Category Archives: Travel

My travels on this planet called Earth.

California Dreaming

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Good morning all!

Maybe there are better things to do than to update your blog, right before you start work.  And looking at my e-mails and my to-do lists make me feel like this will be a long day.  But considering my recent silence I thought an update on me is in order.  Plus if blogging doesn’t get my creative energies flowing… I’m not sure what will.

As I sit at the table of my hotel room, I can not but be amazed.  For a little over a month, I started a new job and showed up at my client’s office.  My client being located in the south San Francisco Bay area.  The first week I felt overwhelmed by the prospect of travelling, working on a serious project for a serious client and living on my own.  While the initial shock wore off, I am still overwhelmed both in the good and bad sense.

A month later I still love the travelling aspect.  Visiting San Francisco and Los Angeles all were worthwhile.  Flying never gets old, but I could do without the insane travel “security” at the airports.  Everyday I still can not believe that I am in California, right smack in the middle of Silicon Valley.  The fact that my client wanted to fly me in from Toronto to Silicon Valley is amazing.  A huge ego boost.  This is me making it in my career.  Sort of like an actor ending up in Hollywood or performer on Broadway.  Plus I get to work on Android development and build a tablet system from the ground up.  All of this overwhelms me in a good way.

Living on my own in a new city, without a car overwhelms me in a bad way.  Living out here, away from the inner-city makes everything so far and inconvenient.  Groceries, getting places, and all that jazz is tricky and time-consuming.  Taxies take too long, and the only real viable option is biking.  Unfortunately I bought a bike that just broke down on me the same day.  Plus since I will not be living here for longer, it doesn’t make sense to plan too long term.  Being away from friends and family also takes its toll.  Originally I assumed I would at least be able to catch up on my long overdue work.  That is partially true, but I still struggle with that.

Still as with anything in life, there are pros and cons.  Overall I’ve learned a lot, and have a greater appreciation of life’s small things.  I do miss Toronto, but I love also living here.  Flying solo does have its advantages.  And I’ve never been able to take the initiative and be more spontaneous like I can now.  I have learned to be truly independent in work and in life.  And I have started to make friends here too.  Now if only the weather here started being more like stereotypical Californian, as in warm and sunny.  Even the Sun has been shy recently.  But other than that–and if the overwhelming amount of catch-up work would just go away–I am happily dreaming big dreams and living it up down here in California.

Gliders, Italy and Androids

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What an incredible summer and it is funny how it all started.  I found myself without a job at the end of April.  A week or two later I started a crazy schedule of fencing, archery and hiking amongst the usual day-to-days at home.  I even got to try out some serious tree climbing and zip-lining.  And I met new friends at a retreat and a number of parties too.  I even got to hang out with and host Anna and Behnaz, two friends from Montreal for over a week.

At the beginning of July, after months of preparation my brother, Martin went for the Air Cadet’s gliding summer camp.  After over 6 weeks of intensive work, training and practise, my brother can now legally fly a glider by himself.  I am incredibly proud of him and we now have a real pilot in the family.  Wow.

The past month and a half I had the honour and pleasure of hosting one of my very good friends from Italy, Laura.  Laura came to visit us, see Canada and learn English.  We did that and a whole lot of hiking, sightseeing and partying in Toronto, Niagara, Tobermory and Hamilton.  And her English became a lot better too.  I am so thankful that you came Laura and I hope you enjoyed being with us as much as we having you over.  Thanks!

After a full summer, I’ve come full circle.  About three weeks ago, I interviewed and got hired as a mobile developer for Web Impact.  I get to work on building Android mobile applications in a great environment with awesome coworkers.  I have always wanted to get into mobile programming.  But I never imagined that I would be doing what I get to work on.  Unfortunately I can not disclose the details of what I am working on and the technology behind it.  However I can say that the technology and the way we apply it is how I envision the future of mobile, web and desktop computing will look like.

This year has been an amazing ride so far.  And from what I can tell there is even more awesomeness in store.

Returned from Afar

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My plane touched in Toronto Thursday afternoon around 3:15-ish.  And officially my regular schedule resumed on Friday.  However in reality, I’m still behind on a number of things, and everything is still one gigantic mess.  I do plan to get back to blogging on a daily basis.  But at the moment  I’ve got a ton of e-mails to answer, phone calls to make, meetings to schedule and a bunch of other administrative stuff to do.  Hence I’ll keep the updates short and sweet until I can dig myself out of this mess.

Offline for a Bit

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Well folks, it looks like I’ll be  mostly offline for the next couple of weeks.  It is a fairly busy time at work, and with my upcoming trip to Europe, I just don’t have time to blog.  I might blog when I get there, but we’ll see how things go… Anyways take care for now.

Crazy Busy

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I’m going to have to keep these next upcoming posts short.  I am a bit overwhelmed at the moment, with the sheer amount of things going on at the same time.  I still want to try to keep going forward on the projects already in progress.  But I will not add anything new to my plate for the next few weeks.  I’m seriously planning a trip to Europe this year.  Planning this trip will take quite some effort.  Still a short update is in order.

I got meet up my university friend Rob yesterday.  Have not talked to him in ages.  I did spend a long time with him.  But it was great to talk to him again, and I needed someone in a similar position to my own to bounce ideas off of.

I started to compile some notes for my novel.  I wrote down most of the background of the novel.  Now I plan on completing my notes and sketching out the plot.  Then the serious work writing can begin.  As for programming, I’m working on a PHP powered website for justCheckers.  Also I am slowly reading through a book on coding C++ and Qt, along with a silly application I plan on writing to learn the Qt framework.

Back in Toronto, Back to Blogging

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Yesterday I landed in Toronto.  I’m home again.  Back to the normal and ordinary.  But even as the airplane hit the tarmack, I knew things will never be quite the same.  The things I experienced, saw, heard and understood during my short stay in Europe, has changed my perspective, attitude and expectations.   I won’t go into the details, because there are far too many.  And far too many of them are deeply personal.  But I’m glad that I went there, and I gained a lot.  I’m still processing and digesting everything still.

With that said, I will return to my daily blogging schedule.  I hope that no new tragedy, will force me to change my daily routine.  Because there is comfort in a routine, no matter how mundane and un-extraordinary it may be.  However I realize now more than ever, I have to move forward on my personal goals.  I feel a bit behind in some areas of my life.  I have a huge amount of work to do.  And at the moment, there is a lot of catching up I need to do.  Life will continue its intense pace for next little while.  This year shows no signs of slowing down, but rather accelerating.  It feels exhilarating and downright frightening.

I’m still mentally organizing my thoughts and goals.  However a few things have come to the forefront.  I need to learn some more French, German, Italian and Polish.  I need to brush up and learn those languages, since they will come in very handy when I try to stay in touch with my friends and family in Europe.  Also I need to learn to drive.  I must follow through on my professional and artistic goals.  A number of my friends are expecting and excited to see the results of my efforts.  I also need to learn to deal with difficult and tricky situations in a more professional, efficient, pragmatic, diplomatic and proper manner.  And then there are all things, minutae and nice-to-haves…  Thinking about all of this is tiring me out.  So I’ll stop with it here.

I’m also planning to return to Europe, most likely sometime this year.  And this may be sooner than later.  So more planning, thinking, et cetera.

Anyways, I’m back!  Did you miss me?

Parting with the Somber

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I changed the theme for the blog again.  Back to the nice calm, natural feel that I so very much enjoy.  Also I am parting from the somber mood.  Maybe this is a bit premature.  Maybe not.  But I can’t help it… I want to bounce back to my cheery, crazy self again.  Maybe I should be less moody.  Or maybe I should just accept my nature for what it is.

Anyways, just a few more days before I go back to my normal routines.  Back to my life in Toronto, my friends there, and the monotony.  Boring can be fun too… so long as it is not overdone.  I’ll miss my friends and family here too.  But I’ll be back sometime in the future.  For some reason I always gravitate back here again.  This trip taught me a lot about myself, my place and everything in general.  As with any search for knowledge, it creates more questions and concerns than before.  But knowledge gives serenity, as it explains the uncertain and pushes back the unknowable a bit more.

I’ve done some writing.  I hope to have more to share in the future.  But if I want to keep this post short and not rambling.  Then I really, really should, just stop right here.

Port City Update

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Hmm… I debated about writing while on “vacation”.  But since I’ve done so much writing today, I felt it might be appropriate to update my blog.

I’m staying with family, in my city of birth.  I’m here on brieviment, so not exactly a fun time.  After the funeral, I might see some friends of the family.  Nothing very exciting, but a rather busy time.  Today is essentially the calm before the storm.  No plans for visiting or sightseeing, as much as I would love to see people outside of my immediate family and friends of immediate family.  Most young people are busy at work or finishing their studies for the year.

Today however, I have some time for writing.  Or rather in any spare moment I find I’m either writing or reading about writing.  I can’t stand idle time and it seems so appropriate to bury myself in work.

Still I love being here, unfortunate as the circumstances are.  The city is dirty, grimmy and full of hazards that one doesn’t meet in a safe city like Toronto.  But there is also energy and enthausism in strange places.  Expectations of what is normal are radically different.  And for some reason, for all the negativity and defeatism that I can feel, there is a vibrance, a feeling of confined growth.
Or maybe it is just me.  Maybe it is just my romantic attachment to my place of birth.  Maybe I’m just a port town boy, in love with a port city.  Even if the port is no longer close to its former glory.

Defrosting from Montreal

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This weekend was a fun one.  I got to see most of the tourist attractions in Montreal: the Olympic Stadium, Biodome, the Old Port, two of the larger churches and most of the museums.  I chose the wrong weather for sightseeing.  After a lot of walking in the rainy and then icy cold weather, basically I was cold for the entire weekend.  Still I have to thank Anna and Robert for letting me stay at their place and for showing me around.  It was a lot of fun and I plan to return to Montreal.  Only this time the weather will be warmer, and I’ll learn French.

Morning in Montreal

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I should be awake now.  But I can’t help feeling laid back and lazy.  After all is not a vacation a good excuse to relax.

Outside the window, grey daylight streams in filtered by light curtains.  Inside I sit and write.  Outside the wind blows.  The dark silohuette of a tree rocks its branches to and fro in the wind.  Inside I sit and write this and other things.

Later on I will go out and do some sightseeing and shopping.  Later it will rain.  But at least it won’t snow as the earlier meterological reports forecasted.  My tea has gone cold.  I must finish my writing now.