Archives for May 2008

What to do if you lose your US passport

May 29, 2008 by Dave Hampton

My passport lies somewhere on this lively street in Ghent.

I’ve never lost a passport before, and am still kicking myself for doing it this time. My small Grey wallet with my passport, USB stick, Bluetooth earpiece, business cards, and bank decoder was under my arm, along with my umbrella, when I left the hotel, and was no longer there when I reached the conference center. I immediately walked back along the street twice, but no luck: someone was quicker than I was to spot it.

All’s well, but there are some lessons learned along the way that might be helpful to others in a similar situation.

1) Make a backup. Years ago, someone suggested that I put a scan of my critical documents up on the Internet where I could always access them from anywhere. So I scanned my passport, driver’s license, and birth certificate in a password-protected file that I mailed to a supplemental Yahoo account. It was easy to just download and print it to have all of the information and documentation that the embassy required.

2) Keep your residence card separate from your passport. I had my Dutch cards in my wallet, so those didn’t get lost. As it turns out, those cards are the important ones: the visa and passport stamps pare irrelevant, superceded by the residence card. I can still travel within the Schengen Area and verify my Dutch residency with that, alone.

3) Report the loss to the police. I was reluctant to do this: I knew that it was really gone, and thought that filling out a police report was a waste of time and an invitation to trouble. A friend convinced me to talk to the hotel clerk, who was happy to call the local station and give them the information about the loss. As it turned out, it mattered. The Belgians tend to put “found” documents into the nearest postal box, where they find their way (eventually) to the police, so it could produce a result. And the US embassy really, really wants to hear that you did tell the police (although you don’t have to show them the report).

4) Consult the Embassy on-line. The US Embassy has a section for what to do if your passport is lost or stolen. There are two forms to print and fill out before you go to Amsterdam: one to report the loss (DS-64), and another to apply for a new Passport book (DS-11). You will also need information about your old passport: again, the importance of having a backup.

5) Make an Appointment. The US embassy REQUIRES an appointment for everything: showing up at the gate at 8:30 am to try to plead through the intercom is futile (I saw people do it). Make the appointment on-line, and be there on-time or you will not be admitted, even to drop off the forms. Bring the forms, your birth certificate (the Apostille worked well), and two passport photos (make sure they comply to new US rules for size and composition). If you are asking for expedited service, you need to bring proof that you are traveling within the next 10 days. And bring a credit card or cash (68 euros for me).

6) Bring no more than you need to. The Embassy is absolutely paranoid about letting you bring anything into the building. Leave the computer, camera, cell phone, Mp3 player, USB stick, outside: they will confiscate it at the door further delaying you going in and out. Similarly, don’t bring friends: fmaily is okay if approved when you make the appointment. Do bring photo ID, filled-in paperwork, patience, and a smile. And change enough for two hours on the parking meter.

7) What is an emergency? The web site says that an emergency document for immediate travel is issued if you are flying out within 10 days. In fact, they process replacement passports faster, and the desk agent said that they prefer to do it only for 5 days or less. Similarly, the web site says that you can come without an appointment if you are traveling within 10 days: in reality, it’s 5 or less.

Postscript: June 5. I never did get a phone call, so, expecting the worst, I made an appointment, took all my paperwork, proof of travel, and new photos and went to the Embassy this morning. Fortunately the passport was there. it’s one of the new ones with lots more anti-counterfeiting detail inside and an embedded RFID chip. It also has an endorsement that it is a replacement for a lost passport: I was advised that if you lose two within ten years, then you start getting issues special ones with shorter terms.

Anyway, all’s well that ends well.

An interlude for the Visual Arts

May 27, 2008 by Dave Hampton

Visual arts are a secret pleasure of mine: I took my first watercolor classes about ten years ago at the urging of a close friend and was immediately drawn to the fluid color and interactive freedom of the medium as a contrast to my work with data and computers. ‘Feeling like I needed to be able to be able to draw in order to do pen and wash sketches while traveling, I moved on to elementary drawing classes, then to life-drawing classes. The expressive shadows and gentle arcs inherent in the human figure were much more pleasing to draw than still-life, and i still enjoy a session to apply charcoal to paper when i can find it.

As someone who was told throughout school that I was hopeless at art, it became personally gratifying to create credible and satisfying works. It also gave me a much deeper appreciation for the difficult processes that other artists go through while composing and correcting their works. I really enjoy the series of odd exploratory sketches, where lines are moved around to get shape and shadow correct: it’s the same issues I struggle with (only my resolutions aren’t nearly so satisfying!).

I’ve collected galleries of my favorite artist’s works as inspiration and examples over the years, and pushed them up to Windows Spaces over the last few days where I could reference them here. Each picture, below, should open onto a larger gallery of works. It’s impossible to attribute sources for all of these images, collected over years, but many can be found quickly using an image search engine or Artcyclopedia.

The root links for the gallery are here. I’ll maintain and grow this archive over time, It’s a very human gallery of creativity and beauty.

Henri Matisse: Able to capture the essence of a figure or their expression with complete economy of line and unmistakable style.

JMW Turner: Hamilton’s excellent biography of the artist describes a very gifted and universal talent, able to compose in almost any style with unerring accuracy. His watercolor landscapes, lit by diffuse light and contrasting areas of blur and detail, are fascinating

Italian Sanguine: Classical artists were able to accomplish a lot with only line and shade. They contrast with Matisse’s simplicity, elegant works that demonstrate the ideal form expressed from a detailed complexity.

Wolf Kahn: A contemporary artist working in pastel. I like the way he blends color in surprising ways, drawing the best from the powdery medium, always with strong subjects and bold forms.

Marc Chagall: A bit like pen-and-wash, with rough figures superimposed on pale colored backgrounds. The overall effect is childish and dream-like: I feel these paintings more than I study them.

Blue Riders: A group of German painters from the early 20th century, among the first to explore bold color and block forms. I like the anthropomorphized animals and unusual colors that bring life to the characters in their images.

Odilon Redon: A symbolist painter who makes great use of contrasting vivid blue on gold. The details almost get lost in the glare, but the paintings have emotional clarity and impact.

Claude Monet: As i travel around Europe, I am forever finding places that Monet called his own. It’s always exciting to stand in front of a landscape, such as the stone arch at Etretat, and to compare it with the Impressionist’s renderings.

Joan Miro: His paintings are all wire and weight, almost an artists rendering of a Calder mobile. They are simple at first, but vibrate with textures and hidden depths as I watch them.

Paul Cezanne: He uses color in blocks like the Riders, but on a much smaller scale that yields a prismatic effect of building images from colored hips of glass. It’s a different painting at close, middle, and far distances, colors and shapes combining in steps and clusters.

Life Drawing: As I started drawing the human figure, I became fascinated with the arc and curve of the body, with the variety of expressions in pose, and the challenge of bringing out human qualities in static two-dimensions. This series captures works by a variety of artists who achieve these ends is many, many ways.

Figurative Drawing: The human figure made both indistinct and sharp-edged; vivid distortions of shape and color, and a strong emotional undercurrent. These are the works I would love to be able to create.

Paul Gauguin: An European expatriate living in Tahiti who created colorful native scenes of people and ritual in Tahiti. Although they appear simple, his paintings capture deeper spiritual and psychologic themes of life and death, primitive and modern.

Wassily Kandinsky: A logical and liguistic stylist who creates abstract narratives full of hidden meaning. The lines and shapes are, in fact, understandable once you learn his very deliberate language, which makes them more satisfying to me than completely abstract works.

James Whistler: His Nocturnes are hazy explorations of twilight and fog, soothing and reflective. He said that he captured his painting in the brush before applying it to canvas: the strokes are worth close inspection.

Edvard Munch: Emotionally charged, often troubling expressions of pain and tragedy. The art is not sophisticated, but it is often very moving.

Pre Raphaelites: While these have become a cliche for romantic storybook paintings, Millais’ jewel-like representations of myth and Rossetti’s infatuated paintings of Liddy Siddal are wonderful examples of narratives rendered into artistic images.

A view from Ghent

May 24, 2008 by Dave Hampton

The conference has ended, leaving me a half-day to explore the historic center of Ghent. I was last here about forty years ago when my foreign exchange group spent a night here before boarding the plane from Brussels back to the US. We must have been staying just outside of the city center: I remember nondescript yellow buildings, businesses closed through midday lunch, and a total lack of people on the streets.

I have a better impression the second time around. The historic core is pedestrian-only and the old harbor area has been extensively rehabilitated. Dramatic lighting has been added throughout the core to highlight buildings and improve safety, and this has brought lots of people out to enjoy the restaurants and cafes. It gets a bit kitsch in places (the castle tours and canal boats are more ‘Disney cute’ than historically informative), but the overall ambience has really improved.

My hotel turned out to be a half hour walk from the center (another reminder to check city maps when booking), and neighborhoods south of the core were more like I remembered: empty, shuttered, quiet, and a bit rough at the edges. But the city is worth a visit, especially in the evenings when the central streets come to life.

Do not destroy what you cannot create.

May 23, 2008 by Dave Hampton

As we continue the difficult and sometimes contentious work of dismantle the company here in Arnhem, I’m reminded again of my hierarchy of things I enjoy doing, in work or outside of it. I’m someone who loves exploration and epiphany, so it’s not surprising that I find my greatest joys in creating new things. If pressed, I will maintain or repair them if I value the result. I really have not got much heart for tearing things down after I’ve built or committed to them: it saddens and frustrates me.

I am attending a resuscitation conference in Ghent this week, and it’s exciting to see all the new ideas that people have for ways to save lives when people have a heart attack. It’s also restorative to have so many old friends to catch up with and to share ideas with. I had to break at noon for a conference call to update status and policies around the transfer of the product and the closure of the facility, and the contrast couldn’t have been greater.

I always liked physicist Leo Szilard’s ten commandments in this light, and it’s worth repeating them:

1. Recognize the relationships between things and the laws which govern men’s actions, so that you know what you are doing.

2. Direct your deeds to a worthy goal, but do not ask if they will achieve the goal; let them be models and examples rather than means to an end.

3. Speak to all others as you do to yourself, without regard to the effect you make, so that you do not expel them from your world and in your isolation lose sight of the meaning of life and the perfection of the creation.

4. Do not destroy what you cannot create.

5. Touch no dish unless you are hungry.

6. Do not desire what you cannot have.

7. Do not lie without need.

8. Honor children. Listen to their words with reverence and speak to them with endless love.

9. Do your work for six years; but in the seventh, go into solitude or among strangers, so that the memory of your friends does not prevent you from being what you have become.

10. Lead your life with a gentle hand and be ready to depart whenever you are called.

Fortunately, since the human race seems to advance over time, there must be more creation than destruction going on in the world.

Once around the Broads

May 20, 2008 by Dave Hampton

Norfolk, of course…

I finished with business in the UK on Friday and had a beautiful weekend to spend on the Norfolk Broads, a web of waterways in pristine forests and marshland east of Cambridge. This is a very traditional British yachting area, and we were lucky to explore it with Zoe, a restored gaff-rigged broads cruiser built around 1900.

Broads Cruisers are wide, shallow-keel boats, able to avoid the mud and tidelands that make up the area. Zoe is a beautiful wooden sailer with a full Victorian stern, unique among the yachts sailing the area. No winches, no electronics, no shower: this is sailing the way it once was, close to the elements in a heavy, warm cradle of a ship. I had never sailed a gaff rig before, so it took a bit of practice to get the rhythm of it, handling the boom at both top and bottom of the square sail. It makes for a lot of ropework and a lot more weight to haul up and down the timbered mast. But the form and performance are really great once you get things set right. The cabin is small, just a couple of berths and a small gas cooker and pump toilet, with a roof that had to be lifted on my shoulders and braced into place at each stop to provide room to work.

At several junctures, the channels are blocked by low bridges, so the mast must be taken down to get beneath. While a lead slab counterbalances the mast weight, it’s still considerable work to walk the heavy mast down and back up in a controlled way. The rigging is much more complicated than a traditional bermuda sloop, and can become a mess of tangled wire and rope if you aren’t careful. Anchoring is done with a traditional mud weight, which is a real struggle to free from the bottom each morning.

Overall, she’s a physically demanding, but very satisfying and beautiful boat to sail.

The Broads were unusually vacant, and the wind was good, so we were able to sail eight hours a day, covering most of the main areas of the Broads. We were able to do lots of beating up the waterways in a staccato of tacks, then take an easy run ahead of the wind down another channel. It was easy to find sheltered marshes and still coves to anchor into for the night where it was quiet and solitary. Waterfowl were abundant, providing a swan poking a nose in each morning or a family of ducks in the evenings to keep company.

The wind was cold, but the sun was warm; we didn’t really get any rain or insects to interfere with the elemental pleasures of sailing. I enjoy helming part of the time, just handling jib- and main-sheets others: there’s always with time to think, to talk, to laugh, maybe to spot a heron or a pike. In stressful or relaxing times, sailing always brings back patience, connection, balance, and reflection. It was even better to have the opportunity to sail a classic yacht on this turn.

For me, times just don’t get better.

Dealing with Feeling

May 15, 2008 by Dave Hampton

The support group supervisors must have been looking over my shoulder this morning; they found me today to ask why I had stopped coming to the group meetings.

I admit to feeling culturally and linguistically outside the process, but I accept the point that it sends the wrong message when a leader decides not to attend the discussions. So, despite misgivings, I’ll plunge back in.

What are the concerns about the company’s transition that I need to be ready to talk about in a support group meeting? Gaining acceptance that the fight for the company is over, suppressing frustration and sadness about not being able to help the people working for me, and getting past worrys about whether the support for my assignment will be abruptly terminated. I want to avoid the resulting stress, but I already know that retreat into large open spaces is restorative, helping me to get distance and perspective. It’s still hard to be patient and to allow time rather than action to resolve future uncertainties, but I’m gradually finding my way to accept that course for now.

So I feel like I’m adapting and coping well.

With regard to dealing with the emotions surrounding the event, I accept and understand the feelings and I’ve been addressing them constructively: Outward displays of anger or grief aren’t my style and don’t seem necessary or helpful. I’ve already talked about other alternatives with people in the past couple of days. Writing is helpful, especially since I couldn’t write about things in the months leading up to the event. ‘Change of scenery’ can be. Having the occasional opportunity to talk it through matters more than I thought it would.

And, at some point, it will be nice to have the uncertainties removed and some freedom to take positive actions again.

Okay, re-centered, off to the meetings…