Very Best Wishes for 2004!

Welcome to 2004! I am greatly looking forward to this new year and am closing 2003 in simplicity, with my parents, sipping a cup of Russian tea. I will hop into the car and have a drive in downtown Geneva. I want to start the day early and get fully started wrapping up 5 1/2 exhausting years of University studies - learning for my finals late February.

This blog saw the light a few days ago, thanks to the inspiration from a teenager blogs. I believe it will carry on for a little while, since I much enjoy writing like this.

2004 will be a very interesting year. I will conclude my studies and have to decide what to do next: either start a job, continue with a Masters Degree in the UK, or find a completely different path. My goal is to do something I enjoy and find fulfilling and am passionate about. But, more important - most important, is finding people, friends and relationships I truly enjoy and care about, which is a bit what I wasn't able to do during my time in St. Gallen. Why, I don't know. But it has certainly something to do with how happy you are about what you are doing. I wasn't really, I now see. But this will change now... all will change.

I wish you all much joy for 2004 - and a good health, because it's important!

Phil

The Return

I have just come back from watching The Return (Возвращение), a Russian film. The story is about a father who reappears to his family after 12 years of absence and takes his two sons on a trip. The elder son is ready from the start to embrace this man as his father and desires his acknowledgement, whereas the younger is far more suspicious about the cold, sometimes violent man (trailer).

The pictures and emotions are raw, and the film touched me. Perhaps it did touch a sensitive spot about the longing for a father's acceptance of oneself, a father a son never fully knows.

The location of the film reminded me of my recent visit to Russia last November. The father takes his sons on a fishing trip and they cross a lake on a boat to reach an island. In Russia, I spent a weekend on Lake Ladoga and went on a boat trip to a small island. I just discovered that The Return was shot on the same lake (north of St. Petersburg). It was strange!

Getting it moving

After nearly a year of owning my domain rose.ph, I gathered enough activation energy to decide to seriously start writing a blog. I had wanted to for a long time, I used to have my "home page" a few years ago and my cousin Jon led the way with www.memoryweb.org.

The kick in the butt that finally activated me was reading about the Guardian awards for the best UK blogs and discovering Max Munton's "a teenager blogs". I surprised myself reading with great curiosity about Max's life, enjoying discovering little details such as the ones on his "100 things about myself". Why would I care to know that he's got an inney or an outy? I did, so I instantly decided to write about my own life's little details. That's the whole reason!

I'm still thinking about what shape to give to this site, but seeing that Jon even took the time to write a comment, I'm more sure I won't be the only one reading about myself!

(I hope Max doesn't mind about the existence of this blog, but if you do, please drop me a line and let me know!)

Hello World

This is my first message. And on the right is my cousine, Alice - same name as the default username for Greymatter's admin console. I took the picture today on my new digital camera. It'll be fun using it to multimedialise this newly created blog! Mmm, I can't wait to catch new people in funny poses!