New country, new blog?

I haven't blogged in quite a long time because after the novelty of a new place wears off its hard to come up with interesting things to write about and I start to sound like a broken record. But things may get interesting again as I have taken a position in my company that requires me to move to Eindhoven, in the Netherlands, close to where my company is head-quartered. I have spent quite a bit of time here on business over the past 12 years but actually LIVING somewhere adds a totally new dynamic.

I went on holiday to Spain with my family for the first 2 weeks of July and afterwards I moved to the Netherlands and started on the new job. Complicating matters is my wife is in the middle of a 2 year work contract and will stay in Taiwan until June '16 to finish. We did a similar thing when moving to Taiwan but the time frame was much shorter. Let's just say the work move for me was not exactly planned, certainly not in this time frame but I am replacing someone who left the company and the vacancy must be filled ASAP.There was actually a 1.5 month gap between my predecessor leaving and me arriving and that made it much more difficult form me to get oriented in the job.

Desired Car

So where is Eindhoven? It's in the south of the Netherlands close to the Belgium border, about a 1.5 hour drive from Amsterdam. I am living in a service apartment but have found a permanent home and will move on August 11. I found this sweet ride parked in the back of the apartment and was hoping I could get something like this. It even comes with a surfboard and bike, well tricycle. Although I ended up with a VW Golf, it doesn't quite have the same character as its black primered cousin.

Actual Car

Fortunately our new home fills the character gap as it is a traditional Dutch 1930s brick row house with some tile walls, plank flooring, heavy wood doors (some on wheels), a terrace outside the bedroom, a small garden area, and ivy growing up the outside walls. I'll post some photos and more info after I move.

The new job is quite hectic. Because the previous guy was long gone there was really no handshake or intro and on day one I was just thrown in the thick of things, running part of a factory over here introducing a key new technology for semiconductor production. I am supposed to have four team leaders supporting me but two of those positions are vacant and one of my team leads is on holiday now. So that leaves two of us doing the work of five while most Dutch are heading to France, Spain and Greece.

European glossary term #1: holiday: n. what Americans refer to as "vacation"