FJ!!'s Neglected Personal Blog

I would like to thankbobaloo for all his tireless work on the "No on Proposition 8" campaign in California.

I am angry and heartsick at the prospects of yet another set of my friends' marriages being invalidated. I know some went in thinking it was "Mostly just a piece of paper", but having attended my number of weddings and having thought a lot about marriage, I know that actually standing up there is transformative, that getting that paperwork done and the changes that follow from it actually do make you think of your relationship in a new way, that it is, still, a hit to the brain of "wow, I never though in my closeted kid days we would get there. That this would happen. That we'd be just as real."

I can't stand the thought of that being taken away. Not there, not in the place I was so happy. I can't contemplate that so many people living among my friends would want to take it away from them.

I am not allowed to donate as a foreign national, as I found out, so I haven't. Oddly, it turns out that pinkfish is donating more, and at the same time my share of the current bills for The Loft has gone up by the same amount; it is very strange how that works. Yeah, I am still unemployed, but I know I will work again and this money is necessary now. Donate.



If you too want to donate some time in the LA area, get in touch with Bob. He is overworked, and needs volunteers. You don't even need to call people, I believe.

So, contradictions. Düsseldorf is an impossibly chic little city, but rents in the central area, not at all run down, are ridiculously cheap. Germany is going through a prolonged economic malaise due to reunification, but organic-ish vegetables and perfectly lovely store brand products in my local supermarket cost nothing. And this gig was in Germany and yet I was caught dead doing it¹.

This gig for Vodafone was one that my agent has been trying to get me to take fo a while, but I never liked the terms: one had to be in Germany at least four days a week, which means that if you do not move outright for the whole thing, you end up in London only one full day, and I went to London 6 months ago to live there, not in Germany. But after not having worked for a month and a half after that single week with the consultancy, and my savings being equally unhappy after this move, I was more receptive. Then my agent called and said he had talked them down to three days at the office, which means two days of work and weekends at home, plus an unbelievable dayrate as long as I paid my own travel and lodgings, but that those could come off taxes, and I said ok. It's only a 55 minute flight after all.

Logistics-wise, the gig turned out to be better than I thought it would be. Of course the first week I overpayed for a hotel, not knowing what and where. The next week I didn't because I knew where the Hotel Ibis was, a Europe-wide brand of cheap business hotels near train stations. By the third week, my appartment had been arranged, and that made me the slow one in the office: the MZW agency can do that in a day, and had for most of my colleagues who flew in like me. €580,- a month for a big studio in the center of town. Almost every name on the letterboxes, stuck on with label-maker tape, was Indian. The landlord basically rents to all us temp workers. Only drawback of my lovely space: it's a 6th floor walk-up. Oh yeah. The city was rebuilt in the 50s after the war, and elevators were not a priority.

So, little cheap Bio supermarket on the same street. Streetcar stop on the corner which I could take to work. The Vodafone tower and adjacent buildings are pretty much on the Rhine, and modern and spacious and open. My co-workers were nice, and it was kind of fun to sit in the auxiliary room together with all the young designers from the contracting firms chattering away. The work was perfectly do-able and started out bringing me further along to mastering the bread-and-butter of mercenary UI designers (which I am still relatively recent at) but by the end had me back writing strategic documents about revenue opportunities in new media (which I can do in my sleep if you tell me the focus).

I looked at all the gyms online, visited a few from very middle-of-the-road to very expensive, and settled for a bodybuilder's gym that had a good 3-month rate and was in the city center. I walked a lot with my backpack with this heavy computer and gym clothes, I ended up never buying protein powder but just eating a lot of eggs and chicken and tuna and fromage frais (known as Quark in German).

I settled on a routine for flying in and out on Monday and Thursday evenings. This means Mondays were always chaotic as I had to get ready to leave, spend a lot of time actually traveling (bus from Oval to Paddington, Heathrow Express, Plane, Taxi), and still get a whole day of work in and exercise, while Fridays were a mess while I had to get a whole day of work in, do expenses paperwork and time sheets, and was just a general tired mess from flying in Thursday night. Every Friday night when I got in to bed having juggled and hurried and done everything and eaten and worked out at two gyms and not dropped any balls, I just collapsed, and then reminded myself I'd get to do it all over again in two days. Sometimes with having to go to the bank on Monday as well to travel with €1K in cash, as using my UK and US cards was either impossible or expensive for things like rent or food. Never used it for shopping, though, as I never had time by day. This last trip I was able to just walk the whole of the shopping street and see how for a small city, Ddorf is just really well supplied in high-end fashion, all in a really nice area. Balenciaga's black knitwear for this season is Teh Raumpatrouille Orion Sex².

The constant planning got tedious. What clothes were where, what should I bring, do I have enough cash for the taxi, what was in what fridge (which is important if you often arrive after shops close), what did I need to bring to work, what would fit in what bag. When I came back in London from having stayed over a weekend to visit my family I learned that Tesco's Finest Orange Juice is not pasteurized: the bottle had bulged, opening it was a plopping adventure, and the OJ had been diligently fizzily carbonated by little entities. The only way to deal with all the planning was routines: everything had to have a place and time, from when I switched currencies, to when and where I would switch keys on my key chain, to when I would pull out my passport and when I would put it back to what I would buy and when I would leave. I couldn't keep track of it all at the same time, so I kept track of each thing as it happened and put it in a place that would be predictable for the next time this part of the routine had to happen. By the end it was actually all really relaxed trip-wise, I just ran through the steps, back and forth, with the only spanner in the works being the damn planes. I only got three outright cancellations in the whole period.

As for visiting my father, one of the reasons I took this gig, that didn't happen because it was really hard to schedule him. He was busy every weekend in May, and I only stayed over on the continent once to see him in June. I will this weekend, but the whole let's go to Rozendaal often just didn't pan out much. The work did, minus two weeks, and the weather was often very lovely. I'd do this again. But now, two days in Amsterdam, and then to Dad, and then Monday to London.

¹Ancient Euro rivalry alert
²If you are into paying €1200,- for a sweater, that is.

Spent last night in the new place, uncovered some flaws, which I am able to live with. Like that the Tiki bar downstairs next door plays music on Fridays and Saturdays till 3 AM. No seriously, I live next door to a bar decorated in Tiki-motif, with a DJ who plays music like some nostalgia school disco for 80s kids. Not that loud, and I like living in urban spaces after all because I want to feel life around me.

Took the subway back to the crappy room near Belsize Park to empty it, and, after handing in my key and getting my deposit back, I processed the awful news of Fred Huntington's sudden death while waiting in front of the church on Belsize Square for Nigel.

He had offered to pick me and my luggage up so I wouldn't have to repeat the back-breaking travel with The Hippos, as Helen christened my rolling suitcase monstrosities. He was driving his classic huge black Citroen so it all fit. We drove from NW3 to SE11, delivered my suitcases upstairs, and then I said I wanted to take him out to lunch to say thank you. He started talking about value for money, I told him my father finally found a way to foist money on independent me, who always politely told my dad when he makes such an offer that whatever the reason was that he thought I needed money it was already taken care of, which it always was until this move when I carelessly blurted out on the phone I was starting from scratch and transferring money around accounts for that, so he got me because of course I couldn't say no because I really didn't have any cash liquid just that specific week -- a situation that would have been rectified in a couple of days -- for IKEA, and he saw his chance so damn the guy finally got me in a way I couldn't refuse, so Nigel shut up already and let's go spend the money I am embarrassed to have received on one of the things my father loves and Fred loved: good food. It's a moving expense, after all.

Lunch in the brasserie of the OXO tower, overlooking the Thames, was lovely. My brain kept reminding me of the happy fact that, holy shit, I live in London now. Getting out of that temporary rented room fliked a switch of permanence. I go to work in London, I take the tube and bus like Londoners do, I eat in London, I have lunch with friends in London, I am decorating my rented flat in London, and I have to rely on friends with cars like most people here^*. God, I really do properly live here. The the next penny dropped that I actually could upgrade a little of this furnishing project now -- because he will ask what I spent it on in order to enjoy it with me -- so Nigel drove me to Canary Wharf so I could buy huge towels and a lovely tea set at John Lewis. Like people here do. Especially, by the looks of it, gay people.



^*I could actually legally drive here for the next year on my US license, but since I can't really even safely cross the street, I don't think I will try. No. Not a good idea.
 Besides the whole transmission thing.

All is fine. Wallet delivered. Waiting for delayed plane.

Edit: I see my voice post never made it, so this means squat to all of you. My wallet dropped out of my pocket on the shuttlebus to LAX. After the panic subsided, I was ready to fly pennyless with my printed boarding pass and passport to London and see if they could print my boarding pass to Amsterdam based on my last name alone, because I would not miss my father's 75th birthday he has been planning for months. And oh, on the way back, enter as a tourist and then apply for a replacement greencard, because that is in my wallet, breaking I do not know how many Immigration rules.

The United ground crew were completely unhelpful, but another FlyAway bus stopped and gave me the number for the dispatcher. He radioed the bus I was on, but that driver did not find my wallet when she pulled over on the highway. When the bus arrived to the depot, the dispatcher did find it, and drove the wallet up from the depot in Long Beach back to LAX to hand it to me. I was never so glad to, when he said he would arrive in a Gold Cadilla, to see one of those enormous gas-guzzling airplane-arrier-sized 80s Caddies in gleaming gold in my life.

Now that he brought it to me ten minutes before the gate would normally close, we are all waiting for a part to be flown in from San Francisco to put in engine nr2. We will be delayed two hours -- oh well, I guess I will get the next flight to Amsterdam in London. I wonder if they can re-book me over the phone right now.

Our group was to consist of a number of adults, of which two were Disney employees with silver passes, and three children. In between our passes and some left-over guest passes I had -- you get two every 6 months when working for Disney -- we could get everyone in. I was basically going as a favor, I think. I did want to see the "Submarine Voyages" ride that had been retrofitted to become a "Finding Nemo" ride, but that was about it. Maybe find some other friends I knew would be in the park that day. I felt no great desire to do rides or anything. Just get some friends in to save them some very expensive tickets. Because I am kind of pissed at Disney.

I was first in Downtown Disney, which is a retail area, managed by Disney, between the parks and the Disneyland Hotel. It has shops like a Lego store and Department 56 and a bakery restaurant. timfogartyfeed, also known as Daddy Tim that day, was coordinating everyone, so he told Regina and Karen, her neighbour, who were coming together with Regina's son and her nieces, where to find me. We met, we introduced, I met the son J who was 4, and the two girls who were 7 and 9. Regina and Karen had to go to the restroom. The kids were asked if they had to go. They did not. They were ok. Off the women went, leaving me suddenly in charge of 3 children. This alone should probably have Regina removed from custody, but ok, I guess nobody warned her that of all of Daddy Tim's friends, I was probably the most child-unfriendly. "Behave or I'll sell you into white slavery," was probably the first thing I said when we were alone. Which is ill-chosen because by US standards, the girls register as black. We chatted some while waiting, as much as one can chat with a 7 and 9 year old who wonder who you are and a 4 year old who wonders if you are safe to talk to at all.

We hang. We wait. We wait. Women, restrooms, of course we had to wait. And J., of course, who had been asked 5 minutes ago, and vehemently denied... never mind. He had to go. So did H., the seven year-old. I am in the middle of a retail area with three children in need of a restroom. I have visions of taking these children to a restroom and setting off a three-fire Amber alert when the mother and friend return to not find their children they left in the care of a virtual stranger. Hasn't it been hours since those women left already?
-- "Oh god," I almost panic, "where the hell is your mother?'
H looks up at me: "You said the 'h' word."
I am already unnerved from having had to watch my language.
-- "Which one is the H word!" I cry.
"'Hell'," H. whispers with a look that tells me this girl, barring any major trauma in her life (which is about to happen under my watch I am sure omygawd) is going to grow up into a Sassy Black Woman. By next week.
-- "I won't tell if you won't," is my only response.

H. has a phone number. I call it. It's Karen: Regina has already left the restroom and should be on her way. I do not see her. The boy is grabbing his pants. I call another number H. reads from her slip of paper. A man picks up, clearly not Regina's cell-phone. I apologize and hang up. H. looks at the paper again and asks "Is this a seven?" I turn my head to her incredulously. It actually was a seven, though.

I make an executive decision, having peeed my pants at a birthday party when I was 6 for having been too shy to ask where the restroom was: we're going. I go to the sunglasses kiosk to ask where the nearest restroom is. The retail worker points in the direction that materialises my darkest fear: it is in the Disney store. I am to guide three single-digit agers on a time-critical mission through a toy store.

"Ok, we're going. Follow me." I wished I had leashes. I have to both guide and make sure they don't get lost on this very busy crowded day. This means a constant craning of the neck and hoping the nine year old, wise beyond her years I can already tell, keeps the two in line in front of her. We enter the store. We walk through. I keep trying to not bump into things as I check back to make sure the plushy toys do not distract them. Where is that damn restroom? I brusquely cut ahead in a cashiers line to ask. The cashier points me to farthest end of the store. I manage to get all three of them there.

I look at the girls: "Do any of you need help?" They look at me as if I am insane. OK, I say, "We're meeting here!" in a firm tone of voice and point to the ground, here in the hallway where the restrooms are. I resign myself to letting them out of my sight and supervision. They go in. I take J. into the men's restroom. "Do you need help?"
Pleasedon'tneedhelppleasedon'tneedhelppleasedon'tneedhelp I mantra in my head; I am a gay adult man, unrelated to you, who will have to handle your four year old genitals in the United States of America, a country that still thinks in every homosexual, if not every adult, lurks a pedophile, if you need help here. Basically, if you need help, thirty seconds from now as I do whatever it is one needs to do to help you do your bathroom functions, I will be one temper tantrum of yours, right there, right then, away of being on a sex-offender registry for the rest of my life.
His answer: "Yeah. Which stall do I use?" They are both busy. One opens up.
-- "That one!" Seems to be all the help he needs. I watch through a crack next to the door, he seems to be ok standing up, whizzing oh god I am watching a 4 year old I do not know urinate through a crack please no one come in play it cool play it cool lean agains this wall keep an eye on him if they do come in of course you are related thank god I am as blond as him. He is ready and comes out, pants properly closed, walks to wash his hands. He is too short to both push the button to make water flow and was his hands, so I lean over to push it. This should be an endearing photo-op, a snapshot memory, but I want it to be over. Fuck soap, let's hope his mom washed his dick this morning, water will do; I grab a paper towel, hand it to him, and go. Outside, another fear calmed: the girls are indeed there and waiting.
"I didn't have to go, I just made that up," H says.
-- "I hate you," is my answer. I put enough Disney-Channel sitcom-mock in my voice to amuse them both. Or at least not make them cry. Whatever.

We walk back in formation, but I decide to get out of the store faster and walk the rest through the plaza instead of the store. I walk beside them now.
-- "J, can I carry you?"
"No," he says.
-- "Ok, can you walk faster then?"
This seems to amuse him to no end and he starts frog-marching at insane speed. For a four year old. We get back to where we were supposed to meet: the women and the gay adult men are now all there. Daddy Tim laughs at me when he sees my pissed off face -- he knows I do not do children. Moments later, as we are sorting out day passes and silver passes, I tell Regina that I used the H word.
"H. already told me you did. And that you hate them."

Later I get told, again, this time for using the F-word. F-word? I did not! "Fool." 'Fool'? Am I going to have any of my vocabulary left in front of these girls?

We get in the park, and somehow we end up directly in the line to the Nemo things. Daddy Tim frets a bit, the line will be long, this might take an hour, the children will be bored. They see live mice scurry in the bushes, they get a quiz to read, they talk to mom, Tim explains to them that part of Disneyland is standing in line, we constantly move, the other adults in our group get out of the line and buy them flashlights and hot dogs.
-- "Don't worry. Years from now this whole thing will be a fond memory of Disneyland. They'll forget all about the line in no time," I tell Daddy Tim. "I, however, will resent you for decades to come." Later, during another conversation, I will confess with broad hand gestures and comic intonations that "I am just not one of his supportive friends."

Crap. Thanks to my fever I forgot to call my family during dinner today, as they were together for a memorial dinner for my mother. I called home and got my eldest sister, turns out it was 1AM, but both she and my father were still awake from having driven back from the restaurant. We talked for an hour or so, a lot of it me trying to explain LA.

6 years since she died. We all have different ways of dealing. I know a lot of them are date-oriented, the day means something special to them. Me, I have to ask ny father each year what date it was, because her death is always a background hum, although it does spike around this week. I like that he respects all the different ways our brains work, that some of us do not organize everything in our brains around dates -- in fact, I barely remember birthdays and anniversaries. Now people know that, you know what, FJ!! 's gonna be a bit late with this. Or early. This was not always the case in my family.

Still bothers me that I forgot, I know they care about it.

Less than a week left here. I leave Monday. Suddenly everything seems urgent, including the work I was supposed to have finished here. I made good headway, but March, my last full-time month in Nokia, is going to be busy if I am going to leave these sites in a good state for people to manage their own pages themselves. Fortunately the system for doing their personal pages works and is being used.

I am somewhat bothered by having talked to two retired high management types, one of them my father, about how I am supposed to structure the coming months. They knew I came here to orient myself a bit on the European job market, but the meeting in Helsinki before I landed here put a stop to that, and I knew that would happen. Instead of slowing down for this project, we chucked a whole subsystem because it would not adequately support our users, and I had to develop something along the very early plans instead -- 4 months behind.

So I tell them about the cicumstancs, and they both, independently, said, well, I advise you to just do less of the work and start working on your positioning and re-invention in these month instead on Nokia's dime. This after I tell them that thanks to severance and being in a dual-income household, I have plenty of time. And thus I have to re-iterate, that I made commitments and I intend to keep them. And that these aren't random customers I am building for, these are my friends here inside Nokia. And that when someone calls for references, I want them to be able to say, yeah, FJ!! keeps his word.

It's been on my mind that keeping a commitment and managing your own reputation as reliable had to be explained to both these former industry types. Well, it does explain massive amounts of crappy colleagues everywhere.

Cuz I am travelling again soon. And this one has me on pins and needles, and not just because of the ridiculousness of the schedule -- utterly self inflicted, I stress -- but its implications.

Jan 13th - Jan 16th Washington DC. Attenting a gay men's leather event.
Jan 16th - Jan 20th Helsinki. Yes, I land in Boston from DC in the morning, go home and get the 2nd Big bag, and go back to Logan airport to fly that evening, because the steering group of the current projects wants a meeting. I fly to Helsinki over London, which means that on the return I can...
Jan 20th - Jan 22nd London ...not get on the next plane but spend some nights in London, after which...
Jan 22nd - Feb 27th Amsterdam  ... I actually do not board a plane to Boston, but spend 4 to 5 weeks in Amsterdam, in my sister's appartment off the Haarlemmerdijk, finding out what it means to to be Dutch in the Netherlands again.
Feb 27th - Feb 28th London Then back to London for one night, to get my return leg back to...
Feb 28th Boston

I will be working all this time, remotely, on the projects -- note that most travel is on the weekends -- as I will be employed by Nokia through March, and I need to guide the last transition of the sites to new systems, and finish documentation of my part of the system. My sister has ADSL working in the place, and I will be able to see my family and friends just like as if I lived there.

Yes, I am not just spending all that time to quell some homesickness. I am spending a big chunk of time in Europe to orient myself on the European job market for mobile interaction designers. pinkfish will not travel with me to NL on this trip, but is very ready to hear from me where I have selected I want to work next, so we can make it happen. 10 years was enough for him too.

Somehow I remember chocolate as really restricted when we lived in South America. Just not something we had often. When we had it, as opposed to something chocolate-flavored, it would probably be in the Netherlands, and be real chocolate. Verkade. Thick bars of real chocolate. There were of course the chocolate sprinkles for our open-faced sandwiches -- it's a Dutch thing, you wouldn't understand -- but those don't really hit the chocolate jones.

(En mijn moeder was dus het soort moeder die altijd zei van "Ze proven het toch niet", en dus nog goedkoper dan Albert Heijn huismerk kocht. Nog minder cacao. We woondden goddome in Rozendaal maar aten alsof we in Velp Zuid op de flat zaten. En ik hoor haar nog zeggend dat "Ik dat geld liever besteed aan een mooiere vakantie," maar nu denk ik van hoeveel geld hebben we het eigenlijk over? Ik ben dus nu een van die mensen die gruwt van het woord "cacao-fantasie".)

The chocolate sprinkles -- I am now overwhelmed by memories of the packaging of the Albert Heijn brand, the tall boxes in red or blue with those very strange clowns on them. The family we spent a lot of time with when we visited the Netherlands -- the father was an old college buddy of my father's -- bought that brand, the real stuff. I am now walking that trail of memories of being seven or eight and eating them, and feeling so lucky. That galle kitchen, that smell of the carpet, that round wooden table, the steps to the back door. I need to tell the mother this. She'd hear me out, and laugh, but understand about a little ball of place and moment opening now in my mind, flowering briefly.

In both bars and sprinkles, I always preferred milk chocolate: it seemed smoother, softer, friendlier, and thus actually richer. Dark just seemed sharp. When we moved to the Netherlands, I ate candybars mostly. Verkade just seemed so plain. The candybars had the same brand names as in the US, Like Mars and Milky Way and Snickers, but I found out when I moved here that, at the time, the brand names were used differently in Europe than in the US ("Hey, where's the caramel in my Mars?") Around the age of 12,  I used to use my allowance to buy some, a highly forbidden act because it was a) candy, which was bad, and b) a terrible waste of money. Most sweets were frowned on at home, except for the cookie or two with the post-school tea. Needless to say, when I started living alone, I spent the first week exploring having dinner on just ice-cream, or a bag of Snickers minis and tea to dunk them in.

At 35 I have now fully grown out of that, I need real food for dinner, or actually all during the day every 3 hours. Even having cereal for dinner just will not do anymore, not with my physical goals and the demands I put on my body. But I do know where having terrible dinners come from. When I hear those "confessional" Lean Cusisine commercials in which people admit their dinner was a bag of Doritos and some cooking chocolate, my first thought is "Sure. And damn did it feel good."

I have lost much of my appetite for chocolate-flavored things, except really inetnse ones. Mostly when I want chocolate, I want the real thing, a bar. Not even bon bons, much. I want to sink my teeth into a bar and break of a thick full piece, and have it melt in my mouth. I may even take a swig of sweet hot tea to make it melt better and faster. I will chew and I will think of all the good chemicals inside chocolate, and not sweat the sugar and cream since I have made space for them in my regular eating plan. Basically, Friday night, when we have friends over, is the night I have large quantities of dessert. Since this is planned and incorporated in the overall weekly cycle, there is no guilt or sense of transgression, just pure joy in the food I enjoy most, dessert sweets. I still prefer milk chocolate, but if it has been very long since I have had any, I will go for dark chocolate. Recently, when Dean is away and we do not have anime night on Friday I have been having thick real chocolate with toffee centers, and that's been really making me happy. Or a block of Valrhona, from the Whole Foods chocolate counter, where they have broken blocks off the huge industrial bars and wrapped them in plastic wrap. Totally decadent mouthfeel to have one big bite after another, and I chew down on them after dinner, by myself, with utter satisfaction.