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Amsterdam

Just a quick note- I'm in Amsterdam right now, and while I'd hoped to be able to check my home email from my work laptop, it doesn't seem to be working. The security on this machine is pretty tight and I'm not sure how to open it up.

Anyway, please write me on peteineurope@hotmail.com until I get back.

Wild news on BBC as I was waking up yesterday morning. Good news in Serbia- I don't think I'm overstating it by saying this election could significantly reduce the chance of more organized violence in the Balkans. And then the handover in Iraq that took everyone by surprise. Probably a good move, in the short term. Let's just hope for the best.

And while all this is going on, I'm stuck doing biz biz biz. In two hours I have to give a presentation in front of 200 people. At least Amsterdam is great- I've really missed the Netherlands.

The border's cool, the food is good
Everyone's mellow in this neighbourhood

Out.

Ready to Go

So that's it. I'm packed and ready to go. Nothing left to do.

Cec is hanging out with friends in Jutland this weekend, and I'm only half here now, so the apartment has a strange, abandoned feeling to it. I found myself saying goodbye to the plants. Not sure I'll be able to sleep tonight, I can feel it.

Some people don't like flying, and I guess I can see why they wouldn't, but I just don't understand that feeling. I love flying, everything about it. The waiting, the nervousness, the rumbling takeoffs and dodgy landings in atrocious weather. I feel so at home up there.

And the way it's been these days, the airplanes are a place of safety. I'm unreachable, no phone or net. Since there's precious little I can do, it removes the need to do anything and I can just relax- really relax. Plug into some music, read a book, or just be still and content. The last few flights across the Atlantic have been too short, and I know the one to Holland tomorrow will certainly be.

One of my co-workers told me about a flight he'd just been on from Singapore back to Copenhagen. He was on British Airways and had been bumped up from business to first class, so he'd gotten one of those pod things that folds out into a little flat-bed capsule. He was trying to fall asleep after the flight attendants had put the lights out in the big 747-400's bubble top. The great thing about the BA pods is they give you almost complete privacy, but he could see into the pod beside him through a slit in the side of the wall. There was a young girl, attractive, asleep, facing him. She had a lost expression on her face and her eyes were REMing in dream. Somewhere outside and below was the Himalayas, but that was just an abstract idea. The two of them could have been anywhere. On a ship to Centauri maybe.

That's what I love- the strange abstractness of the experience. Time to be at peace and to think in the dark. Outside, the thin, frigid, unlivable air is screaming by at more than half the speed of sound, but you and your fellows are safe, more or less, in this little bubble of humanity, with the lullaby of the engines to put you to sleep.

Survival

Sorry for the long patch of radio silence. I've spent the last few weeks buried under work- interesting stuff, some of it at least, but there's been just too much of it.

Tomorrow I'm off to Amsterdam for another work thing. I'm really looking forward to seeing the Netherlands again. I never spent too much time in A'dam when I was living in Utrecht in 2000, so in a way it feels like I'm catching up on something I should have done a long time ago. I'm just afraid I might be so busy I won't get a chance to explore the city, and that would be a real shame.

But the big payoff will be next weekend- assuming I survive the week, I'm hopping over to Utrecht to meet Klaartje, Bram and Yvonne. It's going to be so awesome to see the place again with old friends.

I'm off to pack for tomorrow... I wanted to get this post up before I left, because, as Deborah rightly pointed out, the last post was pretty dire. Ha ha, she said it reminded her of the Faure Requiem...

Dies illa dies irae
calamitatis et miseriae
dies illa, dies magna
et amara valde

That's pretty much how I was feeling when I wrote it too! I feel much better now, probably because I actually got a full night's sleep last night. It's amazing, I almost feel drunk with awareness.

More soon. I'll post from Amsterdam if I can.

Word of the day

Hi kids! Today's word of the day is "calamitous"

Insomnia

Just finished a presentation I have to give on Wednesday. (Group rehearsal tomorrow which is why I'm working on the thing till a quarter to one). But now I can't sleep. I'm spending the time listening to Saint Etienne, which is throwing me into a pleasant nostalgia, and trying to catch up with a million unread posts on Tribenet.

I should be using the time to work on my book. Fox knows I haven't had much chance to do that lately. My brain is just not feeling very creative right now though.

Yeah, maybe time for bed...

Kerry for President

I just gave a contribution to the Kerry campaign. I used to donate to most of the usual lefty causes-- Amnesty International, Greenpeace, the ACLU. But this is the first time I've donated to a political campaign because this is the first time I think it's ever been so important that our guy win.

The readership on this site is almost half US-based and half international. You lovely people in the US, please do something to help out-- There's not much I can do from Denmark. Click the link above to go to Kerry's volunteer page. They're going to need a lot of canvassers in the next few months. It's a miserable job, but a dedicated core of volunteers can really make a difference.

Just so ya know, I hear grassroots political orgs are a really good way to meet politically motivated and potentially libidinous single people. And canvassers usually get, you know, pizza or something.

Work Blues

I promised myself I'd never bitch about my job on this page, because how boring is that to ask people to read? They just fired a quarter of my team this week though, so the ambience around here is pretty ugly.

After spending a bad six months inside a management consulting firm in San Francisco whose policies and business practices I can only describe as Satanic, I swore I'd never work for a megacorporation again. Yeah well, this is why. I like the work I do, but man, sometimes the environment is a real kick in the stones.