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| Little Desert National Park |
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
How the hell have I ended up in Oz!?
WARNING: this post is ego-centric rubbish describing my poor life during past 2 years. It's even sentimental sometimes! Not recommended for "tough guys"!
As our frog-eating friends say: "Cherchez la femme". But let's start from the beginning.
Delft - the place where it all started
Delft is a beautiful little university town in The Netherlands - right between Rotterdam and Den Haag. It has charming downtown part with dozens of old dutch houses and hundreds of grachts (canals). There is also a big technical university, TU Delft, which became my alma mater for one semester back in 2007. The uni is pretty good and the interesting thing about it is that almost 50% of all students are foreigners.
That semester started a big period of my life (that is still going on) full of changes and new experiences. I met lots of people from all around the world and I learned so much from them and about them. If you ever have a chance for exchange study, please don't waste it! It's absolutely priceless experience!
I also met one crazy wild cat there and we stayed together for the rest of the year. She opened my eyes in many ways. She's an Aussie (I'll call her Laura for the rest of the post). Now you can already guess that she's the very beginning of my current Australian adventure.
If you're an exchange student, the best way to make friends is to make trips with them. Go to as many parties as possible, meet people, collect contacts and then invite them for trips. That way you get to know them much better. Another good way is to meet people through common interests (hobby, sport). I started climbing in Delft again and soon I formed very nice group with other climbers. We made couple of trips (Fontainebleau, Rocher de Freyr) and they were always the best moments from the whole year.
After the semester, I decided to stay in The Netherlands for another half a year but for a change me and my very good friend (and climber) Alex moved to Den Haag. I didn't want to go back to Czech Republic and of course I wanted to be close to Laura as long as possible. So I was working (mostly in very good Den Haag city library) on my master project and thesis for my home uni and Alex on his final project. It was a nice life there, we lived just in the middle between the city centre and the beach. We also spent lots of time in Delft and I can't forget the biking there and back (around 10 km) in cold, rain and strong wind.
When that lovely period finished, me and Laura went for our goodbye trip. We flew to Sardegna to visit her friend Federica, we spent awesome days traveling in a van and kayaking around Golfo di Orosei with Fede's friend Massi, then we flew to Rome to wander around its charming streets for a few days, after that we visited Nico and Dani (from the Delft climbing group) in Lille and at the end we chilled out in Paris. Finally we said good bye to each other and Laura flew down to Australia and I flew back to Czech Republic.
End of lazy student life
So back home I somehow managed to hand in my thesis and pass the final state exam. But at the beginning of September, I was already back in The Netherlands, hunting for a job. Diego (another friend-climber) kindly allowed me to stay with him until I found something. It took me 3 weeks and I ended up working for Tieto Enator (What an irony! There is a big development centre of TE in Ostrava, only about 5 min away from my house!) in Amersfoort. Amersfoort is a little town, perhaps little bit too quiet but it has just amazing town centre. Very compact with a ring of medieval houses, city wall and canals around it.
My climbing urge brought me to a local bouldering gym Hangplek, very friendly and cosy place run by a few friends. I started to train a lot and we all together made a couple of climbing trips throughout the year (Freyr - BE, Kottenheim - D, Berdorf - L). It was great! They are wonderful persons and I really enjoyed the time with them. I hope we'll climb together again once I'm back in Europe! Unfortunately the Hangplek is closed now because the building had to be demolished.
Soon after I started working for TE, I realized that it wasn't a place for me. I didn't enjoy the work itself at all and it didn't seem I'd start doing what I wanted (Java development). Moreover the environment was a bit too corporate but that was just a detail. Fortunately I got an offer from another company, M2Mobi. A bunch of cool young guys doing mobile development. I didn't waste the opportunity and despite they offered me less money that I was earning in TE, I took the job. I started working there in december and I stayed until the end of my stay in The Netherlands (august).
Despite the organization of the company (it's a bit chaotic) I really enjoyed working for them and I learned a lot. The environment was just awesome - absolutely informal, relaxed, with only very young people (lots of interns), beers in the office every friday evening, lunches together... After I finished a small java (j2me) project I started iPhone development. I was working on quite a big app called Nulaz, which is an iPhone client for the Nulaz network (a social network with location based services). Thanks to the company, I could also move to Amsterdam in June (it's really hard to get a room there; i tried to get one on my own for half a year and then I just gave up).
As for my relationship with Laura during that time... I needed a bit of freedom and I wanted to be alone for a while. I felt it very strongly and it also made sense since each of us was on the other side of the world. So we technically weren't together. Although I needed it like that, it was very hard and painful for both of us.
Cherchez la femme
I planned to stay in nl until the end of 2009. Then I wanted to travel. I wanted to do a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela first but my great plan was to travel across asia. From Czech Republic to Soutch-East Asia (and then either back or to Australia or who knows) over the land, no planes, preferably hitch-hiking. I kept saving for this trip all the time when I was working.
But as we say in Czech Republic: "Člověk míní, život mění" (it means more or less that we keep planning our lives but our lives keep changing our plans). Laura came to Europe again for two months (June-July) so it was a good opportunity to sort out our relationship and decide what to do next. It turned out that she wanted to be with me but I kept saying that I still needed my freedom and that I wasn't ready for her yet. So she closed the whole thing because it was not going to go anywhere soon and she naturally didn't wanna spend another year or two half-living. After I lost her, I realized how important she was for me. How big part of my life she was. I felt like I've had enough of freedom and I just wanted to be with her again.
So I changed my plans a bit and decided to fly to Australia. We weren't in contact at that time anymore, so I decided to surprise her and not to tell her in advance. I knew she closed the whole thing but I hoped that it wasn't all lost yet and that if we could be near each other we could start again. I was hoping I could still save the relationship. But I was as well aware of the fact that it might not work out, so in that case I was planning to travel around Australia, New Zealand and then do my great plan and travel across Asia. Only the other way round.
The 30-hour flight with stop-over in Hong-Kong wasn't as terrible as I expected. I found a nice CouchSurfing host in Melboune so I had a place to stay before I'd meet Laura and see what to do next. I visited her house 2 times before I caught her. It was really frustrating. But then we met and obviously she was really surprised but as many of you already know, it didn't work out with her at all. I was too late. I made up my mind too late. She doesn't love me as a partner anymore. And she needs a lot of space and time to deal with it all, so we are not in contact again. We only saw each other one day and since then, I've been here in Melbourne, so close to her but yet so far, trying to recover a bit and plan what to do next.
Australia is a beautiful place and Melbourne is a great city. I haven't found it that interesting from a tourist point of view but it's definitely wonderful for living. There is so many things to do, wonderful restaurants, great food, it's amazingly multicultural, beautiful nature around, great climbing spots close by... I definitely wouldn't mind living here for a while. The problem is that in my head, there is a very strong connection Melbourne = Laura. And the same holds for Australia. So I decided to travel around hoping I can break that connection and get over her.
I have a tourist visa so I can stay in Oz for 3 months. My plan is to make a loop Adelaide, Uluru, Alice Springs, Darwin, Cairns, whole east coast, Sydney and back to Melbourne. I want to hitch wherever possible. Hope I can make it in my time, if there is some time left, I'd love to visit Tasmania too. After that I'll probably fly to New Zealand, if possible also work there a bit and then, as I already said, across Asia back to Czech Republic. It will take some time and I intend to keep you updated about my adventures through this blog. My very next steps head to Great Ocean Road, then Grampians (i've bought new pair of climbing shoes yesterday, this time Mad Rock, hehe) and then Adelaide.
I still miss Laura and I hate it ended up like it did but what can I do... I hope the amount of traveling that is ahead of me right now will help me forget.
As our frog-eating friends say: "Cherchez la femme". But let's start from the beginning.
Delft - the place where it all started
Delft is a beautiful little university town in The Netherlands - right between Rotterdam and Den Haag. It has charming downtown part with dozens of old dutch houses and hundreds of grachts (canals). There is also a big technical university, TU Delft, which became my alma mater for one semester back in 2007. The uni is pretty good and the interesting thing about it is that almost 50% of all students are foreigners.
That semester started a big period of my life (that is still going on) full of changes and new experiences. I met lots of people from all around the world and I learned so much from them and about them. If you ever have a chance for exchange study, please don't waste it! It's absolutely priceless experience!
I also met one crazy wild cat there and we stayed together for the rest of the year. She opened my eyes in many ways. She's an Aussie (I'll call her Laura for the rest of the post). Now you can already guess that she's the very beginning of my current Australian adventure.
If you're an exchange student, the best way to make friends is to make trips with them. Go to as many parties as possible, meet people, collect contacts and then invite them for trips. That way you get to know them much better. Another good way is to meet people through common interests (hobby, sport). I started climbing in Delft again and soon I formed very nice group with other climbers. We made couple of trips (Fontainebleau, Rocher de Freyr) and they were always the best moments from the whole year.
After the semester, I decided to stay in The Netherlands for another half a year but for a change me and my very good friend (and climber) Alex moved to Den Haag. I didn't want to go back to Czech Republic and of course I wanted to be close to Laura as long as possible. So I was working (mostly in very good Den Haag city library) on my master project and thesis for my home uni and Alex on his final project. It was a nice life there, we lived just in the middle between the city centre and the beach. We also spent lots of time in Delft and I can't forget the biking there and back (around 10 km) in cold, rain and strong wind.
When that lovely period finished, me and Laura went for our goodbye trip. We flew to Sardegna to visit her friend Federica, we spent awesome days traveling in a van and kayaking around Golfo di Orosei with Fede's friend Massi, then we flew to Rome to wander around its charming streets for a few days, after that we visited Nico and Dani (from the Delft climbing group) in Lille and at the end we chilled out in Paris. Finally we said good bye to each other and Laura flew down to Australia and I flew back to Czech Republic.
End of lazy student life
So back home I somehow managed to hand in my thesis and pass the final state exam. But at the beginning of September, I was already back in The Netherlands, hunting for a job. Diego (another friend-climber) kindly allowed me to stay with him until I found something. It took me 3 weeks and I ended up working for Tieto Enator (What an irony! There is a big development centre of TE in Ostrava, only about 5 min away from my house!) in Amersfoort. Amersfoort is a little town, perhaps little bit too quiet but it has just amazing town centre. Very compact with a ring of medieval houses, city wall and canals around it.
My climbing urge brought me to a local bouldering gym Hangplek, very friendly and cosy place run by a few friends. I started to train a lot and we all together made a couple of climbing trips throughout the year (Freyr - BE, Kottenheim - D, Berdorf - L). It was great! They are wonderful persons and I really enjoyed the time with them. I hope we'll climb together again once I'm back in Europe! Unfortunately the Hangplek is closed now because the building had to be demolished.
Soon after I started working for TE, I realized that it wasn't a place for me. I didn't enjoy the work itself at all and it didn't seem I'd start doing what I wanted (Java development). Moreover the environment was a bit too corporate but that was just a detail. Fortunately I got an offer from another company, M2Mobi. A bunch of cool young guys doing mobile development. I didn't waste the opportunity and despite they offered me less money that I was earning in TE, I took the job. I started working there in december and I stayed until the end of my stay in The Netherlands (august).
Despite the organization of the company (it's a bit chaotic) I really enjoyed working for them and I learned a lot. The environment was just awesome - absolutely informal, relaxed, with only very young people (lots of interns), beers in the office every friday evening, lunches together... After I finished a small java (j2me) project I started iPhone development. I was working on quite a big app called Nulaz, which is an iPhone client for the Nulaz network (a social network with location based services). Thanks to the company, I could also move to Amsterdam in June (it's really hard to get a room there; i tried to get one on my own for half a year and then I just gave up).
As for my relationship with Laura during that time... I needed a bit of freedom and I wanted to be alone for a while. I felt it very strongly and it also made sense since each of us was on the other side of the world. So we technically weren't together. Although I needed it like that, it was very hard and painful for both of us.
Cherchez la femme
I planned to stay in nl until the end of 2009. Then I wanted to travel. I wanted to do a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela first but my great plan was to travel across asia. From Czech Republic to Soutch-East Asia (and then either back or to Australia or who knows) over the land, no planes, preferably hitch-hiking. I kept saving for this trip all the time when I was working.
But as we say in Czech Republic: "Člověk míní, život mění" (it means more or less that we keep planning our lives but our lives keep changing our plans). Laura came to Europe again for two months (June-July) so it was a good opportunity to sort out our relationship and decide what to do next. It turned out that she wanted to be with me but I kept saying that I still needed my freedom and that I wasn't ready for her yet. So she closed the whole thing because it was not going to go anywhere soon and she naturally didn't wanna spend another year or two half-living. After I lost her, I realized how important she was for me. How big part of my life she was. I felt like I've had enough of freedom and I just wanted to be with her again.
So I changed my plans a bit and decided to fly to Australia. We weren't in contact at that time anymore, so I decided to surprise her and not to tell her in advance. I knew she closed the whole thing but I hoped that it wasn't all lost yet and that if we could be near each other we could start again. I was hoping I could still save the relationship. But I was as well aware of the fact that it might not work out, so in that case I was planning to travel around Australia, New Zealand and then do my great plan and travel across Asia. Only the other way round.
The 30-hour flight with stop-over in Hong-Kong wasn't as terrible as I expected. I found a nice CouchSurfing host in Melboune so I had a place to stay before I'd meet Laura and see what to do next. I visited her house 2 times before I caught her. It was really frustrating. But then we met and obviously she was really surprised but as many of you already know, it didn't work out with her at all. I was too late. I made up my mind too late. She doesn't love me as a partner anymore. And she needs a lot of space and time to deal with it all, so we are not in contact again. We only saw each other one day and since then, I've been here in Melbourne, so close to her but yet so far, trying to recover a bit and plan what to do next.
Australia is a beautiful place and Melbourne is a great city. I haven't found it that interesting from a tourist point of view but it's definitely wonderful for living. There is so many things to do, wonderful restaurants, great food, it's amazingly multicultural, beautiful nature around, great climbing spots close by... I definitely wouldn't mind living here for a while. The problem is that in my head, there is a very strong connection Melbourne = Laura. And the same holds for Australia. So I decided to travel around hoping I can break that connection and get over her.
I have a tourist visa so I can stay in Oz for 3 months. My plan is to make a loop Adelaide, Uluru, Alice Springs, Darwin, Cairns, whole east coast, Sydney and back to Melbourne. I want to hitch wherever possible. Hope I can make it in my time, if there is some time left, I'd love to visit Tasmania too. After that I'll probably fly to New Zealand, if possible also work there a bit and then, as I already said, across Asia back to Czech Republic. It will take some time and I intend to keep you updated about my adventures through this blog. My very next steps head to Great Ocean Road, then Grampians (i've bought new pair of climbing shoes yesterday, this time Mad Rock, hehe) and then Adelaide.
I still miss Laura and I hate it ended up like it did but what can I do... I hope the amount of traveling that is ahead of me right now will help me forget.
Finally!
Český text je pod anglickým!
THRAMTADADA!!! After 3 years, I finally managed to start a blog... it wasn't that difficult after all. Anyway, so now I'm here and I'll try to carefully tag each post so you can easily distinguish between ego-centric rubbish about my travels and feelings (mostly for my family and close friends) and (hopefully) some useful information (my travel/living abroad/Objective-C/Mac OS X/etc. experience).
I'll try to post as often as possible, mostly in (primitive) English, sometimes in (now nearly retarded) Czech and rarely in both languages. But since the internet down here is crap and I plan to get to some little remote areas too, it won't always be possible.
I'll also put some pics here but I've been using Google's Picasa Web Albums for 2 years now and I really like it, so I'll keep on doing that but whenever I add new pics there, I'll always post a little announcement here as well. If you're interested in the pics I've uploaded so far, don't waste your time and check them at picasaweb.google.com/lukas.pecinka right now!
If you wanna be notified whenever I post something (and therefore be informed about my wonderful adventures straight away) AND you're sufficiently computer-skilled, you can add this blog to your RSS reader. If you wanna be notified AND you're NOT sufficiently skilled (you have no clue what RSS reader means), let me know, I can set up up to 10 email addresses that can receive a notification whenever I post something. Finally, if you're sufficiently skilled but you don't give a flying fuck about my adventures, don't waste your time here and go and find better entertainment somewhere else!
Konečně!
THRAMTADADÁ!!! Tak konečně se mi po 3 letech podařilo založit blog... nakonec to ani nebolelo. Takže když už jsem se k tomu odhodlal, pokusím se alespoň všechny články kategorizovat, abyste mohli na první pohled rozlišit, který článek je pouhým sebestředným blábolem o mých cestách pro uklidnění rodinky a případně ukojení zvědavosti těch zvědavějších z mých přátel, a který by naopak mohl obsahovat nějaké užitečné informace (z mého cestování, života v holandsku, Objective-C, Mac OS X atd.).
Vynasnažím se psát často. Většinou to bude v (primitivní) angličtině, někdy to bude v (retardované) češtině a velmi zřídka v obou jazycích.
Už 2 roky používám Picasa Web Albums od Google a jsem s nimi velmi spokojený, takže všechny fotky budu i nadále nahrávat tam. Pokaždé, když tak učiním, oznámím to i tady. Chcete-li se podívat na to, co už tam je, jděte na picasaweb.google.com/lukas.pecinka.
Chcete-li být emailem upozorněni pokaždé, když přidám nový článek, dejte mi vědět!
THRAMTADADA!!! After 3 years, I finally managed to start a blog... it wasn't that difficult after all. Anyway, so now I'm here and I'll try to carefully tag each post so you can easily distinguish between ego-centric rubbish about my travels and feelings (mostly for my family and close friends) and (hopefully) some useful information (my travel/living abroad/Objective-C/Mac OS X/etc. experience).
I'll try to post as often as possible, mostly in (primitive) English, sometimes in (now nearly retarded) Czech and rarely in both languages. But since the internet down here is crap and I plan to get to some little remote areas too, it won't always be possible.
I'll also put some pics here but I've been using Google's Picasa Web Albums for 2 years now and I really like it, so I'll keep on doing that but whenever I add new pics there, I'll always post a little announcement here as well. If you're interested in the pics I've uploaded so far, don't waste your time and check them at picasaweb.google.com/lukas.pecinka right now!
If you wanna be notified whenever I post something (and therefore be informed about my wonderful adventures straight away) AND you're sufficiently computer-skilled, you can add this blog to your RSS reader. If you wanna be notified AND you're NOT sufficiently skilled (you have no clue what RSS reader means), let me know, I can set up up to 10 email addresses that can receive a notification whenever I post something. Finally, if you're sufficiently skilled but you don't give a flying fuck about my adventures, don't waste your time here and go and find better entertainment somewhere else!
Konečně!
THRAMTADADÁ!!! Tak konečně se mi po 3 letech podařilo založit blog... nakonec to ani nebolelo. Takže když už jsem se k tomu odhodlal, pokusím se alespoň všechny články kategorizovat, abyste mohli na první pohled rozlišit, který článek je pouhým sebestředným blábolem o mých cestách pro uklidnění rodinky a případně ukojení zvědavosti těch zvědavějších z mých přátel, a který by naopak mohl obsahovat nějaké užitečné informace (z mého cestování, života v holandsku, Objective-C, Mac OS X atd.).
Vynasnažím se psát často. Většinou to bude v (primitivní) angličtině, někdy to bude v (retardované) češtině a velmi zřídka v obou jazycích.
Už 2 roky používám Picasa Web Albums od Google a jsem s nimi velmi spokojený, takže všechny fotky budu i nadále nahrávat tam. Pokaždé, když tak učiním, oznámím to i tady. Chcete-li se podívat na to, co už tam je, jděte na picasaweb.google.com/lukas.pecinka.
Chcete-li být emailem upozorněni pokaždé, když přidám nový článek, dejte mi vědět!
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