September 20th - December 16th
Ugh, I left this post until way too late. Unfortunately I’ll have to drop a lot of detail as 3 months is pretty hard to sum up in a single blog post. Hopefully I can do it justice as India is a place I’m very fond of. I feel bad for all the wonderful little experiences that happened and didn’t get written about. I’ll just have to visit India again and properly journal the whole experience.
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I can’t say exactly when the job search began. It began with the creation of a Note in Evernote (great tool for this type of task). It was much different than any other job search I’ve done, though I haven’t done many as I tend to stick to job for at least 4 years at a time. The key difference with this search was that I wasn’t working, and wasn’t in a hurry to find a job. This allowed me to stick to some rules and a manifesto:
Read more...August 30th - September 19
Remember the woman that I met at the Dream Theater concert? We have kept in touch and she promised to show me around the Hungarian country side! She recommended Balaton Lake area so I found a place to stay in Siófok and worked on scheduling a day to meet up.
Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate as it rained most of the time I was there. On the plus side, I picked up a cold on my way from Ukraine and wasn’t feeling very adventurous anyways. I spent 3 days enjoying the sound of the rain, and watching all of the Harry Potter movies. I picked up some groceries the day I arrived and was able to be pretty self-sufficient.
Read more...August 17th - August 29th
The next leg of the journey was a long slog from Vienna to L’viv. I took a noon train to Budapest and had to pass some time there for a little while. From Budapest it was an overnight journey with many frequent stops in the middle of the night for immigration and customs. If you’ve ever played Papers, Please, it felt like that. Ukraine isn’t part of the Schengen agreement so you can’t just cross the border without a documents check. Around a few hours from L’viv the attendant asks me about my purpose in Ukraine. She then points at my “ringless” ring finger and smiles. I knew of the Russian/Ukrainian bride thing, but found it crazy that her first guess was for that purpose. I thought it was a hyped up, but after watching a few youtube documentaries about it, I learned it’s sadly alive and well.
Read more...July 30th - August 17th
When I learned that my uncle and his family would be in Rome I looked at my schedule to see if I could make seeing them work. It turned out it fit perfectly! The last time I saw them was in London while they were doing their 2013 summer trip and I was on my Belgian Grand Prix vacation. My aunt and uncle are well versed in the world of business so we had many evenings discussing what I’ve learned from the economics courses and floating ideas of what’s next for my life. Of course I got to catch up with my cousins too. Can’t believe how quickly they are growing up (I won’t mention that I remember seeing them in diapers to avoid their embarassment). They had rented a flat near the Spanish Steps which made it easy for me to cram in a bunch of sight-seeing in a short amount of time.
Read more...July 22nd - July 29th
Next portion of the trip is to Eastern Europe! I had a nice simple itinerary to Prague: Heidelberg -> Munich -> Prague. Unfortunately something was going on with the brakes on the train and I missed my train in Munich so it turned into: Heidelberg -> Munich -> Neurberg -> Cheb -> Prague. By now I’m a seasoned itinerary refactorer so this didn’t phase me. These little adjustments of the universe can sometimes end up with interesting things happening. At the Plzen stop, a woman sat across from me in the couchette. She started speaking to me in Czech and my response was the standard Canadian response: I’m sorry?
Read more...July 7th - July 21st
Since my train didn’t leave until after noon, I decided to go back to Bletchley Park and spend the morning there. It was so nice to just spend some idle time in the park and not hurry through the exhibits. Unrushed, I made my way to the train station for a direct train to Glasgow. Upon arrival at the station I was greeted by Derek and Rose who I know from back in the Calgary days. They’ve been super generous and hosting me at their apartment which is close to the train station. It was fun to look back at the tough project we worked on together and look at the experience with fondness and nostalgia. Rose was my concert buddy and Derek was probably the only person I know that likes Green Porno as much as I do.
Read more...June 24th - July 7th
Upon arrival in Antwerp I saw my taxi from the deck. I had all my belongings ready and made my way down to the port. The ship crew was busy with the offloading of containers so I decided it probably wasn’t a good idea to disturb them to say farewell. It was a long drive to the immigration office, and there I found out that I needed a passenger manifest to get the stamp of approval. This meant going all the way back to the ship and back. This added around an extra hour of taxi travel. The chief mate was ready for my return as he had the document in his hand. After that confusion, I made it to central Antwerp and found a hotel near the train station.
Read more...As I mentioned in my last post, I finished the crossing of the Atlantic ocean via container ship. It was a great experiene that I’ll happily do again. 11 days wasn’t enough, and would be happy to spend a month next time around.
A blog post probably wouldn’t due the experience justice so I decided to play around with a basic word game engine to give you a more self-directed tour. Hope you enjoy it!
Read more...After another relaxing two weeks in Vancouver (and attending Sasquatch), it’s time to leave. Here’s the last sunset I watched from the beach. If you can believe it, the weather in Vancouver was 99% rain free!
During my downtime I’ve enrolled in the Economics of Banking and Money on Coursera. I never thought I would find learning this stuff so much fun! To supplement the course material, I’ve been listening to the following podcasts too:
Read more...For the last two weeks I’ve been house sitting for a friend in the beautiful area of Kitsalano in Vancouver. The goal for the two weeks was to figure out the rest of my travel plans and to meet up with a lot of my friends and acquaintances that I haven’t seen for a while.
The two weeks went by quickly. I mainly organized myself around other people’s clocks. This meant meeting people for lunch or after work the majority of the time. Since I had gaps in time between meet ups, I spent a lot of time walking everywhere (and sometimes biking). Experiencing many modes of transportation ends up being an influence on me later on. It was refreshing to not be the dictator of my time, albeit my intentions did dictate who to meet. So by a transitive relationship, I was still directing my time?
Read more...For some context, you may want to read my previous post about quitting my job.
I am homeless and unemployed in probably the most priveleged meaning of the terms. Both states of being are choices I’ve explicitly made. From what I’ve read, I’m not really on a sabbatical, but I’m on a Career Break, except the homeless aspect of it is not as conventional.
So here are the reflections:
On September 1st 2012 I gave up my awesome apartment in Calgary as I prepared for an assignment in India (without really knowing where I was going after that). I changed my mailing address to my brothers place and really didn’t feel much had changed. I had already been travelling weekly for my work assignments since April 2011, and I picked up my life and departed Vancouver to Calgary in January 2010.
Read more...On January 4th 2010 I joined ThoughtWorks and it has been an amazing journey. I’ve seen more systems, worked with more people, and seen more countries than the entire 30 years that preceded that date. I still can’t believe how lucky I’ve been to have such a wonderful opportunity. That’s why it took me a long time to decide to leave it, and go on a bit of an adventure.
For some reason I’ve had every job I’ve had for 4 years since I was 12 years old, so I’m just keeping to my routine! To be honest though, there were a few things that instigated this change.
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