Prison Break: How to Leave a Country (Part 2)

I wrote earlier that I am inefficiently filling my blog with scattershot observations and tips about leaving the U.S. for a while for the benefit of others who wish to do something similar, and that I hope to compile these into a coherent series of pages in the future.

So here's another random tip, this one regarding payment of last bills. If you're like me you get a dozen different bills. I have utilities bills, cable bills, a web-hosting bill, cell phone bill, and so on. Some services you'll want to continue paying for (my Eurotrash web site hosting fee, for example). Most others you'll want to cancel.

If you're afraid you're going to forget about a bill, begin a spreadsheet a couple months before you leave where you list each and every bill that pops up on your statements as well as the cost of those bills. Eventually you should have a good, definitive list of who is asking you for money and a rough idea about how much money they're asking for (keeping in mind the fluctuating cost of heating and so on), so you can be sure you settle things with everyone by the time you fly out.

Just a random tip, but I didn't want to lose that thought.

A Good Little DJ Tool - Calculate BPMs of Your MP3s

I was about to spend hours calculating BPMs for my thousands of Eurotrash songs. Then it occurred to me that somebody must have already written a freeware program that would do this automatically with digital music. I was right. And you can even view the final results in a "beats per minute" column in your regular file view. Fantastic! I am DJ King Pigeon, and I approve this message!

Download it here: http://www.mixmeister.com/bpmanalyzer/bpmanalyzer.asp.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, it seems to be skipping the m4a (i.e. iTunes files). Will see if there is a workaround for that.

UPDATE (10 January 2010): Seems there is no software out there that can calculate iTunes BPMs.

Ukraine - Hostel Booked

"Irony" has been the operative word this week here in sunny Atlanta, where temperatures plummeted into the teens (that's in degrees Fahrenheit) and two inches of snow and ice prevented most friends from making it to my Friday "Going to Kiev" get-together. There is a larger party tonight which will make up for some of that.

My friend Nathan, at whose Decatur house I am staying, was not able to drive up the steep and icy hill just outside his front door, so we nixed our last Vortex/Apres Diem night plans and hiked to the James Joyce Pub instead.

The hike was fun. In the early darkness we wandered through a woodsy area where some unknown wild animal crunched around in the leaves by the trail (my wind-up power flashlight failed to flush it out, but I'm sure it was a wolf ;-)). As we crossed a small bridge a MARTA train gracefully swung by underneath, its amber windows glowing and a few passengers visible as it glided towards Atlanta.

Once at the James Joyce bar counter, an older woman walked up behind Nathan and put her hands over his eyes saying, "I hope you're who I think you are." He wasn't, and she laughed and apologized and went on about how she had met somebody at the bar before who wore a sweater similar to Nathan's. It was all terribly awkward. I suspect this was her version of a pick-up line; that her story was fiction. This being my last Friday night in Atlanta for at least a few months, I was not interested in having a kooky woman invite herself into the conversation so that she could awkwardly hit on married Nathan.

Fortunately, friends Bryan and Laura arrived. Conversation was delightful. Laura flushed out plans to pursue freelance writing, we speculated about what the best bar in America is (and what qualities a great bar should have in the first place), and we weighed the merits of Def Leppard versus Poison. Bryan and Laura gave us a lift back to the top of Nathan's hill, we hiked down it, and after going to bed at 11 PM I awoke refreshed enough to be penning this blog entry.

Today I booked three nights at a hostel in Kiev, so I now have a place to go when I arrive. Picking one was tough; many highly-rated hostels can be found on the hostelworld.com website. I told myself I could sample several during my visit if I so desire, so if I'm unhappy with the first one I'll just move on to another.

Tours to Chernobyl were advertised on the web site as costing "a small fee," but the confirmation email revealed that small fee to be 120 euro per person, which is not a small fee at all. Will likely have to do this, though; it's a rare opportunity.

Back of my heel is injured, but Nathan, who leads a very active lifestyle, quickly diagnosed the condition and recommended stretching exercises that will, over time, solve the problem. I already sense improvement.

Final Days in America

December was spent moving out of my apartment. It was hell.

I moved about 80 bankers boxes of stuff to Seth's office for storage. The apartment was pretty empty when I left for the winter holidays; just furniture remained. My time with my mom and sister, who live in Central and Northern Virgina, was wonderful, but obviously no progress could be made in moving during my visit.

While I was in Northern Virginia my landlord sent me an email telling me he was charging me $145 for damages I'd done to the walls. He said he would charge me even more if there were any other problems. I did some research online and found sites that said that the security deposit, which he had pocketed as a penalty for my breaking the lease, could only be used for such repairs (in other words, he could not keep my security deposit for himself and then charge me an additional $145 in damages). I was in for a fight with my landlord.

When I returned to Atlanta I went over to my friend Nathan's house, which he had kindly offered to me as a place to stay in comfort during the remainder of my time in America. But the keys didn't work. He was out of town, so I had no choice but to return to my nearly empty apartment and sleep there wondering where I would spend the days between the end of my lease and his return.

The next morning I found a back-up key that got me in. Relief.

I spent last Tuesday, Wednesday, and half of New Year's Eve day Thursday cleaning the apartment. My downstairs neighbor Matt was thrilled to have my bookshelves; the rest of my furniture was picked up by the Salvation Army. I gagged on the fumes of floor-cleaners, appliance paint, oven cleaner (4.5 years of grease in that oven), and bleach in my efforts to get the place looking awesome.

I might have a future as an apartment cleaner, but it was not in the financial interest of the landlord to agree, so during the walk-through we went to battle over the $145. We fought and fussed, and in the end I handed him $80 in cash, which he accepted, and I was done with it. Strangely, after the negotiation, he seemed quite cheerful with me, almost as if he half-admired me for standing up for myself.

There was a lot of, "Wow, four and a half years!" and that sort of thing.

On my way out I said goodbye to the best mailman on earth, Lee, and then drove away from the apartment for the last time.

Moving out was hell, but Nathan's house in Decatur is heaven. I had it to myself until tonight, when Nathan returned from Africa severely jet-lagged and sleep-deprived. He went to sleep around 7 PM and he is sleeping still.

Tomorrow I have to fix a flat on my SmartCar and will likely get the car serviced before turning it over to my friend Greg. On January 12 I leave Atlanta for New York, and on January 13 it's off to Kiev.

Prison Break: Tickets Purchased

I fly to New York City on the 12th of January. The next day I board a flight to Kiev. I arrive in Kiev around 2 in the afternoon local time on the 14th.

It will be a grueling flight over; two connections involved. But that made the price much cheaper. Worst case is I miss a connection; I've lived through that before at Charles de Gaulle when I missed my flight to Slovenia due to a late trans-Atlantic arrival. But since I'm flying into Germany things should be more efficient. Really. Their airports are much more sensibly designed than Paris's CDG.

Lately, Kiev looks like this.

Prison Break: Nothing Will Ever Be the Same Again

The plan was to visit Eastern and Central Europe for at least a few months to write and to DJ. The biggest question regarded how to disentangle myself from my office here in the states. Ultimately, the best case scenario would have been one that would have allowed me to hold all my cards for as long as possible.

The best case scenario came true yesterday.

I had two aces up my sleeve that, until this week, I had been completely unaware of. The first was the vehement support of my co-workers, who demanded that I be able to continue working for the organization even while overseas. Their sincere testimony to my importance—instanteous and unprompted—showed that I had a bedrock of support hitherto unknown to me. This support made the thought that I be allowed to work remotely from Eastern Europe more palatable to upper management, and strengthened the case for granting me a leave of absence instead of pursuing termination.

Lessons learned: it pays not to suck at your job, and it pays to have people like you.

The second ace was a bit more comical; until Monday I had been unaware that I had accrued 9 weeks of vacation time. This, according to my supervisor, made everything much easier to arrange.

After many hours spent mentally running in the hamster wheel Monday and Tuesday (coupled with physically running around campus and, on a cold and rainy Tuesday, the fifth level of the parking deck), my supervisor and I concluded that there were two ways things could have gone:

1) Termination from my job in January, me becoming a contractor to the organization, and my vacation time being dolled out to me in one lump sum in the form of a physical check mailed two months after departure.

This was an undesirable scenario. Since I won't have a permanent address in two months, the check would have to go to somebody else to cash. That introduces too many variables for my comfort. And, of course, having no guarantee of employment upon returning means I've lost a card in my hand.

2) A three month vacation/leave of absence combination, padded by hours spent working for the organization remotely as needed, allowing me to continue to receive regular monthly direct deposit payments for the first 2 to 3 months with the guarantee of a job to come back to afterward.

Things went the second way.

The journey will be stressful, my world will be a very different place in a few months, and there will be plenty of questions I will need to answer soon (3 months will go by in the blink of an eye). But it is better to depart this way than any other way.

As I walked home from work yesterday I turned my eyes upward to the Biltmore Hotel. It shined in the golden glow of the late afternoon sun against a crisp blue sky. I walk past the Biltmore every single day, but yesterday, and for the first time, it looked gorgeous to me.

Last night at Apres Diem, Seth remembered how it felt when he left his job. "I realized for the first time that I had been living in a bubble."

This hits the nail on the head. Today I see the world crisply. I see it with all its possibilities wide-open to me. Atlanta looks beautiful for the first time in years because it is no longer my prison.

Prison Break: Field in Motion

I ordered the cell phone from Telestial today. I have canceled all utilities (31 December end date). All but the top of the ladder at my organization know of my imminent departure.

I have the full support of my team. If it were up to them, they unanimously and passionately agree that they want me working 51% time remotely from Eastern Europe, which was my best case scenario. It's doubtful that will become a granted reality, but the worst case scenario (aside from utter termination) would enable me to tap into 10 weeks of earned vacation time.

During our team meeting today, when all this was revealed, I was shocked by how strongly my co-workers supported my working remotely (as opposed to leaving the organization). In fact, at one point, as they described how irreplaceable I was, tears sprung up in my eyes. I was extremely surprised by how valued I was. In fact, this is the first time in over a decade of working at my organization that I felt truly valued.

For the first time during all my planning, this is actually looking like a good idea. In fact, if I have access to about three months of funds, or long-term steady (albeit half-salary) work, I might have to actually rethink the amount of "roughing it" I should do. It might be right to consider renting apartments in some locations. Just thinking out loud.