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This is my dynamic, frequently updated homepage. This is a NewsLog, also known as a WebLog or Blog.
Everything is evolving, so don't assume too much.
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C'est pas Mécanique
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| Tuesday, August 19, 2003 |  |
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 Julie posted an article by Jon Rappoport, and since I think it is absolutely great, and it matches something I've just been thinking about and focusing on, I'll include it below here too.
It is sort of a big secret. The power and the role of our imagination. Large portions of the human population have somehow gotten to believe that imagination is just some confusing random noise in our heads. Day dreaming, a source of material to write or talk about, maybe positive thinking at best.
Where really it is what our whole reality is built on. Not just that it is a good idea to visualize one's plans. Much deeper than that. Not even just a fuzzy new age idea that we're creating our own reality. Yes, but more tangible than that.
It is hard to even talk about to people who don't get it, or who don't agree. Which ironically proves the point.
If you believe (imagine) something isn't possible, it isn't. If you believe it is possible, it is. No, not just that you have the thought, or do a few affirmations, or pray a little bit, although that will all help. But you'll have to fool yourself completely. That is the hard part.
Jon gives a delightful rundown of crazy things some people have believed which enabled them to do paranormal things. What is great is that there's no common denominator between them, other than that somebody believed each of them well enough for them to work.
I have been a counselor for many years, working with people on their issues and aspirations. My tools are essentially ways of helping people feel it being comfortable and appropriate to change their mind and their life. I've seen many life changes, and sometimes miracles. The only thing that ever changed any of my clients was when they stopped imagining what they were previously imagining, which they weren't happy with, and when they started imagining something else. Normally nobody will admit that it is that simple. Therefore, my techniques are much more complicated, and involves ways of processing one's thoughts and feelings and memories, and ways of gradually getting to a point where one feels that, now is the appropriate time to change.
The irony for me is that it makes it a good deal harder for me to practice my craft on myself. Because I know the secret.
Now I have the thought that it is time to take it to another level.
People live the lives they imagine themselves living. If they imagine themselves being stuck, they are. If they succeed in imagining new possibilities sufficiently well, and they manage to believe they're available, they are. If groups of people start imaginging something different, and they do it well enough, their collective reality changes.
The world could be different next week. It doesn't really depend on anything we don't already have. It doesn't really depend on money or politics or laws or astrology or science, except for to the degree that we believe it does.
We're looking through the wrong end of the telescope.
I imagine it is about to change.
[ Inspiration | 2003-08-19 17:59 | | PermaLink ] More >
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| Friday, August 15, 2003 | |
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 So, now that I'm looking for new business opportunities, I'm naturally finding myself networking more. Despite often calling myself a networker, I don't really network very much. I know a lot of people, but I don't particularly deliberately work my personal network, or try to expand it. Which is probably stupid. A network is most valuable when it is already there when you need it. And you need to cultivate it. Check in with people, find out where they're at. Be Interested. Look for opportunities to link things up, supply something somebody else needs, keep them informed about what you need, be a valuable ally to them.
See The Networking Game for some simple rules of networking.
Oh, I do seem to have friends, and I'm quite available and helpful. But the thing I don't do so much is to work my relations deliberately and strategically. Which I maybe should change.
I have been more focused on how I might help others network that I've often overlooked helping myself. I'm quite dedicated to providing facilities and opportunities for other people to find each other, connect, work together, etc. But I've often been so busy with that that I haven't done much of it myself. So I sometimes don't really know who I know, and I sometimes don't keep connections alive.
I ironically feel a little silly about calling people up on the phone just to hear how they're doing. Some people are very good at that. But me, despite being considered a skilled communicator in other areas, I either just don't do it, or I don't know how. When I try, very rarely, the person at the other end will very quickly get around to saying "What do you want? What are you calling for?" and I don't have a good answer. Maybe it is because I usually don't call without a specific reason, so people assume that I must always have one.
Online it is considerably easier. The threshold is much lower, and in many cases you don't need much of a reason to communicate with somebody. You can leave comments in their blog, sign their guestbook, add them to your contact list. And none of that requires much of an official reason, other than that you might share some interest or the other.
One of the online networks other than my own that I've recently explored is Ryze. It has a considerable momentum and lots of people I know are already in it. Its features are relatively simple, but well thought out, and it does what it does well. I found a couple of new contacts in Toulouse, and so far those have been fruitful connections. My page is here.
Another one is LinkedIn. A little harder to figure out, but has a high caliber of people that it might otherwise be difficult to get access to. More directly oriented towards serious business connections.
Those are business network. I'm also on networks like Friendster, although I don't know what to do with it. Maybe I'm too old to understand what one does there other than to look for dates or promote one's garage band or something.
And then there's Friendly Favors, which I just notice has changed its umbrella name to Living Directory Network. Lots of people I know in there, and it is large, but I haven't quite figured out how to make it useful for networking with people I don't already know.
Let me know if you need an invitation from me for any of these.
One thing I learned today from my new friend Lionel who is a management consultant is that in a place like Toulouse a lot of business is done based on people already being part of the same network. I.e. you're a freemason or in a Rotary club or in the same rugby club or something, and you do business with the people you meet there. You don't just easily do business with strangers. I did have some idea of that, and it is part of the high-context mediterranean culture.
Networking seems to be unavoidable at this point.
[ Diary | 2003-08-15 18:04 | | PermaLink ] More >
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| Wednesday, August 13, 2003 | |
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I seem to again have enough free attention units in my mind that I can blog on other things than my immediate situation, mention news items, and forward satirical pictures, like this one here of the alleged leader of the free world. I don't know if I have more or less right to throw rotten eggs at George Bush, now that I'm not living in his country any more, but I guess I don't care.
[ Politics | 2003-08-13 06:30 | | PermaLink ] More >
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| Tuesday, August 12, 2003 | |
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 Now, if we all had sufficiently good information, that whole issue about what to do and how to make a living would just not be a problem.
Most of us have something very useful we can do, which is needed somewhere. For that matter, there will usually be somewhere where that which we most love to do is exactly what is needed.
What makes our current economic system work very inefficiently is that we usually don't have good information about what is needed and where, and about who are the best people to deal with. And we don't have a good way of informing others about what we'd like to do, or what we can do.
Oh, there's an overwhelming abundance of information around us, about products and services offered, and opportunities available. But it is not very good information. Most of it is bogus information.
Advertising is mostly bogus information. It tries to make us desire and seek certain products, not based on that we really need them or that they're the best ones available, but based on making us want them, despite that we might not need them, or they aren't really the best.
A free economic market is ideally perfectly fair, and is driven by information. If people consider a certain product or service worthless, the price will drop, and it will no longer be sensible to produce it. If people find a certain product or service very valuable and desirable, the price will go up, which will reward those who produce it, and inspire the production of more of it. Until there is too much of it, where the prices will then drop and things will adjust themselves again. It is a very sensible system of self-organization.
It is unfortunately not completely how it works in real life. Some wrenches have been thrown into the free market, such as the existence of corporations, with corporate veils, and intellectual property right. We have a Monopoly game, essentially, where the biggest rewards go to those who most succeed in grabbing a monopoly in some area, in part by making their product look better than they really are, by paying less for producing them than what is fair, by hiding their corporate structure, by bribing governments to give them special treatment, and generally by hiding or embellishing the truth about how things really are.
Oh, there's still a market there, so market mechanisms can still manage to adjust things, as some of the true information gets shared. The public might discover who consistenly produces bad products, or they might discover who really owns a company, or which public official is working for them, and they might disapprove. The system still tends to be more efficient than a centralized bureacracy.
I suppose the communist system was based on the idea that if we centralize all the information, we can make the best possible decisions about what production power is needed where, and we can do things most efficiently. But the problem is that it ignored all the little pieces of information exchanged between individuals, and it ignored their individual choices, and their need to be motivated by personal accomplishment. And then a top-down hierarchy becomes very inefficient.
No, what we really need is an open network of very well-informed people who make decisions based on what they know. If the information is mostly good, the result will be useful self-organization, despite that not all participants can be expected to make completely rational decisions.
Imagine for a moment that we all had fully functional telepathy. I would know right away when you're lying to me, and I would know right away what you're actually doing, and how you are doing it, and with whom. There would be no point in you trying to tell me anything else, as I could just look in your mind and see the truth. Thus you wouldn't be able to sell me something that wasn't right for me, or which pretended to be something else than it really was.
We'd need some kind of networked telepathy. I don't just need to know the truth about what you're about, I'd need to be able to quickly assess what is *out there*. What is offered and what is needed, in a wide sphere around me.
Currently, if I need something, I might search on the net, look in a newspaper, write about it in my newslog, ask a few people. And quite often I'll find something that fits what I'm looking for. But it is in a very haphazard manner.
Like, right now I have certain skills, certain experience, and certain desires, and I have a need for applying some of these in a way that my life is supported from it. Putting that out to a few hundred people who read this, and networking it a little bit on other sites - that does produce results. It is good to have friends. Quite often, what one is looking for might be found amongst the few dozen or few hundred friends one has. And that's certainly a good thing.
But if we had a good enough information network, be it telepathic or computerized, there could very well be ways that I might access the information shared by thousands or millions of people, and it would be much more likely that I'll find what I'm looking for.
I'm not talking about that I can do a search on keywords in a search engine. I can already do that, and that is great. But it gives me a very small portion of the whole picture.
I'm right now in a city of close to a million people, and of course, amongst those, there will be some people who know a great place where some of my skills will fit in a very mutually advantageous place. But I only know a handful of people here. I'll know more. But most information is well hidden, so it takes a while.
There's plenty to do here, and anywhere on the planet, and there are plenty of people who can do what needs to be done, and plenty of resources to do them with. The only thing in the way is our lack of ability to see all this clearly. We don't have enough good information, or it isn't structured to give a clear picture, or we're not sure we can trust it. Thus we operate based on small personal networks and questionable information from public sources. Where we really could operate at a whole different level if the real information was available.
It is not an impossibly hard problem to solve this. Telepathy would be preferable, but it can also be done through well-structured computerized databases. Large numbers of people who share their knowledge and value judgements about many things. Better ways of expressing needs and offerings in a concise way.
[ Organization | 2003-08-12 04:42 | | PermaLink ] More >
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 A few more tidbits from our life in Toulouse. We've lived here in the house for just 12 days, but it feels like home now. And, since we don't really have any money right now, we have to focus on the simpler things and actually be a bit more in touch with the local surroundings. I.e. we walk around or take the metro. I haven't not had a car for more than 20 years, so that in itself is sort of new. More work, but kind of refreshing. We get a lot of sun and exercise.
The Metro is about 10 minutes of walking away. It is called Arenes and is by some quirky architect designed to look like an arena. There's essentially only one Metro line in Toulouse at this point, and they're working on one more. We can take it towards the center of town, stopping at various squares, or the other direction, towards the Mirail university and a shopping area called Basso Campo. The most likely reason for us to go there is that there's a big hypermarché there. That's a supermarket on steroids and the French have many of those on the outskirts of cities. Several times bigger than the biggest markets I've seen in the States, and selling a mixture of just about anything. Nothing fabulous about it other than the size, but it is a practical thing. Somewhat less practical without a car, though. Yesterday we dragged a folded up table home in the metro.
We live in an area called La Cépière. I'm not sure what that means, but it seems to be the name of the horse race track which is very close to our house.
Today I walked to the center of town to see how far it was. Not too bad. About 45 minutes or so. All of it is pretty pleasant, but the more interesting parts are crossing the Garonne river over Pont Neuf and the walking streets and areas around the Capitole Square. Today I walked into the Capitole (Town Hall) and looked at La Salle des Illustres. It is a gallery with richly decorated ceilings and huge paintings, mostly illustrating various historical aspects of Toulouse.
We haven't particularly figured out how to blend in yet. I'm sure we look to the locals as obvious Americans. I'm sure that wearing white socks, a baseball cap, and carrying a water bottle in my hands and a map in my back pocket gives me away right away, before I even open my mouth to mangle the French language. But when anybody asks, I say we're Danish.
And as to the house. Everybody else in the neighborhood seem to be hiding behind closed shutters with the lights out, being very quiet. Where our natural tendency is to open all windows and curtains and have lots of lights on. Even in L.A. our house looked like the christmas tree or fishbowl of the neighborhood. Here I'm not at all sure what they'll think about us. And we aren't exactly quiet people either. But so far the villagers haven't shown up at night with torches or anything.
We don't have a TV yet, but maybe it would be useful after all to help with the language learning. Otherwise I have in mind that Marie-Therese and Zachery will attend an intensive French school from September 1st. Alliance Francaise probably. And Nadia will probably be in a local kindergarten when we find one. The language is really a big thing, and I'm looking forward to not being the only one who can answer the phone when it is in French.
Getting to know some people here is a bit slower than I would like. Of course the language is an issue there too, and it will help when we can go out and sign up for various activities where you're likely to get to know people. French classes or fencing or whatever. One isn't very likely to make friends in the Metro here.
[ Diary | 2003-08-12 17:24 | | PermaLink ] More >
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| Monday, August 11, 2003 | |
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 So, what else might I do? I do feel a little overdue for a career change of some kind.
Already about 12 years ago I felt I was done being a programmer. Like, I was getting too old to sit and think intensively all day, working many hours without stop in front of a glowing screen.
At that particular time I became a spiritual counselor. Or a therapist, if you will. Opened up a storefront office with a reception and a lot of certificates on the wall, advertised in metaphysical L.A. magazines, and did counseling sessions with people most of the day. Plus I travelled a bit. Florida, Germany. Trained some people in my techniques, wrote a couple of books about it. That all went well, and was a period of exciting growth for me.
But eventually I sort of reluctantly went back to programming for paying the bills. Well, I got a low level programming job, with very little to do, and no room for advancement, and I actually spent most of the time meditating or writing or conversing with people on the net. That was kind of like a vacation for five years, and I got a lot of my own things done in that time.
Eventually I couldn't stand having a job that wasn't going anywhere, so I quit, without having made any plans for what else to do. What followed was a couple of years of poverty, combined with having a very adventurous time, working on great plans, hanging out with great people, changing the world. Poverty is maybe a bit exaggerated. There was no money left over, it wasn't clear where money for food would come from, and it was very stressful for my family, and I was almost never home. But somehow everything that was needed still ended up being there, in the last moment. Sort of skating on thin ice, and somehow the ice never quite breaks.
Again, I eventually went back to programming. Got some contracts that grew to be very lucrative. Money was abundant again, but I worked 16 hour days just about every day. Somehow always being a bit behind, having too much to do, even though I did great things that some people were very happy with.
So, now we're here. I've lost most of the previously lucrative programming contracts. Nobody's going to miss me terribly if I don't spend all day programming. Well, one client is, but they have great problems paying me as well, so it might not last either.
This would, of course, be a good point to change course a bit. Do something different and unexpected. Become a traveling shaman, a tour guide, a forest ranger or a sword swallower.
The last several years, although I've been working on my own, in my own house, have been a little too much like being employed. Doing other people's stuff, on their schedules. Where really my most creative work has always been in my own timing. The stuff I would do when I had some time left over, or when I was really supposed to be doing something else. Or the stuff I would do when people had no particular expectation on what I would do.
I've always been attracted to being a consultant or facilitator of some kind. Well, I was quite successful with that on a person-to-person basis, as a therapist. And I can certainly do that again, of course. But I also somehow feel I have a role in facilitating things for groups, organizations and companies. I just haven't quite figured out how to find an inroad into that.
I could very well just take my counseling materials bigger. Travel around, do seminars, train people, speak. It would need to be worked up a bit, but some groundwork is already laid, in that many people in many areas have downloaded, studied and used my books. Eastern Europe would be quite likely, as lots of my books have been sold in Russian.
A difficulty in anything I do is that I do the best stuff if people come to me, rather than the other way around. Meaning, I'm not good at selling myself. It either works for me that somebody else will represent me, or that I've already done something great in the past, which makes people seek me out. It is not just that I'm vain or lazy or something, but there's something that works for me about being an oracle that people will go and seek out.
Or, another way around it, it works for me to look at a situation and then go off and come up with solutions or alternatives to it. Like, that's how I program best. If I can just sort of study how things work in some area, and then I go off and hide away in my tower and cook up the best way of dealing with it, and I come back when I'm done. You know, as compared to some manager who comes by every day and changes my priorities.
The whole capitalistic working-for-money system on this planet pisses me off. I've never really liked it. Which is why I haven't done all the normal things one should do to have a safe a secure middle-class life, like putting money away for retirement, and paying your taxes on time. And I haven't either done the normal things one would do to have a secure upper-class life, like buying low and selling high; getting lots of people to do work for you that is worth more than what you're paying them; getting people to buy things from you that cost you less to make; hiding your money well.
So, of course, rather than just going for making money, I'd like to do things I care about and that make a difference. And I'd like to be paid well, as sort of a secondary effect. But I've kind of been idling for a number of years. Despite working hard and accomplishing many things in several different fields, I somehow haven't yet really gotten around to the stuff I'm here on this planet to do.
If there's a chance that I'm about to, I don't know. I'm trying to be open to it.
But right this moment I'd probably be happy with some well-paid programming projects in the fields I'm most into (social software, knowledge management), using the tools I know best (PHP/MySQL/Linux).
[ Diary | 2003-08-11 13:02 | | PermaLink ] More >
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| Thursday, August 7, 2003 | |
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 Finally some break in the heat wave here. Clouds started forming, suddenly there was a weird dust storm, and then thunder and lightning and it started raining. I hope it continues.
And then I had a hit of lightning myself today. A rather unwanted economic one. The company that has been my most reliable and stable source of income for the past several years has decided to cut down my contract. They haven't been doing as well as they used to, have been losing money actually, and I haven't been doing much of importance for them recently. So there goes $4000 per month. Not exactly a good time for us. What is left is barely enough to survive on, and not really enough for much new furniture or a car or that kind of details.
But maybe it is a great thing. Or maybe it will seem like it when looking back in a few months. The slates are being wiped clear, and I'll have to find new things to do, make new contacts, reinvent myself. Sometimes that doesn't happen without being forced into it. Most of us change rather reluctantly.
It is sort of weird how our current situation has a number of parallels to how we moved to the U.S. 18 years ago. I would really have preferred that I had it all together, and everything just was perfectly comfortable and smooth and carefully planned, but I guess that isn't to be. Most adventures aren't smooth and predictable, or they wouldn't be adventures.
In 1985 I moved from Copenhagen to Los Angeles with my wife and 1.5 year old daughter. I did a quick recogniscance trip first, to learn how things worked and to get a job, but then we just shipped the most essential things and sold or gave away the rest, bought a ticket and left. The exchange rates between Kroner and Dollars were terrible. The money we brought went as far as buying a used car and moving into a little furnished apartment, and surviving for a month. The job I had arranged was as a sales person in a computer store. But after the first month they had to let me go, because they didn't know how to pay me. I was an illegal alien, and hadn't learned yet that that was no problem at all at the time in L.A. One could just go and sign up for a social security number and bank account and driver's license, and then one would look like an American. But I found out too late, and we basically were there, in a foreign country, not really knowing anybody, having run out of money, and no job, and it started looking a bit desperate.
What happened at that time was that I gave up, realized that my planning wasn't enough, and gave myself over to fate. What I actually did was that I walked around and applied for a lot of jobs that I wouldn't otherwise have considered. I was willing to take anything. After a lot of walking around in the hot sun, going for a lot of interviews, I finally got an offer. It was a $6/hr data entry clerk job. I was going to type in names from a phone book. Which I did for a few days, my eyes turning all square.
But it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It turned out that I worked for the managing partner of the largest medical group in Southern California, and we actually hit it off really well, and he quickly realized that I wasn't really supposed to do data entry. Rather quickly I was doing financial modeling and developing their information system, designing the whole computer system for a sister company, and before long I was making $100K/year and managing big long-term projects with a bunch of people working with and for me. And I had wonderful and inspiring experiences with some great people.
The point is, it went through a certain cycle of making careful plans, having them all fall apart unexpectedly, starting over and following some kind of desperate intuition, and things ending up succeeding way beyond my expectations, in ways I couldn't have imagined. The problem is, I would never quite volunteer for such a thing, or advice anybody to aim for doing it that way. Even though I know well that it sometimes is necessary for life to treat you that way.
And now, we're in a foreign country where everything is new and different and difficult. We sold and gave away all of our stuff, and shipped some essentials. The exchange rate (this time between dollars and euros) is really bad, so we don't get much for our money. All of it gets used up really quickly for renting house, cars, etc. And then I lose the job I was counting on for security. And then what?
There are other odd little parallels. On the first recognisance trip to the U.S. I smashed up the rental car, and had stupidly declined the insurance and ended up owing the rental company a lot of money. This time the rental car broke down, and despite that I opted for all the insurance, the company somehow has decided that it is all my fault and I ought to pay for the repairs, and for the trouble they have of having two cars 1500km from where they belong. I don't agree with them at all this time, but it is a bit of a deja vu.
Anyway, more later on my search for what needs to happen next. Don't worry. Things generally work out.
[ Diary | 2003-08-07 17:04 | | PermaLink ] More >
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| Tuesday, August 5, 2003 | |
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So, I got a phone line at least, and hopefully DSL within the next couple of days.
Lots of little problems with many things. Nothing that doesn't make it worthwhile, as far as I'm concerned. I sort of enjoy figuring out new systems. And, well, in France many things are done a little different.
I can't complain too much. This is a modern, civilized, well-organized country, and we live in the middle of a major city. Everything is close by. It is not like we moved to Ethiopia and they just didn't have any phone lines, or it took a month to get one. Here it is more of an issue of doing things in the proper order, going to the right place, knowing what to say, having the right paperwork handy. Certain things depend on other things, and it is important to call things by their proper name.
The landlord took care of the account with the electricity company (EDF) it seems, so that was no problem.
Opening a phone line with France Telecom went smoothly too. I went to one of their offices and they just needed to see ID (my Danish passport) and some proof of that I lived where I say I do. The rental agreement for the house served that purpose. Otherwise, electricity bills is what one would drag around for that purpose, but I didn't get any yet. The phone line was opened the same day, but there was a small problem which had to wait for Monday to get fixed. A nice touch is that, for any phone line, connected or not, one can pick it up and press * to speak with the phone company. So I could call them even though the phone line wasn't connected right.
To get a DSL account, I needed a bank account I found, so that became the next step. I picked a bank, fairly randomly, at Place Esquirol, as we seemed to come by there often. Credit Mutuel. Went in Friday and asked at the counter if I could open a new account. She gave me an appointment to come back Monday, and a list of what I supposedly needed to show. ID, proof of residence, proof of income such as an employment contract. Which I don't exactly have. Anyway, I showed up Monday and it was a very nice gentleman who handled it, and it really was no problem. He didn't need any proof of income, but believed me when I said I did work in the states and would transfer money into the account every month. So, getting a checking account and a bank card seemed to be no problem, although it will take a couple of weeks for those to arrive.
Then I tried for the DSL account at France Telecom again. After a long conversation it turned out that the options I wanted (router, fixed IP, faster upload) were categorized as being for professionals, not regular people, so he had to send me to another branch, dealing with business. I wouldn't be too surprised if I will have to prove there that I really have a business, but hopefully not.
Otherwise, well, it is still super hot here. Like Palm Springs without air conditioning. The recommended approach to keeping the house relatively cool is to keep the shutters down all day, so the cool night air is kept inside. All French houses have shutters in one form or another, and they're very often closed. Either because it is hot, or because one wants privacy, or because one is afraid of burglars while one is out.
[ Diary | 2003-08-05 05:34 | | PermaLink ] More >
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Thomas Nicholls is a fellow Dane who also has moved to Toulouse recently with his French girlfriend, a couple of months before us. Reading his blog, Le Danois, and exchanging a few messages with him, asking a few questions, has been very helpful for me. He goes through some of the same things, a little ahead of us. Checking out the area, getting your papers in order, etc. Now that the dust is settling a little for us, I hope we can actually meet soon.
[ Diary | 2003-08-05 05:56 | | PermaLink ] More >
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| Sunday, August 3, 2003 | |
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Lots to report on, but right now I'm having a really hard time connecting to the net. We've moved into our new house, and I did reserve a phone line, which should have worked from yesterday, but I suppose they must have connected it to the wrong wire or something, as none of the plugs are working. Anyway, after that works I can at least dial up again. And, after I succeed in getting a bank account, I should then be able to order DSL, which should take less than a week to get going.
Right now I got so desparate for an Internet connection that I drove around on the streets of Toulouse with the MacStumbler Wi-Fi scanner turned on on my laptop, until I found an open connection. I'm parked on the street in front of College Lamartine right now as I'm typing this and picking up my e-mail. I suppose it is a school of some sort.
One gets so easily used to an always-on broadband connection that one forgets to prepare well for times when one doesn't have it. My work is pretty much based on being connected all the time, and it becomes really painful when suddenly I can't. Although I theoretically could do all sorts of work while off-line, I'll usually quickly run into things I don't have handy locally, because it is normally so easy to access things anywhere.
[ Diary | 2003-08-03 12:10 | | PermaLink ] More >
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| Sunday, July 27, 2003 | |
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 So, we drove to Denmark for a few days. Mostly a good idea. Except for that it is 2000km. Made it on two tanks of diesel, so that wasn't the worst part. But that is a whole lot of driving. Through France and Belgium we could do an average of 150km/hour, and the French speaking people are very good at making that possible, letting one by, and getting into the slower lanes when one isn't going fast. The Germans and Danes seem less cooperative, so that took a good deal longer. And it took 1.5 hours just to get past Paris. Traffic there was like L.A. in rush hour.
The French auto routes are wide open and with few people on them. But they're mostly pay roads, so going through France cost as much in toll as it does in gas.
But now, the less fun problems started when the car broke down in Hamburg, Germany at 3AM in the night. The clutch on the rented Ford Mondeo decided to function less and less and eventually the car just wouldn't move. And we were in some dead neighborhood next to the harbor. Our first thought was then to find a hotel and spend the night and deal with it in the morning. But a taxi driver, after checking with his office, informed us that there were no available hotel rooms to find. Then we realized that there was an emergency number for Budget in France, to call if one has trouble with the car. I called it, and they informed me they'd send a mechanic from Ford within an hour, to fix the car. Which sounded great, and I started fantasizing about a helicopter landing with a new clutch. But, not exactly. 1.5 hours later a tow truck showed up, with a driver who only spoke German, and who's instructions were to take the car away. Which would sort of leave us with a lot of luggage, a sleeping kid, and two cats, in the rain on a sidewalk in Hamburg in the middle of the night. Further calls to Budget, and promises to find a solution for us, weren't very productive. I had to stand and discuss things with the tow truck driver while waiting for them to call back. My German surprisingly seemed to be sufficient to get by. Eventually we decided on letting the guy take the car away, taking a cab to the airport, and waiting for the Budget office there to open in the morning. Which we did. So, after a few hours of drinking coffee in the airport, still another string of obstacles as the German and French Budget guys couldn't quite agree on what to do. Ultimately we got the German guy persuaded to just give us another car, big enough for our stuff, and forget about what the French guys wanted to do, which would have taken longer. And off we went again. Ended up taking about 30 hours to get here.
So, after a long sleep, a shower, breakfast at my moms, and being plugged into her DSL connection, things are cool. Of course we need to go back in a couple of days, but we'll probably be better prepared.
There's something nice about tracking the road over land from our new home in Toulouse back to our roots and our home till 20 years ago in Copenhagen. It gives a more tangible sense of where things actually are, compared with jumping around in planes.
[ Diary | 2003-07-27 03:34 | | PermaLink ] More >
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| Wednesday, July 23, 2003 | |
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 Well, looks like we'll have a house to live in. I'll know for sure tomorrow.
It is not an old 17-room chateau on a mountain in a forest, but it is a fine place to start. A compromise, really, but I think one that my family and I can agree on. It is in the middle of Toulouse, pretty much, close to a Metro station and to other facilities that'll help at least some of us to not feel homesick. But still in a calm and open area. It is an almost new house, equipped with a bunch of things one normally has to acquire oneself in most French houses. Like, a kitchen doesn't automatically have a stove or cupboards here, let alone dishwasher and fridge, etc. Only when it is 'équipé'. Anyway, this house is a good deal larger than what we lived in in L.A. and a good deal cheaper. Not much of a garden, but there are private areas, at least.
So, we're moving in the 1st of August, if the landlord approves my paperwork. That in itself was a bit of a trial. Oh, it went remarkably smoothly, and the real estate agent and the landlord and everybody's extremely nice, but it is a bit nerve-wracking for me still to make negotiations using only French, some of them over the phone, trying to understand all of it, and to try to fit with the requirements. The French love paper. In this case they needed a bit of paperwork to show that I actually was making money. Hopefully I gave them something that is satisfactory, even though I didn't have the french forms they were looking for.
This was the very first house I made a call on and that we made an appointment to see with the owner. And there was a bit of synchronicity involved. I had decided that we'd see several houses that day, so I found another ad with a house that sounded like a possibility, out in the suburbs here. That was listed by an agency. When I went to their office, instead of just sending me to what I semi-randomly picked, the lady interviewed me about what we'd like, and looked up on the computer and made some phone calls, and then she wrote down what she thought would be the best choice for us, and gave us an appointment for 7:30. And, now, the weird thing was that the appointment we first had made was for 7:00, and I realized it was the same address. Out of hundreds of listings, she had picked the very same one I had already called. So it was a bit inescapable.
Aside from that, we're having a fine time, but things are sort of up and down. The money is moving a little too quickly (away from me) for my liking. Not that it is all that expensive here, but there are many things to take care of. And then one of our cats disappeared for a day, and had apparently balanced on a narrow ledge, five stories up, and made it around to a room on the other side of the building. Today I set fire to our printer, which we had dragged with us in a suitcase. I thought I had put the power through the right kind of transformer, but the smoke said otherwise.
If I hear yes on the house tomorrow, we'll drive to Denmark and hang out with family for a few days until we can move in on the first. Might as well.
[ Diary | 2003-07-23 14:06 | | PermaLink ] More >
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This is a collage of things that catch my eye, things that need to be said, and stuff I really care about
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