Most Boring Clips on Google Video

As promised, here is the video clips from our train journey from Fort Worth to Dallas.

Pictures from Fort Worth

And here are the pictures I promised from Fort Worth.

Exploring Dallas

It might be that being European, I'm too used to interesting sights, culture and more lively cities, but I still can't believe that there really isn't much interesting to see in Dallas. In my quest to find interesting places around here, I've been on two "expeditions".

Deep Ellum

The first one was yesterday (Friday) where we finish training a bit earlier than expected, and since the weather wash surprisingly nice I decided to go for a walk. Having looked at one of the maps of the city I've got, I found a place called Deep Ellum. Now this area is describes as, and I quote the map: "A hotbed of jazz in the early 1920's, Deep Ellum now swings with all types of music, plus independently owned restaurants and shops - a trendy, hip and modern area nestled within an old warehouse district.". Sounds good right? Loads of shops, restaurants cafes etc. was the image I had before I went out there. The distance wasn't that bad, I just went downtown and headed east on Main st. I did start to suspect that I should probably have taken a bus, as I slowly moved away from downtown and towards Deep Ellum. However, the weather was nice, there were still a few people in the streets, and I didn't feel too uncomfortable walking around on my own.

When I got to Deep Ellum about 25-30min later, what I found surprised me; the area was completely dead. Sure there are bars and probably swinging clubs of all sorts, but they were closed at that time and probably wouldn't open until a couple of hours later. I didn't notice that many restaurants and the only shops I could find were tattoo parlors. They might very well be independent, but it was surely not what I had expected :) In a way I was glad that most of the bars and clubs were closed, as I'm not really sure if it's a place to be seen or to be stabbed. When I concluded that there wouldn't be anything else to see, I headed back to the hotel with a short detour to the supermarket - believe it or not but I'm fairly tired of eating out breakfast, lunch and dinner. I needed something close to home cooked.

Pictures from Deep Ellum has been uploaded to my Dallas Jan 2007 - 2 Picasa album. By the way, I just read on WikeTravel that if you go to Deep Ellum on a weekday night, you should go in a small group...

Fort Worth

The second expedition was to Fort Worth today. Quite a few people from the office has said that we should definitely see Fort Worth with it's cowboys and stockades, so we were a small group of three people who set out on the 30 miles trip. Getting there wasn't a big problem except that when we checked the train schedules just before leaving the hotel, we found out that it didn't leave until an hour later and when we finally left Dallas it was a fairly boring one hour ride. Just to prove that even the scenery was boring, i shot a few minutes of film with my camera, which I'll try and upload to Google Video at some point.

We had lunch in Fort Worth, saw a bit of downtown, and started walking towards the area with the stockades etc. I had managed to get another map from the reception so we knew in which direction to go. It didn't take us too long though to figure out that walking would take hours, so we luckily got a taxi to take us the last stretch. I'm not sure how long it would actually have taken us, but we quickly decided that we were definitely taking a taxi back to Fort Worth again later.

Almost the first thing we saw was an old style saloon, people with cowboy hats (probably not real Stetsons) so we had arrived at the right place. We started wandering about a bit, and though there was a reasonably amount of cowboy stuff, it was mostly shops trying to sell all sorts of touristy junk. I would guess 90% was complete waste of money with the last 10% being the real deal, that which cowboys might actually buy. I had expected large areas of stockades filled with animals and cowboys, but like so many other things in the US, all of it was just for show. There was a "real" cowboy with hat, boots, spurs and probably also chewing tobacco, but something tells me it's been a while since he last did any real cattle driving. After having wandered about a bit, we actually managed to find a few cows. I would guess there were about 15-20 laying lazily in a small stockade, which seemed to be the only one around. Oh yeah, there was a big bull with huge Texas horns and everything on the street, but that was just one you could mount and have your picture taken with. Again not what I had expected...

Having seen the whole area within an hour or two, we started to look for other activities there might be. There was a cattle drive at 4pm each day (most likely the cattle we saw in the small stockade) where they took a bunch of cattle and drove them around the area, so once again not the real thing but just something to show the tourists. At 8pm there would be a rodeo show with bull riding and everything, but since the weather had turned on us, bringing the temperature quite a bit down, and it was only 3:30, we decided see that some other time. Neither of us were prepared to lounge around for nearly five hours in a place where there was nothing else to see or do except buy tourist junk and eat. Checking the time schedule for the train home, we decided to make a quick run for it and aim at catching the 4pm train. With a bit of luck and some "interesting" driving from the taxi driver we made it to the station just as the train drew up to the platform. After another boring one hour train ride, with nothing to do than look through the pictures from earlier today, document the boring ride and play around with the macro feature on our cameras, we arrived back in Dallas a bit past five.

So far I've got nothing planned for tomorrow, except to go back to Up Town and hang out in the Starbucks cafe and at Borders...

Images from Up Town

For some reason my Picasa iPhoto plugin wouldn't upload more images to the old album, so I've created a new one where the images from Up Town have been placed.

The lively Dallas

I think I might have found the part of Dallas where people actually live and hang out. Since I got a few maps from the reception at the hotel, I've been interested in seeing a part of town called "Up Town". It's marked as a shopping area, so I thought I might be able to find something a bit more interesting than the mall.

The weather was really great on Sunday, probably 13-15 degrees, so I found the small tram/trolley/streetcar that runs from downtown to Up Town. The one I got on was actually from 1920, but had been restored quite nicely, and it got me to Up Town in a fun and relaxing way. Once I got there, I fairly quickly realized that this was a place where people actually live and would hang out on a regular Sunday. The stores wasn't all open when I got there, but I think all of them opened a bit later during the day. The best thing of all though was that Borders was open, and there was a blockbuster close by.

Having walked around a bit, making sure that I've covered the whole area, I went to blockbuster and got a few pre-viewed DVDs and to Borders for a few interesting books. I found one on commodity trading, which will probably come in handy trying to learn this new industry, and one on stock analysis. Probably sounds boring, but they both look very interesting :)

Monday was a tough day though. We started at 8, and sped through inventory, processing and scheduling. I felt a combination of having been run over by a truck and having my head stuffed to the brim :) So much information in such a short day will make everyone feel overwhelmed...

Today is a bit easier, with an overview of Crystal Report XI. Not that different from other types of programs that enables you to specify a certain layout of something.

Better get back to work...I'll upload new pictures from Up Town later...

A Day at The Mall

Even though I got here last Saturday, this feels like the first weekend I'm here. Some of the other guys from work has either flown back home, gone to another city in the US, or arranged to meet up with friends. That left just half of us here at the hotel, with nothing to do basically.

The company will pay for a gym membership, and since we'll be here for a while, we can get a membership card to the local YMCA gym. Given that the "gym" here on the hotel is so tiny, it is a great offer, and I managed to I a card yesterday. I had arranged to go to the gym with one of the Calgary guys, but his bed won the battle of getting up, so he never made it. Anyway, the gym is really nice and fairly large, with a good number of machines, an indoor running track, a large pool, sauna, steam room and probably a lot more. Unfortunately my card wasn't activated, but I got a one-day trail membership and was allowed inside. Having come that far, I was told I should have brought my own lock if I wanted to use the locker room. Of cause I didn't have one, but luckily I could leave my stuff behind the reception counter. After a nice workout, I chose to go back to the hotel and shower, as I wouldn't have a chance to lock my stuff away while showering. The steam room has to wait until Monday.

Besides going to the gym, we've decided to go to a mall a bit north from downtown Dallas. One of the HR girls from work suggested that we go the the North Park Center, and said that it was a place one could easily spend the whole day. I must admit that we were skeptical. We tried to gather as many people as we could, but it ended up just being three of us, the last one being my new boss. Armed with directions we went to the nearest DART light rail station, but managed to miss the first train while we were getting our tickets. Little did we know that it took 20 min before the next train arrived, so we waited patiently at the station.

With about 25-30 min by train and a few minutes on a shuttle bus, we got to the mall. It surely is huge and just finding something for lunch took us a while. There's apparently a hockey type gathering there this weekend, with people selling trading cards, pucks and loads of other hockey stuff. There were a few cups on display, and you could get a picture opportunity with the Stanley Cup, if you were prepared to wait in line for a while. I still don't really know what the Stanley Cup is a trophy for, but it was very popular so I guess I'll look it up at some point. I did get a picture of it, along with a few more from the mall, which I'll upload in a bit.

After having spent an hour and a half walking around the mall (I think I went round the place twice...) we were thoroughly bored. There were loads of clothing shops and shoe stores, but that was about it. There were a few other types of stores like an Apple store and a Dell store (I didn't know Dell has that) but there were no bookstores or music stores or something like that. Since neither of us were looking for clothing, there wasn't really anything for us there, so after having been there about two and a half hours, we decided to go back. Somehow we managed to just miss the shuttle bus back the the light rail station, so once again we waited 20 min.

I was a kind of hoping that there would be a place to buy some movies, so that I could have something else to watch besides HBO, so I decided to get off at station called Mockingbird, where we went for happy hour on Thursday. I was pretty sure I'd seen some shops there, and hoped to find what I was looking for. But no, it was just about five or six shops which provided the exact same things as the shops in the mall had. There were just a lot fewer shops there, so after having spent about 10 min walking around the place, I headed back to the hotel.

When I got the the station near the hotel, there was still a bit of daylight left, so I had a quick walk round the area, in a direction I hadn't been in yet. Amazingly I came across grass, which is something that is really hard to find here in Dallas :) It's either concrete or mud/bare earth all around. The piece of grass I found happened to be the place where Kennedy was shot, so that was two surprises in one go - not bad for a rainy Saturday afternoon.

Now I just need something to do for the rest of the day. Uploading a few pictures won't take long, so I guess I could try and find out what that Stanley Cup is all about :)

Btw: I promised a picture from the 22nd storey. It's also going to be in the latest back of uploaded picture in my Picasa web album

Snow in Dallas

We woke up to the view of snow this morning. Unfortunately I didn't think of taking a picture, perhaps because snow isn't that uncommon to me. To the Texans who made it to the office, it was quite a special thing. Apparently they only have snow every two years or so, and we just happened to get here when it occurred.

Training is getting constantly more challenging, and with the complexity and configurability of the system, it's no wonder we need four weeks to cover everything. Even though we've all got new laptops, and in theory could bring it back with us to the hotel, I haven't done so yet. I've got my trusty mac, and until we get the system and database configured locally on the laptops, I really haven't any need for it. Hopefully we'll have it up and running locally by tomorrow, so it's possible to play around with the system e.g. during the weekend.

I haven't made any plans for the weekend yet, but might go to Uptown which is apparently a shopping area. There are hardly any stores in downtown, besides fast food joints and other lunch places, so it must exist elsewhere. Everything seems to close around 18:00, when most offices will be nearly empty as well, leaving downtown scarily empty and frankly a bit spooky. I did manage to find a supermarket though, so I've finally been able to prepare some food on my own. Given the fact that my room hasn't any oven, hotplates or even cutlery dinner tonight was some simple salad wraps. It was still nice to have something fresh and simple, while at the same time know which ingredients have actually been used.

The trip to the supermarket went ok, but I didn't exactly feel safe in some areas I passed through. I'm glad I got there fairly early (around 18:15) as there were still a bit of life left in the city. A few people were walking their dogs while others were on their way home, but my guess is that the same area is completely drained from life at this hour. The supermarket is about a 15 min walk away, but from the map I've got, it seems I need to travel further away from the hotel to find other types of stores. Uptown is accessed via an old tram which begins it's route about 10 min from the hotel, and I guess it'll take about 5-10 min for it to get to the first part of uptown. Another option is to go to a huge mall op north, possibly the largest mall in Texas, which can be reached by a DART train/tram with a station very close by. It could be interesting to see what's there, and from the description we've got, it's a place where you can easily spend a whole day - should you want to do that :) I'm just imagining a busy shopping mall, on a Saturday where everyone is off work (already sounds like a nightmare to me) filled to the brim with huge Texans and loads of shopping bags...come to think of it, I'm no longer sure I'll go :)

This reminds me of the stereotype questions, and the thing about the size of the Texans and their cars aren't far off. Most Texans would be considered large by European standards, but naturally it varies. There are some skinny people, muscular strongly build people and the obviously obese. The same goes for their cars. Pickups and SUVs seem very popular, and they take a regular sized sedan like the Volvo C70 as a "small car" since it seems a bit of a waste for one person to commute in an SUV. Come to think of it, it's not the same with the cars as it is with the people. I've seen really skinny Texans, but I haven't seen any small cars yet - not even sports cars...

I'll try and remember to bring the camera to work tomorrow, so I can show you a few pictures of Dallas from the 22nd floor :)

First days in Dallas

I made it to Dallas without much to mention. It was a slightly crammed flight with two large ladies besides me, so I was glad I had an isle seat. It wasn't too bad though, and I got through to 11 hours of flight mostly by reading my book.

What caused me most problems was to find some melatonin to help my get over the jet lag. The stuff is not available without prescription in either Denmark or the UK, but it's a food supplement/homeopathic ingredient here in the states - go figure. Having gone through the ingredient list of about a full shelf of products I finally found some chewable pills, they taste horribly but I think they work as they should. I'm almost on Dallas time - or perhaps I've just slept so little the last few days that I've completely ruined my sleeping pattern :)

The hotel here is fairly nice, though a bit dated. The exercise room is tiny and the pool is both outdoors and tiny, but then they have free wireless internet. That kind of balances everything out :) The view isn't great, but at least I can see the building where the company office is, and where I'll be attending training for the next few weeks - see more in my picasa album.

I haven't seen much of Dallas yet, as it's around or below zero degrees and raining - it's simply too cold to venture outside for long. It's not just the city sights I want to see, I'd like to figure out where to buy food etc. I haven't found anything but the pharmacy on the corner. I've only got a microwave oven and a sink, but it would be nice to not have to eat out each and every night. Though the idea sounds promising, you actually get tired of it after a while. Actually, the same goes for "ping diners" (aka prepared meals for the microwave oven; most of them go "ping!" once the time's up)...

One of the things I kind of look forward to, besides starting training, is figuring out if my stereotypic image of Americans (or perhaps more specifically Texans) has any basis at all. So far, most people I've seen here are slightly on the heavy side compared to the average Londoner, and with the amount of parking spaces and car parks just outside the hotel, it's quite evident that they love their cars. Also, I saw a lot of pickups on the way in from the hotel...but still, this is just a few small things that aren't that important in my view - it's more important how the people are, and what it's like being here. So far everyone's been nice, from the guys in the reception to the homeless people I've met, but I still don't feel too comfortable with the idea of just walking around town. That might change once I get more information on the area, and once downtown get filled with people again. It almost seems like the only people here during the weekends are homeless people, tourists, business travelers and those who have to work here. There doesn't seem to be any one living here which is quite a shame; it makes the city seem dead and without much soul.

Enough rambling...it's time to go to bed. I need to be rested for tomorrow :)

A New Year, a New Life

Some people come up with a few new years resolutions, in an attempt to change their life. Though the idea is good, it doesn't always work as most aren't prepared to put in the effort it takes to complete those changes, since it's usually more of an "empty threat" than a real promise to one self...

As you can see I'm back to my random mumbling again - a result of a "resolution" that didn't work out :) I didn't manage to blog as often as I wanted, as I lacked both something to say and the will to pursue the matter.

Anyway, just because this blog hasn't changed (except to return from the dead) loads of other things have; I've not only changed career and place to live but moved to a new country as well! Katrin and I have decided to pack up our stuff and move to London, which is where I am at the moment. Just before xmas, I got a job at Allegro Development as a consultant, with base in London but working on-site at the client most of the time.

This "small" change has had a huge effect, with the most pressing being four weeks of training in Dallas. As I went to London on the 9th, and Katrin won't be here until the 15th of February, we're apart longer than we've ever been before ;( This is quite difficult as we have to resolve to speaking on the phone, and won't be ably to see each other, so it's something I hope we won't have to do again, any time soon.

The trip to Dallas will still be interesting though, as I'm facing a fairly packed program with loads of stuff to learn. I should now a bit of it already, but implementations vary so there's always something new, even in the "old" stuff. The hotel looks nice, and it's just a short walk from the office, but other then that I'm not sure what to expect - except a whole lot of parking lots :). Does anyone doubt that the Texans like their cars?

The last few days have been spent with setting everything up for a new life here in London. I've looked at loads of flats online, and quite a few in real life, and we finally settled on one in Wimbledon yesterday. Hopefully the landlady will agree to the price I've offered. I've also tried to open a bank account and get a credit card, but that seems more difficult than bin laden trying to get a green card to the states! It's almost a catch 22; to get a bank account, I need to show a utility bill with my name on it, but to do that I need to have a place where I need to pay for utilities. Getting that is doable without having specific UK documents etc., but I still need to pay rent etc., which demands a job paying me money, which again requires a bank account for the company to put money in! Hopefully I'll be able to get my salary into my danish bank account, and I can use my danish visa to pay for stuff until I get the fabled utility bill...I know they need a proof of address, but it just seems unnecessarily complex

That's pretty much all for now. My e-mail hasn't changed, but if you want my new phone numbers drop me a line...I'll hopefully be back (with pictures) once I'm in Dallas