Live From Redmond

Hello guys!
I am finally able to access the internet from where I am in Redmond right now, the last few days have been a bit tiring, all new, but lots of fun (el 7amd lelah)

We passed by Amsterdam airport on our way, and the strangest thing happened while we were boarding our plane to Seattle, the airport officials seem to have been very worried about security, Me and Helal were sort of interrogated separately, the guy who asked me the questions was kinda weird. He asked me about my job, MS, my previous employer, what my job entails, why clients have I worked for previously, and lots of other questions. He asked for my MS offer letter, and contacts. But anyway, he let us in in the end :)

Having experienced that we were expecting more of the same in Sea-Tac Int'l airport, but the officials over there were far more relaxed. They just asked a few questions and let us in immediately. My friend Helal had a sort of a special case because he failed to de-register on departing from the US in an earlier visit so he was escorted to special registration where he was asked a few more questions but also let in with the official's affirmation that she'll try to erase that incident from his record. So Nice people overall :)

We then took our avis rental car, and went to our key pick-up location. The key pick-up location is where we get the keys, driving directions and map to our rental apartment provided by Microsoft for the first month.

We then headed to my apartment (Helal's was not ready yet), it was very nice and ready, all furnished and equipped with everything we might (and might not) need.

We stayed for an hour or so and then went back to get Helal's keys, it turns out (although he seemed very unlucky so far) that Helal's apartment is a 2 bedroom
, we called my relocation specialist and asked her to cancel my apartment and instead extend Helal's so that we stay together (and save a month on rental, $1000 ;) ) She said it was no problem.

We then met Khalid Aggag (not the singer, a friend who also went to MS a few months ago, and the founder of this blog's hate-club) and he took us shopping at Fred Meyers, we got some food and essentials and headed to Helal's (now our) apartment. We finally unpacked and then went down on a tour with our guide Khalid. He took us to Redmond town center, we had a meal at a nice Thai restaurant called Thai Ginger. Both the chicken curry and steak were very tasty, we then had some ice cream and went back to the apartment, had a shower at last and went to sleep dead tired at 9pm.

I will soon post about the next days. For now I'll let you enjoy some of the photos I took so far. Click on any pic for a larger version.


Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, a very nice and huuuuuge airport, we spent just 3 hours there



Our rental Chevrolet Classic the moment we found it :)



The key pick-up location described in our maps, we entered our security code provided earlier via e-mail on this numpad and the door automatically opened exposing our envelopes (among lots others), each envelope had 2 key copies, garage entrance pass and a map the apartment location. No human beings involved and very game like :)



Khalid Aggag coming to our rescue



Bigger is better has never been more obvious than in the shot from Fred Meyers parking lot



Our apartment's living room



Our humble dining room



The welcome package we found as soon as we entered the apartment, very neat



Our living room couch and where I am sitting right now at the moment of writing :)



The view from our balcony and bedroom windows


P.S.
I will upload more pics soon hopefully, I have more but blogger is giving me a very hard time uploading them, fails a lot, it took me around an hour to post these few.