first impressions

Hi all,

time to put down some impressions about the U.S. and Pittsburgh in particular.
The weather has been great so far. It was still summer hot when I arrived in late August and the weather stayed like that for quite a while.
Though the temperature has dropped significantly over the last 2 weeks it's still around 20 degrees Celsius. Though we have some rainy days these are mostly followed by several sunny, blue sky days.
Have switched from t-shirts to longsleeve this week but might actually wear sweater or jacket soon.

Coffeeshops: where people from my hometown instantly think of soft drugs shops where you can chill and get high, the American coffeeshops actually are what the name implies :-)
People go there to drink coffee (or tea) and almost everyone brings their laptop and actually use them! Plus it's a good way to be social and 'on the look' compared to being locked up in your office.

Other shops: where ever you go and no matter what you buy, they give you a shitload of bags and they actually pack them as well.
Also, the amount of choice you have for buying something as stupid as cereal is dazzling. Numerous brands, variation, sizes from big to huge to giant to... you get the point.

The food: though I haven't been to McDonalds yet (yes, it's shocking I know!) I went to Subways a few times and had a lot of Italian food. Meaning pizza. Lots of pizza.
But now that I've moved into my own apartment, I'm trying to eat some healthier food. Besides cereal every morning (the bread isn't as good here!) some decent stuff. I've eaten a few American apple pies and no, I haven't tried to enact the infamous scene from the 1st "American pie" movie. You sickos!

Movies/TV: Have been to the cinemas just once so far. Saw "Broken flowers" (by Jim Jarmusch) which stars Bill Murray in a performance which equals his "Lost in translation" acting. To some extent the movie reminded me of "About Schmidt" (with Jack Nicholson) in that both main characters go on a road trip down on memory lane and find out what could have been and what is lost.
Not for the flashy Hollywood-movie lovers but for everyone who enjoys good real life stories it's a very moving picture and well-worth the investment of time/money.
Kudos to Iwan for this tip!

Small world: last Friday we went out for a drink and one of the group members supposedly also came from the Netherlands. Amsterdam to be exact. However, when I met him it soon turned out he originates from Elsloo (Aelse OD!!!) which as some of you know actually a small town conquered by my old hometown Stein. So we talked a bit of Limburgian dialect.
Pretty bizarre to run into someone with roots so close to my mine...

Thanks to my family I got a DVD copy of my public defense from the 22nd of April. Can't bear to watch it really so I've fastforwarded it to the end where I get my PhD hehe.
Would like to put it online but since it's about 3-4 gigabyte so not really tiny. Still have to see how much space we have on our personal CMS-webpage so perhaps I could put it there.

I finally moved into my own place last weekend. It's pretty empty still and the living room is filled with bags (see above where these come from!). Hope to get a vacuum cleaner the upcoming weekend so I do some more cleaning.
It's an old house and the wooden floors are pretty squeacky which noise you can either interpret as charming or as annoying. I can hear my upper neighbour walking through her apartment quite well but this is mostly annoying when I'm in bed sleeping and wake up to the cracking sounds.
Well, my lease is until June 1st 2006 so perhaps by then I'll have grown accustomed to it. But anyway, I guess I'll just have to crank up the volume of my music. When I get a stereo that is.
Pics of my house can be found at http://photobucket.com/albums/a137/Saldiac/Pittsburgh/

While I was working at home last Monday evening I discovered an insecured wireless network so I now have free access to the internet at home. Lovely!

If all goes well I'll have my 1st paycheck tomorrow. Very, very curious how much money that will be. Most of it will go to my landlady to pay 1 month rent and remainder of security deposit.

That will be all for now, not much interesting developments going on just yet.
But no worries, we're still bouncing over here so things will settle down eventually :-)