UK for 10 months

So a peace of very good news! I am being deported. The second week of February I will no longer reside in the US. Ok I’m not actually being deported, and my permanent residence will still be in the US. But for 10 months I will be living, working, and playing in Europe. I fell backwards into the role quite really. I had been trying to get onto a project in Germany for months with out any luck. Apparently the German partners are a bit hard to deal with. So when I was on the bench in October I got a call from my old counselor who was one a project in New York. He wanted me to come out for a nothing role really for 5 weeks. I didn’t really want to do it hoping a more meaty role might come up, but since it was just for a few weeks I said ok. Well I didn’t say ok, I basically got dragged in, but that is what happens to junior resources.

Well I was further frustrated by this project when they wanted me to come straight from my PTO in Russia to the project. So that I would land at 3:20p in Minneapolis and leave on the 7:00pm flight to New York. Once I got on site the role was what I expected it to be. Five weeks of busy work. But I was able to talk the managers into bringing on a new analyst for me to train so if something good came up I could leave. Well there was an interesting turn of events coming up. I flew in Monday night, worked all day Tuesday, and mid day on Wednesday the project manager jokingly asked what I was doing for the next 10 months. “Well” I said, “I don’t really have anything lined up”. He then asked - not joking any more - “Really, would you have any interest in working in Europe”. Of I did as it would get me closer to Russia. So I briefly told him about my situation and he told me about a possible role they had.

Four days later I was in. So I will be the only US resource on the ground in the UK with a few trips to Germany for the project. My role has to do with migrating the FICO data for the SAP project (I know most people don’t know what that means but that is ok). I will be put up in a nice apartment, have a company mini-lease car, and have most of my other expenses paid. I am supposed to be on site as of February 11 and I will come back to the states every six weeks for a week. This is pretty much what most people look for when they are single. It almost never happens either. But someone is watching out for me. London is basically half the way to Moscow so this is really going to let me see RG quite more often. Probably twice as often actually, every three or four weeks rather than every 6 or 8.

On top of all of this it is very cheap to get RG to England and she already has a visa good for six months. So we are already planning weekend trips all over Europe. Of course Germany, Paris, Barcelona, maybe a week in Italy in the fall, possibly Bern, I would like to go to Vienna, and half a doze site in England, Scotland, and Ireland. Along with our trip to St. Petersburg we should have quite the year; though it will be an expensive year. But of course the best part will be that my wife is closer and that we can spend so much more time together. So you can be certain that I am no longer upset that I got dragged into this project!