the story so far…

My original plan was to get civilfritz set up as soon as I got my apartment in New York, and begin logging my experiences there. Though I suppose I have not yet violated that expectation, it seems that I won’t be in a permanent residence, with a regular ISP, for some time. Thus blogspot.

For those who haven’t heard, things at KAUST have not gone as planned. Though I had intended to live in New York for 12-18 months, I was greeted at IBM/Watson with the announcement that I would need to relocate to Saudi Arabia in June, leaving us with less than 30 days to prepare.

We’ve had a couple of difficult days (the worst of which was probably the day we transferred the contents of the U-Haul to a seemingly tiny storage space) but God has definitely been there with us. This was what we wanted, after all: to be challenged.

We’ve been through three separate hotels so far, including less than 12 hours in an Extended Stay America, but we finally have a wonderful room at the Marriott Westchester Residence Inn in White Plains. It’s a 10 minute walk to the train station, which has been wonderful.

We found a surprisingly great church in the area our first Sunday here: the First Community Church of the Nazarene. I seem to be destined to attend an ethnically-centered church: this time it’s an all-black congregation that is, apparently, mostly Jamaican (or otherwise Caribbean). The minister and his wife sought us out, though, and took us on a tour of Westchester County (including the Pepsi Headquarters), terminating at a seaside restaurant in Stamford, Connecticut.

Shaun came for a quick weekend visit (from New Mexico) to see us off before we leave the country. We spent a day in the city, including a lot of wandering about in the subway and a riverboat cruise around Liberty Island.

Work at IBM/KAUST has been a hectic cross-section of paperwork, IT, and meetings so far, including two days of meetings with the KAUST CIO, John Larson. It’s all gone respectably well so far, and I’m excited to get to Thuwal so I can start building things that matter long-term. Until then, though, it’s back to the 32-node Linux cluster, and more paperwork to get a visa for Saudi Arabia.