzeria", but unfortunately it was closed. So we headed home again.

With no pizza I decided to have some of the non-eaten cheese and baguette bought for the previous night. Unfortunately 24h old baguette, new bread-knife and my left index finger did not get along well, so the remainder of the evening was spent patching up badly bleeding Sissi

Job offer arrived

Just before Thanksgiving I finally received a job offer!
It is an internal transfer with NSN, working from home in DC as Project Manager for Solutions Deployment, It basically means I will manage upgrade projects and introduction of new functionality. I was lucky, I decided one morning to follow up with a guy who I have been in touch with before, just to let him know I was still around. He told he had someone resign in the morning so we had a quick chat and it all sounded good. Then I spoke to the Customer team representative and we got on very well, so they sad I had a good chance. Job got advertised on the Internal website, I applied, beat the competition and now I have the offer :-)

However, being the U.S. the offer is conditional. I have to pass a background Police check from three countries (Sweden, UK and Australia) and I have to pass a drug test. Police checks were kicked off last week but due to Thanksgiving I could only do the drug check today. For that they sent me off to the scary part of town, well I think being Washington DC there are scarier parts, but walking along the streets with my e-reader did not seem like a safe thing to do. Lots of houses with bars over the windows, boarded up windows, druggies on the streets and generally bad feeling. Found the place I was told to go, scruffy with worn-out carpet tiles and strange smell. After while got called into an office, some rookie who only spoke whatever language they speak in Ethiopia, was directed by a colleague to fill in my forms. Then asked to empty my pockets and pee in a cup, exactly to some imaginary line. Now I am in the hand's of them - should know in a few days, but unless the owner of the "Daiquiri Shack" in Bahamas did not put anything weird in my drinks I should be good.
When story relayed to new boss he suggested that perhaps they sent me to that area to see if I got tempted to buy some drugs...

I am pretty sure I am no criminal as well, as did all 3 police certificates last year and passed. Since then I haven't even got a parking ticket! But it will take time, so from tomorrow I start working here as a Visitor from the Swedish organisation. Straight in there with customer meetings in Chicago and Christmas party this week. I always wanted to visit Chicago, as I have changed planes there many times, but never got out, but December wouldn't have been my choice. The rest of the team sits in Irving, TX, near Dallas. So assume I get to go there soon too.

Thanksgiving weekend - Day 2

Day 2 started with checking out from the Day's Inn, really not that nice, but they had "free" transfer back to the airport. "Free" as you are supposed to tip the driver... how much??? Anyhow, arrived at reception on-time to find minibus and lonely kiddie (guess around 6-8) guarding the family's luggage, stating they would come soon - in Spanish! Why do everyone speak Spanish! anyhow driver gave him an ultimatum and he summoned the rest of the family and we were off just 10 mins late or so.
Arrived at airport, checked in and off to the AA lounge. Lounges are a bit difficult in the US - you don't always get unlimited food & drinks. This time we were each given a free "Premium drinks" voucher at 7 AM and off we went. Unfortunately no breakfast according to Sissi standard. There were croissants and sticky Danish pastries. Compared to the United LA. lounge a few months ago that was a real disappointment. They had bagels with jam and cream cheese and yogurt and orange juice. But we had unlimited wine... even Sissi at 7 AM is not that keen - a nice breakfast would be much more appreciated.

Eventually off we went on our 45 min hop from Miami to Nassau. The flight was fine, but as we went nearer our goal the nice weather from Miami was exchanged for a thick layer of clouds.

We arrived way early so were not allowed to check in. As weather was so-so we hopped on a minibus (number 10 from Cable beach to Nassau downtown) to see the town and have lunch. It was very much catered to cruise ship passengers. Shops selling diamonds and expensive watches but not much food (cruise ship passengers tend to be well fed and not willing to spend extra money on food).

Suddenly Alastair spotted a sign for a Hard Rock Cafe, so we had a pre-lunch Hurricane!

Eventually we found a place with sea-food and local beers. A tribute to the British Queen outside the Justice Building and some local Police in action at street!

         

Thanksgiving weekend - Day 1

Don't read this series if your are in a cold and nasty place, but wished you were sipping a daiquiri under a palm tree instead. That's what I did.

So, Thanksgiving coming up - what should we do? No idea! Left Alastair downstairs one evening and he decided that if most Americans stay at home for Thanksgiving to spend it with their families, going somewhere would be a good idea. With autumn finally arrived here in DC, somewhere warm might be nice. So he checked all the flights from DC and came up with Nassau, Bahamas.

Off we went, on the eve of Thanksgiving out of DCA, there were no people! No queue to check-in, no queue through security and no people in the lounge. I would have thought, as we were travelling domestic the first leg, DCA - MIA it would be chaos, but not!

Off we went on a reasonably full not to completely full flight to Miami. Not bad being an AA flight as flights go and at MIA we had booked a motel-room between the runway and the freeway. It lived up to it's Day's Inn reputation, but what do you really need for a few hours sleep. First greeting in hotel room was a load of flyers from various pizza delivery places - hmm, don't they do food here?

It looked pretty shabby. After un-loading we headed down to the bar / restaurant. It turned out they had stopped serving food and had some special club/dance evening, with entrance fee. We asked if we could jut have a beer at the bar, and as they were empty, they agreed. The music was so loud we could not talk to each other at all. There was nobody there and we would gladly have stayed for at least a few drinks and a snack, if they turned it down a notch - but no way. Left around 11 PM - not sure how many travelers staying at a cheap airport motel will go out clubbing all night!

The hotel in itself, I thought was put-up-able but after spending $40 more at the Sheraton going back, perhaps not... You get what you pay for as they say.

Just-in time

Talk about just-in-time delivery.
Many of us who have office based jobs order a bunch of business cards when we start the new job, uses a few and then bins the rest when we change jobs. At least that is what I am used to. Same last time, I ordered them back in 2010 when I started working for NSN (Nokia Siemens Networks), my name was Sissi Bergstrand and so was my e-mail address. My phone number was Swedish.
Since then, my company (still NSN) has changed name and logo, I have changed name and email address and I have a new phone number. Did it ever occur to me to order new business cards, no - as I have been working with the same customer and the same people for almost 2 years.
However, here in DC, I attend a lot of networking events and business cards are really necessary, if you want people you talk to, to remember you and get your contact details in an easy way. I realized this a few weeks ago and set about ordering new cards. It was a complicated process as it is in most large companies with the added complication that I am employed in Sweden but live in Washington, DC and needed cards delivered here.

Tonight, I am invited to the IMF, International Monetary Fund (Internationalla Valutafonden) "spouse after-work mingle". One of those events where business cards are necessary. I was hoping and tried to monitor my business card order, but still yesterday had no idea about delivery date (they could easily have told me when shipped, with a tracking number and that would have made my life so much easier. So I resorted to researching where I could get some temporary ones made up, but the last few days have been very hectic indeed so I never got it done. I found out there are some instant printers around which will make me some simple black-and-white ones more or less instantly, so decided to leave a bit early for tonight's event.
Early, is after mailman arrives though, and when next door neighbours dog started to bark I stuck my head out the door. Flag on mailbox was up and in between a pile of junk mail and bills, I found 250 new business cards, with correct name, company name and phone numbers.
So, I am off in 2h to hopefully get to know some interesting people.

Hiking in DC

Long Walk : 4 miles (6 km) from Home to Georgetown trough the park.

Woke up to a lovely day! Cold, but I have learnt that around lunch-time it will warm up if the sun is out (and it definitely was). So after a morning of admin work, updating Resumes and sorting out a few more books, I decided to take a hike through the mysterious park I walked around a few weeks ago. I have found out where the entrance is now. It's funny there are no signposts whatsoever and evidently a park in the city is intersected by roads here and there. But after you come out of the park, and cross the road, you have no idea how to proceed or in which direction. This happened at least 3 times during the walk and I just had to guess which was the right direction towards Georgetown and the river (where I had a feeling the park would finally end).

It really was not a park as such, but a bit of wild forest with a path through it. Occasionally you came to a clearing with a meadow, and the you were back in the wild again.
After a few miles, not sure how far, I finally made the river and then followed that into Georgetown, where I had a nice meal and a glass of wine.

All the photos can be viewed here:

Bethesdavisit

Today I went northwest to Bethesda in Maryland. It is not as far as it sounds, Maryland is the next state along but starts just a mile or so from home. DC is actually very small. Bethesda is quite a large place a few stops along the Metro line.
I went to see my Bolivian friend and she offered me Bolivian beer as pre-lunch drink while showing me all the hard work she has done on our house. She has only been here a few months but has managed to completely renovate kitchen and two bathrooms as well as lay new floors and completely overhaul a pretty large house. I am sure her contacts for some of the specialist handy-work will be useful for us as well. We don't have to do too much on our house to start with. My next task is to put doors on my new huge IKEA wardrobes, but to have to wait for Alastair to return home as they are too heavy to lift for me alone. Ideally I'd like a new cooker and new worktops in the kitchen, but it is more a nice-to-have than necessary, so may have to wait a while.
After a lovely lunch consisting oven oven-baked chicken and spicy potatoes, I got to experience the school-run U.S. style on our way back to the Metro station. Wow! When I was a kiddie, I cycled or walked to school, on my own from grade 1. To be dropped off or collected by your parents would be embarrassing and in any case parents were normally at work and I had my own key. Here the school was slightly further away, around 3km (2miles), but still... the schoolyard was full of cars parked in three lanes.

We came in a Volvo XC70 SUV and it was one of the smallest cars there! There were lots of rules! Anyone parked after a red line was allowed to get out of their cars and go and get their kiddie, who were waiting in a certain area. At 3pm exactly a whistle blew and the everyone had to be back in their cars which then took off in a certain order, to make space for the cars in the 2nd run behind. Very complicated!