Amsterdam

My last post was right after I returned from my semester abroad in London in Fall 2007. Since I last wrote, I completed the last three semesters of college, found a job, and moved to Chicago. Last Monday I started work as a software developer for the trading firm IMC-Chicago and the first thing they did was send me to Amsterdam for five weeks of training! Rough life, I know :)

The direct Chicago-Schipol flight was uneventful, and I think it is the first time I've actually been in a 747. Amsterdam is 7 hours ahead of US Central Time and we got out of the airport around 7am. We were met at the airport and taken to our executive apartments, which are very European, very accommodating, and huge. The shower here is about as large as my entire bathroom in Chicago, and the kitchen here is about the size of my living room. It's almost a pain walking around the place because everything is so spread out.

See pictures of the apartment here

Some of our first tasks were getting Dutch pre-pay phones and groceries. Despite the odd layout of the store, the latter was not very difficult as most Dutch nouns seem to consist of a common root as their English counterparts and a liberal sprinkling of -ij, -met, -uik, etc. The frozen pizza was cheap at ~1.5 Euros, but not bad nonetheless. We noticed that almost all the food in the store was prepackaged; there were fewer bulk options for vegetables and the like. I picked up some spinach, field greens mix, potato salad-ish stuff, some Heineken, sliced pineapple, and frozen pizzas.

I'm here with two other new hire recent college graduates and a couple other new hires not straight out of college. The former group and I were trying to stay awake through the whole day and get onto Amsterdam time, but then I dozed off on the couch and when I woke up they were gone. Although they were all sleeping, I had no idea where they went, and the paranoid part of my brain was telling me they were already partying at some bar.

The days are very long here; when I woke up after dozing on the couch I estimated it to be about six or seven, but it was actually nine-thirty. Similarly, the sun rose at about 4, and my roommate and I were both awake. Suffice to say, we aren't on Amsterdam time yet.

Anyway, I plan to post about some of the sights and events I encounter in my five weeks here, so we'll see how well that goes.

Later!