Reflective Surface

My vacations are over, and I’m back to work, reinvigorated for another year. This blog will now resume its scheduled programming.

In less than one hour I’m leaving for my yearly vacation. Twenty-four days to relax and forget about work. Woohoo! Expect a lot less movement on this blog until April 22.

Posting has been and will be light for a few more days here. After a three week programming marathon across three different projects I’m utterly tired — especially considering the results. The first week was unsuccessfully spent trying to make an ActiveX work, but when it ended I had to give up and archive the project for another try in another time. The second weeks went for a web-based wizard that was discarded later because the specification had changed. And the last of these weeks was spent coercing a COM library into submission. It was a long fight, but at least I won.

In the next week I’m in a fourth project, and in the following week, judging from what I’m seeing, I will be in yet another project. Did I mention I hate such task switches?

The frame of my prescription glasses broke unexpectedly the day before yesterday. When I was going home from work, I heard a sound like a low click coming from the frame, but when I checked it I didn’t notice anything wrong. Some hours later, when I was at a men’s meeting in the church, the frame simply fell apart, and the world went indistinct.

I wear glasses since I was seven, and I wear them the whole day. Except in the shower, or when I’m sleeping, I rarely take them off. Although it was not the first time something like that happened to me, the last time I broke my glasses had been so long ago that I had forgotten how badly I rely on them. I can only read if I hold the book a few inches from my face. I can’t use the computer, and even moving around is difficult.

In the morning (that was yesterday), I called work to inform I was not coming in the morning because I needed to fix the glasses. I took my wife with me because I didn’t feel confident enough to get on a bus and go to downtown all by myself barely aware of what was happening around me. Finding a place to fix the glasses was easy, but it did take some time to meld the frame pieces together, and we had to walk around a little while we waited because the place we went had no waiting room. I can’t express how I was relieved when the fix got ready and the world went back to its usual distinct state.

After that, I decided to buy the new glasses I should have bought six months ago when I went to the ophthalmologist the last time. I had my current glasses for almost four years, and I think it was old age that caused them to break. My myopia stabilized two years ago, and in the last test I made it had even got a little better. My wife and I went directly to the store of a man who has made my glasses for the last fifteen years (with a single exception) where we ordered my new glasses and new lenses for her glasses (she had went to an ophthalmologist recently, too). The bill was a hefty R$ 373.00 because I use lenses with anti-reflection coating and a special treatment that makes them go dark in sunlight (I’m photophobic). We had a pretty interesting time at the store talking about how lenses are made, which is something I always wanted to know more about. The technology in this area has improved a lot since my last pair was made.

The new glasses will be ready early in the next week. I hope the fix I made to my current glasses holds until the new ones are delivered. An indistinct world is no fun at all.

Today my wife and I are celebrating our second wedding anniversary. Those two years were surprising, complex, blessed, happy, and everything else a year with another person at your side can be. I thank God for every day in those two years, and ask Him for His guidance for the next years.

Should you ever need directions some day when I’m nearby, don’t think about asking them of me. You may end in a completely different place. I can’t remember how many times somebody asked me directions to some place, and I provided what I considered correct instructions with the exception that I was mistaken about a seemingly insignificant detail that later turned out to make a big difference.

For example, recently I was explaining to a friend of mine how to get to his home from where we were, and I told him to turn right in a given street. But, I should have instructed him to turn left at that point. He followed my instructions, and it took him half an hour to find a return point since he was not familiar with the region. I simply don’t know why it happens. It’s probably related to my being terribly inattentive sometimes.

So, don’t trust me for directions. And I’m forced to say that it almost happened again today. Someday, somebody will end up in another city because of my blunders.

I was nine then, enjoying the third grade in a small school in the neighborhood I did live at the time. I was an overly curious boy that loved to read and study, and would spent my days between school and the books I managed to borrow from a reluctant librarian who didn’t believe I could read so fast.

In that particular grade, my Portuguese teacher was a small and beautiful woman called Mrs. Natividade. She had a short blonde hair and an open smile that spoke of her love for her students. Pregnant at the time, she was very emotive, and sometimes that led her to cry in the class. My classmates and I would stand still, not even daring to breath, until she stopped crying. It frightened us to see an adult cry. Nonetheless, we loved her. She was gentle, and cared about us.

She encouraged us to write. I know it was part of her duties, but she did it in a special way. She corrected our mistakes, and sometimes selected some of our texts to read them aloud to the class. It was glorious when that happened.

One day, she asked us to write a text without providing a subject, as she would usually do. I let my imagination run free, and wrote about a farm. The story told how the farmer was losing his crop to birds that would eat the grain, and how he managed to solve his problem. It was childish and simple, but she liked it. She praised my text, and said she had loved it. I believed her. The original text, with her written observations is still in my possession.

I never saw her again after the year ended. But she taught me a lot of things that still guide me to this day. She nurtured my abilities, and helped me to develop my language skills. That first experience with writing became one of many joyful forays in the realms of literature.

As I progressed through school, I developed a taste for writing. I wasn’t a prolific write; I just enjoyed the occasional incursions in paths I had not walked before. I wrote poems depicting the fight of the pieces in a game of chess. I wrote tales about courageous starship crews risking their lives exploring the galaxy. I wrote about my faith, and any other subjects I was interested at the time. I chronicled my daily life in a journal, recording thoughts, aspirations, and fears. And I read. I admired those who could write better than I will ever do, and envied their skill and eloquence.

Time passed. I had to forget about going to a university because of my financial condition. I found a job to help my family, and put my technical skills to good use. Writing was relegated to an even lower place. I never abandoned reading, but wouldn’t write anymore. More time passed. I married and changed jobs.

In the course of my first year in the new job, I discovered blogging. Luckily, I stumbled upon technological blogs, and found aggregation too. Reading blogs became a daily pleasure. I was amazed at the quality of what people wrote. Their voices awakened my long dormant desire to return to writing. A few months later, I started my own weblog. I would link a lot, and comment on things I found interesting. Sometimes I even ventured an original writing.

Meanwhile, I had found people in the company I worked for who shared the same desire for writing. Two became friends. One was a former musician, now working to make a living in an unrelated profession. The other, although working in his field of choice, wrote poems in his free time, and wanted someday publish his already written books.

One of those friends was a blogger too, and had preceded me for a few months in the blogosphere. As our friendship grew, he suggested a joint writing project. I invited our common friend, and proceeded to created a shared weblog were we could dump our thoughts. I loved it. The blog was an outlet to our writing desires. Those friends encouraged me to return to poetry, and helped me in my first feeble steps back into the art. We laughed at our mistakes, and shared our dreams. Writing was once again part of my life.

I’m blogging because I love to write. And also because I love to read what people write. I admire Shelley Powers’ passion when she talks of what she really cares about. I admire Jonathon Delacour when he expresses eloquently what matters to him in life. I admire Dorothea Salo when she shares tidbits of her life that show the human being behind the words. I admire Doc Searls telling about his six-year-old son reactions to the Columbia tragedy.

I admire the other sixty or so people in my blogroll who times beyond count provided valuable insight about things I was interested in, and shared their lives in their writing. I don’t agree with everything they say, but I have grown to respect them. And I also admire the countless other writers out there, in the vast spaces of the Web, pouring their souls into their words.

The Web is full of life. And life tells itself. That’s why I blog. I’m still finding my voice, but I can see where I’m going. Some long lost dreams are real again. It may not matter to anyone else, but I don’t care. I have found a part of my life again.

One of the most common mistakes we make is to believe some things will never happen to us. Especially with respect to violence. We read about it in the newspapers, we know it is becoming worse, but we never really believe something can happen until it does.

Today, I returned from work to my home, and if things had happened differently, I would not find my wife here: she and a friend were robbed at gunpoint, and almost were kidnapped — or worse; only God knows. They had spent the afternoon together, and later this friend brought my wife home. When they arrived at the front door, they stood in the car for a few minutes, talking. That’s when three armed young men ordered them to get out of the car. You can imagine what happened in few succeeding minutes. The robbers were extremely nervous, and ordered my wife and the other lady to get again in the back seat of the car. Fortunately, my wife managed to talk them in letting her and her friend go. She cannot explain how she found the courage to argue with them. The robbers then took their purses, got in the car, and disappeared. Thanks for God, it was over.

As I write this now, a few hours are gone. My wife is asleep, feeling better. The car is ensured, and the loss will not be too big. Obviously, nothing can compensate for the fear my wife and her friend endured, but everything is well now. Except for the documents, nothing else too valuable was in the purses. My wife lost her cell phone, but as she ironically said later: “At least the cell phone was broken, and the purse was very old.”

It’s strange to think this just happened. I lived almost all of my life in the same part of the city. I relocated a few times, but to different houses, and, except for two years in a another part of the city, I always have been in some point of two neighborhoods. When I was a child, the street I lived on was one of the most peaceful in that parts. The little traffic it had was caused by people living there. Theft was almost unheard of. When my wife and I got married, we choose a house in another neighborhood, but not much far from there. We chose it because it is situated near our church, and that would help in our ministries. We also had no problem with violence. Until now. The police officer that handled the case today told my wife the level of violence is increasing exponentially in this parts.

I thank God for His deliverance. Although it’s scares me to think a stranger has the keys to my house in his possession now, I trust God’s provision in that regard. When something like this happens, our perspectives are changed. It’s easier to understand our priorities. The old cliché applies: life is frail.

But as frail as it is, it goes on. Thanks to God.

“And we know that he works all things together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8.28)

Update: Good news! The car was found. It had been abandoned after being used for a robbery in another city. Most of the things stolen were in the car, including my wife’s prescription glasses and identification documents. Some we will just have to buy again, but that’s better than nothing. Thanks God!

I just finished a project I had been working on for some days here at work. As I’m now “available”, I will get all the boring, repetitive jobs no one else wants but somebody has to do — like extracting reports from badly modeled databases. I’m luck I’m a programmer. If I were a HTML person, I’d be doing data-entry instead.

After two weeks off, I’m back to work. Time to resume the daily routine: wake up at 6:30 AM and drag my sleepy self to the shower trying to get it bootstrapped for a new day; take the breakfast with the wife; endure a 45-minute trip in a crowded bus; stay 10 hours (counting lunch time) in the office; endure another 45-minute trip back to home; stay in peace for a few hours; sleep; start the procedure all over again. Of course, that is the pessimistic in me speaking. There is a good side to every thing in life — even to work. New challenges, prospects of growth, camaraderie at work, and other good things a job entails. I like what I do, and I am employed after all.

Unfortunately, I managed to once again do what I should not do before coming back from vacations. Every single time I’m about to return to work, I find myself going to sleep later and later in the night. This time I managed to sleep well after 1:00 AM in the last three nights before this first day at work. Obviously, today was a very slow day. But I can wait for the next weekend. He! Back to the routine indeed. Welcome, self, to the rest of the year.