Well, yeah… It’s been a while. If there are already any faithful readers, my appologies. I’ve been busy with normal stuff, but nothing as is often the case, normal stuff is not really much fun to write about here.

But there is news. I’ve found myself a job in a hotel as a porter. I’ll be the first point of contact when guests come into the hotel. My first shift is next Saturday, and I’m looking forward to it. Finally a real job. It’s still part-time, but who knows, that might just change into full-time after I graduate in December.

Also, I’ve now been officially induced as a new member of the Golden Key International Honour Society, which I was invited to join at the beginning of this year. The ceremony consisted of several speeches of executive members and university officials to congratulate all new members. I also received a certificate of membership, which I’m sure would look great on my wall, but for now it’s just looking great in one of my drawers.

Besides this nothing much is happening. I’m dilligently working wrapping up my degree here, and I’m excited about the things that have been happening over the past week. I’m gonna have to try to post something here a bit more often I guess, to entice you to come back more often. So I’ll try to do more exciting things.

The following story was on the news here today:

An audacious young Canadian is homing in on his target, after setting himself a seemingly impossible task as a trader on the Internet. Starting with a humble red paperclip, Kyle MacDonald is well on his way to owning his first house.

When Kyle MacDonald, a 26 year-old from Quebec, started this project, he was just a man with a red paperclip, a website and a dream - to trade a twisted piece of metal and plastic for a house.

KYLE MACDONALD: I’m not interested in a down payment or a mortgage. I’m trading for a house. I want to own the thing outright and my girlfriend and I are going to move there and live in it.

No matter where it is?

KYLE MACDONALD: No matter where, yeah… ..which is sometimes a scary thought, but…

In nine months, he has made an astounding series of trades.

KYLE MACDONALD: I started with one red paperclip, traded that for a pen shaped like a fish, traded the pen shaped like a fish for a doorknob, traded the doorknob for a Coleman camping stove, traded the camping stove for a 1000-watt electrical generator…

And then, he traded the generator for a keg of beer and a neon sign, the beer, somewhat unbelievably, for a snowmobile, the snowmobile for an all-expense paid trip for two to the Canadian Rockies - the trip for a moving van, the van for a recording contract at a studio, and, this week, he is trading that recording contract to this musician for a year of rent-free living in her apartment in Arizona.

KYLE MACDONALD: I do crazy things all the time and this, this was perfect.

MacDonald is almost there, but not quite. He admits there are probably easier ways of getting a house.

KYLE MACDONALD: I don’t really have a plan B so this is the kind of thing that I need to actually finish.

For that rent-free apartment in Phoenix, MacDonald is now being offered a low-rider truck, a 30-second fully produced commercial and 24 hours worth of lap dances from a stripper in Japan. You think there is a book in this?

KYLE MACDONALD: I definitely do, yeah.

If and when MacDonald gets his house, which he hopes to do by July, he plans to write about the journey. Then he plans to go shopping for more paperclips.

Damnit!! One of my teachers in Kansai Gaidai had us do the same exercise for Strategic Management. I traded my paperclip up to an iTunes MusicStore card and an electric toothbrush… I should just have kept going…

Autumn is kicking in for the second time this year for me. It’s raining outside and I’m starting to have a cold…

You have that too sometimes? That you feel you have lived somewhere for ages and you don’t have a clue what goes on in your backyard? I felt like this a few days ago when I was on my way through Bundoora Park, right behind the building I live in, and I found Cooper’s Settlement. Today I decided to honour this place with a visit. Read my experience here.

In principle I don’t agree with the death penalty, but sometimes…

I already know this will be the highlight of 2007.

Have you ever noticed how people compare themselves with other people? Esspecially with celebreties. I have never understood the magical attractions of famous people. Aren’t they people just like you and me? What makes them so special? Movie stars for instance are often not the smartest people on the planet, so why is it that so many people want to be like them and follow them?

Yes, I am playing devil’s advocate up to a certain degree here, but check this out. Gawker.com provides a service for people who have spotted celebs in Manhattan, so that other people know where to go to stalk that particular famous person.

A colleague at work the other day mentioned that when she was working a one of the largest shopping malls of Melbourne Jamie Oliver visited the food court where she was working. She perceived Jamie as arrogant because he came in through the back door and didn’t spend much time talking with the staff of the food court. Why is it that if you and me would have walked into that same food court and we wouldn’t have spent much time talking to the staff we wouldn’t have been seen as arrogant?

Some people tend to forget that famous people are also people, and that they sometimes get irritated with all the attention. It’s an interesting phenomena.

After the GDrive rumours I realised that all my data is on my computer only, and if it crashes I loose invaluable things like photos and things like that. I looked around a bit and I bumped into Mozy, an online backup sollution that offers up to 2GB in storage for free to backup your data to. And it comes with a nice utility that backs up your stuff during the night or when your computer is not being used. The first backup takes quite a while, since all your data has to be pumped up through your internet connection, but after that’s done only changed files will be backed up. It’s a good way to securely store your data somewhere outside your own computer, and it’s free!

News.com.au yesterday reported this remarkable feat of craftsmanship:

IT was Ryanair that pioneered the art of flying passengers to some far-flung airfields and telling them they had arrived in one of Europe’s loveliest cities. So it should have come as no surprise to travellers on board Flight 9884 from Liverpool to Derry, in Northern Ireland, when they landed not in the city but Ballykelly Camp instead - an army airfield 8km away.

Ryanair passengers are also accustomed to not having an air-bridge to get them inside the terminal, but in this case they didn’t even have any steps to get them off the jet. Luckily, the flight’s original destination was close enough for ground staff to bring the steps by road to the army base.
(Click here for the full story)

I’ve heard of airlines sending luggage to the wrong destination before, but a whole plane…