Tag Archives: Travel

Grey Morning in a New Reality

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Outside the window, grey clouds fill the sky and raindrops stream through the air.  A warm morning for an early December day, the weather being more likely for mid-November.  The rain does not bother me as I am sitting in a GO train headed to downtown Toronto, and getting ready for the start of a new day.

Since I started working at Indusblue as an Android developer, my mornings involve a morning train commute to Toronto.  While taking the train and streetcar to work extends my commuting time, I can not complain.  I get about two hours each day of time for myself, to get work done.  Amongst other things, I use this time to write or catch up on past work.  Today I decided that instead of sleeping on may to work, I would update this blog.

After a summer of travelling to and from San Francisco and spending a good portion of my Fall travelling in central Europe: Poland, Germany, Austria and Italy; I finally am settling down at the end of the year.  While I love travelling and visiting new places, I am glad that I have returned to Toronto.  I am glad to be close to most of my friends, family and familiar settings.

Since my return, I have concentrated on catching up on overdue work.  So many tasks and delayed projects have piled up, that I feel the need to make progress on them or even finish them before the end of the year.  Amongst other things I started writing two pieces: a science fiction novel and an auto-biography of sorts.  Also I started working on justcheckers again, which I plan to complete as part of my portfolio work.  And I am working on a few other missing or lacking parts of life, that I can not comment on right now.  However I am overjoyed with the progress I have made, and the opportunities that linger on the horizon.

So while the mornings are grey and rainy and sometimes quite cold, I am grateful for the new reality of life I am in now.  It might rain outside, but I feel as if it were sunny.

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.

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.

An Invitation to a Party

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Somewhere out there in Wolverhampton, UK, four large gents and there large group of friends, followers and groupies are having one helluva party. Unfortunately I’m not with them. As Aq pointed out on a previous blog entry, Toronto is a bit of a ways. And in days of stellar expensive flights, I couldn’t afford such a trip. 🙁

I did listen to the last studio recorded LugRadio podcast. On my N810, a device which first heard about in LugRadio. Or was it from Bert & Ernie on LAS? I keep on mixing up my muppet shows. 😀 And whats up with the melon?

Anyways, thanks again to the entire LugRadio crew, for the crazy banter and great times. You will be missed. And if I ever meet you guys in the flesh, I’ll be buy ya a beer. Or more if necessary. 🙂

Home Again, Home Again…

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Back in sunny, and fortunately not scorching-hot Toronto. Actually, I flew in on Wednesday but I need about two days to unpack, clean up and readjust. Everything around the house is still in various levels of disorganization, disaster and chaos. So nothing much changed since I left, at least around here.

Anyways, currently I am employed at home cleaning up. Hopefully in the evening I will start my job hunt. A slightly daunting task to say the least, but I need to get off my lazy bum and start earning some money. After all the 8 hours transatlantic flight allowed me to come with a shopping list of things I need… and want. The vacation gave me many things to think about. But I do not feel comfortable listing out all my personal thoughts here. I already posted too much information about myself thats floating around the web.

One thing that I want to start up again, are all the open source projects I left off. Also I need to start writing again, but this time for actual publication. There is so much I want to do. Sigh. Where should I start? Maybe a round of UT2004, and then I will take it from there.

Chilling in Umbria

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Okay. I admit it: I have been too lazy to write updates in a while. Instead I am enjoying the “high” life in Terni, Italy. Mostly just learning Italian (Mia italiano e povero, perche sono canadese e non sono italiano.) via translation from Polish (yes, its doable), travelling and chilling. Travelling certainly expands one’s perspective of the world. I learned how a subtropical climate looks and feels. I learned why siesta is a great idea and a great excuse for sleeping in the middle of the day. I learned how difficult it is to learn a new language. I even may have experienced how its feels to be desired. Apparently my profile resembles that of Tom Cruise’s. w00t!

Anyways, I could not describe all the things I experienced in this past week. Or I could of just grown truly too lazy to exert myself. The hot, dry Mediterrean sun has that kind of effect on a person. Or I might be enjoying Terni and its welcoming people too much. Its funny, how my Northern European attitude towards at least some form of organization, is seen as workaholism by Italians. Seriously, guys wanting to clean up after my own mess and me being lazy are not mutally exclusive.

Its getting late. Maybe I will write more tomorrow. Maybe.