I’m pleased to announce that Stephi and I have decided to move to Toronto in the New Year. It was a difficult decision especially considering I am turning down a great job as General Manager of a law firm in Dubai to move back to Canada where as of this moment, I have no guarantee of a job. But after four and a half years of living abroad, it’s time to take that risk and come home to be closer to family and friends and start our life together in a place we both very much want to be rather than one in which we simply tolerate for the money. Despite the short-term uncertainty, we also believe in the long run this will work in our favour career wise.
We have a lot of planning and preparation to do over the coming weeks so we are not yet certain when we will be in Toronto, but our desire is to arrive sometime in late January.
We look forward to seeing everyone in Canada again soon (and regularly)! And for all our friends and family outside of Canada, once we get settled the invitation is open for you to come visit anytime.
Happy Halloween everyone!
They’ve taken a while to finish, but I have finally posted two new galleries from our trip to Belgium. The first focuses on the historic canal city of Bruges – a World UNESCO Heritage Site (Album 20), while the second focuses on the less well kept but equally interesting city of Ghent (Album 21).
The pics were taken back in September when I went with Stephi and her parents (Ilse and Gerhard) on this short four day road trip. From where they live in Wied, Germany it’s about a three hour drive to Ghent, a further hour to Bruges and another 30 minutes to the North Sea. With these kind of short distances to interesting places, road tripping in Europe is simply amazing.
Overall Belgium isn’t a spectacularly scenic country being mostly flat, but it does have some rare treasures, Bruges in particular. Of course there is also the deservedly well known and delicious Belgian chocolate, but my favourite was the beer. Besides sampling as much as I could while there, I brought back a nice collection to enjoy at home.
I hope you like the pics.
It’s been a busy and fun summer for Stephi and I. After she completed her last exam and officially finished her degree back in May, we headed off for 2.5 months of travel through Australia and New Zealand (check out the pics in the “Galleries” link above). We then spent a month in Germany at her parents’ place with a short side trip to Belgium (pics coming soon). Now we’re in Canada having arrived on October 1st and will be here until the 25th. The first few days we’re spending with family in Montreal, then heading to Nanaimo, BC before flying to Toronto for the last couple weeks of the trip. As it’s been almost 2 years since we’ve been to Canada, it’s going to be great to catch up friends and family here before flying back to Germany.
I’m not that good at keeping up with people by email. To be truthful, I hate email, phones, skype, faxes, voicemail, etc. as forms of communication. I like to talk in person, face to face. However, as I roam the globe and have for the better part of the last 8 years, in person communication is challenging. I set up a blog once before about 4 years ago. It didn’t go well. I think I made two posts before forgetting all about it. But I also had the wrong intentions when I started it. I dreamt of sharing on an almost daily basis the experience of adapting and integrating into a middle eastern culture in Dubai. In the end, the experience of integration wasn’t too blog worthy and I was just too busy to share. This blog, as part of my own personal website has different goals:
1. Give me a forum to share significant events in my life.
2. Provide a tool to automatically communicate to subscribers of this blog when I update the main flawd site or its galleries.
3. Provide an easy to use commenting system for subscribers.
I never know who cares to see pics I’ve posted, or that I’m heading out on some adventure. Through this blog, you can subscribe to automatic updates, or you can go to the URL (www.flawd.ca/blog) to see the posts whenever you want. I no longer need to worry if I’m basically spamming you. To register for updates, click the “Register” link to the right or add the RSS feed to your favourite reader by clicking the “RSS” links to the right.
With these more modest aims, postings will be infrequent but I should be able to maintain them.
One last note… the creation of this blog doesn’t mean I will ignore email or stop using the phone. It’s simply meant to supplement my less than stellar efforts in those regards. So don’t write me off completely if you’re not interested in the blog.
Cheers.
