2008-01-07 Day One

This morning I stood out there on the street, holding a coffee in one hand, a muffin in the other, and waited for the bus. (Yes, coffee. I thought I might just as well give it another try. I'm still no fan, though.) That was when I realized two things. First thing: I had forgotten to put the memory card from the notebook back into the camera. Rats. Second thing: I am here. I really am. This is exactly what I wanted to do, and now I'm doing it. I made it. All by myself. Nothing and nobody could hold me back. I rule!
I wish I could say that this was the best moment in my life. Or even this year. But it wasn't. Don't get me wrong, it was great, but I've had better. What I can say is this: It made me feel like nothing in this world can stop me. I did it once. I can do it again. And next time it'll be much simpler, because I won't be alone anymore. And if that's not a happy thought, I don't know what is.

***

Some impression from day one at the new job:

- By simply working there I'm automatically health insured. It's that simple. Now my parents have one thing less to worry about.

- There are sooo many people there, and they all have different names! Brian, Colin, Graham, Wei (Chinese), James, Tino (German), ... er... see? I'm confused! They have a funny way of pronouncing my name, too. They don't call me "Marc" with an American R as in Richard, but "Maac", as in MacGyver, only longer.

- From how they behaved on my first day, they're all really nice. Wei went out of his way to get me a room/flat/apartment. He gave me about a dozen URLs and even called his real estate agent for me.

- My boss Colin goes running in his lunch break. Everybody seems to be into sports, and they have a shower there, too. There's even an iron man interest group! I'll start running as soon as my bag with the jogging shoes arrive. No iron man, though. Not yet, anyway...

- There's free beer and wine. That's how much they trust their employees.

- Tomorrow I'm going to get one of these MetroCards. That's a bus ride for only $ 1.90, which is amazingly cheap, considering that I paid $ 7 for the same way when I first came here.

One more thing that's not exactly an impression from my first day, but still worth mentioning: I signed up for Japanese classes, starting in February.

Instead of the beautiful rainbow that I photographed today (inbuilt memory... who needs SD cards anyway?), I'm going to post a picture of my new Kiwi T-shirt. Air New Zealand is seriously starting to get on my nerves.

***

Last Saturday in Hong Kong, I used one of these Internet terminals I mentioned. I should have known better than to sign into Google Talk there. But I did. Argh! The Windows at these terminals is so badly configured that it doesn't show a taskbar. Which means that there's no system tray, which means that there is no way exit Google Talk. Even the Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc) was disabled. So obviously, I couldn't log out. Dang! It's all funny until somebody starts chatting with your girlfriend, using your own account. Thank god she's such a smart girl and figured it out in a second. But still, at least three different people chatted with three of my friends before I noticed and changed my password. I just hope that helps as long as Google Talk is still logged in. If not I'm screwed.
So, boys and girls, always use a protection when you get into closer contact with foreign computers! And don't sign public keys!