kerimsatirli.com

One more day to go and my first four weeks in NYC will officially be over. Does not really seem that way from my point, because I can still remember the day when I go there:

On the day I left the Netherlands, I had to get up at 06:15 am, way too early for my taste, but thinking that it would all be for the greater good, I put up and made do.

After a quick breakfast, I was off to ’s Hertogenbosch Central Station, where I would meet up with a friend of mine who wanted to accompany me to the airport and wave her goodbyes.

Following a short ride on the train, we entered Shiphol Airport, which seemed to be quite an experience for my company, mostly because she had never been to an airport before, much less flown a plane.

The check-in was quite painless, with a friendly ground stewardess explaining, in great detail, where I had to go, once I arrived at London Heathrow and ensuring that I understood the directions. Makes me wonder if many people are actually able to get lost on that five minute walk…

The day before I left, I spent, I think, at least two hours packing stuff the right way and stripping out anything that would not be needed, and it paid off: once I entered no-mans-land and walked through the first checkpoint, one of the security officers actually complimented me on my packaging skills - score one for the home team I guess.

Another funny bit is that, since I am traveling with an Austrian passport, everybody felt the need to talk to me in German, which felt kind-of weird to me, but still: a great service.

The flight to London was easy, had a little chat with one of the stewards who talked to me about the planes that were already outfitted to allow cellphones during flight and how the plane we used was not yet upgraded to add this service. No child sitting next to me (in fact, nobody sitting in my row at all) meant a nice fourty minutes of relaxation.

I got a little bit freaked out when the pilot mentioned that the flight would take fourty minutes, because that would mean that I would be too late for my connecting flight and I kept stressing out until I arrived in London and finally realized, thanks to an announcement stating the local time, that the UK was in a -1 timezone. Phew!

Once in Heathrow, I made use of the instructions I got earlier and quickly found the gate where my plane to JFK would be departing from but first had to go through a security checkpoint (the fifth one at that point) where I was, once again, complimented on my compartmentalized packaging technique.

A lighthearted security guy frisked me (he skipped on the body cavity search though) and asked me for the address that I would be staying at during the first night. I had everything prepared the way it should have been (mostly thanks to tsa.gov and got through the whole ordeal in two minutes as opposed to ten (which is what the next guy took). Apparently, doing what the security officer asks you to do and not resisting can make it a whole lot easier.

During the flight itself, I discovered Virgin Atlantic’s in-flight entertainment system called v:port, which a selection of great movies and while consuming the food, a selection of chicken with mushrooms, pasta salad and pudding with 53% chocolate, I watched and very much enjoyed Into the Wild.

Some six-seven hours later, when we landed, people started clapping, which reminded me of the kind of audience you would expect in a Turkey-bound airplane. People, the pilot is supposed to land the plane, successfully; that is what we pay him (or her) for…

And quite a good pilot he was (or maybe just plain lucky): we got to JFK twenty minutes early, which meant that our gate was still occupied, so we just parked in the middle of a runway; if that ain’t pushing your luck, I would not know what is.

While disembarking the plane, I had a little bit of a déjà vu experience, the gangway which led us to the customs hall had the exact same ads as the one we used in Heathrow, even at the same spots.

Getting through customs was easy, the whole process not taking any longer than twelve minutes, of which I spent ten in a line leading to the actual officer. I was prepared for everything, needed nothing other than my passport and index fingers. Friendly and professional are keywords here. So much for the FUD most people tried to instill in me.

In order to combat jet lag, I decided not to sleep on the plane and complete the day/night cycle according to East coast time, which resulted in me, technically speaking, going for an all-nighter. Nonetheless, I woke up very refreshed the next morning and had, at that time, already adjusted to the local time.

The day after my arrival, Pak-Kei and me went to a few of the events that were part of the Internet Week New York, one of them being Mashable’s exhibit hall, where I discovered a couple of nice services (more on that some other time) and got rick-rolled by the DJ, which sparked quite a few laughs from the attending audience.

I also got to meet a few people from The Hatchery, which is basically an American Idol for companies, it would certainly be great to put those connections to use some time in the future…

As past of the Internet Week New York, Pak-Kei and me also went to a panel on Net Aesthetics and did some more stuff, like attending (yet another) “Diggnation does IT live” recording, where I even got interviewed, based on the fact that I was, apparently, the one fan that travelled the farthest of all attendees.

Shortly after that, the first semi-heatwave (we only had four out of the required five days to be actually allowed to call it a heatwave) of the year hit us, with temperatures averaging 32 deg. C (89.6 deg. F) and even peaking a whooping 37 deg. C (98 deg. F).

Once the heatwave was gone and our Internet uplink was restored, I finally got a chance to sit down and get dirty with the likes of CodeIgniter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, IMEEM and Last.fm, in order to build what I came here to build.

A few more, noteworthy things are the thunderstorms (and lovely warnings that weather.com provides you with) and the home cooked style meals that are so fat that they can easily give you a cardiac arrest, but still taste amazingly good.

For some visuals, check out my gallery or my Flickr photostream.