Do Not Fold

When I was young, I sometimes walked through the house looking through the viewfinder of my father’s old mirror reflex camera pretending that I was making movies. For some reason I find life much more interesting when it’s “framed” by a viewfinder. I’ve always been intrigued and curious about how my life would be, being a cameraman or a photographer. Sadly enough I never studied photography or video (I don’t regret many things in my life, but this one is definitely in my top 3).

I’ve got a couple of friends that are professional photographers and they inspire me a lot, I really hope to be as good as them one day! :)

Last month I joined Wannabes. It’s an ‘independent collective for rock photography’, call it a group of fun people, with great love for photography and music. It’s great because I can combine two things I love doing: listening to nice music and taking pictures ;) Click here to check out some of my concert pictures. Here’s Leki on Mano Mundo last week:

My life changed a lot lately. It’s been exactly a year now that she and I announced that we where getting married. But as you probably know, we didn’t. After eight years she decided to break up and cancel the wedding. In the meantime, we’re a couple of months further and we both moved to a new place. I’m finally getting all the boxes empty and books on the shelves. It’s time for a new chapter in my life. Don’t worry… people that know me, know that I’m a guy that keeps his chin up, and tries to get the best out of every situation.

What’s next then? Well, for all my life, I always wanted to move to New York but had accepted that I’d never work/live there because of the wedding etc. But because of the recent events it feels like I’ve got my second chance. As of this month, I’m soliciting in various companies in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Stockholm, London, etc. If you are looking for an experienced specialist in web development, I’m your man! ;) You can download my resume here. I look forward to hearing from you!

One last thing: I want you to know that I’m not trying to “escape from my current situation”. That’s definitely not true, because I really like how it is now. These Days is an awesome company! I’ve learned so many things, got loads of opportunities and it just keeps on getting better and better. The colleagues are nice, the work is fun and challenging, the mojitos are good and the boss rocks! ;) [UPDATE] The other boss got jealous on the fact that I didn’t chose his picture :P Sorry Sam, you’re really awesome too!! I’m not joking, you better re-read that recommendation I wrote about you on LinkedIn.

So I really love my job, but I feel like I should take my career to the next level. I want to build high-quality, next-generation websites and web applications. I’m looking for a company that demands pixel-perfect implementations and thinks further than the typical. There are such companies, but most are abroad. This is the main reason why I feel like I should move abroad and step into the next chapter of my life.

Quite useless, but fun to watch afterwards: Daily Mugshot. I took about 103 images so far and could order myself a neat little flipbook, but I’m going to wait with that until I’m fed up with taking a picture of myself every day :P

Steve Jobs announced the next generation of the iPhone! I’m kidding about upgrading, but 3G and GPS are really cool though. With the announcement of the new iphone software and the new .mac service, Mobile Me, they also take the “old” phone to the next level. Which is really great too.

Sure, 3G and GPS are great, but I think it ’s amazing that the new phone is slimmer, has more battery power, is available in black and white and last but not least: it costs only 199 dollar! On June 11th, the new iPhone will be available in 22 new countries, including Belgium and (#@$%) The Netherlands. I think – at 199 euros – it will be a big success. Think about it: a Tom Tom GPS unit costs more! I’m curious what they will do with the iPod Touch, who will buy one if an iPhone almost costs the same?