It's a crazy nice day in Dublin today, so I am typing this blog from Merrian park on a bench. Everything is in full bloom and the sun worshipers are out. Here is a pic of where I am sitting. One amazing thing about Dublin is that there are no mosquitoes and very few other annoying bugs. It really makes sitting here so much better :). Another thing I like about Ireland is that the laws are much more lax on drinking alcohol in public. There is a group of people in front on me enjoying a picnic complete with sandwiches and wine. I feel like in Canada, that might land you an $80 fine.
Progress continues to be made on the legal end of my move to the UK. I finally received my grandparents marriage certificate in the mail from the Manitoba Government. This was the last document I needed in order to get my UK working visa. So, I imagine I will apply for this visa around 3 months before we expect to go. Currently, we are thinking of going in Mid-September because I have stocks and bonus money coming around that time and I would like to have that money.
I would really like to live in London when we get there. I've never really lived in a big city and I want to experience it sometime in my life. I think this may be the best chance I get to live that experience. So, the plan would be to have a place in Oxford and a place in London. The prices for these 2 places is going to have to be cheap because our family budget really cant afford to do this, so I expect we will have to go back to living with flat mates. (Note, they don't use the word room-mate here because that would imply you are living in the same room; Housemate is acceptable as well). There is a good bus called the Oxford-Tube that goes direct between London city and Oxford city. It's a coach style bus with free Wifi on board and it takes about 1.5 hours each way. I expect Julie & I will commute back and forth on this bus several times a week but we will be apart a few days a week as well. It is required that Julie live close to campus for the first year.
I've got job alerts that come in my email every day about jobs that might interest me in London. There are lots of jobs out there. I even have recruiters calling my phone the odd time trying to sell me on certain jobs. So, I don't think it will be too hard finding something. There is also a huge financial software industry in London. Much of it is centered around investment banking. I am debating whether or not to join this sector or not. On the one hand, the money is about 15-20% better, but on the other hand I really don't think these investment bankers are doing anything positive in society, especially when it comes to things like high frequency trading software which buys and sells stocks in fractions of a second. The dream right now would be to work at Microsoft in London. Microsoft has a small office in london which does a bit of software development. They also have a large office in Reading which I would be much more likely to get in but I don't think I want to live in Reading nor commute from London. The other option is that I could do contracting work which might not require me to go into an office very often but might give me less stability (but possibly more financial potential). I was talking to a guy on Friday night who hires iphone developers on contract. He says good developers working for him are making 100 euros per hour! There is lots to think about and lots of things still to investigate.
Right now Julie is in Canada staying with her parents. She is getting in lots of quality time with her family before her grueling Ph.D.. She is even going out to California to see her brother for 1 week. One main objective while there is to try to convince her native band to completely fund her Ph.D. at Oxford. Right now, they will contribute about 50% which is a good start but still leaves us on the hook for a substantial amount more. She will be making a presentation to Chief and Council soon to ask for more money. Yesterday she had a great chat with an old German lady who lived in Germany during the entire WWII. She was 9 years old in 1939. Julie said that chat was amazing and quite emotional for the both of them.
I have been working hard on the weekends these days on Windows phone apps. My first app was called "I speak German" which was a small quiz game to help you learn 1000 basic nouns in German. I think there were actually quite a few Germans who were downloading as well to learn the same nouns in English. Here is a link to the app. When the app was free it was getting about 20 downloads per day. However, when I started charing $0.99 for it, my downloads dropped to about 2 per day. The German app was targeted at English people trying to learn German. However, I also made another app called "Yo Hablo Ingleas" which is targeted at Spanish people trying to learning English. I hired a Spanish person to translate all my 1000 nouns into spanish and all the text in my app to Spanish. This time, I also recorded my own voice saying each and every noun so that the spanish person can listen to how the word is pronounced as well. I put that app out on Friday for $1.99 and we will see how well it does. If I could make $2000/year per app, then I might just be able to make 25 apps and live off the income. Unfortunately, now making only about $700/year per app it may not be worth my time. We will see. I may also need to market my apps better which could be a possibility of increasing my revenues.
Over the easter weekend, we are moving desks at work, so they have given us a 4 day weekend while the movers move our stuff. So I've planned myself a little weekend trip to Porto, Portugal. It's a very old little town on the ocean that is famous for wine. I will be taking a day trip away from the coast and into the famous wine region! I'm super excited about this trip. The prices of everything in Porto are supposed to be very cheap. I have actually considered Portugal as a possible place to retire one day. Its got everything - safe, cheap, all the amenities, and close to all the best parts of Europe. We'll see if this opinion is strengthened or weakened when I visit :)
Max has offered me a little website work which I am looking forward to. He doesn't have time time these days and his employees seem to be untrustworthy and unreliable. Hopefully this work goes well. It's using some technologies I am not too familiar with so there will be a bit of learning involved which is always good.
Anyhow, I think that's about it. Cya
