Ok so here's the story...of a man named Brady!

...nah fuck that.

I'm a console videogame programmer living in San Francisco...or at least I was one until I was laid off in June 2003. Sorry to start on such a sad note, but actually that's when things started to get better.

Not too long after this alteration to my career plans, an old college buddy of mine was off to Europe for a few months to visit friends. As luck would have it, one of her friends on the list was the office manager of a videogame developer in the Netherlands...in Amsterdam specificly. I guess at some point my friend made mention of my predicament to her friend. And as it turned out her friend's company was looking for programmers.

...and the rest was history.

...but not really though (psyche!). I'm in fact not hired yet. As an american, I require both a work and residential permit in order to work in the Netherlands. We're in the process of submitting those documents to the appropriate dutch bureacracies right now, and should get a response sometime in November.
In the meantime, I decided it'd be a good idea to fly over to Amsterdam a couple of months early, to get to know the company, city, as well as the people. If the work and residential permits don't go through, then at least I can say I've had a good summer vacation (which, as a developer in the game industry, you NEVER get to enjoy).

If they do go through, then I suppose I'll have to start some dutch lessons.

That all said, I figured it'd also be a good chance to set up my first web site to document the experience. Yes that's right my first web site....and being that I've watched friends make home pages since 'Netscape' was a university project called 'Mosaic', this is a very sad thing. You could say I've been dragging my feet on the whole thing. So, please excuse the shoddy work, I'm learning!

Enjoy,
SkinnyP

"There are only two things I hate;
those who are intolerant of other people's cultures,
and the DUTCH!" - Nigel Powers

(cheers to Tieg for the quote)