Merry Christmas! and I'm Not Dead Yet! (A letter to my friends and family)

As I start to type this, it's 7:12 PM on Wednesday, 24 December 2008 in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Merry Christmas Eve!

Ann is visiting with her family for the holidays in Versailles, Ohio, USA. It's cold, icy, windy and dark there, but she's cosy and warm in the familial love of her surroundings.

I'm doing my usual hiding-from-the-holidays. Here it's warm, dry and sunny - though we're expecting some rain for the holidays (Christmas and Boxing Day) and the weekend. We've just passed the summer solstice, so we're getting the maximum sunlight; it's light outside as early as 4:30 AM! I'm content - happy, even - to be in a warm climate with the time to think my thoughts and to reconnect with the love I feel for my many friends and family members.

I wish you all a wonderful Christmas (or other holiday of your choice) and a joyous new year. May peace prevail.

Thank you for being such a valued part of my life.

---

Of course, some of you might be asking "Kevin who?"

I've never been very good at correspondence or keeping up with those I care about who are not in my immediate environment. As I have become older - and, perhaps, having moved to the other side of the world - I've just become worse. It remains a difficulty. Though, after forty-some years, I'm more willing to accept that this is just how I deal with the world. (See my previous blog entry for more on this.)

So I wanted to take a moment to tell you a little bit about what's been happening in my life and, perhaps, start the process of reconnecting with those who are distant to me.

LOVE: Ann and I remain happily married. We celebrated our five-year anniversary this year. I think we're very compatible - similar enough in our approach to things to share much and to avoid major difficulties, and different enough to keep things spiced and to support each other in our weaker areas. I continually feel I am a very lucky man to have her in my life.

GOAL: I've wanted to establish dual citizenship (USA and Australia) ever since I fell in love with and moved to Australia in 1999/2000. One of the main pursuits of living in Australia this time is to work toward that goal. We accomplished a very important step this year by obtaining "permanent resident" status from the Australian government. That was the hard bit. Now we just need to have lived in Australia long enough to meet the requirements to apply for citizenship. That should happen for me around October 2009 and February 2010 for Ann.

WORK: I continue to be a trainer for New Horizons Computer Learning Centre, a training company with franchises around the world. I specialise in Microsoft networking (Windows 2003 and 2008), database management (SQL Server) and messaging (Exchange Server). I'm working for the company that holds the franchise for Australia, which is the same company I worked for in Sydney from 2000 to 2002. The difference is the manner in which I train.

New Horizons has pioneered a new way of training, which we call The Walk-In Classroom or Mentored Learning. It brings together the best elements of both traditional instructor-led training and self-paced training. The short description of this is that the lecture/presentation part of the course is provided via pre-recorded video (that is, not by me), but you still have a live instructor to provide guidance, answer questions, process discussions, etc. (which is what I do).

My experience is that it's a win-win situation for the student (more personalised training and greater focus and motivation) and the training company (much more efficient management of resources). It's provided a different challenge for me for the past three years. On one hand, it's "easier" because I'm not "on"/performing all the time, like I am when I do traditional instructor-led training. On the other hand, it's "harder", in that the questions the students ask me are truly "random access", as I'll typically have several students that are doing entirely different courses at the same time.

I enjoy the people I work with, my colleagues are friends and my direct boss is an honest and reasonable person, so that's all good.

PLAY: I'm still playing lots of games, hosting a weekly group and typically attending another gaming event each week. I keep track of the games I play and earlier this year, I realised I had played over 1,000 different/distinct games in my life. That number will keep going up, as I continue to enjoy the process of learning new games and lots and lots of new games keep coming!

I still enjoy seeing films, but I'm nowhere near as active as I used to be. I think that an increase in gaming time has led to a decrease in film-watching.

Also, Ann and I have been watching complete seasons of television shows. That eats up a lot of our free time, but we enjoy it!

OK, that's where I'm at these days. What about you?