I have an apartment!
I've just made a verbal agreement for an apartment in Den Haag. The Apartment itself is very nice, but it's in a "cheaper" part of the city. A lot of people were warning me against the area, but the current tenant (an Australian originally from Merewether in Newcastle, as a matter of fact) told me that he'd never had any problems, and that it's mostly suburbs on the other side of the train station that are responsible for the area's bad reputation. By European standards the apartment is certainly not cheap at EUR€740/month plus approximately €150/month for water, gas, and electricity.. especially considering that I was sharing a nice apartment with river views for €255 all-up in Passau.. but it's not tooo bad by Sydney standards, and there's a higher population density here. I do have a spare room with a single bed, so it will be good for visitors, or short term sub-leases. But the best thing is that it doesn't have a German style toilet! No shelf!
Thom's kicking me out on Friday because he has another friend arriving (he's been a great sport, though!) and I'm going to travel to Amsterdam and Zwolle on the weekend, meeting up with a dutch friend Willem who I studied German with in Passau. Then I've organised to stay at a workmates place for the week after I arrive back. I'm sorted!
— by Robert Thomson, created 30th Jan, 2007, last modified 30th Jan, 2007 | 1 comment | Tags: World
News from the Nether
I've just finished my second day of work for SHELL. There's a lot of initial "onboarding" to do before I'll get involved in projects. Health and safety is a very big thing here. I'm sleeping on a mattress on Thom's floor, but am looking around for accommodation. I signed up for a bank account on Monday, and if Shell's internal post office doesn't destroy my mail, I should have my card on Friday. It's quite useful to have a bank card in the Netherlands - they're slowly becoming a cashless society. I should also have an automatic overdraft, which will be useful this first month, as I don't want to spend my Australian money when I'll have Euros so soon.. and I'll have to pay two months rent up-front when I find a place to stay.
Somebody within Shell misspelled my name so I'm now known to all as "Robert R Thompson", which makes me cringe.
— by Robert Thomson, created 16th Jan, 2007, last modified 16th Jan, 2007 | Tags: World
I have the contract..
I'm told that the paperwork will be sorted out by the end of today, but I've given the recruiter permission to accept on my behalf based on our discussed rates and start-dates. Now - to find accommodation. I may be one of the better paid homeless in Den Haag.
I'm actually going to stay with Thom May for a couple/few days when I first arrive.. but I don't want to impose so I'll do some frantic apartment hunting. I'll also use this time to get my SOFI (tax file) number, a bank account, and a dutch phone number.
It's quite sad to be leaving Passau, but Passau has no IT industry to speak of, and this is very much the kind of opportunity I was looking for last time I was looking for work in Europe.. but at that time I wasn't prepared to move too far from Passau. I'll probably keep my apartment here for now - I may sublease it, or just give up the lease.. but I've got a reasonable amount of stuff to move, so I'll have to come back and sort through things soon enough.
Update (9 Jan 2007)
I just heard, I start on Monday, and I get the rate I hoped for. I'm dusting off my suitcase as we speak. Farewell dinner/drinks on Wednesday.. probably train on Thursday.
Update (11 Jan 2007)
Leaving tomorrow morning at 11:22am, arriving around 8:30pm.. changing trains once in Frankfurt, and once in Utrecht in the Netherlands. I'm sure I'll be up for a good meal and a beer after that journey.
— by Robert Thomson, created 8th Jan, 2007, last modified 11th Jan, 2007 | Tags: Passau, Tech, World
New Bliki using Django
A few weeks ago I thought I'd jump into the 21st century and check out a web framework or two. I looked at RoR first, and after a little mind-bending I understood it reasonably well. It really requires you to be one with RoR to grok it fully. Shortly after that, however, I noticed the Netherlands contract advertised, which was of course for a Python developer. Since things were going well there, I decided to focus once again on Python.
There are a few interesting web frameworks for Python.. but my eyes fell on Django and I gave it a go. I must say, I'm impressed. It's far less hyped than Rails, and it's really quite simple. I wrote this entire website with under 350 lines of Python code, plus HTML templates. The administrative interface is quite neat, although I wish it were a little more customisable and a little less tied to the database structure. The basics required only 200 lines of code -- comment spam checking, email integration, and custom captcha code took up the rest. It took quite a while to get here, though, as I was learning on the way.
I'm using SQLite, because I really don't need or want anything more. In fact, I still think that a database is overkill for a blog/wiki. I am, however, mildly impressed with the result. I'm also using Markdown (modified) for a more wiki-style of editing.