Entries Tagged 'Personal' ↓

And so a new year begins. After a 10-day break, I returned to work yesterday. And it has rained on and off since. Considering that we had sunshine basically during the whole break, it’s kind of interesting.

I didn’t manage to read everything I had planned to during the holidays, obviously. I did finish two books, but two others are “pending”, and I didn’t even start on my pile of magazines.

On the reading front, in 2004 I read 28 books (that is, I finished 28 books in 2004; one of them was started in 2003, and the two I finished in 2005 already were started in 2004). It looks like a lot, but I think it’s below average for me… part of it is probably because I more or less stopped reading from mid March to late June, because of the big move. Part of it is because some of the books were somewhat “heavy” (the Baroque Cycle trilogy, for example). Let’s see how things develop in 2005…

Visit http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com/. This site has lots of information on the best ways to help, regardless of where you are. It also has links to information sources, list of people missing and found, and to relief organizations. Post comments there (not here) if you have any new information or wish to help in some way.

Yes, I am still alive! And in Melbourne!

Things are finally settling down. I have an apartment (rented), a phone line and ADSL should be installed within a week. More details to come.

Just for the record, yes, I am still around. Not much spare time, though, since there are a lot of things that need to be done before finally flying to Melbourne. The flight is in two weeks, May 26th.

If you can read Portuguese, I’m posting some info on final preparations and on the visa process in my other weblog.

I just handed in my badge and, in a few hours, I will be technically unemployed for the first time since college (oh so many years ago). Tonight there’s a going-away barbecue and, after that, I leave this building for the last time as an employee. My next job (in the not-too-distant future, I hope) will be in Melbourne.

As an administrative note: I will be entirely offline until early next month, so no posts until then. Further news when I get access to a computer again…

The movie “Cast Away” is on TV tonight. You know, that one with Tom Hanks and that lovely volleyball. This is not really relevant for most people, but my name happens to be Wilson (if you’ve seen the movie, you know what I mean).

I also happen to be leaving my job; next Tuesday will be my last day. So, as a parting gift, a group of co-workers gave me… a volleyball (Wilson, of course) decorated more or less like the one in the movie.

Personally, I want to believe this is a good thing.

In a way, you can say I am going after the Oscars. Or, at least, close enough. This year, most of the Oscars went to either New Zealand (Lord of the Rings) or Australia (short animation, Master and Commander…), and that’s where I’m headed to, also: specifically, Australia.

So, those are the big news. Our visa has been approved, and we are moving as soon as humanly possible (which probably means some time in May). We were accepted as permanent residents of Australia, after a long process that started with a skills assessment and an English test, in mid-2002, and ended with an e-mail informing us that the visas had been granted.

I received the news on Feb. 29th, Oscar night. And, to be honest, I think I felt just like the people who went on-stage in LA to get their statues and thank everyone they know. And I guess there are a lot of people I should be thanking, too. This is going to be a big step, and it is something that we’ve been planning for since 2001; many people helped, before and after we started working on this, even without knowing. But I won’t list them here; when they read this, they will know who they are. To you, we say: thank you.

And, to the few people who knew about our plans but thought we were going to Canada instead, I apologize. The Canada trail had one disappointment after another, and eventually we decided to set our sights on some place where we didn’t feel like we were going in uninvited. The Canadian rules changed again when we were mid-way through the Australian process, and we could’ve got in easily under the new terms, but by then it was too late. We may go visit you someday, and now at least you have an excuse to go check out what’s hidden down under.

Ignore, just a small test…

I had the weirdest dream last week…

I dreamt that, in the last film of the Indiana Jones trilogy (the third one, not an hypothetical fourth movie) Chewbacca shows up and meets with Dr. Jones in a remote location somewhere. And that happened because, you see, the three Indiana Jones movies are actually episodes 7 to 9 of the Star Wars series!

After the events in “Return of the Jedi”, Han Solo goes away and, somehow (my dream had no details about this), ends up on Earth in the early 20th century, where he proceeds to disguise himself as an archaeologist and goes on to live the amazing adventures we see on the movies. And that’s where Chewbacca finally catches up with him (perhaps, at the same time, giving birth to every Big Foot or Sasquatch story there is…).

It made perfect sense in my dream, at least.

Great news on the way. Details on the next days or weeks. Keep tuned!

A little self-promotion, if I may… a few months ago, I quietly started a new blog which I intended to use to keep tabs of the books I read, by posting reviews as soon as I finished reading them. So it happened that, soon after starting it, I managed to spend four long months reading the same book: Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson. What that means is, four months with no posts to that blog.

Yesterday, I finally finished it (great book, by the way), and soon after I also read (almost in one sitting) Eastern Standard Tribe, by Cory Doctorow. I have already posted reviews of both books to the other blog and, since now I have almost two full months before the next Baroque Cycle book comes out, I guess there will be a few more of them showing up.

You can track my reading progress with the “currently reading” box on the left-hand side of the main page of this blog. And, if you read any of my reviews and have comments about them, make sure to let me know.

I was going through some old tapes recently, and found three episodes of thirtysomething hidden in one of them. They happened to be the one when Gary tries to get tenure at the university, the one when Michael and Hope go away for the weekend and leave their baby with Nancy, and the one when they discuss having a second baby and Hope finds an old journal in their attic.

They were originally broadcast in 1988 (that is, Michael and Hope’s baby is now probably in high school) and I recorded them in December of 1995. That means that it took me eight years, almost to the day, to watch the episodes I recorded. Talk about procrastinating…

But the fun thing is… when I recorded them, I was a twenty-something (and when they first aired I was a teenager!). I was attracted to that show because the producers, Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, also produced the short-lived (and great) show My So-Called Life, which I greatly enjoyed. I recorded the episodes because they aired very late in the night. But the fact that they sat undisturbed for eight years on that tape can probably tell us that I wasn’t really hooked at that time.

Well, now I am a thirty-something, and I did watch the episodes. And I think I can relate to those people. I’d like to see a show like that nowadays; a show about “real” people in their 30s who are not like the guys in Friends or the girls in Sex and the City; just, you know, regular people.

I guess the chances of that happening are very close to zero, though.

Jeremy Zawodny wrote about what he was publishing on the net 10 years ago, and about how the wayback machine brings everything back to life, and, so, I just had to look myself up…

You can see the result here; that’s the oldest page they have in the archive that definitely comes from me, and it is for Dec. 20, 1996; almost seven years ago. However, the page itself is dated Apr. 7, 1995. Almost two more years before I can celebrate my 10 years of web presence…

Maybe I should celebrate April 7th as my web birthday…

I finally finished the new version of my main website (inasmuch as any website can be said to be finished). It is not particularly content-heavy yet, but that will get better with time, and the visual is now much better than before.

If you care enough to take a look, suggestions and comments are welcome.

I’m back from vacation, after nine days in London and several more in São Paulo. We had a great time in London, and were lucky to find an amazingly sunny weather there! The autumn colours in the parks were just beautiful. I’ll try to post some pictures here at some point, when I finished going though my mailbox and skimming over the latest entries in quite a few blogs.

For now, just a small sample…