The Arrival

Its five days now that I arrived at my new country and I can tell you that I am happy as never before.

The flight was good and fast and most important I did not have to pay anything for my music. I mean I paid already enough. The day at my arrival it was 40 degrees in Monterrey – Mexico and I was feeling as if I lived in an oven so hot. My whole body was in flames and I could not have any refreshment that night. Anyhow we are together again me and my wife and my small son that has been growing a lot in the meantime. He is talking already like an adult but as long I still have troubles with the Spanish language he can tell me as much as he want jajaja.

My wife took 2 days off and we could enjoy the days after such a long time with each other. However we had to do a lot. My wife already prepared a lot in advance and us where very lucky that we passed the first day already all “verblijfsvergunning” related options. You need to be a lawyer or notaries to find your way true this labyrinth of burocratic papers because some of them require knowledge of the law and you have to describe exactly how it is mentioned in the law otherwise you never pass. It’s like a big jigsaw puzzle of forms that needs to be solved in order to get a price: “your permission” and this is only for one year. The next step will be the request of my permission for 5 years, and I should be working on my own at that time. Anyhow we are doing fine. My wife is getting promotion soon, and I already now my benefits in Mexico of me new job jajaja ;)

It seems that the holidays are here the worst because you are getting no holidays the first year, you have to earn them, which is similar to the Belgium system, and then you only get 6 per year followed with two days more each year you stay longer. So if you want to have the same Holidays as in Holland for example if you start the first year as new employee, then here in Mexico you have to stay at least 10 years at the same company to get the same amount of Holidays like in Holland you get the first years. That is a lot of loyalty here. On the other hand you not going to have problems to save too many holidays, like some have in Holland for example ;)
On the other hand there are a lot of Holidays that are National Holidays at least 12 a year so all together you going to have the first year only the 12 National Holidays and then the year after the 18 holidays. One thing is fine here in Mexico if a National Holiday falls on a Saturday or Sunday they move it to the Friday or Monday so you still have the benefit of this day. The other benefits are similar like in Holland like life insurance, pension, health insurance, Holiday bonus and kind of 13th month, of course not that much as in Holland but in ratio. New to me here is the bonus for the mortgage, in which you can save points to buy a house later, all of course individual savings.

Anyhow I heard that the pressure to work is less then expected and hopefully it stays like this because the heat is enormous. On the other hand it cools down a little and the raining season starts, I mean everybody is already witness of the biggest hurricane yet, named Dean and it flew over Mexico costing a lot of people there houses and their fortune. Anyhow till now it is still under control and it seems only material damage has occurred, but it is the beginning of the rain season and more hurricanes are yet to come. Normally there are 12 till 15 hurricanes a year that build up in the rain season above the Gulf of Mexico, hopefully we are as lucky as now that they will not reach us. We had only a little bit of rain and wind and of course the streets were flooded but nothing serious. Here the flooding of streets and houses are very normal and it seems that Holland is going to have to deal with the same in the coming years as I wrote on some websites, and already everybody complaining jajaja ;) on that occasion the people in Holland are really spoiled.

So as you see I am doing fine and I am very happy I made this step. It is in some occasions a little bit back to the basics, but if you like camping, don’t be to grumpy about the governments services, like burocratic things and telephone services, and like warm weather all day long, even after it has been raining the sun is shining, you going to love it here.

It is also really that cheap as I told you already however you should not go shopping with your wife the first days, because then also 200 euros are gone like nothing. I mean you should also not do it in Holland costs you even 10 times more jajajaja

By the way more pictures are on the way.

LIFT OFF

Finally after 4 weeks of Holidays my last strings are cut and my lift off to my new home country is a fact. The meantime I was here I was enjoying my Holidays by traveling to Germany, France and of course Belgium. I saw a lot and maybe it is my last opportunity to do so. Especially the trip to Paris was super, what a beautiful city. Anyhow I enjoyed my last stay in the Netherlands and now I am ready to make the big jump.

On Sunday the 19th of August my departure will start at 10 o’clock in the morning at Maastricht Airport, from there to Amsterdam Schiphol Airport which after I will continue my trip to Mexico City with my final destination Monterrey. All together a trip of 23 hours from the moment I step out of my bed till I will be reunited with my family. In the meantime my wife has prepared everything for my arrival and we will stay a couple of weeks at my parents house till we find a new house which we going to live in.

I can also report that I already found a job and that Mexico called me in The Netherlands to do the interview, by phone. In the meantime I already get confirmed that I will be starting at the 1st of September at CEMEX Mexico in Monterrey. CEMEX is a growing global building-solutions company that produces, distributes, and markets cement, ready-mix concrete, aggregates, and related building materials to customers and communities in more than 50 countries. I will join the ICT staff as a consultant on IBM Lotus software products. You can imagine that I am very happy with this opportunity because I was not thinking of such a quick result of my applications on Internet. Anyhow this will give us a good start for all the things we need to do, because at this moment we need all the money we can get because we have to start all over again from scratch.

With this I will also thank all the colleagues from DSM that supported me so much and which I still have a good contact with. DSM was more an employer for me then Atos Origin ever was, sorry that I have to write this but its true. I hope we will continue the good contact we build during the coming years, seen the situation I am now again working for a global company, who knows we will see each other again in a joint venture or contract, or else.


Lets start the engines and fasten our seatbelts, and finally lift off to my new country, viva Monterrey - MEXICO