Time flies

Time for some update. It has been almost a month since we arrived. So much to tell, so little time.

The house is nice. And big. The living room has more furniture in it than the one at home. Nevertheless it is so huge, that we could easily fit in a table-tennis table, a pool table, a table-football table and still have a dancefloor for 20 people in the corner! Actually it feels a bit empty, to tell the truth. We could use some more stuff. To make it less empty hangar-like. We've had to borrow a lot of things, especially for the kitchen: cutlery, pots and pans, etc., etc..


My father has been living with us most of the time. It's confusing for him. He keeps wandering from one house to the other: ours, my sister's and his own, which is empty most of the time. He doesn't like to be alone at home. My mother is still at the hospital, although lately her situation has improved a lot. She's started to come home in the weekends. A step in the right direction, although the weekends become rather stressful for the two old people - they tend to raise each other's level of stress.

I started working the day after arriving. I've spent most of the time on getting acquainted with the technology that I will be working with: M$ Visual Studio .NET for developing in C#. Enemy territory indeed for someone in love with Java and religiously anti-monopoly like me! I haven't changed my mind a bit, but I must say that the package is appealing. They really have created a framework and a toolset that is appealing for developing web-based solutions. Damn! And it is hard not to be grateful for the documentation and tons of splendid tutorial videos. I have started on some proper work lately, though, and realized - again - that the cool wizard-like tools have a dark side as well: it's hard to get at the code behind the visual representation. Inevitably, on real-life projects you need to do something beyond the one-size-fits-all problems that the wizard can solve in five seconds.





A picture can lie better than a thousand words.


The weather? Look at these photos. What do you think? And by the way: I'm sitting on the balcony and writing these words, enjoying the sun and wishing for a display with more contrast. It's really true! You thought that it was all rain and fog, that we had to stay indoors every day and eventually catch a cold? Well, look at the pictures!

Airports are boring - (Saturday aug. 5)

Did you know that? They really are. It dawns on you when you have spent six hours waiting.

Normally I see airports as busy places and my physical state is one of tension and high blood pressure when I'm there. Today is different. Today is just about killing time. There is nothing you can do but wait, occasionally checking the departure table, going to the restroom or getting something to eat.

Sitting in the cafeteria, I realize that I am part of a funny little ecosystem, with different groups of people fulfilling different roles, depending on others in funny ways. One role is obviously the one that I am playing: killing time, eating and drinking. I am dependent on the cafeteria staff, that they feed me and clean up after me. They are dependent on me - otherwise they would make no money. They are depending on each other: the chef, the guy at the counter and the waitress collaborate in intricate ways. But the others playing the same role as me, they don't need each other. From my point of view, they are just in the way, as they compete for the same resources as myself: the clerk's attention, a clean table, a more comfortable chair, some silence. My role can be subdivided into those who are rushing to catch a plane and us that are just waiting for something to happen. Super- and sub-tension. We lazy bastards are like wasps in late summer: expendable and annoying, only pursuing pleasure and comfort for ourselves.

Actually it's only the staff that experience some kind of normality in the airport. For the rest of us, it's an extraordinary experience, no matter that we may have passed through the same airport hundreds of times before. It's just a time-consuming and annoying step on our journey from one place to another. And this perception shows in the way that we behave in the airport. As we would rather not be here, we start behaving like everything is a bit unreal. Like this is not a part of life. How come I see no people kissing or hear no jokes? Do we need a sense of normality for such endeavor? I was in the queue in the cafeteria. An Italian group had just ordered their two slices of Pizza Margherita each, when the chef whispers at me "Those Italians always expect you to understand what they say in their own tongue". I hadn't heard the conversation - after all I was busy pretending not being there - but it struck me that this was really extraordinary. Someone behaving in a friendly and truly human way. Like you would talk to your colleague at work. Or your neighbour at home.


00:06. A couple of hours ago, the rumour started to spread: the fog was going to lift. Two planes have left for the Faroes. Ours is estimated to leave at 01:00. The kids are exhausted. We have been trying out several alternatives regarding comfort: either the chairs are uncomfortable or there is a draft or too much noise or too much light. Morpheus just took control of my daughter, nevertheless. She is sitting in a truly creative posture with her mouth open.



00:45. We are informed that the plane doesn't leave in quarter of an hour anyway, but we are going to spend the rest of the night in a hotel nearby. The staff starts sending passengers off in taxis. After five minutes, the airline company stops them. "An airplane has landed on the Faroes and will return for you." Confusion and irritation with the passengers as well as the airport staff. We have waited for 12 hours now. Are they going to make us stay awake for another 3-4 hours? There are a few children - it has already been a long, rough day and it is 3-5 hours past their normal bedtime. What about those who have left the airport already? Five minutes later the orders change again: we are going to the hotel. No information on if or when the plane will leave tomorrow: "You will be informed".

06:00. The wake-up call. That means we got a little over four hours sleep. Are we in a hurry? Is there breakfast? We choose to expect the worst. Hurry to get some cold water in the face and in the arm-pit. Lesson learned: always keep your toothbrush and a deodorant in your hand baggage. There turns out to be breakfast and busses are leaving around seven.

I don't know. Why do I have the feeling that it is the first time this happens to the airline company. Why do they give the impression of being unable to anticipate anything? Why is the level and quality of information so low? Actually this is something that happens a lot. It's very common that there is fog in the Faroes and the planes can't land. They should be a lot better at handling this situation. Not to scare anyone from traveling to the Faroes. Of the say 100 times that I've traveled to the Faroes, something like this has only happened 3 times. To me. But for a professional airline organisation, this is nothing extraordinary. They should be able to prove themselves as professionals in a more convincing way.

The trip was fine, although the landing was a little rough. Next step: the bus ride to Tórshavn. Normally there has been a bus waiting when you exit from the customs. Now there was a sign stating that the bus would leave in half an hour. The bus arrived and people started entering. It was raining and the bus driver was selling tickets with one hand and half a brain while using the other hand/half brain on some interesting business on the mobile phone. When half of the passengers had entered, wet as rats, he suddenly remembered that he should have been to the neighbouring village Sørvágur before coming to the airport. So the passengers were kicked out, so that he could return half an hour later, having brought noone, neither from the airport to Sørvágur nor vice versa. But properly delayed he was indeed. This country has a lot to learn when it comes to service.

Delayed!

No queue at the check-in counter! Have we ever been that lucky before!? The clerk says we have ten kilos over-weight. We have to go to the airline's office and pay.

"We don't want to deal with overweight today, under these circumstances.", the airline lady tells us. We are grateful. But, hey! What circumstances? It turns out that the flight is mega-delayed. There is fog in the Faroes. No plane has landed nor taken off there today. Four planes are regularly attempting to land. One is currently circling over Vágar Airport. As for our plane: it'll have to first land on the Faroes, then load and return to Copenhagen before it's our turn. At the very best, it means three hours delay. Probably we won't get anywhere today.

So, when there is no queue at the check-in counter: be suspicious!

Limbo

Strange feeling. We had packed everything and left the house. In the taxi on the way to the airport, I was overwhelmed by the the feeling that this departure was different. All right: as usual when I'm travelling, I'm leaving something behind. But this one is different. I lack the sense of a home base. What's home and what's out? Up or down? We are leaving a place that is going to be someone elses home for the months to come. And the destination is someone elses home that is going to be ours for a long time. Emotionally there is this dimension that all of a sudden is devoid of gravity. Wonder if I felt the same way when I left my parents home - and the Faroes - twenty-three years ago.

Packing galore

The suitcases are about to be stuffed harder than what the authorized standard bodies prescribe. How could this happen? After all we filled the car to the rim the other day, so that we only had to pack the clothes that we were to wear the last couple of day before the departure.

I've also spent a good number of hours on writing a room guide for the people that are going to rent our house. The ambition was to write a one-page fact-sheet, but the printer spit out an eight-page novel. I know it's a bit exaggerated, but on the other hand: life is complicated. My house is complicated. How can you expect an American family to intuitively absorb the finer details of a Danish remote heating system?

A friendly person also volunteered - yes - to take care of my son's tortoise during our absence. The only requirement was: that I write a manual for the thing!

Two manuals/guides in less than a week! Documentation! And I'm not even at work and getting paid!

For the technically inclined: AFT (Almost Free Text) is a nice tool for ad-hoc documentation. You write the content with minimal but intuitive mark-up. A lot like with wikis. And you can use a real editor! The only drawback: it's not good with special characters like in Danish. :-(

Sending off the car

So, here it is. Upon popular request: my blog! Now you, my friends, family and faint acquaintances, can follow my adventure to The Faroe Islands, where I grew up and spent my adolescence.

Yesterday I sent off the family's car, filled to the rim with our earthly goods. Spent days filling it. Hours of speculation on what to pack, what to whack, what to put to hibernation till we return. The car is going by ship and we are going by airplane. We chose the expensive solution. Could have done it for a quarter of the price, if we all - including the car - went with the ferry from Hanstholm, but the ferry has been sold out for months.

Strange experience, sending off the car. Had to deliver it at a goods terminal. 'Trucks only', it said at the entrance. The only entrance, I found out after driving around. Pretended to be a truck, then. Parked the car as far away from the trucks in the truck yard and started looking for some kind of office. Only place with a sign on it was the goods store. Climbed the platform by one of the trucks. Caught eye contact with a guy looking puzzled at me. "The office? The white door in the opposite building. The one with no sign on it.". Avoided all doors with signs on them. Entered the remaining one. An empty corridor. Tried to the left first. Led to a place that seemed to be where the truckers have their coffee breaks. Tried the other direction. At the far end of the corridor there was an open door. A guy sitting at a computer. "I have this car...". He wasn't looking surprised and asked for the car keys and then sat at his computer again. "But isn't there any paperwork to do?". He refused. "How about a receipt?". "A receipt for what?", he replied, obviously never having faced this situation before. I started to tell him about my long-time relationship to my Toyota, but he interrupted me before I had even a decent chance to provide some context to my account. "all right then, I CAN write you a receipt.". Then he scribbled something like "Received 1 piece car. Doodle-doodle.", while at the same time muttering something about not liking to be held responsible and actually it was another company that would pick up the car and deliver it to a third company and how busy he was. With a rather uneasy feeling, I took the note, contemplating the doodles for a while. They looked like a couple of fifty-legged spiders, dead in the attempt to figure out which leg to put where.

Woke early this morning. The uneasy feeling persisted. Phoned the transportation company. They had the car and it was fine. I was almost disappointed.