The Southeast Face
The life of leisure is a mixed blessing, and it would be so much more enjoyable if it were accompanied by a trust fund. As it stands, my conscience is constantly nagging me about being a freeloader. As a student, I had an excuse, but now, as I see the torrent of cash outflows, and we are trying to build our life in this new country (where neither of us is a citizen or permanent resident), all it does is give me heartburn.
The job search is plodding along. My first and only interview should take place on Thursday morning with BearingPoint. It should add some clarity--one way or the other--about what I need to do further. Eliminating one variable of uncertainty in life reduces the degrees of freedom in a positive sense. If BearingPoint should decide that I'm not a good fit for them, then I will at least know that I need to start pursuing other avenues more aggressively.
The downtime has give me the opportunity to work on some personal projects. The biggest one has been my website, which is now more or less operational. I've also decided to start brushing up on my Japanese, which I've allowed to deteriorate since I joined the Peace Corps in 1999. We'll see how long my resolve lasts on that one. Hopefully it will be better than my resolve to exercise. Our apartment building has an exercise room. I've made some token efforts to visit it, but I can't say that I've been very enthusiastic about it. Not that there's any excuse. All I have to do is get in an elevator and go down 23 floors.
Andrey's work is okay. He has found it very frustrating, partly because it's a different level of research, but also because they are asking him to do things that are little bit outside of his profile. The cultural and language barriers make it even harder for him to get this sorted out, but I am very confident that he will. In six months or so, he should be able to look back and give a sigh of relief. More importantly, he will be amazed at how much he's learned. I hope.
Toronto has been a nice home for us so far. We enjoy living in the heart of things. It's so wonderful to be able to walk everywhere (although that doesn't rationalize my failure to go to the gym more regularly). The panhandlers and "crazy people" can get to be a bit much, at times, but they're not any worse than in any other big city. (This will be the topic of a forth coming blog.)
That's all for now. Maybe now I'll go climb a few thousand stairs.
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