Me? Very! It took about 6 weeks for my broadband connection to be set up in my new flat (5 to get a phone line..thank you BT!). Until that I had the Internet through a 3G USB stick. It worked but was pretty flaky. Now, I’m back with a proper connection and it made me realise how dependent I am on the Internet. It’s a bit like you’re unplugged from the world without it. Email has become my primary form of communication. The first thing I do when I get home is switch on the TV and flick my laptop open on my Netvibes homepage. BitTorrent download is gift from the Gods. And I do a lot of shopping online too. So in short I am extremely dependent on the Internet. It’s good to be back online.
Archive for the ‘personal’ category
How dependent are you on the Internet?
November 7th, 2009Feeling the strain
November 7th, 2009It’s been a while since I have had a good night sleep. Combined with a lack of exercise, bad eating hygiene and too many drunken nights my body (and mind) is really starting to feel the strain. It is time I start pulling myself towards myself. So commencing today I’m giving my body a break from alcohol. The first thing I will do tomorrow is go for a run. And I need to eat properly. One has to be sensible from time to time…
Time to reflect
October 28th, 2009Seating at the window of the train, looking at the English country side passing by in front of my eyes I can’t help but ponder on where my life is heading. For right now I am en route to a two-day workshop in Winchester. A welcome change from the office. But back onto the main point. What should a single and slightly confused 30 year old man do with himself?
In this modern world of ours it has become very easy to live and travel abroad. And it is for the better. I consider myself very lucky to be able to experience different cultures. It also allows me to look back at my own culture with a bit of distance. The catch is that I don’t feel like I belong anywhere. In London I am just a foreigner like many others. In France I more and more feel like a stranger too. Very uncanny!
So what should I do? Well, the simple truth is I don’t know. I have very good friends in London so I guess I could stay here longer. But for how long? Or maybe I should go back to France. After a while I suppose I’ll feel less like an outsider. Or why not a new adventure in a different country? I could also renounce all material properties and retire to a Buddhist monastery in Tibet. Okay, maybe not. But the possibilities are almost endless and the question still wide open.
I guess a little more pondering is required…
Reading List
October 4th, 2009A few old and new books I want to read:
I’ve just started reading Implementation Patterns by Kent Beck.
The last supper
September 15th, 2009
No, that's not me at the center of the table.
Today my ex flatmates and I (a.k.a the Awesome Foursome) will hold our last dinner at the flat I live in. As of next Monday we will all have moved out of this place which contains a lot of memories. For the most part, memories of great times spent with great friends.
The feast will begin with some delicously melted Camembert (receipt compliments of El Juanito). it will be followed by the world famous “Quiche de Ludovic” and accompagnied by the spectacular “Insalata di Gaia”. The dessert (pronounced dezert) will be a specialty from Brittany called Kouign aman. Dinner will of course be served with wine: South African and French (need to manage all egos – though I would still not budge that the latter is better). Saucisson will be offered as appetiser. Live entertainment will be provided by the other members of the cast, known by their stage names as El Gordito and Sleepy Bee…
it should be fun.
The programmer-turned-team-leader syndrome
July 21st, 2009The other day one of the team leaders I work with mentioned about the challenges inherent to moving on to a team leading role from a more hands-on development position as he has been experiencing recently. This is something I have come across on quite a few occasions in my relatively short career in the software industry. This is something I experienced first hand a couple of years ago.
The skills required to be a talented developer and those necessary for successful team leading seem to be at the antipodes. Indeed, often software programmers lack basic social skills — remember Garry the IT admin guy you went to talk to the other day because you needed something fixed on your computer and the guy told you off without even looking at you –. After all, we spend most of our time interacting with machines, not humans*. On the other hand, these very social skills are the tools team leaders are required to master in order to be successful.
Another challenge newly appointed team leaders face is that they are forced to stop coding as much as they used to. Most developers I know went into the software industry because they enjoyed writing code so it is a bit hard to take that away.
My personal experience with this transition is that it threw me out of my comfort zone and was challenging at the beginning. However, I quickly realised that although challenging I did enjoy that aspect of my job. And because I wasn’t leading too big a team I also still had time to keep writing code.
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* Kent Beck in “Implementation Patterns” argues that developers should write code for other developers to read, not for compilers. Michael Lopp in “Managing Humans” also has some very interesting things to say about it.
Turning 30
July 19th, 2009It is funny to think that everyone goes through the same thing in life, yet, it is once in a lifetime an event. I imagine it has been talked about countless times but anyway, here’s my experience:
At first, a few months back, I didn’t think it was such a big deal. In fact, I was even looking forward to being 30 years old. Well, now, it’s a different story. Next Sunday I will be 30 and I’m not so cool about it anymore. It’s not so much the age but the expectations I had about my life when I imagined myself turning 30 many years ago. I look at the life I have and I’m not sure I have much to show for myself. I don’t want to sound self-pitying though. I do have a pretty comfortable life. I just struggle to make sense of it sometimes. I live in a flatshare, in a country I don’t belong to, single, doing a job I don’t enjoy so much these days and no real plans for the future. Ok, that sounds a bit like self-pity. I guess it is quite scary not to know what to do with myself.
Maybe I am having mid-life crisis a bit earlier than expected…I hope at least.
Time is not on my side
June 17th, 2009These days I find myself juggling with a lot things to do; both professionally and personally. The problem is that I don’t have very good coordination skills, which makes juggling quite a challenge. Struggle is the word coming to my mind.
It’s not that I’ve gotten bad at time management — I was never good at it — but nowadays I have many more things to take care of. It is the most obvious at work. Back in October last year I was promoted to a management position which meant that the number of projects I have had to keep an eye on increased at least 2-fold. Combined with a busier private life, my brain quickly gave up trying to keep up with everything going on.
Back in my student years I didn’t have such problem. Life seemed much slower and maybe simpler. Not to mention I was younger.
So what I should I do (I hear you ask)? Well, if my memory can’t hold all this information I need to give it some help. At first I tried making ToDo lists on paper at the beginning of every week. Unfortunately the list kept getting longer and messier as the week went by. Plus, I had to recopy my ever growing list every Monday. I quickly realised it wasn’t a practical solution. The more logical approach (especially given that I’m in the software business) was to use a software to help me keep track of my tasks.
Being a Mac enthusiast I stumbled upon a tool called OmniFocus from The Omin Group. It is build around the GTD approach. I’ve found it very simple and intuitive to use. Unfortunately my computer at work runs on Windows so it wasn’t an option. After some more research I came across My Life Organized — don’t you love the name? –. I’ve only been using it for about three weeks so far but I have certainly noticed a very substantial improvement in keeping up with all my tasks.
Time will tell if this approach is really working for me.
Moving on…snif, snif
January 11th, 2009Two of my flatmates have now moved out of the flat. The four of us have lived together for almost two years and have become very close friends. However, having been married for over a year now, it was naturally time for them to move on to their own place.
They informed me of their decision when I came back from my fabulous holidays in South Africa with Gaia (the fourth flatmate), which broke the holiday mood very quickly. Since then my feelings have been swinging back and forth from sadness (to see them leaving) to happiness (to see them moving on with their lives). This last week has been particularly emotionally challenging. It is one thing to know their leaving but it is another thing to actually say goodbye! Now, I need to point out that they are only moving a couple of blocks away. I know it will probably sound a bit stupid to some but it will never be the same again.
Today, we have new flatmates moving in. It is so strange to have suddenly different people living with you. I suppose that’s London. They seem very nice too and hopefully we’ll also become good friends.
To wrap it up, I’d like to say thanks to both of them for having been such great flatmates, and for being some of the closest persons I have in this world. It means a lot to me.
Goodbye 2008, Hello 2009
January 6th, 2009With the new year with us already, it always makes one reflect and look back on all that happened throughout the year and on what to look for in the new year. I will not derogate to the rule.
So what’s happened in 2008?
- Some difficult times when (and after) I decided to end a long distance relationship.
- A lot of hard work, party (or mostly?!) to compensate for the void left.
- Changes at work: more responsibilities, different type of work. Probably due to my hard work.
- Some very good times with friends, including a lot of memorable moments with my flatmates.
- Turning 29 (the last one before the big one).
- Some travel: France (obviously), Columbia (wicked awesome
), Cape Town (wicked awesome++ ). - Becoming an uncle for the second time, this time a girl (Jade).
- Some mistakes…who doesn’t make a few
. - And a realisation! A realisation that things can be different and that it’s only up to me.
So what’s to come? Well, I could make a (very) long list of things I’d like to do or change this year but I will concentrate on one: letting people in. For a long time I haven’t let anyone get too close to me. This has to change. It’s already changing…
PS: Happy New Year!
