Stephen's Den

Well, last weekend (September 1-4) was a long weekend because Monday was Labor day (yes, American spelling on purpose). So I very carefully planned a trip away from Dallas to spend some time in Austin, the capital city of Texas. Austin is named after a man called Stephen F. Austin. He led a very interesting life and played a pivotal role in the development of Texas as its own country and ultimately as a part of the United States. I didn’t know this before, but Texas is the only state that can claim to have been a country once in its own right.

You see, Texas has been a part of 6 countries in its time. These are known as the six flags over Texas. In the state Capitol (pictured above) which I was lucky enough to visit, they have a large star on the floor in the centre of the building which depicts the emblems of those 6 countries.

Continue reading Stephen Austin – The father of Texas

Last weekend (September 1 – 4) I went down to Austin for a bit of a holiday. It turned out to be a very memorable trip, not the least because my timing was serendipitous. This post is a long one about how I discovered that Austin is, in fact, quite gay. The image on the right is of Stephen F Austin. The father of Texas and the man after whom the state capital was named.

I had just had a long day, a very long day. For reasons I may elaborate on elsewhere, I had been driving for 8 hours non-stop. About 4 of those hours had been spent getting from Dallas to Austin, in itself a 192 mile trek.

My eyes were starting to close involuntarily as I took the turnoff to my hotel. Thank goodness it was easy to find. The Holiday Inn is a place that I trust implicitly since I have been to their branches in other parts of the world. After parking in the temporary parking space I walked up to the counter and “bing!” the gaydar goes off.

Continue reading Gay Austin

Ok, so after all that excitement, this is a boring work post. My company (Beca Applied Technologies) is looking to hire intermediate to senior software developers (that’s you, Doug). There is a CV submission thingy but the user interface is horrible.

Let me know if you are interested and I can write a recommendation for you, my recommendation will help a fair bit I am sure. I will also get a finders fee or something I think.

The last step in the process is complete! This post represents the day when I came out to my father. He was the last person who I desperately needed to tell that I am gay. Some of you I haven’t told. Please don’t be offended, I only told people when the timing seemed right and when I could cause the least offense. Now that all my parents and my immediate family know, there is no one in the world I care to hide this information from.

I sent him an email, and I sent it from the US. I did this because I was afraid of his reaction and afraid of possible rejection and/or losing his love. I am grateful, surprised and overjoyed that my father replied back almost immediately to tell me that he loves me no matter what. Sure we will probably have our disagreements, but he hasn’t disowned me, he hasn’t demanded I do anything. He’s probably going to have to take some time to digest this information and do his best to understand. I am just grateful that he is willing to try.

I may post some things that relate to my sexuality here. When I do so, I will often tag them as “gay” and emails won’t be sent out so as not to offend anyone.

The image on the right is of the back of my car. Yes, that is the bumper sticker that I drive around with in the middle of Texas. No, I am not mad. Believe it or not, the most common reaction I get is people laughing or chuckling softly to themselves as they drive behind me. One gay couple stopped next to me on the road to tell me they loved my bumper sticker. I do too.

Last week Sunday I went to the Dallas Museum of Art. This wasn’t planned of course, most of the best things in life aren’t. I had just finished church and lunch afterwards (as usual) and was making my way home through the city. It was about 1pm. As I drove towards my turnoff, I decided to carry on going into the heart of Dallas so I could take some pictures of this vibrant metropolis. I stopped in the shade of a large apartment block and got out into the hot, muggy Dallas air. I walked around the reserve bank on my way to the heart of the city sweating profusely. The image on the right is a sculpture that greeted me as I entered the city proper. This behemoth stands sentinel over the I35E and against the pale blue Dallas sky, it’s quite striking.

I carried on walking in through the city, happily snapping pictures of the impressive architecture, mainly consisting of steel & glass monstrosities rising hundreds of stories towards the Texas sun. Imagine my surprise then when I happened upon this lovely old chapel, juxtaposed against the harsh steel-blue reality of the city. This, I soon discovered, was the Dallas Arts district: A place where a tourist like me might go to see some unique and interesting things. I couldn’t believe my good fortune.

It turns out that the heart of Dallas is brokein up into 8 districts. Arts, City Center, Main Street, West End, Reunion, Convention Centre, Government and Farmer’s Market to be precise. I had stumbled on what had to be one of the more interesting districts on offer. Continue reading For Art’s Sake

This post is a self-indulgent religious post with no pictures. You have been warned 🙂

Last Sunday’s church service touched on the concept of generosity. Now, personally, my cynical mind suspected that the admonishment to be generous seems to be quite common in American churches, where they’re always trying really hard to bolster up the offering so they can afford that new sound system or gold trimmings on the pews. That said, I did take something away from that. For me, generosity is a core part of the Christian lifestyle, but it’s generosity of spirit, not necessarily of money. Continue reading Generosity

It’s been a while since I posted so I thought I should update Y’all.

I have been busy with life and work but what I have really been trying to do is get more pictures of me. You see, what I realised is that when I am looking at someone’s holiday photos, I don’t really want to see the places they have been or the bags they packed. I want to see them and the people they met! So, I am endeavouring to do that now. I haven’t been travelling anywhere in particular yet. I think, however, that this will be my last weekend of “settling in”. I will have been here for about a month by then and I have promised myself I will go somewhere new and exciting once a month!

Above is a picture of me watering my pot plants, click “more” for more photos!

Continue reading Photos of the simple life

It was coming up to my fourth weekend in Dallas. I had achieved all of the goals I had set for myself pretty quickly, there was just one big one remaining: I was determined to socialise with other gay people of around my own age (or generation). My experience at church had been disappointing, I really needed to get out of my comfort zone and start meeting new people.

Continue reading My first gay bar experience

Ok, so now it’s time for a boring work post. I wish I could show pictures of where I work but no recording devices of any kind are allowed in the building. Security is reasonably tight. I can’t even get back from the toilet without a swipe card.

Yeah, Cecil guys & gals, I have been there before, but this time knocking on the door is not allowed. I once forgot my card when I went to the toilet. I had to get the security person (her name is Barbra) to ring into the office so that someone could walk out with my swipecard. No swipecard, no entry. Our swipecards have our pictures on them too.

Anyway, So I am writing code (no specifics). The design is finished and one of our key problems is interfacing with a particular API. This API is all done in unmanaged C++ libraries and we’re programming in C#. Non-programmers, continue reading at your peril… Continue reading New generation

This past week, I have travelled 455 miles (732 km). That’s over 100 km more than driving just 100km shy of the distance from Auckland to Wellington. It equates to about 65 miles (104 km) per day.

That includes 5 trips to work and 2 into Dallas (both about 30 miles each way). I filled up with 9.88 gallons (37.4 litres) today which cost me $28.25 ($2.86 / gal) and means that I achieved around 46 miles per gallon (19.55 kilometres per litre). A single tank of gas, will last me over a week (I estimate my tank to be about 11 gallons).

Yes, that is my steering wheel. I needed a cover because it gets so hot here 😉