Guus Bosman

Today was my second day at work.

Yesterday I spent the day in my employer's office and today I went for the first time to the building of a large customer of our company. I'll work for this customer, and in the morning I received a badge with my photo that will give me access to the building. The building is huge, and when you enter there's a booth with security guards checking your ID.

Somewhere in the next few weeks I'll also get a magnetic card so I can open various security doors inside. All these security things require a lot of signatures and paperwork; quite a difference with working at Chess. Really interesting. And I'll work in a cubicle! Many people in our company use "AOL messenger", so I've also installed that. My AOL name is "guusbosman".

At the end of the day Sasha came and we went to see an apartment. It's really close the our customer's building. The apartment looked very nice and I liked it a lot. Tomorrow we'll decide -- it's available immediately so we can move in quickly.

In the evening we saw the beginning of "Van Helsing": a seriously bad movie. It was "Veterans Day" in the U.S. today, so I expected there to be less traffic, but in the morning it was very busy on the road to the metro station.

Today is my birthday! Well, in the Netherlands it is, here in D.C. it's still November 9th.

Tomorrow will be my first working day and I'm really looking forward to it. Tomorrow evening Sasha and I will go out and celebrate.

Ettie will receive her propedeuse diploma today (on November 10th, that is).

Today I am not working yet. My new job will start tomorrow so this is my last day off in a while. Sasha left this morning for her exam and we'll meet at 16:30 o'clock.

I like it that I have some time, after a busy weekend and the traveling yesterday. Finally I can update my website, unpack my bags and configure our new computer. Sasha bought a new PC last week, as she needed it this weekend. It's really fun to have such a new computer: it has DVD, it's quick and comes with a lot of software. The internet connection is an old-fashioned dial-up line and is not completely reliable, but it is great to have internet in our bedroom. The internet provider we have is the apt-named "America Online", or "AOL"; the computer came with a free trial AOL subscription. The computer works very nicely with my digital camera, and I have just installed one of the two harddisks I brought from the Netherlands.

I downloaded a lot of programs in Middenmeer and brought them on CD-ROM (such as Eclipse, various Java version and Mozilla Firefox). I'm very happy that I did that; dialup is too slow to download these large tools.

I woke up at 2:45 o'clock this morning. This is 8:45 Dutch time, a good time to get up, but I was rather happy that my body decided to return to sleep immediately. The second time I woke up it was 9:00: much better. I slept very well; I really needed some rest.

This weekend I stayed in Middenmeer with my parents and Ettie and Gerben. Sunday evening we went out to a pizzaria in Hoorn. I said goodbye to Gerben in evenning. The rest of us had a short night in Middenmeer: we woke up at 5:00 o'clock, and we left to Schiphol just after 6:00 in the morning. There was quite some traffic on the road already, but Ettie brought us safe and well to the airport. We arrived at the departure hall at 7:30 o'clock. I went to the check-in desk with Mieke, so I wouldn't have to walk around with my huge suitcase and bag. There was only a short line (no wonder, so many hours before departure time). Just when I was checking in Jaap and Ettie came back from the car parking, and they brought Steven with them. I was happy to see him because due to the traffic we were later at the airport than expected, and was afraid we would miss each other.

Around 8:00 o'clock we went to a restaurant where we had coffee and breakfast and many friends came to say goodbye. Daniel, Marjolein and Jerry gave me a very welcome present: a large apple pie with the suggestion that I could either bring it in my carry-on luggage or share it immediately with everybody who was there. Ankie, Jean-Paul, Jennie, Jelly, Joost and Richard were there, as well as Tibor and Janneke with their little daughter Fiona. Saying goodbye was sad of course, but seeing all these friends and family members was great.

This is a good time to say thank you: everybody who was there yesterday, and everybody who over the last weeks has sent me e-mails, supported me, came to visit, left comments on the website, gave me presents, helped me moving, called me, and wished me well: it means a lot to me, and I really feel stronger with your support!