Many companies in the world have tried to do Research and Development (R&D), but have failed to do this effectively. There are few companies left who have the budgets to keep a R&D facilities (Microsoft, IBM, HP, to name a few). Look what happened to Xerox Parc, Xerox' golden R&D facility in the eighties. Look at Bell Labs, Ma Bell's R&D facility since the twenties. Look at Bellcore, the Baby Bell's R&D facility, after the breakup of Ma Bell. And, look at NYNEX Science & Technology, the R&D facility of the former NYNEX Baby Bell company (now Verizon), where we started working on the Brahms Multi-Agent Modeling and Simulation environment in the early nineties. Gone are they!
Companies create a R&D center, let researchers go at it for a while, after which they realize that researchers are expensive and don't create many useful products for the company. Consequently, the R&D is stopped, because "outsourcing" R&D seems to be more lucrative.
NASA has an opportunity to do it different. NASA Ames Research Center is truly one of the best places where a computer scientist, interested in Space Exploration, can work. The thrill is to be able to do both basic research when needed, but then to move your research into mission operations as well. In the first seven years being at NASA Ames (1998 - 2005) we received plenty of research funding to develop our Brahms environment. I finished my Ph.D, we did many Planetary Exploration Expeditions to Haughton Crater on Devon Island in the High Arctic, Meteor Crater in the Arizona desert, and the Four Corner region, near Hanksville in Utah (I have the T-shirt that says "Where the hell is Hanksville?"). We were able to develop Brahms as both a simulation environment, testing it out on the Mars Exploration Rover mission at JPL, as well as a real-time Agent-Oriented Language to develop distributed multi-agent systems (MAS) for planetary exploration.
We integrated our agents with speech dialogue, bio-sensors, GPS, digital mapping, semantic web databases, wide-area wireless networks over many kilometers in the desert having agents sent e-mails, digital voicenotes, pictures downloaded from normal digital cameras, and panoramas from robot cameras to people in Buffalo, New York, San Diego, CA, Milton Keynes, UK, and Canberra, Australia. It was cool work, new, innovative. Way before Google existed, let alone was able to think about Google Maps or Google Earth, we were already tracking people and robots, linking images and digital voice notes, all real time, via GPS in the Utah and Arizona desert. Basic and applied research is what we did, over a seven year period. Very cool and a blast to do.
Then, Mike Griffin became NASA's new administrator. My $15 million research project got cancelled after only 6 months of the 4 years. Devastated we were. NASA had to get a new focus, a real objective to work towards. Mars was out, the Moon was in. Back to the Moon we will go, Griffin said. Humans and robots exploring Mars was a topic we weren't allowed to work on anymore. Ok, so now what? Science is out, engineering is in!!
Our first reaction, as is still the issue for the hard sciences at NASA (planetary science, Earth science, Astrobiology, etc), was that we are researchers, not engineers. Wrong we were. You had two choices; 1) Leave, which a lot of our computer science colleagues did. To Google, next door, they went. Funny, although they didn't want to develop tools for Space Missions at NASA, they now have titles like "Quality of Search." They are doing cool work at Google, don't get me wrong, but researchers they are no more; 2) You can stay and see what this new mission brings.
Staying, we did, and with some success, although it didn't come easy. We lost our research funding and had to go and "sell" our technology to the operations centers (Johnson Space Center, Kennedy Space Center, and Jet Propulsion Lab). Successful the TI division at Ames has been in doing this. In our case, we are now getting very close of having our Brahms environment automate some of the flight controller's work process at JSC's Mission Control (you know, from "Houston we have a problem!"). Sixteen years we have worked on Brahms, starting in 1992 at NYNEX Science & Technology. From basic research (I even was able to write my doctoral thesis on Brahms) to now automating parts of NASA's Mission Control.
As I tell my friends, how many people can say that they have helped develop systems for NASA's Mission Control, let alone, how many researchers can say they have done research for 15 years and now their work helps NASA to do space missions?
It is but a small step for mankind, but a huge victory for the Brahms team :-)
To everyone who reads this and who has worked on Brahms at one point or another (you know who you are), we are planning to give a huge party after Brahms goes live in Mission Control. When this is is anybody's guess at the moment of writing this. The plan is before end of July this year (2008), but many software control boards have to be passed, before we are able to claim victory. I will keep you all posted.
I will end by saying that I think NASA has the opportunity here to get the benefits of years of research that they funded. I am convinced that successful R&D can be done by funding research in phases, and then switch to fund bringing the research into operations. This is true R&D. Seven research years, followed by two to four development years. Then, go back to research. Back and forth. NASA can show industry how it is done ... I'll be even more stronger in saying that NASA *is* showing industry how it should be done.
The American tax payers should demand that Congress stops funding useless Pentagon projects, and give some of that wasted money to NASA. This, my friends will give a return on investment that the future generations can be proud off.
On to the Moon we will go, and beyond ...
Monday, February 18, 2008
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Ode to Kurt Vonnegut ...
It’s a beautiful Sunday morning. I woke up to go for a mountain bike ride, but remembered that I bought a book by Kurt Vonnegut yesterday, and I suddenly felt compelled to turn on some nice soothing music, make myself coffee and sit in the backyard reading Kurt’s book on this beautiful Sunday morning. What a treat.
I wonder who won the Tour de France this morning. Since we are nine hours behind, they must have passed the Arc de Triomphe some time ago already. While I was deciding not to go bike riding, they must have been passing the finish line. Just as well, no way in hell would I have won this etappe.
Back to my wonderful morning sitting in my backyard reading Kurt’s last novel, biography, science fiction, satire, poetry, and epitaph about the dark side of the world, better known as Homo Sapiens.
Kurt Vonnegut, in memoriam, was a man without a country, just as the title of his last book suggests. A funny and optimistic book, but just as much a sad and pessimistic autobiography about his life, his fears and joys, and his views on America and the people that are, in his eyes, destroying it and the world as a whole. An atheist with more morals and less prejudices than the Pope himself.
Funny, this is the second writer I have stumbled upon in the past couple of weeks who writes very eloquently about topics I relate to so emphatically. The other one is Pierre Bayle, one of the forefathers of my pedigree. My mother’s maiden name is Bayle, although her side of the family ended up putting an accent aigu on the ‘e’ at the end, which I am sure was done to help solve the age-old problem of the correct pronunciation of the name Bayle.
Both Bayle and Vonnegut were men that wrote about tolerance. Tolerance the world, since the 17th century and before, has not known. They wrote about tolerance of religion, the poor, the sick and innocent, instead of the powerful billionaires, politicians, and their cronies. Funny, both men are known as atheists, those of us known as people without a belief in deities, although Bayle never proclaimed himself as one. Funny, in the sense that atheists, at least in the US, are often said to be people who do not have any morals. Here are two world famous writers, although granted that most people will have no idea who Pierre Bayle is (for a refresher see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Bayle), who seemingly were against organized religion, but in their writings always wrote about tolerance and love for people. Funny, that both men died disliking the human race, having been disappointed by their fellow citizens, or better, those who were the most powerful citizens in their time.
How ironic, that I decided to miss my Tour de Pleasanton Ridge on this beautiful Sunday morning to read about the evilness of the Homo Sapiens destroying all we know as living creatures, by destroying our planet Earth. How ironic that I could have been enjoying mother Earth on the ridge, or what is left of it, but instead was enjoying myself reading about Kurt’s misery in knowing that we are destroying it.
Even the Tour de France is being destroyed over time. That, what once was one of the most exciting sport events to watch, has now been destroyed by drugs, doctors and the media, let alone the riders themselves. Evil doing is what human nature is all about. Just look around the world today.
If you don’t believe me, which I can understand, just read Kurt Vonnegut’s last book “A man without a country.” It is short enough that you can finish it, in your backyard, on a beautiful Sunday morning.
I wonder who won the Tour de France this morning. Since we are nine hours behind, they must have passed the Arc de Triomphe some time ago already. While I was deciding not to go bike riding, they must have been passing the finish line. Just as well, no way in hell would I have won this etappe.
Back to my wonderful morning sitting in my backyard reading Kurt’s last novel, biography, science fiction, satire, poetry, and epitaph about the dark side of the world, better known as Homo Sapiens.
Kurt Vonnegut, in memoriam, was a man without a country, just as the title of his last book suggests. A funny and optimistic book, but just as much a sad and pessimistic autobiography about his life, his fears and joys, and his views on America and the people that are, in his eyes, destroying it and the world as a whole. An atheist with more morals and less prejudices than the Pope himself.
Funny, this is the second writer I have stumbled upon in the past couple of weeks who writes very eloquently about topics I relate to so emphatically. The other one is Pierre Bayle, one of the forefathers of my pedigree. My mother’s maiden name is Bayle, although her side of the family ended up putting an accent aigu on the ‘e’ at the end, which I am sure was done to help solve the age-old problem of the correct pronunciation of the name Bayle.
Both Bayle and Vonnegut were men that wrote about tolerance. Tolerance the world, since the 17th century and before, has not known. They wrote about tolerance of religion, the poor, the sick and innocent, instead of the powerful billionaires, politicians, and their cronies. Funny, both men are known as atheists, those of us known as people without a belief in deities, although Bayle never proclaimed himself as one. Funny, in the sense that atheists, at least in the US, are often said to be people who do not have any morals. Here are two world famous writers, although granted that most people will have no idea who Pierre Bayle is (for a refresher see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Bayle), who seemingly were against organized religion, but in their writings always wrote about tolerance and love for people. Funny, that both men died disliking the human race, having been disappointed by their fellow citizens, or better, those who were the most powerful citizens in their time.
How ironic, that I decided to miss my Tour de Pleasanton Ridge on this beautiful Sunday morning to read about the evilness of the Homo Sapiens destroying all we know as living creatures, by destroying our planet Earth. How ironic that I could have been enjoying mother Earth on the ridge, or what is left of it, but instead was enjoying myself reading about Kurt’s misery in knowing that we are destroying it.
Even the Tour de France is being destroyed over time. That, what once was one of the most exciting sport events to watch, has now been destroyed by drugs, doctors and the media, let alone the riders themselves. Evil doing is what human nature is all about. Just look around the world today.
If you don’t believe me, which I can understand, just read Kurt Vonnegut’s last book “A man without a country.” It is short enough that you can finish it, in your backyard, on a beautiful Sunday morning.
Monday, July 16, 2007
The Last Night ...
It's been fun. Today is our last day, and while I am watching a replay of the Copa America final between Brazil and Argentina on tv, I finally have a moment to write a message for my blog.
What a couple of weeks it has been. Appropriately it is storming and raining outside in Rotterdam. Our vacation weather has been mostly cloudy and rainy, although it has not been cold which is always a plus in Holland. In my Lonely Planet about The Netherlands one of the people interviewed about Amsterdam, who was asked about what he thought was the worst about Amsterdam, said “The rain in the winter, and the winter rain in the summer.” Indeed, we can’t argue with that.
Nevertheless, our father-daughter vacation trip has been a lot of fun. We have done almost everything we set out to do; we went to Berlin, as you can read in the blog entry below, then we went camping for a long weekend with lots of friends in the Belgium Ardennes, a beautiful part of Belgium with the lovely Maas river that ends in Rotterdam and the side river the Lesse, then we went to Oma in Eersel and biked through the forest, after which we went to Amsterdam for two days where we again rented bikes as our mode of transportation. Oh, I even forgot to mention our one-day side trip to Brugge and Antwerpen on Flanders day. Then, as one of the highlights, on Saturday night in Rotterdam we went to the North Sea Jazz Festival. What an event. The rest of this last weekend Megan spent mostly with the family Schox, our good friends from way back when we lived in Capelle a/d IJssel. Today, as our last day we went to visit Amersfoort, my roots in Holland, if I can speak of having roots anywhere in the world. This was a short trip through memory lane that I could share with Megan. We met with old neighbors of almost 40 years ago. We visited our old house, the bedroom my sister Elisabeth was born, and my first soccer club AFC Quick and my first tennis club Flehite. We are tired but very satisfied.
So, what have we learned? It is hard to describe. Of course, Megan’s experiences have been different than mine. What Megan has learned I can best describe from the different little things she has said to me during our trip:
“If we could do this in America [going to a bar and having a drink whenever a teenager wants] we would not be so bored in the US.”
“Can I have a Smirnoff Ice? … oh, if you don’t have that, just do a bitter lemon with vodka.”
“When I am back, I am going to bike more.”
“Wow, this is so cool, just buying bongs and hash pipes in the street, as if it is very normal. This is so weird.”
“Do it without tobacco and yes, can you please role it for me?”
“and … can I have a cappuccino with that?
“I like that [Dutch people] always have breakfast and dinner together …”
And, what about me? What have I learned from this? Well, first and foremost I have learned that my daughter is a quiet person, a cerebral person who keeps her thoughts to herself, unless you ask. She is a person who has a wide interest and who can enjoy the simple things in life, the particular Dutch things, as well as the beautiful and dark history of Europe. She likes to read, finishing three very thick books and half way done with Harry Potter’s Order of The Phoenix (which she intends to finish by the time we land at SFO, so she can see the movie). I can go on and on mentioning wonderful qualities, but in short she is a great and easy person to travel with. I have great respect for her and am surprised that an eighteen-year can be so grown up.
To end, a last word to Megan, my travel partner and daughter: Thanks Megan for taking this trip with me, even though you had a hard time leaving. Thanks for all the wonderful memories, the laughs, the bike rides, the evenings together, the breakfasts in the morning together and the goodnights when we went to sleep. I will never forget this trip and I hope you will not either. I am very proud of you, as a father should be, and I hope that this trip has given you food for thought about being Dutch, an European, and an American at the same time. I hope it has shown you the differences and the similarities between these two continents of the Western world. I also hope it has shown you how wonderful it is, and how privileged you are to belong to both. It has made you who you are and knowing both sides of the Atlantic will make you a better person. I also thank you for your patience with me, the things I forced you to see and the people I made you say hi to. I love you always.
What a couple of weeks it has been. Appropriately it is storming and raining outside in Rotterdam. Our vacation weather has been mostly cloudy and rainy, although it has not been cold which is always a plus in Holland. In my Lonely Planet about The Netherlands one of the people interviewed about Amsterdam, who was asked about what he thought was the worst about Amsterdam, said “The rain in the winter, and the winter rain in the summer.” Indeed, we can’t argue with that.
Nevertheless, our father-daughter vacation trip has been a lot of fun. We have done almost everything we set out to do; we went to Berlin, as you can read in the blog entry below, then we went camping for a long weekend with lots of friends in the Belgium Ardennes, a beautiful part of Belgium with the lovely Maas river that ends in Rotterdam and the side river the Lesse, then we went to Oma in Eersel and biked through the forest, after which we went to Amsterdam for two days where we again rented bikes as our mode of transportation. Oh, I even forgot to mention our one-day side trip to Brugge and Antwerpen on Flanders day. Then, as one of the highlights, on Saturday night in Rotterdam we went to the North Sea Jazz Festival. What an event. The rest of this last weekend Megan spent mostly with the family Schox, our good friends from way back when we lived in Capelle a/d IJssel. Today, as our last day we went to visit Amersfoort, my roots in Holland, if I can speak of having roots anywhere in the world. This was a short trip through memory lane that I could share with Megan. We met with old neighbors of almost 40 years ago. We visited our old house, the bedroom my sister Elisabeth was born, and my first soccer club AFC Quick and my first tennis club Flehite. We are tired but very satisfied.
So, what have we learned? It is hard to describe. Of course, Megan’s experiences have been different than mine. What Megan has learned I can best describe from the different little things she has said to me during our trip:
“If we could do this in America [going to a bar and having a drink whenever a teenager wants] we would not be so bored in the US.”
“Can I have a Smirnoff Ice? … oh, if you don’t have that, just do a bitter lemon with vodka.”
“When I am back, I am going to bike more.”
“Wow, this is so cool, just buying bongs and hash pipes in the street, as if it is very normal. This is so weird.”
“Do it without tobacco and yes, can you please role it for me?”
“and … can I have a cappuccino with that?
“I like that [Dutch people] always have breakfast and dinner together …”
And, what about me? What have I learned from this? Well, first and foremost I have learned that my daughter is a quiet person, a cerebral person who keeps her thoughts to herself, unless you ask. She is a person who has a wide interest and who can enjoy the simple things in life, the particular Dutch things, as well as the beautiful and dark history of Europe. She likes to read, finishing three very thick books and half way done with Harry Potter’s Order of The Phoenix (which she intends to finish by the time we land at SFO, so she can see the movie). I can go on and on mentioning wonderful qualities, but in short she is a great and easy person to travel with. I have great respect for her and am surprised that an eighteen-year can be so grown up.
To end, a last word to Megan, my travel partner and daughter: Thanks Megan for taking this trip with me, even though you had a hard time leaving. Thanks for all the wonderful memories, the laughs, the bike rides, the evenings together, the breakfasts in the morning together and the goodnights when we went to sleep. I will never forget this trip and I hope you will not either. I am very proud of you, as a father should be, and I hope that this trip has given you food for thought about being Dutch, an European, and an American at the same time. I hope it has shown you the differences and the similarities between these two continents of the Western world. I also hope it has shown you how wonderful it is, and how privileged you are to belong to both. It has made you who you are and knowing both sides of the Atlantic will make you a better person. I also thank you for your patience with me, the things I forced you to see and the people I made you say hi to. I love you always.
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Checkpoint Charlie, Bike riding in Berlin ...
Yesterday was a highlight. The day started with a blue sky we hadn´t seen in Europe since our arrival. We walked to the old Check Point Charlie, the place where East met West. Strange to realize that we are staying in "East Berlin," in one of the world´s most well-known hotel chains and names associated with capitalism ... The Hilton.
As a teenager in Holland I had often wondered about going to Berlin. I remember a well-known movie about heroin use and teenage prostitution in Berlin. I forget the name, but it played in and around Zoo Bahnhof (maybe that was the name). I never felt a particular drive to go to Berlin. Riding a train 300km into East Germany somehow didn´t appeal to me.
Now, standing at the old "point of no return" into the Iron Curtain, I felt I had missed an incredible opportunity. Embarrasment is what I feel. How can I have not gone there to personally experience this failure of German history and in some sense German society. Today, the day after going to Checkpoint Charlie, Megan and I met this wonderful couple from Norfolk, VA., who had been to East Berlin via Checkpoint Charlie in 1962, the year I was born. They had been there, but I, who grew up in Europe, never experienced this divide between East and West.
We went to the Checkpoint Charlie museum. Well worth the time. I remember the stories in the news about people fleeing East Berlin over or underneath the wall. Amazing this human drive to freedom.
Then, on advice by Oma Sierhuis, we rented bikes near Checkpoint Charlie. We spent the afternoon riding our bikes through Berlin. The weather was good, and it was a great experience. We biked by the Reichstag, through the Tiergarten to the Zoo. Then around Kurfurstendam all the way back. I even got a flat tire at the Potzdam, but a extremely nice German with a bike taxi helped fix the flat, and we were on our way within 10 minutes. What a random act of kindness. Thanks to this nice guy.
Today we spent the entire afternoon roaming the German History Museum. Wow, what a history these Germans have had. We wonder how it feels to be German with this kind of history. I often feel bad about being Dutch and the "invention" of slavery, but this seems small against the start of two world wars in less than 20 years ... it is not a nice picture, and it makes us wonder how the German youth of today feels about their country´s history.
Tonight is our last night before we go back.
As a teenager in Holland I had often wondered about going to Berlin. I remember a well-known movie about heroin use and teenage prostitution in Berlin. I forget the name, but it played in and around Zoo Bahnhof (maybe that was the name). I never felt a particular drive to go to Berlin. Riding a train 300km into East Germany somehow didn´t appeal to me.
Now, standing at the old "point of no return" into the Iron Curtain, I felt I had missed an incredible opportunity. Embarrasment is what I feel. How can I have not gone there to personally experience this failure of German history and in some sense German society. Today, the day after going to Checkpoint Charlie, Megan and I met this wonderful couple from Norfolk, VA., who had been to East Berlin via Checkpoint Charlie in 1962, the year I was born. They had been there, but I, who grew up in Europe, never experienced this divide between East and West.
We went to the Checkpoint Charlie museum. Well worth the time. I remember the stories in the news about people fleeing East Berlin over or underneath the wall. Amazing this human drive to freedom.
Then, on advice by Oma Sierhuis, we rented bikes near Checkpoint Charlie. We spent the afternoon riding our bikes through Berlin. The weather was good, and it was a great experience. We biked by the Reichstag, through the Tiergarten to the Zoo. Then around Kurfurstendam all the way back. I even got a flat tire at the Potzdam, but a extremely nice German with a bike taxi helped fix the flat, and we were on our way within 10 minutes. What a random act of kindness. Thanks to this nice guy.
Today we spent the entire afternoon roaming the German History Museum. Wow, what a history these Germans have had. We wonder how it feels to be German with this kind of history. I often feel bad about being Dutch and the "invention" of slavery, but this seems small against the start of two world wars in less than 20 years ... it is not a nice picture, and it makes us wonder how the German youth of today feels about their country´s history.
Tonight is our last night before we go back.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Unter den Linden ...
A quick update from the Berlin Hilton. We arrived yesterday afternoon after a six hour train ride from Amsterdam. It rained most of the day. We were upgraded to the executive floor in the Hilton ... nice! The privileges of being a Hilton Honnors member pays off :-)
To our big surprise, my good friend Alessandro Acquisti is in Berlin as well. He joined us last night and we went out to the Scheunenviertel neighborhood for dinner and drinks. This is a lively area with lots of trandy bars and restaurants. It´s the old Jewish area in Berlin and lays in the old East Berlin. Megan wanted to eat pasta (what else?) and we found a great Italian restaurant called El Dente. Even Alessandro, who in principle doesn´t like Italian restaurants outside Italy, was impressed. Afterwards we walked around and had a beer before we went back to the hotel at around 1:30am. A very nice evening indeed.
Today Megan and I will rent bikes and will bike around Berlin. NOt sure yet where we will end up.
To our big surprise, my good friend Alessandro Acquisti is in Berlin as well. He joined us last night and we went out to the Scheunenviertel neighborhood for dinner and drinks. This is a lively area with lots of trandy bars and restaurants. It´s the old Jewish area in Berlin and lays in the old East Berlin. Megan wanted to eat pasta (what else?) and we found a great Italian restaurant called El Dente. Even Alessandro, who in principle doesn´t like Italian restaurants outside Italy, was impressed. Afterwards we walked around and had a beer before we went back to the hotel at around 1:30am. A very nice evening indeed.
Today Megan and I will rent bikes and will bike around Berlin. NOt sure yet where we will end up.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
The rain in Holland falls mainly on the plane ....
It feels like home, when it rains in Holland. We finally have arrived. It's Sunday morning and just finished talking to my wife over Skype. Megan has been talking over Skype to her boyfriend all night, and finally went to sleep around 7am.
Funny, when people use IM it's ok to be multi-tasking, answering once in a while, while you're reading e-mail or doing something else on your computer, like writing in your Blog. But, it is different when you're on Skype talking to each other. Then, multi-tasking becomes a problem. The other person is saying something, while your mind is doing something else and you don't hear the whole sentence. You say "what?" too many times and the person on the other end becomes annoyed with you, because you're seemingly not paying attention to what they are saying.
Today is our second day in Rotterdam. Megan and I arrived yesterday afternoon around 3pm. It was quite a trip. When I woke up Friday morning at 7am in California I immediately looked at the Continental website to see if our flight at 11:45am was delayed. And, yes, of course, it was. It was already delayed till 12:38pm, arriving in Houston at 6:30pm, while our flight to Amsterdam was still leaving on time at 7:10pm. I panicked, because 40 mins to change planes with the huge possibility that it would land even later, I was certain we would miss our connection in Houston for a second time. I immediately called Continental. All other earlier flights from the Bay Area to Houston (SFO, Oakland, San Jose) were booked solid. Get to the airport to go on standby on an earlier flight was the advice. So, we hurried and left the house by 8:45am. In the end, we didn't get on an earlier flight and we left SFO at 12:38pm exactly. I had learned that our A'dam flight would leave two gates down from our arrival gate, so if things would work according to plan, we would arrive just in time to get on to the next flight. Iff, that is "if and only if."
Around 5:45pm local Houston time, the captain came on the intercom; "Ladies and gentlemen, we were just told by the Houston tower that we need to go into a holding pattern around Houston, and we will be landing around 6:45pm. Sit back, relax, and we will be on the ground shortly." What? I gasped. Sit back and relax? Are you kidding me? These [bleep] [bleep] are going to make us miss our flight again, and we will be stuck the entire night in Houston. Crap!! I knew it, this is going to be the trip from hell. Somehow, I relaxed. Where I would have freaked out when I was younger, at middle age I am able to take things more as they come. Oh well, whatever. If we miss it, we'll just get a hotel and stay the night. No biggie.
This seemed to have saved us, although, I don't believe in these things. We landed at 6:40pm and were at the gate around 6:50pm. We got out and ran to the next gate, where to my surprise our Amsterdam flight was delayed until 7:38pm. Excellent, even time to get a coffee at Starbucks!! From then on things went smoothly. I got on the plane using my brand spanking new US passport, and Megan got into Holland with her brand spanking new Dutch passport. How fortunate we are. The immediate benefit of having dual citizenship is the fact that you can use the shortest and fastest lanes at immigration at all times. When arriving in Europe, we can take the "European Union citizens" line, and when we arrive back in the U.S. of A. we can take the US. Citizenship line. Eventhough we had landed about an hour late, we were at the train station in Schiphol in less than 30 minutes after landing. Now, just buy a train ticket to Rotterdam, call my sister to let her know we are on our way, and hop on the train.
"The next train to Rotterdam is in three minutes from platform 6!!" "What? Megan, run, while I call aunt Elisabeth." I knew taking my tent, sleeping bags, mattresses, etc, etc, was going to be a pain taking the train, and indeed I was huffing and puffing dragging my big duffel bag, my backpack and my always too heavy computer bag across the platform. Toot toot, huf, puf, tschh ... there went the Rotterdam train, right before our noses. For God sake, planes and trains are always late, but of course, not at this moment. Away it went. Next train, 30 minutes later.
We arrived in Rotterdam, got to Elisabeth's and had a wonderful dinner together with Oma (my mother), uncle Belly (my brother Jan) and prima Elijah (Jan's son), who had arrived from Curacao the day before, and aunt Elisabeth. A nice family Sierhuis gathering in rainy Rotterdam. It's not very often that this group of people is together for dinner. It's something special for us. Well worth the long trip from sunny California. After dinner, around 11pm local time, Megan was ready to go to the local Dutch kroeg (pub) around the corner. A typical Dutch Saturday night event. For Megan her first time sitting at a bar with a drink, without it being illegal. What a great feeling for both her and me. It will probably sound silly to anyone reading this, but I felt content and a sense of pride sitting with my eighteen-year old daughter at the bar in Rotterdam, the city she was born in eighteen years ago, drinking a beer. Back to our roots. Nice!!!
Funny, when people use IM it's ok to be multi-tasking, answering once in a while, while you're reading e-mail or doing something else on your computer, like writing in your Blog. But, it is different when you're on Skype talking to each other. Then, multi-tasking becomes a problem. The other person is saying something, while your mind is doing something else and you don't hear the whole sentence. You say "what?" too many times and the person on the other end becomes annoyed with you, because you're seemingly not paying attention to what they are saying.
Today is our second day in Rotterdam. Megan and I arrived yesterday afternoon around 3pm. It was quite a trip. When I woke up Friday morning at 7am in California I immediately looked at the Continental website to see if our flight at 11:45am was delayed. And, yes, of course, it was. It was already delayed till 12:38pm, arriving in Houston at 6:30pm, while our flight to Amsterdam was still leaving on time at 7:10pm. I panicked, because 40 mins to change planes with the huge possibility that it would land even later, I was certain we would miss our connection in Houston for a second time. I immediately called Continental. All other earlier flights from the Bay Area to Houston (SFO, Oakland, San Jose) were booked solid. Get to the airport to go on standby on an earlier flight was the advice. So, we hurried and left the house by 8:45am. In the end, we didn't get on an earlier flight and we left SFO at 12:38pm exactly. I had learned that our A'dam flight would leave two gates down from our arrival gate, so if things would work according to plan, we would arrive just in time to get on to the next flight. Iff, that is "if and only if."
Around 5:45pm local Houston time, the captain came on the intercom; "Ladies and gentlemen, we were just told by the Houston tower that we need to go into a holding pattern around Houston, and we will be landing around 6:45pm. Sit back, relax, and we will be on the ground shortly." What? I gasped. Sit back and relax? Are you kidding me? These [bleep] [bleep] are going to make us miss our flight again, and we will be stuck the entire night in Houston. Crap!! I knew it, this is going to be the trip from hell. Somehow, I relaxed. Where I would have freaked out when I was younger, at middle age I am able to take things more as they come. Oh well, whatever. If we miss it, we'll just get a hotel and stay the night. No biggie.
This seemed to have saved us, although, I don't believe in these things. We landed at 6:40pm and were at the gate around 6:50pm. We got out and ran to the next gate, where to my surprise our Amsterdam flight was delayed until 7:38pm. Excellent, even time to get a coffee at Starbucks!! From then on things went smoothly. I got on the plane using my brand spanking new US passport, and Megan got into Holland with her brand spanking new Dutch passport. How fortunate we are. The immediate benefit of having dual citizenship is the fact that you can use the shortest and fastest lanes at immigration at all times. When arriving in Europe, we can take the "European Union citizens" line, and when we arrive back in the U.S. of A. we can take the US. Citizenship line. Eventhough we had landed about an hour late, we were at the train station in Schiphol in less than 30 minutes after landing. Now, just buy a train ticket to Rotterdam, call my sister to let her know we are on our way, and hop on the train.
"The next train to Rotterdam is in three minutes from platform 6!!" "What? Megan, run, while I call aunt Elisabeth." I knew taking my tent, sleeping bags, mattresses, etc, etc, was going to be a pain taking the train, and indeed I was huffing and puffing dragging my big duffel bag, my backpack and my always too heavy computer bag across the platform. Toot toot, huf, puf, tschh ... there went the Rotterdam train, right before our noses. For God sake, planes and trains are always late, but of course, not at this moment. Away it went. Next train, 30 minutes later.
We arrived in Rotterdam, got to Elisabeth's and had a wonderful dinner together with Oma (my mother), uncle Belly (my brother Jan) and prima Elijah (Jan's son), who had arrived from Curacao the day before, and aunt Elisabeth. A nice family Sierhuis gathering in rainy Rotterdam. It's not very often that this group of people is together for dinner. It's something special for us. Well worth the long trip from sunny California. After dinner, around 11pm local time, Megan was ready to go to the local Dutch kroeg (pub) around the corner. A typical Dutch Saturday night event. For Megan her first time sitting at a bar with a drink, without it being illegal. What a great feeling for both her and me. It will probably sound silly to anyone reading this, but I felt content and a sense of pride sitting with my eighteen-year old daughter at the bar in Rotterdam, the city she was born in eighteen years ago, drinking a beer. Back to our roots. Nice!!!
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