What the heck is this?
Joi, Ianuarie 18th, 2007Well it isn’t much 
According to my stats, roughly 865 people are getting the same email that you are (presumably) getting. That’s the number of people who are subscribed to this blog and since I haven’t written anything in more than six months, it’s about 99% likely you’re getting this in an email rather than through RSS or something else.
First of all, let me say hello and then answer some questions that I’ve gotten in email and from other sources.
1) Are you in Romania? – Well not yet but I will be back shortly. I cannot tell you exactly when because I do not know but it will be this Spring. I am hoping to go in just a matter of weeks but again I do not know for sure. In the meantime I congratulate Romania for having joined the EU and now being an official member. Of course I realize not much has changed but some things have and mostly those are for the better. So way to go Romania!
2) Will you be blogging full-time now? – Well not yet. I’ve been working a number of jobs in the months I’ve been in the USA. When I first got here, I simply walked around the neighborhood and went into every single business and asked if they were hiring. One of them was a hotel and I applied and was hired within a week of my arrival. Of course that wasn’t my life’s goal but it did at least provide for an immediate income.
That job was okay but I’ve since moved on and am working nearly full-time on a completely different job that is done entirely via the internet. I wish I could tell you more about it as it is fascinating (to me anyway) but again there are just too many people who wish me harm out there. Suffice it to say that it is hopefully a good job that will pay the bills and allow me to live anywhere in the world I want to, so if I go to Italy for a couple months or something, I can still log on and work.
3) So when WILL you blog? – Well that’s a good question. For now, it won’t be very much. The blog you are reading at the moment is specifically for my life in Romania and I want to keep the focus on Romania. I might add some vocabulary or news stories about Romania here but until I’m actually on the ground, the blogging will be light.
4) What about your other website? – Right now it’s closed down. I still "own" the site and I am the one who closed it. I’m such a horrible programmer that I haven’t even put up a little sign letting people know it’s closed. Instead it just has some error message. So this time George Costanza is right – it isn’t you, it IS me 
I am not sure when I will bring that other website back up. It requires some time and a little bit of programming and I’ll need a full day off to do it. I hope to do it very soon and I have a lot of ideas about how to make it even better than it (briefly) was. I will definitely let you know when it is up and running "for reals".
5) So what are you doing if not blogging? – Well mostly working. The reason why it’s taken me so darn long to get back to Romania is because I overstayed my visit there. In other words, I borrowed money to live there that I had no way of paying back and really should’ve come back to the USA and made a better financial plan a long time ago. So even though I’ve been working since the first week I arrived here, I had a lot of debts to pay back.
The good news however is that those debts are finally all paid back. I’ve also managed to save up enough pennies for a new computer, something I badly needed. All the blogging I ever did was on a computer that was made sometime in 1998 or 1999, an old IBM thinkpad that was actually donated to me. It originally had Windows 95 on it and I upgraded it to XP and that used just about all the memory and "brain power" it had.
6) So what’s the plan? – Well the plan is for me to keep working here super hard in the next few weeks and get ready to move back to Romania as quickly as I can. I also have to make sure I have all the things I need from the USA that I can’t get over there, especially electronics. A little three dollar cable that you can buy online in the USA might be next to impossible to find in Romania and then cost you 40 bucks.
To give you a concrete example – in the USA you can buy a brand new iPod shuffle with a 1 gig memory for about 80 bucks. In Romania they still only sell the old model, with half the memory, for about 120 dollars.
I also have a unique dislike for European footwear in general and tend to prefer to buy my shoes in the USA. I know a lot of people disagree with me but hey, that’s fine
Ok folks, that’s about it for now. I just wanted to send out a signal of life and let some of you know what’s going on and I can do it this way en masse. I still keep the old email for the blog and occasionally do respond to it.
Once again, happy new year and lots of luck to Romania as an EU member and I’ll be blogging to you soon (I hope!).
Pax
