Spoke to the lovely Steph at Planet Subzero about getting somewhere sorted to live in Chamonix. Lo and behold, am all set up! Perfect.
Everything's coming together nicely and picking up pace at a good rate with more ideas for work coming into the pipeline and being discussed. Will book flight this week and start dusting off my thermal thong and the rest of the boarding gear.
For those who aren't sure where Chamonix is, here's a link to the French Google maps listing.
Showing posts with label idea. Show all posts
Showing posts with label idea. Show all posts
Monday, 27 November 2006
The Changingman
Written Friday 24th November
Decided to head home to the country to see my folks and take part in the Lytham Yacht Club annual dinner. It's a pretty traditional affair - dinner jackets, speeches, port and the like. It's pretty crusty too. Junior members are those under 30 and the president of the club is in his 90's. As I said - traditional! The funny thing is not one of the (all-male) members actually owns a boat/yacht/ship - it's purely social.
Another reason for coming up to the dinner is to take a break from the big smoke. I've been in London for a several years now, working for a capital management company and then for a financial betting company. A radical change in life is due. So yesterday the formal resignation went in and it became time to start shaping the future of the boy Narg.
Today I find myself on a Virgin train piling through central England heading from Euston to Preston listening to Nina Simone's greatest hits flowing through the headphones from my iPod with the same subtle, blended, sinuous feel of looking out of the window watching the scenery roll past. It truly does feel like the beginning of an adventure - one that potentially could shape life for many years to come.
I've decided to move out to Chamonix - the town that sits in the valley at the bottom of Mont Blanc in France. It's a mecca for skiiers and snowboarders due to the high, steep peaks, as well as being one of the best places in Europe to go climbing for the same reason. Timings look like to move out there mid-January after spending a month in New Zealand over christmas and new year. The more cynical out there will think this is purely a ruse to go out and play in the snow for a few months, but in fact it's going to provide the oppertunity to finish writing a piece of software that's been rolling around my mind for some time now. Also there's a particularly talented friend out there who runs the Chamonix valley website - chamonix-valley.com - and we've talked a bit working on a few bits on that together in a trade for using his offices to work from.
There's a heightened sense of freedom and happiness now that's not been felt for far too long. It's too easy to get bogged down in monotony and the negative aspect of life and that's debilitating. There's too much oppertunity to make your life wholely fulfilling and happy out there. The big adventure of life is an exciting miracle of a challenge and I've always felt that if you feel like life is passing by and you aren't living to the apex of the fun, happiness, joy and peace you can have then it's time for a change. Life is beautiful - even the chapters that are difficult or you don't like provide the lows for the highs to be high. Once again, it's been easy to wake up in the morning and jump up and down on the bed with excitement about what the day will bring, the utter joy of knowing that this one day is unique and there will never be the chance to live it again. That for me is the most special feeling, to share that with someone else - especially your partner and children - has to be the great gift of life.
There is an element of sadness leaving work - there is a plethora of amazing, incredible people there. Especially one guy who stuck up for me when times were hard and I just hope one day that he'll see the loyalty and honesty he showed me was reciprocated at every oppertunity that arose - he deserved it and much more. For that and his ability to teach and share knowledge selflessly, I thank him. I wish him and the other guys all the very best. Before leaving it also feels fully right to make peace with the very few people who there was any sort of friction with. It just feels correct in order to look back at this chapter in life with a whole heart full of happiness at having those people around as influential characters.
So the main plan of action now is to move to Chamonix and:
1) Write an exciting, challenging, clever, sellable piece of software (then sell it!).
2) Settle into doing two things that I love unconditionally - programming and snowboarding.
3) Fall in love again. OK now this isn't quite so urgent, but it's definately part of the main life plan thingy so it's included here.
Related links:
Chamonix valley website
Listingslab blog
Decided to head home to the country to see my folks and take part in the Lytham Yacht Club annual dinner. It's a pretty traditional affair - dinner jackets, speeches, port and the like. It's pretty crusty too. Junior members are those under 30 and the president of the club is in his 90's. As I said - traditional! The funny thing is not one of the (all-male) members actually owns a boat/yacht/ship - it's purely social.
Another reason for coming up to the dinner is to take a break from the big smoke. I've been in London for a several years now, working for a capital management company and then for a financial betting company. A radical change in life is due. So yesterday the formal resignation went in and it became time to start shaping the future of the boy Narg.
Today I find myself on a Virgin train piling through central England heading from Euston to Preston listening to Nina Simone's greatest hits flowing through the headphones from my iPod with the same subtle, blended, sinuous feel of looking out of the window watching the scenery roll past. It truly does feel like the beginning of an adventure - one that potentially could shape life for many years to come.
I've decided to move out to Chamonix - the town that sits in the valley at the bottom of Mont Blanc in France. It's a mecca for skiiers and snowboarders due to the high, steep peaks, as well as being one of the best places in Europe to go climbing for the same reason. Timings look like to move out there mid-January after spending a month in New Zealand over christmas and new year. The more cynical out there will think this is purely a ruse to go out and play in the snow for a few months, but in fact it's going to provide the oppertunity to finish writing a piece of software that's been rolling around my mind for some time now. Also there's a particularly talented friend out there who runs the Chamonix valley website - chamonix-valley.com - and we've talked a bit working on a few bits on that together in a trade for using his offices to work from.
There's a heightened sense of freedom and happiness now that's not been felt for far too long. It's too easy to get bogged down in monotony and the negative aspect of life and that's debilitating. There's too much oppertunity to make your life wholely fulfilling and happy out there. The big adventure of life is an exciting miracle of a challenge and I've always felt that if you feel like life is passing by and you aren't living to the apex of the fun, happiness, joy and peace you can have then it's time for a change. Life is beautiful - even the chapters that are difficult or you don't like provide the lows for the highs to be high. Once again, it's been easy to wake up in the morning and jump up and down on the bed with excitement about what the day will bring, the utter joy of knowing that this one day is unique and there will never be the chance to live it again. That for me is the most special feeling, to share that with someone else - especially your partner and children - has to be the great gift of life.
There is an element of sadness leaving work - there is a plethora of amazing, incredible people there. Especially one guy who stuck up for me when times were hard and I just hope one day that he'll see the loyalty and honesty he showed me was reciprocated at every oppertunity that arose - he deserved it and much more. For that and his ability to teach and share knowledge selflessly, I thank him. I wish him and the other guys all the very best. Before leaving it also feels fully right to make peace with the very few people who there was any sort of friction with. It just feels correct in order to look back at this chapter in life with a whole heart full of happiness at having those people around as influential characters.
So the main plan of action now is to move to Chamonix and:
1) Write an exciting, challenging, clever, sellable piece of software (then sell it!).
2) Settle into doing two things that I love unconditionally - programming and snowboarding.
3) Fall in love again. OK now this isn't quite so urgent, but it's definately part of the main life plan thingy so it's included here.
Related links:
Chamonix valley website
Listingslab blog
Monday, 13 November 2006
Mood music
I was looking at a clip on youtube earlier about a german guy called The Trainrider who spent the last year of his young life trainsurfing around europe before dying of leukemia. The intro music to the clip is a piece by Enya called Caribbean Blue and it's a fairly recognisable tune. The celtic calmness got my juices going so being of focused mind immediately downloaded the whole track from alltunes.com. I love pieces of music that get you thinking, sometimes the words or the feeling they give you, but ultimately it's the mood they put you in. Spark yourself up in the morning listening to the Grease soundtrack, chill out later listening to Massive Attack, free your mind with Led Zeppelin. It's like a personal psychology experiment.
I like to think that this song by Enya is fairly sad, soulful and relaxing. In fact it almost brings a tear to my eye when I listen to it, but there's an overall sense of contemplative happiness that I get which is an interesting contrast. Everyone has a song like this they know, one that makes you sad but you don't know why - or maybe you know why it makes you sad but can't let it go.
Working the way techies do means you're surrounded by music in various formats, and there's such a range of music to listen to that you rarely just stick your entire collection on random and hit play. You pretty much stick to choosing album/artist/playlist according to your current mood. I'd love to write a program that stores the music I listen to during the day so at 6pm I can look back and see if the music I listened to affected my day greatly in any way. Or even over the week - see which days were good, which were bad and what music you listened to. I reckon there would be some interesting results.
I like to think that this song by Enya is fairly sad, soulful and relaxing. In fact it almost brings a tear to my eye when I listen to it, but there's an overall sense of contemplative happiness that I get which is an interesting contrast. Everyone has a song like this they know, one that makes you sad but you don't know why - or maybe you know why it makes you sad but can't let it go.
Working the way techies do means you're surrounded by music in various formats, and there's such a range of music to listen to that you rarely just stick your entire collection on random and hit play. You pretty much stick to choosing album/artist/playlist according to your current mood. I'd love to write a program that stores the music I listen to during the day so at 6pm I can look back and see if the music I listened to affected my day greatly in any way. Or even over the week - see which days were good, which were bad and what music you listened to. I reckon there would be some interesting results.
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