Back in Iceland

I'm back in Iceland for the holidays, I'm staying for a few days in Reykjavík before moving on to Akureyri. I haven't been in Reykjavík for more than a couple of days for years.

Observations for the first few hours, in no particular order:

• Icelandic customs welcomed me with a search of my luggage. It happens 1/3 times I come here, never happens in Europe. One of the reasons I think this is a somewhat crappy country to live in. "Welcome home, fuck you!"

• Nobody told me that wearing vintage 1920 hats and growing a beard was now fashionable among the arty types in 101 Reykjavík, but it now is. What'll they think of next?

• A common beer costs ~5 EUR at a pub/restaurant. If you're not getting paid in EUR that's more like 10 EUR. Murder!

• You can't get beer in this country at anything but obscene prices except in the government run store. I know this intellectually, but it takes a while to get used to every time.

• I had forgotten what an actual shower felt like after living in Amsterdam for a while. The showers here aren't just like a warm version of standing out in the rain. They're hot and the water actually streams out of the showerhead.

• Icelandic food, what an oxymoron, at least that burger I had.

• It is actually cold over here. It's -2 at the moment.

• Nobody is amazed that I'm from Iceland. This happens in every other country in the world, but not here. What gives?

• The water here is actually good enough that I'll drink it. I have to start buying bottled water in Amsterdam.

• I've been reading Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World by Michael Lewis on Darren's recommendation. I'm 60% through it. The first 1/4 is about the Icelandic collapse, it also covers Greece & Ireland. It's the best account of those collapses I've read yet. This book really needs an Icelandic translation, but it doesn't appear that one exists.

Using the screen(1) stuff command

I use GNU screen a lot to manage pretty much everything I run on my computer, and everything I run on remote systems (well, aside from cron).

When I go into work I spawn a screen which in turns connects to other machines which are also using screen. I didn't know about the stuff command until recently, but now I don't have to manually run e.g. screen -rx to connect to these nested screens, or cd to some directory.

It's really handy.

Moving to Amsterdam

I'll be starting work with booking.com on October 18. I'm flying out to Amsterdam tomorrow on October 13.

I'll be in a temporary apartment Booking.com has arranged for me for the first two weeks while I look for my own place. That's one part of their excellent relocation package, they've really got the process of bringing you into Amsterdam nailed down.

I've got everything I need packed into approximately 30L of a single 60L backback. Just cloathing, my laptop and camera. Everything else I'm either going to rent or buy once I get there.

I'll most likely be getting an apartment to share with Steffen Müller. I'm already in contact with housing agents on the ground that have viewings lined up for me once I get there.

Wish me luck.