Blog
Welcome to my page of scribblings about what I'm working on, what I've been doing with my time, how much the weather sucks and other such fascinating stuff.
This blog has an RSS feed.
Filter: All General Parrot Christianity Types & Semantics
Saturday, 3rd May 2008
"trying to decree orgasm by law"
Well, that's one phrase I'd not have expected to ever see in a news story...
Addios Spain, ahoj Slovakia
It's strange to think that one week today, I will be about to spend my last night here in Spain. By then I'll have been here just about a week short of six months, having arrived back in the middle of November. It's gone fast, but I've enjoyed the warmth and having people to visit. I'll be spending a couple of days in the north of England before flying out to Slovakia to start my next living abroad adventure. :-)
Finding an apartment took a little doing, but I've ended up with something really nice at the end of it, thanks to contacts I have through the Perl community. I get to be near the old city, which is very pretty, and even get a view to the castle, not to mention plenty of space for me and for friends to come and visit. Oh, and I have a bit of a tower, just for fun. It's a bit of a way where I am to the train station, but from the Google map it looks like I'm only 2-3 minutes away from a tram stop where I can get a tram directly to the station during the hours they run.
I'm very much looking forward to being over there, especially the Bratislava Perl Mongers social they've kindly arranged to welcome me a couple of evenings after I arrive. I sure owe some beers to some very helpful folks. One thing I want to do shortly after arriving, other than just settling in and finding where the good shops, bars and eateries are, is to find a private tutor in the Slovak language. The approach has worked nicely for me in Spanish, and I've made decent progress in the last six months despite me not really having given it the amount of time I should have. I hope that I will be able to make some good progress with what is reported to be a hard language. I have been learning the alphabet and how to pronounce stuff, can just about count to ten with correct pronunciation (actually in Slovak, rather than doing it in Russian and pretending it's Slovak...there are subtle differences as well as obvious ones) and do a few very, very simple words and phrases (like "yes", "no", "hi", "I am Jonathan" and "Beer, please"). I've fancied learning a Slavic language in a more depth ever since I learned a little Russian, so it's going to be hard work, though fun, to do so.
How to lose an evening
I hate it when people don't know what they're doing, have root and screw up a production server. I hate it when it's one that I used to be responsible for but haven't been for since a year and they come crying to me about it. I hate having my evening taken up thanks to someone being incompetent, when I had quite enough to do anyway (and didn't get done as a result, and now have to do tomorrow, when I already had quite enough to do anyway). Moral of this story: never run a hosting company. It'll only come back to haunt you, a year after you managed to sell...uh, let me get this accurate, give away...the dammed thing.
Saturday, 26th April 2008
Funded To Hack Perl 6!
I'm very excited to have been given a grant from Vienna.pm to work a day a week on the Rakudo Perl 6, initially for three months but if I do OK with that for the rest of the year. Being able to dedicate a day of thinking and working time to the project, rather than just bits of spare time here and there, will be great. I'll be starting on this next week, and posting about my progress on use.perl.org and rakudo.org. :-)
Thursday, 17th April 2008
Goodbye, Oasis
Oasis Hong Kong Airlines, the airline I used to get to Hong Kong on my trip to China, has gone bust. It'd only been operating for a year and a half, and sold the flights really quite cheaply, but still gave free meals during the flight. I'll always remember the Asian noodles for main course, followed by the very British apple pie for desert. :-) I guess they just gave too much and charged too little. I'm struggling to think of any other budget long-haul airlines out there, which may tell you something about the viability of such a business. Feel bad for the passengers caught up in this, though...I'm long overdue a major delay or cancellation given the amount of flying I do.
Sunday, 13th April 2008
Financial Annoyance: The Weak Pound
For many people, the euro getting stronger against the pound makes holidays to many European countries just that bit more expensive. I'm feeling the effects somewhat more. The rent of my apartment here in Spain has increased by well over £60 a month during the time that I have lived here. That isn't because of a change in the rental price, but rather because I pay the rent in euros and all of the contracts I have been working on recently, which produce my income, were negotiated and are paid in pounds. And it isn't just the rent: food, beer, the train to the airport, the power bill...the list of things that cost that bit more goes on - and it adds up. It's not like I don't earn enough to absorb this, but it does mean I have to work more hours to have the equivalent lifestyle, which isn't equivalent anyway because I'm spending more time working. ;-)
I am currently negotiating a couple of new bits of work, and for both of them I am negotiating my payment in euros. However, the question then becomes, what should I do with current ones? Should I try and re-negotiate the current ones that I expect to go on longer in euros? That really comes down to whether I expect to be in the eurozone long term or not and, of course, how the pound is going to perform against the euro from here onwards.
Then there's the whole issue of where to put savings. Doing the computation of how many euros less my savings now buy me than they did this time six months ago is pretty depressing. Of course, if I put them in an account in euros and then go back to live in the UK and the euro has weakened against the pound by that point, I lose out again. It's somewhat like gambling. Thing is, by having savings and earning in one currency, but paying out my living costs in another, I'm inherently tied up in the currency market whether I like it or not. I'm still trying to work out the best way to manage that.
And the surprise decision is...
...that I'm going to be moving to Bratislava for the summer. The most common reaction to this so far seems to be along the lines of, "where on earth is that?!" So for those of you who are wondering - don't worry, you're not alone. And hey, I couldn't have told you where it was up until a year or two ago, when I started traveling a lot and became more geographically aware. :-)
Bratislava is the capital city of Slovakia, also known as the Slovak Republic. Compared to many capitals, it is fairly small. In my opinion, it is also very beautiful, but at the same time very modest about it. It's main square is much smaller and much less overwhelming than is typical in Eastern European cities, but full of character.
Bratislava lies on the Danube river, and is just an hour away from Vienna by train (and probably not too much longer by a really good fun method of transport: the hydrofoil, where you speed along the Danube, the wind in your face and your hair flowing in the wind). Slovakia has Austria to its west, Hungary to the south, Ukraine to the east and Poland and the Czech Republic to the north. I guess you could see it as being at the crossroads of Europe. And yes, for me that also sets it up for some fun weekend trips. Budapest is possible as a day-trip (two and a half hours by train away), Prague is about five hours and the western Ukraine is an overnight train journey. And that's just getting out of Slovakia and forgetting all the great stuff in the country itself, not least the High Tatra mountains, with their beautiful and well marked hiking trails, being about four hours away. Just nice for finishing off work a little earlier on a Friday and taking a train over there for a weekend's hiking.
Admittedly, this wasn't what I expected the outcome of my "where shall I live" question to be. However, it's the first answer that I feel at peace about. It feels like the Right Thing, and, I believe, where God wants me to go. I'm not entirely sure why. I guess I'll find out. Unlike when I came to Spain and it felt like running away from things, this time it feels much different.
I'm still working on a place to live, but am very hopeful that this will fall into place in the coming week. Prices are really quite steep right in the heart of the old city, and fall off a bit as you head a little way out, then quite a lot even further out. I'm aiming to be close to, but not right in, the old city. I'm also trying to find a place with enough room to let me have folks over to stay and accommodate them comfortably, even if that costs me a little more. The single thing I have enjoyed most about having my own home in an interesting place (warm creates interest in winter ;-)) has been having friends come to stay and being able to show them around. Amusingly, one person has already asked if they can come and stay before I've even got a place to live. Cheeky, huh? :-) But I very much hope I will be welcoming many friends into my corner of Bratislava over the summer and autumn.
Friday, 28th March 2008
Heathrow T5...oh my...
Check out how smoothly things are going at Heathrow's new Terminal 5. Summary: they aren't. It's the usual typical combination of BA and Heathrow. Yup, baggage screw-ups. I'm not sure how on earth they've managed to make such a mess of it, but I sure know my patience would have expired if I had to wait four hours for my bags in arrivals, or arrived to be told I could only take carry-on luggage. I mean, really, how hard can it be to get bags off a plane and onto a belt? FOUR HOURS?! I'll take this opportunity to re-affirm my vow that I refuse to fly with BA.
Monday, 17th March 2008
Ukraine Photos!
I've finally gotten around to putting the photos from my time in Kiev up. It was a surprisingly beautiful city, and I really want to return there, and to explore Ukraine more generally too. Need to improve my language skills first, though! I spoke some very bad Russian, but it was enough to find out where to buy a bus ticket, get directions to the metro, buy coffee and say my please and thankyou's. How many people I offended by speaking Russian rather than Ukrainian, I've no idea. :-)
Huge thanks to Andrew Shitov for organizing the workshop that saw me heading to Ukraine as well as Peter and Maxim, both of whom I greatly enjoyed apartment-sharing with. Not to mention everyone else I met for interesting discussions and good times. Can't wait for the next workshop in that part of the world! And yes, I know, there's one in Russia in May, but I plan to be backpacking around the Middle East at that point in time. I will most certainly make a big effort to be in attendance if the plan to hold one in Belarus comes off, though! :-D
Sunday, 16th March 2008
Tibet: it's not incense smoke now
It's really strange to see pictures in the news of a bustling square I crossed only several months back covered in soldiers and riot police. Lhasa, and Tibet as a whole, really are just different to anywhere else I've been, and I've still never found good words to explain what I really mean by that. There was something in the thin high-plateau air - and I don't just mean the constant smell of incense. The guest house I stayed in, with its wonderful attached restaurant where I ate my way through yak meat, nan bread and Chang, was quite literally two minutes walk from that square: the one that lies before the Jokhang temple. I remember walking down the street on the evening after I arrived and casting my eyes on it for the first time at dusk, the incense smoke billowing up from the burners.
This week's pictures of smoke aren't showing the burning of incense. One of them, rather, showed a street of burning shops, with orange flames and dark, black smoke. I'm pretty sure I walked down that street. If it's the one I think it is, then it's the one with many IT related shops. The owners, from what I could see, mostly (or maybe entirely) were Han Chinese rather than native Tibetans. Not that this makes setting a shop on fire OK, but at the same time it makes them a pretty obvious target for venting resentment against the Chinese government's policies on Tibet.
I was also at the Sera monastery, where monks have protested in the recent uprising. I was meant to go to the Deprung monastery, however the Chinese government forbade visits when I was in Tibet, just as they refused to grant my permit to go to Everest Base Camp. If you were ever skeptical about the level of interference by the Chinese in Tibet, have no doubts. I've seen and felt it on a personal level. And don't get me started on the traffic police, who detained my driver for a short period of time on a road in the middle of nowhere.
I had quite a lot of freedom on my trip to wander around as well as having the bits where I was with my guide and driver, and you didn't even have to go looking for resentment to find it. The tone of voice which people used when referring to the huge monument erected by the Chinese to mark their "liberation" of Tibet was telling enough. The impression I got was that the Chinese are viewed as an occupying force. Of course, that's not the way the Chinese government sees it. The Tibetan Museum in Lhasa, while full of interesting exhibits, is also full of their point of view. A Norwegian Professor whose company I was lucky enough to have for part of my journey had a good word for it: "childish".
I don't want to dig into a big analysis of the situation. At least, not tonight; this post is more to share my memories of Tibet and cast them in the light of the current situation. But at the same time, I don't want to leave it without at least considering the position of the Chinese government a little more, because I don't view them as entirely bad and can relate somewhat to their current dilemma (I find looking at governments from their actions on specific issues far more helpful than just trying to categorize them good or bad, which tells us little of interest). While the press casts it in a "trying to look good for the Olympics" light, I doubt that's the real issue. It's more of a show of power.
If the Chinese government were to allow Tibet to have independence or to give them far greater autonomy than they now have, they immediately create themselves a mass of other potential stability issues. Tibet is far from the only place with an ambiguous relationship with China. Many of the states along the north of China are to some degree in that category, including Xinjaing, home to many of the Uighur people. But very concerning is also Taiwan, which has defense treaties with the USA (and probably many more places) should China try and take back any power there as a result of a Taiwanese declaration of independence. Letting Tibet have independence could send out the signal that other parts of China can do the same too. And while the USSR thus peacefully disintegrated in such a way, I don't really think China is led by a Gorbachev right now.
So while I'm happy to stand and say that yes, I'd like to see an independent or greatly more autonomous Tibet, because there are very genuine and serious human rights issues there, I think it's important to step back and look at the much wider issues that make the Chinese government so set on keeping Tibet under the thumb. The one I've stated is far from the only one, but I think it gives a clear enough idea of why things aren't quite so simple as would be preferable.