First day at ZRL

I'm just wrapping up my first day on the job at ZRL (here’s another photo).

Yesterday morning, I woke up to an empty apartment in Stockholm. I had consigned my stuff to the moving company the previous day, having spent the preceding week packing all of my belongings. The last two days were the busiest, and I probably wouldn’t have managed without the help of Lotta, Janaki, and other friends. I brushed my teeth, packed a few last things in my suitcase, and tidied up the flat a bit. I caught a taxi to the airport at eight o’clock, and arrived in Zürich around lunchtime. I caught the S2 train from the airport to Thalwil, and took a cab from there to my hotel, the Gästehaus Niedelbad, located just 5 minutes’s walk from IBM.

After leaving my bags in my room, I bought some groceries and had a late lunch at a picnic table in a park overlooking the lake. I met some American expatriates playing with their children in the park. It was nice to talk with some of my countrymen. One of them was even from Texas (Houston). After a walk around the neighborhood, I returned to my room for a nap. I had just a snack for dinner, chatted with a few friends online, and then crashed for the night. I don’t think I’d gotten a proper night’s sleep in two weeks, so it was nice to be able to catch up a bit.

My first day of work has gone very smoothly. I now have a badge, office, telephone, and a new MacBook Pro. Actually, I’ve had the Mac for a while now. My colleague Stefan sent it to me in Stockholm a few weeks ago so that I could move my files over to it from my old ThinkPad before handing that computer back to IBM Sweden.

My new workplace is situated on a hillside overlooking Zürichsee, above the village of Rüschlikon, and just 15 minutes by train from Zürich’s main train station. One of my primary tasks in the coming two weeks will be to find a place to live. I already have one apartment to look at, and I have a feeling I’ll see several before making a decision.

In the coming days I will open a Swiss bank account so that there will be some place for my salary to be deposited. I’ll also register my presence with the local government, through which process I will obtain my Swiss residence permit.

That’s all for now. I’ll post again soon, with photos!

Budapest notes

I'm in Budapest for a week of technical courses related to the Tivoli software I work with in my new role at IBM Software Group. So far, so good. This morning I'm going through a bunch of hands-on labs that show the new features in the most recent releases of IBM's enterprise monitoring tools.

Budapest is beautiful. The weather reminds me of Texas: it was sunny and warm the first day, we had a thunderstorm that night, rain yesterday, and it's hazy and humid today. Last night I joined some Swedish and Norwegian colleagues for dinner at a traditional Hungarian restaurant on the Pest side of the Danube (the hotel is on the Buda side). After dinner, I walked a few blocks to a restaurant/night club where I had read there was supposed to be salsa dancing every Tuesday evening. Unfortunately, I was misinformed. The dancing is only on Fridays and Saturdays. So instead of dancing, I took a long walk along the river and took some photos of famous bridges and buildings. I tried out my D300's bracketing feature for the first time, taking several exposures of exactly the same scene, but with slightly different shutter speeds. I intend to combine the photos in the computer, taking the best-exposed portions of each photo. The result should be a single photograph with "high dynamic range." HDR is a relatively new set of techniques. Do a search on flickr for photos tagged with 'hdr' and you'll get an idea of what's possible. The result can be quite dramatic.

My colleague and friend Warren is here from Austin to give several talks related to IBM's workload automation products. Tonight we plan to find a brewpub and sample some of the local beers. If there's time, I might also take a dip in the Széchenyi fürdő (thermal bath) here. I went to that bath with my good friend Agnès when the two of us traveled around Eastern Europe together nearly sixteen years ago. I remember that the Hungarians had an amazing tolerance for heat. They sat unperturbed on the top bench in a sauna whose lower bench proved too hot for me. I also remember that bath as the place where I was treated to the best massage of my life. Not the sexiest massage, mind you—my masseur was a very large and very brusque Hungarian man. But it was the best massage. Afterward, I felt like a piece of cooked pasta.

I'll return to Stockholm Friday night. Saturday, I'll attend the wedding of my friends Sarah and Thomas. I'll also be tasked with taking photos at the wedding, so I'm excited about that.

Ups and downs

I awoke this morning feelling much the same as yesterday—better than on Tuesday, but not really back to full health either. A light dusting of snow fell during the night, but had mostly melted by morning, leaving water and slush on the streets and sidewalks. The sky is partly cloudy and every once in a while, the sun pokes through, making the office here twice as bright. Despite the snow and slush, there's a feeling of anticipation in the air. Winter's almost past, and spring is on the way.

However, it's hard for me to feel enthusiastic. My mood is down at the moment due to some bad news I received last night. Last week, I applied for a new job that seemed perfect for me. It's a job that would let me combine my technical and creative skills, and would give me the opportunity to have a big influence and to help lots of my colleagues. For a while, it seemed liked I was on my way toward getting the position. I received positive recommendations from several colleagues, and the decision-maker told me I was the front-runner. Unfortunately, I learned last night that there are some obstacles that stand in the way, and now it seems that my prospects for getting the job are bleak. I was really excited about the job, and it's disheartening to let the dream go.

“There will be other jobs,” a friend reminded me. Yeah, that's right. But I'm still feeling down.

Sick again

Well, those sore muscles and chills I felt Sunday night were harbingers of worse things to come. Monday morning I awoke at 05.41, almost unable to breathe because my face was so full of phlegm. I was able to do some work in the morning, but felt progressively worse as the day wore on. Tuesday, I managed to hual my butt into the office for a meeting with my manager, but went straight home afterward. My fever took a turn for the worse in the afternoon, and as a result I spent most of the afternoon and evening in bed. The fever finally broke in the late evening and I was able to get a solid 5 hours of sleep. Aside from congestion and a throat sore from coughing, I feel a lot better today. I’ve been able to work all day. I intend to try to get some more work done tonight rather than risk exposing my fellow salsa classmates to whatever bug I've contracted. If I still feel okay tomorrow, I might go dancing in the evening.

Kista Entré

_MAL1181.jpg, originally uploaded by Michael A. Lowry.

This is the indoor foyer of the the South building of Kista Entré. Now that I've moved to IBM Software Group, I spend most of my workdays in this office complex. IBM's offices occupy two floors of the north building, plus a customer demonstration and briefing center on the ground floor.

I haven't eaten at the foyer restaurant yet; my colleagues and I usually walk to the food court at Kista Galleria for lunch.