SomewhereSouth.net

Murf: Back home - A room, a job, and slowly back to normal.

Writing somewheresouth exactly one week after I returned to my own home. A lot changed, a lot stayed the same. It was incredibly busy last week and I did have to arrange soo many things that my mind was buzzing all week but with succes. In this week I found a job as a 1st line helpdesk employee at a big internet provider (2 actually so I had to choose) so I can start paying of the debts straight away. I also bought 3 big closets to store my stuff (2nd hand off course) and to work as a room-divider, found a big curtain to serve as door and as a room-divider as well so I finally have my own private space again. Tiny but very very comfortable with view over the balcony and a massive room-wide window. I got all my stuff from Nicky's parents and from a friend of mine where it was stored for 6 months and next to all that I bought myself a cheap but very good 2nd hand laserprinter (HP Laserjet 4Plus, 25 EUR) with a free nice Pentium III system and a desklamp. (I had to buy a monitor though but 20 EUR for a nice Dell 17" with 4 weeks warranty is not bad.) That means that I not only have a nice bedroom now (with a massive 180x120 poster of the movie "Constantine" on the wall) but I also have a very nice office / study place next to my bed so that I can improve my skills in private.

So it seems that all looks pretty ok for now. There is still an awfull lot I have to do, making the place nice and tidy, arranging lot of financial stuff, getting insight in my finances and paying off the debts but at least I made a good start and begin with a fairly tidy bedroom/office. (I basically stashed all my stuff in my closets to sort out later.) And that does feel like a good start. It's been a bit of a rush last week and the rush won't be over the next weeks but the rest I can at least do on an easier pace so that I can concentrate on my new job. The job might be a bit below my level, I'm still really looking forward to it as it has very hard parts. The big problem with the job is that most of the customers calling don't have ANY clue about computers and/or internet and are using windows. The main question you'll hear will be "The internet is broken. Can you fix it?" while 99,9999% of the time the internet isn't broken (really, that won't happen, it's too big and to spiderweb-like to be able to totally) but it's their computer and/or their internet connection and/or just their email/MSN/browsing which doesn't work. And without too much knowledge of Windows from my side and no experience in a big commercial callcenter like this (I've always worked for small companies as 1st/2nd line helpdesk, systems administrator, hardware-engineer and technical consultant) this will be a challenge for me. Not because I don't have all the knowledge but because I have to talk in THEIR language, not mine. (And because the ISP is on the low-end of the market deal with very upset customers who really don't have a clue what's going on but are still totally pissed off when it's broken because off course it's alwas YOUR fault.)

Anyway, there won't be to many updates from my side anymore. I will write a general overview off my/our trip later and maybe an incidental update about how life starts to run again after the big trip but as Somewheresouth is about travelling I think I should mainly stick to that and pull it out of the closet when I (or Nicky) start travelling to the southern hemisphere again. And for our trips on the northern hemisphere? Well, you could've guessed that a long time ago I already registered somewherenorth.net. In fact, that website existed BEFORE Somewheresouth because I heard a song of AudioTransparent with "Somewhere north is where I belong" in it and couldn't resist registering the domainname. It was later when I met Nicky and wanted a website for our travels when I registered somewheresouth. Somewherenorth was a bit unappropriate for travels on the southern hemisphere so somewheresouth became allive...

Murf