Jumping In
I’ve had too much to blog about and not quite the time to do so! So I’ll just do a bunch of entries that combines a bunch of them.
When I was around 4 years old, I was at my cousins’ house and they were all swimming. I couldn’t swim yet but I thought something along the lines of “Hey! They’re all doing it, how hard can it be!” so I just jumped in at the deep side of the pool and tried to swim. I didn’t quite get a hang of it, and my cousins panicked and yelled that I was drowning, so my father ran to the pool and jumped in with all his clothes on to get me out of there. He said that I shouldn’t do that again. About 10 minutes later when I was dry again I did it again and managed to get it right. Since then I’ve always loved swimming. Jumping in on the deep side didn’t stop there either…
Moving to Canada
I’ve been meaning to blog about this properly for the last 3 months. A little more than 9 months ago I started working for Révolution Linux, a company that does large-scale Linux deployments around the world. I still do my work in South Africa (which has recently expanded to Uganda) and the combination of being almost-full time employed while also doing my own thing is working *great*.
Révolution Linux had a requirement that I go to Canada and work there for 2 months for integration and to get to know everyone properly. I was initially going to come over around the end of 2009, but my work permit took way longer than expected and I only ended up getting it in June. Initially, while deciding what I’ll need to take over for 2 months (that’s very long for me to be away from home), I wondered whether I shouldn’t perhaps go over for 6 months instead. Then I could sell my car, get something cheap and nasty on the other side, cancel a bunch of stuff that I wouldn’t need anymore like gym membership, etc. I started wondering what actually stops me from doing a complete move, and then I just decided on a whim to pack up everything and move.
Lots of people asked me why I’m gone, how long I’ll be gone, when I’ll be back (especially on Facebook) and I just haven’t had a time to answer everywhere properly. In short, I love Cape Town and I want to live there again. However, I’m not sure when that will be, I decided when I came over here to split my long-term future plans in 2 year periods (almost like the Ubuntu LTS releases), so I’ll be staying here in Sherbrooke for the next 2 years and decide somewhere in between what will happen next. Maybe I’ll move to Brazil then, maybe Spain, maybe back to Cape Town, we’ll see how it goes 
So far Sherbrooke has been quite good. It’s certainly a mixed bag. It’s nice and small and quiet but it’s also very old fashioned and the food here is horrible, but I have uncapped Internet now which kind of makes up for it! The people at work though are awesome, there’s a real sense of community between a lot of people at work, we see each other a lot outside of work hours too which is quite nice, I haven’t had that much with other places I’ve worked. I also have a flatmate for the first time ever. I’ve known Stéphane for a while know since we worked together in the Ubuntu community before, and we both work for Révolution Linux so it turned out to be very convenient, so far it’s been working out great. There’s also a big bunch of other people from work living in a 2km radius around us, which is quite cool.
My New Gym Buddies
I’ve gone to gym before, but it was mostly cardio and even when I’ve done weights, I’ve done it completely wrong (or so I recently learned). Max and Simon from work signed up recently and it inspired me to do so too and go work out with them every day. It’s the first time I’ve ever had gym buddies. It helps a lot and Max is an awesome “coach” who does a good job of telling me what I do wrong and how I can improve. It’s not even been two weeks and I can already feel the results (yesterday I couldn’t even lift my arms!).
I initially thought that I’d be at least better than Simon with the weights since he’s deceptively thin, but I learned quickly that I completely suck when it comes to doing exercise properly! The great thing is that now that I can learn from their experiences I’m actually learning and improving my physical health much better and faster than before. It kind of feels dumb not always being able to keep up with them, but jumping in the deep side with this definitely helps!
French Lessons
About two weeks ago I started taking French lessons. In Québec, around 90% speak French as their first language, which means that it isn’t really optional!
Some people I’ve met there didn’t know that these classes existed and some of those people have been here for nearly two years already, so if you’re ever in Sherbrooke and need French Lessons, contact Denis Charest at 819-823-8853 for more information.
There were about 50 people there the day I signed up, we’re divided in to classes of around 6-8 people. All the other people in my class are from Columbia. Now and again when I get stuck with French I just blurt out one of the Spanish sentences I learned while in Spain and they think it’s really funny. They’ve been really nice and I already consider them my friends. Columbians are officially awesome. I think most of them did French as second language in school or something because their French is *way* better than mine. It’s kind of hard starting a class when you start being behind everyone else, but they’ve done a great job at helping me when I get stuck and it certainly helps that they have a sense of humour. It makes jumping in on the deep side just so much easier if you have a great support network, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have been able to gain that in the short time I’ve been here!