Notes prepared for today:
- Jüzek wants to see if I can make it today, how much would I ask to move to, say, Noo Joizy or wherever suitable (there's work, work, work to be done). He'd like to have me at the keyboard as much as possible. In case of relocation, there's the lease we have until end of july.
- the son-in-law aka manager of UniJewel would like to have me at hand, on a hanger, jack of all trades, so whenever anyone needs someting
- David would like to go over the framework with me first
Agreed to talk with David first, before talking with Jüzek.
My flight was leaving at 6:40, which means I must have been up before four and left the car at the airport. The airplane was a smallish one, and took me only as far as DC, a prop job, I almost spilled my coffee when somewhere around Richmond we got into thick screwy clouds, it shook really well and fell and climbed. On Dulles I switched to another equally small one and landed on White Plains, rather far north of NYC. And there's not much of transportation from there - the cabs operate only on call (I'll have to get a cell phone once), all the passengers from my plane had some car waiting. A nasty wind was blowing, it was quite chilly. The local bus goes once an hour, so I found a sheltered corner and had a couple of smokes with some guy with air company logos. Turned out he was the pilot who flew me here, and he said this is probably the last year they operate propeller typed airplanes (nope, it was just an announcement), they introduce jets even for these short rides. Which makes no sense - both types take about 20 minutes to achieve the height, and as much to lose it when landing, and now whether the part in between will last forty or twenty minutes is mostly irrelevant. But then the jets consume three times the fuel. Modernization for modernization's sake.
So the bus came, and it, of course, has to make a pee stop at every lamppost, including a tour of the campus meadow of the local university, where nobody rides a bus, this is a rich area, there are no houses below half a million. I somehow reached the railway station, made my way through their system of ticketing, and then it went on quickly. I got off at Penn Station, which is just a few blocks to UniJewel. It was almost noon.
They were all there already, and we started the negotiations, in Jüzek's office where all the screens for security cameras are, about ten of them. David introduced me as one of the top 100 fox programmers in the word. I said he was exaggerating, I'd rather say two hundred. The old guy seems to have liked that.
One thing that I remembered later, is that he took me to a tour of a few languages, and in those I didn't actually speak I still managed to understand what he said, and he was impressed.
I tried to look like I'm ready to walk out at any time, and led the conversation close to that point at least twice. The funny thing was that I was actually asking for less than the amount offered, on the condition that I work from home. Jüzek's offer was 70000$ and work on site, I asked for 60000 and no move. We pulled back and forth for, best guess, almost an hour. And eventually I got it, with the stipulation that I should be present onsite about a quarter of time, say one week a month, in New York. Which turned out to be less than that. This way I could work all day, take no more than half an hour for lunch, not to mention hour and a half in commute every day. And 60K in Virginia Beach is roughly equal to 90K in NY, that's how much more expensive everything is there.
I guess we dined somewhere, set the communications and what goes where in the project, and then I caught a subway to get to the LaGuardia for the flight home. Managed well. It crosses a bridge around 59th street, which looks quite, um, movie like at night, and disembarked at the right station. There in Queens the subway is not underground anymore, the tracks are on steel frames above the main street. Ouch, the thunder, and below there are cars, pedestrians, shops, and they don't seem to mind that of each ten minutes for one they can't hear each other. So I slided great today through local roads, air transport, local bus on White Plains, suburb railway, subway... and now can't find my bus stand. When I saw that the other lines are getting their second bus and mine isn't coming, I asked around and someone said it's around the corner. Aaaahhh... I moved there and held my thumbs that it gets me there on time. The whole setting looks somewhat surreal, how did I ever get here... Eventually the bus came and drove down some backstreets and halflit areas, just as if I'm coming from the second shift of gimnazija and returning home at night. It arrived in the end, and I even managed to discover on time that it let me off in front of the wrong building of the huge and mostly empty LaGuardia. Walked a bit, got my boarding pass, even had to wait some twenty minutes.
One of the crazier days. Amazingly, I didn't sleep during the flight, and drove home without a hitch. Too bad there were no photos, could have made a bundle today.
The next day I got an email from some Tracie Cooper of Prestige Staffing, wants to talk about a job. We talked already and I sent her an updated CV. Too late now.
On 18th, got fox v8 from Berix. Current rate is 54 RSD for 1 USD.