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| Angelika/Mike Schilli |
Dear friends,
Michael Most of you already know this anyway, but now it's official: Since September 15th, I no longer work for Blaxxun Interactive but for America Online. Back in June, things looked so bleak for Blaxxun at the old company that it seemed like it was almost too late, and Angelika and I were already mentally sitting with one butt cheek on the deportation plane. So, I took my suit and tie out of the closet, coughed a bit because of the dust, rented a car, and went job hunting.
AOL Productions, the group I'm with, is working on new developments for www.aol.com and some other projects for AOL (not everything, there's another department in Virginia, on the East Coast of America, that also develops) consists of about 70 people, all based in San Mateo, 20 miles south of San Francisco. Like everyone else, I sit in a cubicle (partitioned square in an open-plan office) with a PC and an X-terminal. All very nice people, the guy in the cubicle next to mine, Mike Gleeson, sat in front of the screen with sunglasses on all day today - they're all freaks. Besides a Scot who has been living in the US for 20 years, an Englishwoman, and a very Asian-looking Frenchman, I'm the only 'alien' as it's so nicely called in bureaucratic English here. The hardest part for me at the moment is having to chatter in English all day. "How are you?" "Good! How about yourself?" "Good!" "That's great!" It goes on like this all the time, and Americans love to chat.
On Wednesday, there was a company outing to Alcatraz (for those unfamiliar with America: the prison on the island off San Francisco). Although it's a tourist attraction, most of the locals have never been there, just like hardly any Munich residents go to the Hofbräuhaus. When the tour guide there asked where we were from and the guys said in perfect local dialect, "San Mateo!" he was quite surprised and said, "Man, what a drive! Are you tired???
Today was the New Employee Welcome Lunch at TGIF's. That stands for "Thank God it's Friday" and it's a chain that serves really hearty American food, really good.
And I have to program in Java. My job description says: "Very strong understanding of OO-development in Java." Well, that fits perfectly. So, you can expect a Java book soon ...
It's a very relaxed atmosphere: No one (not even the boss) wears a suit or tie or even a button down shirt. On my first day, when I parked my bike downstairs, I was asked if I wanted to bring it up to the office like everyone else - since then, it stays with me during the day - cool. In the morning, I roll it over the carpet in the entrance hall, say "Hello" to the receptionist (the first time she said, "Hey, you got a bike - cool!") and then continue through the rows of cubicles...
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