Zoet zoet Eindhoven

To celebrate the next big change in our lives, we will be writing this post together, as there are many exciting things that have been happening...definitely not just because we're behind on several topics we've been excited to talk about for a long time. 😅

Eindhoven

As Brought to you by Emily

The largest city in the southern province, known for being a hub of technology and innovation, birthplace of the company Philips, home of the UFO-shaped Evoluon building, host of Dutch Design Week, and our new home.
"Eind" meaning "end", and "hove" a section of land. Written history shows Eindhoven being granted city rights by a duke in 1232. 
Yet another major city of the Netherlands that had to rebuild after WWII, there's modern architecture mixed with some of the old that survived.

Eindhoven's status as the city of innovation and design also extends to it's branding. The city logo was unveiled in 2013, as well as a font for businesses to use. You can read more here: https://www.eindhoven365.nl/en/cases/eindhoven-brand

So what are we doing here? Christopher will be working at High Tech Campus, a (per their website) "collaborative ecosystem of over 300 high tech companies". The bus stop in front of our apartment goes directly there, or it's an easy bike ride. Anyone we've talked to seems to know if High Tech Campus, lots of people have interned or worked there. 

We're really enjoying the general vibe of the city, it feels less chaotic and busy than Rotterdam and cleaner than The Hauge. Certainly a big change from Delft, the most perfectly quaint city imaginable, but it was always our goal to move to a major city. Delft was so small it did not have a bus system, but here in Eindhoven it's busses galore. We can expect a bus to the city center and train station every 10 minutes or so right out our front door. There's always something happening here. We experienced our first "King's Day" in April, and heard about "Carnaval" celebrations being especially big in this city. There's been weekend flea markets, a LEGO Expo we missed (😔), a bookstore older than the state of Oregon, a tattoo convention, an evening get-together with neighbors on the "dakstraat" ("roof street", a sort of shared apartment balcony), having neighbors over for coffee, exploring the city, and so much more!

To furnish our new life here we've relied on "marktplaats", a Dutch FB marketplace equivalent. We rented a van for a day and drove around picking up secondhand furniture. Our first stop was in the cool, industrial part of the city known as Strijp-s ('J' can be thought of as 'Y', so Stripe-S) to get a desk from a mechanical engineer at his office. He asked where we're from, and we've taken to answering in two parts - first the US, and if asked which part, we'll ask if they know of Portland, Oregon (which surprisingly, most people do). He was very excited to hear that, saying he's always wanted to visit Portland, and even works with software that was created there. We'd actually just been talking about how much Strijp-s reminded us of Portland. 
For our next pickup, we drove out of city limits into the countryside, took a narrow overgrown back road, and arrived as a huge, gorgeous home. A very friendly 80-something year old man told us he had just sold the home (for 2 million!!) and was in the process of downsizing. He was selling all sorts of really nice, vintage furniture for very cheap. He'd never sold things online before, and was having the time of his life meeting "so many friendly people!" If we hadn't been needing to hurry to the next pickup, we could have stood there in the driveway talking all afternoon.
Our last stop was at an apartment complex to get a work desk and chair for Christopher's work set-up, as his new position is hybrid and will allow him to work from home at times. We met a family who was sad to be moving back to India for personal reasons, wishing us the best of luck in our new life here, and that they'd enjoyed their time in the Netherlands. 

Koningsdag

As Brought to you by Christopher

The Netherlands is not known for its national pride, save for one day of the year.
Dutchies don't pay much mind to the monarchy as they also have parliament, save for one day of the year.
This day is Kings Day.

Koningsdag, or Kings Day is to celebrate the King's birthday as a nation, in the way that Dutchies know how to celebrate best: loud music and lots of beer. But on this day in specific, everyone wears orange, the color of the monarchal family.

Eindhoven happens to be one of the primary hosting locations for Koningsdag, having a big stage in the center of the market area, and DJ's at every point two streets meet (which is QUITE often).

Every direction you went was loud music, beer booths, VERY public toilets, and ORANGE. A veritable sea of orange.

The Netherlands is the birthplace of Hard Bass music and they are very proud of it, and you could count on hearing it wherever you went. There were so many people out and about that paths that would normally take us minutes to walk suddenly became half hour ventures.

We came, we saw, we oranged, and decided that was enough people for one day, but behold, the glory of the orange:

Axelera AI

As Brought to you by Christopher

As of April 27th, I am officially employed at Axelera AI, with a start date of June 1st.

For those who know me, to say I'm apprehensive at best of AI technologies can be an understatement, and yet, I am very excited and proud to be working here. LLM technology is here, and whether through integrations, corporate desire, or people making use of it, it is here to stay.

Axelera creates Acceleration chips that help render AI technologies, and takes the stance of making it as efficient as possible, reducing power usage down to 10-15 watts, which competes with Nvidia's best cards. While it's a startup, Axelera is celebrating its 5th anniversary and receives sponsorships from many sizable sources including the EU itself.

My role will be as the Lead of IT Applications, supporting the organization here in the Netherlands, the UK, and Italy. I have had the privilege of meeting my whole team already and am very excited to work with such a smart, diverse, and down to Earth group of people.

Finding work in the Netherlands is interesting, there are many worker protections, including preventing at-will layoffs, so companies take many precautions to ensure that they are employing long-term and good people. Two major examples are the fact that rather than 2-4 interviews, you're much more likely to go through 5-7, making sure that they've thoroughly gotten to know you. It's also very common practice for your first year to be on a contract, so that they can decide by the end of the year if you are a good permanent addition to the team. Axelera so far seems to be impressed enough that they've allowed me to negotiate my salary and have already planned out my pension in addition to future raises and stock options.

Depending on your industry, you may need to know Dutch, English, both, or more. Since English is the common language across many of Europe's countries, it's considered the 'professional' language to know, so that your company can be international. Thankfully, the position that I've found is an English-only role, so there will be no expectation for me to speak Dutch, though I still intend to learn.

The tech industry is booming in the Netherlands currently, so the same month I got my ID, I was able to send out applications, go through 5 interviews, and secure a position. Competition is still intense, I won't deny it, being that only one job ever took the time to interview me, but for anyone that's applied to jobs in the last 2 years, you know that finding work in that short of time is nearly unheard of.

Many jobs here seem to also come with some very nice benefits, this one including no-receipt-required payment for my phone and internet bills, allotment every two years to go toward a new phone, discount for transportation, free business trips to our other locations, free meals at the campus canteen, pension, and more.

I'm very excited to get started here, but know it's going to be a lot of learning, figuring out the new tech stack, learning workplace culture of not just The Netherlands, but also of UK and Italy, learning the new role, etc. It's an intriguing challenge that I look forward to tackling.

High Tech Campus

As Brought to you by Christopher

Ok, I've talked about the nerd things, but I want to take a moment to also talk about HOW COOL THIS PLACE IS.

For those of you who know about Garden Cities, The Netherlands is home to 3 of them. For those who do not, the simplified version is that it was a city layout created in fiction that people liked the idea of and attempted to recreate in the real world. This layout is a circle path around a garden, then a street leading off to categorized sections of the city, such as an industrial section, a municipal section, an agricultural section, etc. In this setting, you would always pass by the garden going from one place to the next, being both epicenter and natural break between tasks.

Eindhoven seems to modernize this concept, having the intercity train located in the very center, along with the vast majority of its markets and its stadium. There is then a rail that circles this area that can lead off to the different sections of Eindhoven.

Some of these areas that it branches off to have specific focuses - an area focused on art and design, an area focused on sciences, and an area focused on technology.

My new job is located in the High Tech Campus, a square kilometer of massive buildings dedicated to supporting various focuses in technology. These buildings are separated by beautiful greenery and canals, and in the center of the campus is a food hall, comprising of a grocery store and several different locally-owned restaurants.

The buildings in this campus all focus on a different aspect of technology. As you'd expect, the building that I work in is focused on AI technologies. The idea is that you can be surrounded by and work together with like-minded people on similar projects, addressing similar challenges, and being able to discuss the technology with anyone in the building.

What the Fluff...

As Brought to you by Liara

Well well, here we go again. The Humans shoved me back into the Travel Box and took me away from my wonderful window sill. On the journey, someone had the audacity to ask if I was a DOG. Everyone wanted to see me, but I was too sleepy to care.

At least The Humans have had the good sense to provide me excellent windows here at New Place. They say they are going to let me outside onto a balcony, but are "cat proofing" it first. Ha. I'll be the judge of that.

New Place has lots of windows and lots of space. Most definitely the biggest place that The Humans have ever provided me with before.

One night as The Humans slept and I was stationed for my nightly watch, I saw another CAT on MY balcony! Maybe the "cat proofing" wasn't such a bad idea, after all...

A Very Nice Woman who spoke in unusual sounds came to see me. She bribed me with treats, gave me a toy, and smelled of Other Cats herself. I liked her.

My life goes on, as ever. The Humans rearrange as new furniture comes in, and recently put down a rug for me. I spend my days relaxing on the couch, on the rug, and in the window. I will report back once I inspect the balcony.

Good tidings and fluffy thoughts,
-The Cat