On the move...

Yikes! I've been too long off the blog. I feel bad since I've started getting comments and contributions. Timothé, a friend in Brussels, sent me this. Cool, huh? It's not that there has been nothing to report. There actually has been too much! A brief snapshot of my last two weeks:

1. Started working part-time at O'Hare for YFU, an NGO that arranges year-long student exchanges between high schools in the US and overseas. Essentially, I make sure that the foreign students flying home from O'Hare get to their flights on time. If you're familiar with the phrase "herding cats", then you have a pretty good idea of what I do;

2. Interviewed for another part-time job with a for-profit education outfit that provides afterschool tutoring (funded by No Child Left Behind) for Chicago Public Schools. The position went to someone else but they offered me another one and then "fired" me because I only get around the city by bike. That really pissed me off. But I'm trying to emulate the patience of the Buddha;

3. Facilitated the first steps in a potential partnership between Ecto Prep, a for-profit, and Iearn, an NGO. The former provides web-based education platforms for student-teacher collaborative learning. The latter organizes education projects between classrooms in the US and overseas;

4. Joined the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation. I've been volunteering at citywide events where the CBF has presence like the Intonation Music Festival and the Gay Pride Parade. It's been great. I've met these really fascinating people like a muralist who's doing the wall at a new tequilla bar on the east side of Lincoln below Belmont.

5. Kept churning out bike-related graphics with my pirated edition Photoshop 5.5. All the graphics here, except for the photo and the Ecto jpeg, are my own. Now I'm thinking of going into the t-shirt business. I'm amazed how many of my friends here in Chicago have other friends who are in the business. Hopefully something will come from all these contacts;

6. and in between all this, I've been rereading Bruce Chatwin's Songlines. It's a wonderful novel exploring the idea that the wandering life of nomads is the natural state of humnaity. I'm applying it to my thinking on biking as a way of life.

My schedule is finally settling down. I hope to get back to regular posts starting tomorrow. So thanks for your patience %)