Caliban – Opinion and Righteous Anger

Life without modern technology is hard; really bloody hard.

I had not accurately assessed how dependent we would be on the Internet after our move from California to Amsterdam. It seems that, these days, everyone requires you to fill in forms on-line, be able to send and receive e-mail, manage your account with them via the Web, etc., etc. I knew that we would need an Internet account before very long, of course, but I had no idea that life would come to a virtual standstill without Net connectivity.

Anyway, that was remedied today, when our do-it-yourself ADSL kit arrived in the post. The KPN had said in a letter that we received last Saturday that it could take up to four business weeks, but it actually took only a couple of days for the package to arrive. The postman had been trying to deliver the package for the last couple of days, but we haven’t been at home, so today I collected it myself from the post office on the Singel.

I had to visit a hardware shop to buy a set of screwdrivers in order to remove the wood panelling behind our front door, which is home to the house’s telephone cabling, cable TV wiring and other crud. That’s where I had to connect the DSL modem and stow the related wiring.

Anyway, we’re now up and running via XS4ALL (my ISP for more than 10 years already) with 3200 kbps downstream and 768 kbps up: very respectable. That’s about three times the downstream bandwidth I had in Mountain View and twice the upstream. This package costs €60 per month. For another €20, we could have 8 Mbit downstream, but that seems excessive, even by my spoilt Silicon Valley standards. Maybe we’ll get that one when we buy our own house!

Interestingly, the KPN had warned me that we may be too far from the central office (CO) to be able to get stable DSL service here, but that must surely be a mistake, as we’re in the centre of the city and my initial tests indicate that we’re getting close to the maximum of the bandwidth reserved for us.

Our land-line has obviously also been connected. An engineer came here on Tuesday to fix that for us, so we now have a fixed phone, a mobile phone and DSL. All that remains on the communication front is to get Sarah a mobile phone and we’ll be as reachable as we were back in California.

Anyway, it’s time to catch up on e-mail and all of the other things that have been happening unbeknownst to us whilst we were reduced to unwilling techno-trogladites.

I’ll post more on our adventures here, both good and bad, over the next few days.

I’ll keep this short, as we’re around at a friend’s house, using her computer.

As you can surmise, we made it to Amsterdam intact and are now living in a rented house. However, we’re quite unhappy with it and are considering moving elsewhere.

For one thing, most of the nice furnishings that attracted us to the house in the first place have been removed since our friends viewed the property, so that which we signed for is not that which we received. I’m very angry about this, but accommodation doesn’t grow on trees here, so I’m not yet sure what the solution will be. In the meantime, we have no comfortable furniture, no tables and a crappy old television that can’t even do Teletext.

Since arriving, we’ve accomplished a few of the bureaucratic tasks through which we must wade, but Sarah’s residence permit is going to take longer than I’d thought, because extra time is needed to verify our marriage certificate (yes, even though it has an apostille attached).

I’ve got a new mobile phone. If you want to call us, ring my old mobile number and you’ll get my voice mail message, informing you of the new number.

We were supposed to have a new house phone as of last Friday, but it’s not working and no-one works at the weekend. Hopefully, this problem will be fixed early in the coming week.

DSL is going to take a little longer. I received a letter from the KPN, informing me that I can expect to wait 20 business days for our new DSL connection to be delivered. Bah! I might try to see if I can cancel the order and get cable Internet instead, because that would probably have a shorter delivery time.

The culture shock is surprisingly significant. Things feel (and are) very crowded and neither of us is used to this (any more). Places are not baby-friendly (lots of smoke), the weather is horribly humid and the pace of life is snail-like. It takes an infuriatingly long time to get anything done, partially because no-one whose job is to provide service is in any hurry to do so.

As you can see, I’m complaining already. It feels as if we have a mountain to climb in terms of the number of tasks we must accomplish to establish something approaching a normal life here. At the moment, things feel very alien — even to me — and we’re struggling quite hard just to stay in good spirits.

It’s clearly going to take a while to get on our feet and feel settled here, perhaps a lot longer than we’d considered. Time will tell.

Given the lack of Internet connection, communication from our side is going to be sparse for the next four weeks. Don’t expect blog entries or replies to e-mail during this period.

The movers came on Wednesday and took all of our belongings with them in a large shipping container, which will be loaded onto a ship within the next few days and then make its way to Amsterdam.

We weren’t quite as ready as we’d thought and so had quite a lot of packing to do on the day of the move itself. Once the move was over, we also had to spend quite a lot of time getting our last few belongings into bags, ready to take onto the plane. We also had to clean up around the house, in preparation for the next tenant.

All of this work meant that we didn’t actually leave the old house until just before 18:00, at which time we drove to Palo Alto and checked into a hotel for two nights.

We spent that evening with Matt, Randie and their four lovely children, the most recent addition to whom resembles a four month old sumo wrestler.

Today was much more relaxed. I had to pop into Google to send a fax, then Sarah and I ran a last few errands: new trousers for me, dummies (pacifiers in American) for Wiesje for take-off and landing, and a quick visit to Stanford Shopping Mall to return a few items, followed by one last milkshake at the Creamery.

We had dinner at the hotel tonight, and how pleasant it was not to have to either drive or walk somewhere. Geoff turned up later in the evening for coffee, cookies and some lively discussion.

In a few hours, we’ll close our bags, load the car and make our way to San Francisco airport. Twenty-four hours from now, we’ll have embarked on the next exciting chapter of our life and be living in Amsterdam. It’s hard to believe this day has finally come.

Although it’s returning home for me, it’s still a daunting prospect. How much will Amsterdam and The Netherlands have changed? How much have I changed? How will Sarah experience living in this new country? How easy will the adjustment to a completely new lifestyle and environment be?

The coming months will provide answers to these questions. Success is not assured, but we have every reason to be optimistic. It would be foolhardy, however, to ignore the fact that a large effort will be required on our part to readjust and help each other settle in. Plus we have a new daughter who needs a lot of love from us.

Sarah and I are very excited to find out what the future holds for us. We’re reinventing our lives and it’s going to be fascinating to see where the combination of our efforts and happenstance carry us.

And now to bed.

We’re now mostly packed and ready for the movers to arrive in the morning.

It’s somehow always quite saddening and a little bit distressing to see the place you’d once called home in utter disarray. We gave our couch away this evening, along with our television. Our beloved TiVo is packed away and will probably be given away tomorrow. Never again will we watch its 70+ episodes of Globe Trekker, but we were, at least, smart enough to transfer them all onto DVD+RW last week. Watching those in Europe will bring back sweet memories of our TV time here. They even formed the inspiration for our honeymoon through South-East Asia.

As I surveyed what was once our living room this evening, I must admit I shed a tear. Yes, the place was dingy; yes, the carpet was stained and ugly; yes, the neighbourhood was shitty concrete and devoid of character; but at the same time, it was home; our home, Eloïse’s home. She was born here, upstairs, in the bedroom. For that reason alone, 49 Showers Drive will always be a little bit special to me.

Tomorrow, we begin a two night stay in a hotel in Palo Alto. On Friday, we leave the US for good on flight KL606. Saturday, we arrive at our new home in Amsterdam.

It’s going to be a wacky few days.

I’ve no idea what our network access is going to be like over the next few days, so if I post no updates, you’ll understand why.