Present Perfect

Had my parents and my sister over for the past week. They dropped in right after Christmas. Spent a lot of evenings in good restaurants eating good food. Having been away from the family unit for some time made the transition back into disfunctionality all the more shocking :) These days I am perceived as the most normal of the lot. Not that hard to achieve though...

At one of the places my mother asked the waiter for a kiss four times. I admired the waiter's persistence in managing to avoid the inevitable conclusion. At least he managed to hold out until the next day when she went back.

Somehow the family unit managed to get into arguments and drawn-out emotional aftermaths which I ended up trying to mend in the usual ways. Step 1 - get them in each other's vicinity again. Step 2 - choose a safe activity for them to participate in (ie, going to the movies). Step 3 - pretend everything is fine and go along with the meaningless banter exchanged. Step 4 - watch them get physical with each other again. Step 5 - grit teeth as emotional gameplaying directs itself to me again, acknowledging temporary resolution of respective differences.

I can't complain - I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who ends up in situations like this. And hey, they're still my family. They should just come with a surgeon general's warning.

Had my parents and my sister over for the past week. They dropped in right after Christmas. Spent a lot of evenings in good restaurants eating good food. Having been...

So, a ten day stay back in the land of home. Arrived on Friday. Noticed I had turned ill on Saturday, fever and cold lined with snot. Got up fairly early and went to An's house because Kristien is the best woman for this wedding. Hung around all day, meeting people, eating finger food and drinking. Then time for the wedding party. It was fun, and dinner was great. Good idea for possible future wedding - have dessert buffet until late in the night.

Sunday

Sunday was spent taking a walk in the forest and laying around being tired. Monday morning I took the train home, and about two minutes after I left the train I noticed I was missing a whole bunch of stuff. I left my suitcase on the train. Grumbled, went to lost and found, filled in papers, got phone numbers, and went home. Started calling around for the suitcase, asked the people at the end station to check the train again, found the suitcase, asked to fax to get it sent back, and so on. I was relieved enough to have it located and too angry at myself to protest to all the calling back and forth I had to do.

Monday
Still sick as a dog. During lunch, we got a call - my grandmother suddenly passed away in her sleep. Left me speechless. All sorts of stuff needed taking care of, so I wasn't as productive work-wise as I was planning to be, and not as friendly to people as I normally try to be.
Went to the sauna with Jeremy, which helped my cold a little, and it was nice to go there and relax again, especially given the conditions.

Tuesday
Worked. Did stuff. Went to see Collateral with Peter, pretty good. Afterwards Peter and I crashed some party at the cinema. People had to show some ticket at the entrance of the party but we sneaked in easily inbetween the crowd. I'd never expect something like this of Peter - it's nice to know someone like me gives someone like him the courage to do so :)
Took turns guessing what the occasion was, and Peter guessed correctly that it was a recruitment party for PriceWaterhouseCoopers. We got very depressed looking at the future elite of our society, had the photographer take our picture for the in-house magazine, ate and drank a little, then we left while taking some game with us.

Then I noticed I lost my cell phone. I'm turning into my dad. Went back in the projection rooms (which is good to know for the next time - we can easily see four films in a row if we want to), but it was already cleaned. Harassed cleaning crews, until my cell phone turned up again. Phew.

After that, went to my grandmother's house to help out uncles and aunts with sorting out and sending out notice and invitation letters. It was nice to see how stuff like this is done, chaotic as it may be, and it was nice to see them still being able to laugh at each other. Went home at two with my tongue raw from licking stamps. I'm going to miss that big old house, damnit. Went back home at two.

Funeral's on the same day as my best friend's wedding where I am the best man. I timed the ride between the wedding church and the funeral church, and we figured out I should be able to make the trip from wedding.city.hall to funeral.church and back to wedding.church without missing a thing. What a week.

Wednesday
Finally got my new identity card. Worked all day. Had lunch with a good friend - the fun thing is that we exchange a voucher for a free meal each time we go eat together. Guaranteed lifelong friendship. Quickly dropped by record store and comic store. Bought eight CD's (among wich The Blue Nile, a bunch of local stuff, and the Bloc Party EP, yay !) and the Star Wars box set. San Andreas not out yet, have to get it on friday before I leave. Managed to lose my debit card in the record store, but to be fair this time I lost it deep in my wallet. I went back and forth between the two stores three times. I swear/fear I will be my dad very soon. Worked some more and fixed some bugs again after calming the masses stressing out about perceived bugs vs. real bugs, and fixing some network overloading at the office.

Joined the gang for the Sports Wednesday I helped launch. We played volleyball, and I had a blast. Again an opportunity to think about friendship. I realized a) I miss friends like this and one day I will come back home and b) I really need to get my ass in gear and make sure we do similar stuff in Barcelona. So come on Benjamin, let's play some basketball.

I hope the rest of the week will be slightly less disturbing in theme. Kristien, come on down and soothe my fears.

So, a ten day stay back in the land of home. Arrived on Friday. Noticed I had turned ill on Saturday, fever and cold lined with snot. Got up fairly...

Disclaimer: this is a week-old entry blocked by my use of umlauts. Flushing it again...

Weekend

Had a great saturday with people from the other company. We went into the mountains, climbed a bunch of trees, jumped off some platforms, swung from cables, and did all sorts of safe adventury stuff. Lunch was in a typical Catalan restaurant, with wine being served from the special caraffs which have a second neck to drink from. You're supposed to tilt the bottle, getting a very fine flow of wine, and direct it in your mouth, then extend the arm as far as possible without spilling any wine. When you're done, you get the bottle back to your face then stop tilting.

Needless to say, lots of variations on the theme were tried, with the climax being a couple pouring for one another without spilling a drop.

We were happy to have chosen the quad riding for the afternoon. On a quad, no one can tell when you're drunk (Well, except for the poor woman who managed to land her quad off the road TWICE). The other half was not so lucky apparently - one guy managed to fall of a platform during the drunk tree climbing, straight into a bush. And some other guy managed to run fullspeed into a rope he managed to not see, and got catapulted back some ten meters.

Anyways, it was a good preparation for the very same activity at the same place for this weekend, which for obvious reasons (to the parties involved at least) I am not at liberty to discuss any further...

New employee

Fluendo wants to welcome their newest employee. Zoë weighs a good 3.2 kilos and is in perfect health. I'm sure she'll be an excellent asset to the team. Congratulations to the happy mom and dad !

Telefonica

As other inhabitants of Spain can attest, sometimes dealing with Telefonica can be really frustrating. Both phone and ADSL went dead last wednesday. Called on Thursday. They called me back on Friday, saying it was probably a problem in the central switching station. By Saturday, the telephone was fixed, but the ADSL wasn't. Tried to get into the help line for ADSL (since of course that's a different line), keyed in my number, got disconnected with the message that there was no one available to take my call. Called again, keyed in number, got some waiting music and a message saying that everyone was busy. After eight minutes another voice said no one could take my call, and I got disconnected. Sigh.

Apparently Kristien had called as well, since when I got in the lady told me that she called. I was going to get a call back in the next 48 hours from a technician. Tuesday morning, I get a call. What kind of router I use ? A Nokia one. Yes, I'm sure it works. No, it's not one of yours. No, it isn't the fault of the router - it's the third time this year you managed to turn off my phone and ADSL at the same time, so I'm pretty sure it's not our fault. Yes, the phone works again.

Then the guy tells me that the telephone guy turned off ADSL completely in the central station. Why on earth did he want to grill me on the router then ? Anyway, he would have it fixed. During the day Kristien lets me know that it works again. And when I check, I realize that I understand WHY they messed it up in the central station - I had double the download speed as before. So it was all part of Telefonica's cunning plan to give you double the speed in one week and no speed at all the next.

Anyway, I'm happy for this week.

Music

I had been impatiently pining for the new Interpol disc, "Antics". When I finally got it the day it was released, I had two quick cursory listenings to it and was hugely disappointed. Nothing seemed to grab me.

This weekend I gave it another go, and I haven't listened to anything else ever since. There is not a single bad song on this CD. And the emotion I thought lacking at first listen is all there under the surface. I love to be suckerpunched by music that way. Highly recommended.

Food

We finally managed to cook tartiflette, a typical Savoie dish which I love eating on skiing trips. It came out great, we were very impressed with ourselves. So were our guests, Jochen en Kristien. It was better than on ski holidays, though it made me long to have my feet stuck to a snowboard on a white mountain. Jochen made the dessert, impressing me with a stunning pineapple carpaccio with mint and sugar.

On days like this life just feels right.

Disclaimer: this is a week-old entry blocked by my use of umlauts. Flushing it again... Weekend Had a great saturday with people from the other company. We went into the...

Thursday

The past few days in a nutshell. Left home at four in the morning. Was off to a bad start as there was a song on the radio that was beyond crap. The chorus went "Eso sera mi casa cuando me dice adios" or something to that effect, but sung in a wailing voice, pulling out all the stops, and using every trick in the book, including the "half-note-up" trick. To my horror I realized when the next song started that it was a complete CD of this crap. "Has creido en mis mentiras"

My plan for fighting jetlag this time was pretty simple - I'd start sleeping as soon as I was on the second leg of the trip between Milan and Boston. Sadly my plan was thwarted by some strike, causing a 4 hour delay in Milan. Not much point in trying to sleep there. Hacked a little. Got on the plane. Re-read through Code Complete again, but this time in one go, highly recommended. Proofread the GStreamer manual, making notes for later changes. Arrived after eight hours (including the just bearable Starsky and Hutch) Waited around for Ward (Logan airport had working free wireless, yippee), took a shower, stayed up too late hanging around waiting for dinner to get ready. Drive to Meg's place where we were dropped off to stay for the next few days. Sleep.

Friday

Ward and April had planned a Freedom Trail walk at 9 AM. It took us past John Kerry's house. Since we were in the neighbourhood I dropped by the FSF. Their work place looks like a warehouse storage room. I bought some T-shirts and some books. We went to have lunch in one of the greatest inventions ever: a Food Court. After discussing for fifteen minutes before finding it where to go eat, we found this place that allowed each of us to pick whatever the hell we wanted. I started off with sushi, then got myself another helping of honey-roasted chicken, yummy.

I love all the signs in Boston. I don't know if it's typical of Boston or the whole of the US. This is my favourite. You can just see the library council get together and say, "We need a time limit for people sitting on our steps. John is in favour of an hour. Rita says 30 minutes should be enough. What say we split the difference and limit to 45 minutes."

We took one of the tour buses because we talked the driver into letting us on at half the rate. Bostonian transportation officers seem to like ticket cutter machines. In the evening I dropped by Novell, and I realized they shared a building with Akamai. Fons, this shot is for you. I know you'll love it...

Said hi to the hackers still around, including Cave Dave. Got some sneak peeks at NLD and listened to the story of another one of Nat's beautiful pranks. That guy is totally nuts, in the best possible way. Went out for dinner where we got a mountain of pumpkin beer. Interesting.

After that, went to Flat Top Johnny's because that was where the GNOME 2.8 release party was, which after all was my entire reason for being in Boston in the first place. Good to see some of the hackers back. Especially nice to see Colin and John again too, they're interesting to discuss stuff with.

The party was really just shooting pool, drinking and hanging around. So after a few hours, time to go to the pre-wedding party at the house of three friends of April. As I entered some girl said "Oh my god, you really DO look like John Cusack. You are my new boyfriend !" And then she introduced me to her current boyfriend, explaining to him that he just doesn't have the look. OK ...

At 1, time to go back home with Meg - seven of us in a car that barely fits five. And that, as they say, was Friday...

Thursday The past few days in a nutshell. Left home at four in the morning. Was off to a bad start as there was a song on the radio that...

I can't even remember the last time I cried before today. I can make a guess when it was but I can't be sure.
Crying is fine when it's liberating and you can just get it out. It sucks big time when you're forcing yourself to hold it in, and you realize it's caused by something that you have no control over. Sometimes things just happen, and the only thing you can do is find a way to accept it. Wish I wasn't stubborn on the verge of stupid though.

I can't even remember the last time I cried before today. I can make a guess when it was but I can't be sure. Crying is fine when it's liberating...