Friday January 05, 2007
Friday January 05, 2007
5 Things You Probably Shouldn't Know...
Apparently there's this thing where you get tagged by someone who has to tag 5 people and then you tell the world 5 less-well-known things about yourself in your blog, after which you tag 5 other people who do the same thing in theirs.
And Roumen tagged me. So here are my five deeply embarrassing, fascinating, or otherwise, factoids:
- I used to work for Coca-Cola (in Vienna) and now I work for NetBeans (in Prague). So I moved from the world's biggest, unhealthiest, commercial softdrink to the world's biggest, healthiest, free software. Not a bad move, all things considered.
- I attended Princess Diana's funeral. It seemed like the whole world was focused on that funeral and it wasn't far from where I lived -- i.e., Amsterdam. So I flew over and sat in Hyde Park, watching the funeral (and the amazing speech by her brother) on massive screens, with a communist friend who I knew there. As left-leaning spectators, we felt pretty conflicted being there at all, but the emotion of the event was incredible.
- I once shook Nelson Mandela's hand. I grew up in South Africa and went to law school there -- and one day in 1994 it was announced that Nelson Mandela was going to be speaking at the local city hall (just prior to the first democratic elections). Students were asked to help in arranging the meeting, telling people where to park their cars and so on. I had a pretty meaningless but interesting task -- I was back stage, supposedly on 'security detail' (but the guards that Nelson Mandela brought with him instantaneously made me redundant, so that all I got out of it was a great spot to watch the speech from). At the end, Nelson Mandela personally thanked everyone involved in setting up the meeting -- by saying hi to everyone in person, one by one, in a long line like with the queen in British movies, and shook our hands.
- Before I started blogging, I wrote a lot of poetry. Always formalist poems (i.e., rhyme, stanza, narrative, rhythm), and my favorite form was the sonnet. Here's one of my favorites:
Bad Day for Kafka He hadn't been an elephant last night,
but now he sees a trunk swing past his face.
And are those tusks? His ears flap-flap in fright;
he screeches loudly, tramples, breaks a vase.His clumsy legs stampede him to the wall,
then fumble-turn and crash him through his bed;
he hears his parents padding down the hall,
and tries to rise but falls to his knees instead."All right there, son?" his worried folks exclaim.
He wants to reassure them, but his shriek
reminds them of long treks to Mozambique.Experienced stalkers, hunters of big game,
they corner him and gore his hide with spears
and keep his tusks to mount as souvenirs.My poetry is scattered all over the place on the internet. Here's a good starting point. Most of it is really drivelly. Since I started blogging, all my creative energy has gone into this medium, rather than poetry. But blogging is a kind of poetry too, sometimes.
- When I grow up, I want to be a fire engine.
I hereby tag the following 5 people: Tutorial Divas, Dave Lindt, John C, Josh, and Lou.
Jan 05 2007, 10:01:50 AM PST Permalink
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