Iselin, New Jersey

likewise...celery soda?????

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Lola wrote:

littlek wrote:
Celery soda? Interesting..... does it go with vodka?

It may go with a V-8.

yeah, but...... celery.

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Vodka goes with anything. Even V8. I think V8 has celery in it anyway.

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dagmaraka wrote:

Vodka goes with anything. Even V8. I think V8 has celery in it anyway.

I have V8

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I just talked to a colleague who worked in Iselin for several years. Here is a summary of what he said:

Places to stay (in order of attractiveness):

Metuchen, in the side roads branching off of Central Avenue. Central Avenue itself is way loud, and American houses have crappy noise isolation by European standards.
Iselin itself has a few nice apartment buildings, but only a few, in a corner between Menlo Park and Roosevelt Park.
Edison, within the rectangle surrounded by Plainfield Avenue, Lincoln Highway, Talmadge Road, and the railway tracks.
Woodbridge
Highland Park (Optional because a long way to the railway station lengthens the commute.)
Rahway, but only in the city center. (Optional because most other places in Rahway are either run-down or industrial.)

Biking v. Driving

Biking from home to work is possible if I live either in Metuchen or Iselin. For everything else, I'll need a car.The Seashore

... is generally on the ugly side from Staten Island to Amboy to Keyport to Atlantic Highlands. But the Gateway National Recration Area is gorgeous, and so is the whole New Jersey Shore from there on South.Temporary Housing

I have a fighting chance to find a nice, permanent place within the two weeks from December 1 to 15. But it's a only a chance, and even if I find something, I may find that the current renters won't move out until December 31, January 15, or even later. To guard against risks like this, a good option is to live in temporary housing for the first weeks until moving into the new place and fetching my stuff from Germany. A decent source for such housing (my colleague lived there for three months earlier this year) is [url=http://www.furnishedhousing.com/]Churchill Corporate Housing[/url]. They offer short term leases in Rahway, Edison, and other places.
... and with that, back to wodka: Is its taste improved or diminished by adding celery juice?

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That temp housing makes sense..

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Vodka, vodka, vodka!

wodka is polish spelling, thus not exactly correct in english (not to mention the polish stuff is far less drinkable)

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Would you go as far as saying that wodka can be improved by celery juice, but vodka can not?

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it is a possibility, yes. that might even be a useful distinction between the two.

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The Jersey Shore....

The dock that's to the left of the red boat in this picture? From there back to the railway bridge was my childhood home.

Past the railway bridge, to the right, is the Atlantic Ocean, about a mile away.

In the evenings in the summer, we would sit at the end of the docks, enjoying the cool breeze, drinking wodka (I'm of Polish heritage) and listening to the railway bridge tender play the blues on his trumpet.

http://www.ronsaari.com/stockImages/newJersey/BogansBasinM.jpg

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That Jersey shore sure sounds good. It would be lovely in the Summertime. Bernie, Thomas and I have shared a day at the beach. It was very nice fun. Let's do it again someday this Summer.

Temporary housing sounds like a good back up policy.

As far as Vodka goes, I don't like the stuff. But my favorite morning drink is 4 ozs of V-8 and 4 ozs of lemon juice. Deeeeelicious. And yes, V-8 does have celery. Yummy. I think I'll go have one now. It's officially morning, after all. Then night night to everyone.

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My contract has arrived, and questionnaire-filling-time has arrived. This raises a couple of questions not directly related to New Jersey, but not worth starting their own thread for.

1) Here's a question that's apparently related to what kinds of work I'm able to perform: "Have you ever been bonded?" What does "bonded" mean in this context? Is my company hiring me to explore the darker facets of sex together?

2) One box I'm supposed to check as a condition for employment is that I agree to take a drug test "no later than three work days after entering the United States". They don't specify who will administer the test and where. So where do employees in the US usually go for drug tests?

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I doubt you've ever been bonded (most people haven't). Here's a description

Quote:

Bonding is very closely related to being insured. With insurance, an insurance company evaluates risk and estimates how much to charge for the policy and how to write the policy. Bonding is very similar in that the bonding company evaluates risk and determines how much to charge to provide bonding to a project.

Typically, when an undesired event occurs -- such as a homeowner's house burns to the ground -- the insurance company pays the homeowner for the cost to rebuild the house because he bought insurance from the company. Similarly, a bonding company typically pays a third party who is under contract with the purchaser of the bonding when something doesn't go right. In the event the bonded company fails to perform adequately, in some regard, the bonding company assumes certain obligations and responsibilities toward the client of the bonded company. The contract between the bonded company and the bonding company determines what obligations and payments are to be assumed by the bonding company. The contract also states the conditions under which these obligations are to be assumed. However, the terms "bonding" and "insurance" often overlap, and the semantics can be confusing.

For example, Errors and Omissions Insurance in the computer industry is much like bonding. If a company hires a programmer, and the programmer really screws up, costing the hiring company a great deal of money, Errors and Omissions Insurance will protect the hiring company. source

Agreeing to take a drug test doesn't mean you have to run out and find an independent lab that will hand you a cup to pee in. It simply means that if you are handed a cup (or given an appointment) by your employer that you agree to the pee and the testing.

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Thanks, JPB. Just to make sure I understand "bonding": Would professional indemnity insurance be bonding, or only "much like bonding"? Your article would seem to suggest the latter. Or to ask it from a different angle, is "being bonded" the same as "being vouched for"?

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No being bonded is coverage (bond) from a bonding company. Professional liability insurance or errors and omissions insurance is coverage from an insurance company and is "much like bonding. I think you can honestly state that you have never been bonded. One would know if they have been.

On the pee in the cup thing... the application has a checkmark for agreeing to the test. Since you are agreeing to it, you may want to follow up on their requirements once the application is accepted if they don't get back to you with specifics. My assumption is that your employment package will include directions on how to comply with the requirements.

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Thanks! I think I get bonding thing now. As to the drug test, it's not a checkbox. It's a catch-all sentence in my work contract, saying

Your employment is also contingent on completion of a standard background check, drug screen (to be taken no later than 72 hours from arrival to the US), verification of information supplied on your employment application and related documents and depending upon your position, clearance pursuant to our Deemed Export Guidelines as required by the United States Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security Export Administration.
So, technically, it would seem that if I enter the United States and take the drug test four days after entering the US, they can pretend they have never employed me. Sure, I don't think they'll do it, but then why would they put a phrase like this in the contract?

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Thomas wrote:

My contract has arrived, and questionnaire-filling-time has arrived. This raises a couple of questions not directly related to New Jersey, but not worth starting their own thread for.

1) Here's a question that's apparently related to what kinds of work I'm able to perform: "Have you ever been bonded?" What does "bonded" mean in this context? Is my company hiring me to explore the darker facets of sex together?

2) One box I'm supposed to check as a condition for employment is that I agree to take a drug test "no later than three work days after entering the United States". They don't specify who will administer the test and where. So where do employees in the US usually go for drug tests?

Bonded here used to mean that you took some benefit (like free education) and in return you agreed to work for the people who gave you the benefit for a certain number of years.

Eg...when I was in school, teachers were in short supply, so the education Dept. offered free Teacher's College (and sometimes University) to people, in return for working for the department (usually in the country) for a given number of years.

If you left before the years were up, you had to pay back a percentage of the cost (the bond) of your education, depending how many years of the agreed time you had already worked.

If you did that, it was called "breaking the bond".

I am wondering if they want to know if you have ever broken such an agreement?

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We'll see. Meanwhile, I answered "no". If I ever had been bonded, I'd be knowing what they're talking about, and I don't.

As to the peeing agreement, I just notice that it was myself who falsely told JPB it was a checkbox. Sorry about that!

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Are your forms being submitted electronically or via snail mail? If it's electronic then you have plenty of time to submit the documents with an email cover asking for direction on completion of the drug screen. If it's snail mail then you're starting to run into time constraints with getting feedback by Dec 4th. If so, you may want to send an email to the personnel director (or your hiring boss) letting them know that the paperwork is in the mail, that you will be arriving in the US on Dec 1, and that you need direction on how to complete the drug screen requirements by Dec 4.

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Here are a couple of URLs
Here are a couple of URLs that you might be interested in looking at.

http://www.cityofrahway.com/home.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/realestate/06livi.html

Let us know your progress and what you decide. Also, if these are helpful sites. Good luck! Charli

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Iselin, New Jersey

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