Welcome to the great north west!

Yep I’m all over the place or planet. Up to the US again.

So I’m in Seattle (actually I’m in Bellevue) to attend the Hosted Messaging and Collaboration 4.0 Airlift. We flew in last Saturday to get somewhat adoption on the time difference of 9 hours with the Netherlands. Lets first talk weather 😉 We’re Dutch so we either complain about the weather or about the quality of coffee abroad. On Sunday we decided to go to Seattle downtown, I’ve been here before so I’m guiding my colleague around. It was pouring, at home we had a swift 18 degrees and the sun was shinning, but man it was pouring in Seattle. We actually took the Downtown underground tour just to stay dry. Let me just mention that the tour guides are hilarious, they tend to make out of everything and particularly the Seattle rain season (which runs from early March till the end of February). So much for Sunday :-/

The get the utmost out of the Christmas feeling the rain turned in to snow. A lot of snow. Well let me put it this way unfortunately, Seattle in general doesn’t react well to snow. To many hills, to few snow plows, to few drivers who know how to use the ABS in their cars, to many folks who think that the 4-wheel-drive on their jumbo SUV’s will help them stop on ice, etc. So what would you do in that case? Exactly get out of your heated car into the snow and just abandon your leaving it just there,on the middle of the road! Crazy.

So the next day we have an appointment on the Microsoft Campus, yep it’s icy, but he what the heck we’ll take our time to get there . . . .
Found a cabbie willing to take us, drove to the campus, no big a deal, paid the dude, stepped out, cabbie is going, walked to the door, door is closed.
Damned it’s cold outside. So Microsoft issued a warning ‘Campus will be closed today’. Uhhh, so your standing out there, it’s freezing, no reception, no taxi. Who do I have in my mobile:-) So I phone a guy, he’s working at home but he knew (Live Communication Server presence!!!!!) a guy that was actually in the building. Long story short, he let us in, phoned a cab, got back to the hotel, took a left to the bar, so much for another day.

I didn’t mentioned Daniel’s Broiler yet. If you ever end up in Bellevue make sure to get there.

During the Airlift we had two tracks, one focused on techies the other a more commercial direction. Yep, I’m a techie. I’m in building *** on the Microsoft campus. Some time in the afternoon I moved my feet on the carpet and (let my put it this way) made a rather unusual sound 😉 Bummer, does it really be that whet down there. Somewhere in the ceiling of the room next door a water pipe broke. End off session, get out there, go to cafeteria, wondered around and get out.

Get the drift? I’m here some twice a year but never had this much ‘birthday talk’ to take home 😉 

Share this