Leaving IBM Research (and Ireland)

It has been almost exactly three years since I have come here to Ireland to work for IBM Research. You can read all about it in these blog pages. Well, not all, and I very seldom wrote about work. Above you see Kostas and Pierre, two of my coworkers. Kostas asked the security guard to take a picture as I was walking out on my last day.
I don't regret having worked and lived here, but it is time to move on. Over the years the job I had changed and I felt I had very little control over the direction things were going. Near the end we got a new lab director and she really started turning things around. However, by that time several of my colleagues had already left and the team had shrunk considerably from the size it should be. Of course, my leaving doesn't help and it will take a couple of years to build the team to its full strength. Sorry everyone.

Our future new home

Sometime last year I got a tip that Intel was looking for people to help work on operating systems for high-end HPC systems. This was something I had done before at Sandia and enjoyed very much. I was (and am) a little worried about how long it will take me to get back into this, but as our negotiations progressed, I became more and more excited about the possibility for this to work for both Lee Ann and me, as well as the group at Intel I have now joined.

Gaudi is big in Barcelona

 Originally the plan was for us to stay in Ireland. Other than the weather, we like it here and it would have let me concentrate on my new job instead of having to deal with a cross-country move. In the end we agreed that we would move to Barcelona in Spain.
That is exciting, but also a little bit scary. We neither speak Spanish nor Catalan. Barcelona is a very international city and it is easy to get by there with English; as a tourist. Living there will be more complicated. I don't understand the Irish plumbers when they come here and fix things, so that wont be that big of a change in Spain. But at least here I was able to read rental contracts, information from the bank, and the tax office web page.

We'll be eating tapas instead of fish and chips

 Lee Ann said she wants to learn Catalan, since Barcelona is in the heart of Catalonia and may some day secede from Spain. I'll try to learn Spanish first. It looks easier than Catalan and many more people speak it. But it will be a few years before we'll be better than Google at translating web pages.
So, busy times ahead learning new languages, new jobs, and a new culture. It will be good and fun to continue stimulating our old brains in new ways.

After a bunch of beers at the Halfway House pub.

On my last day at IBM some of us went out for beers. My colleagues gave me a jersey from Qatar airlines and tried to explain to me that Madrid also has an airline and that they were going to give me their jersey at first. But then they thought it would be safer for me to have the jersey of the local airline. Or something like that ;-) Anyway, it was real nice and the whole team chipped in and wrote their names on it. Thanks everyone!
Now the question is whether I should start a new blog -- my fourth life -- or keep going on this one: After all, we are just moving from one European country that is trying to recover from the financial crisis to another which still needs our help!