I'm still here

I know this is probably a record in the number of days I went without blogging, but I'm still here. A lot has happened in the past few days that I don't even know where to start. Maybe I'll just tell you one or two things. First, there is the important news that I am going home in the first two weeks of January. Actually I'll spend new year's eve in the air flying home and trying to figure out are we in 2006 yet or not (depending on which time zone we'll be in). Yeh, I'll miss the countdown and all that but I think this new year's on the fly will be an interesting experience. I wonder if they'll do anything special on the plane that night.

What else? Well, I've been thinking a lot lately about the meaning of these lines:

Far, far from each other
Our spirits have grown
And what heart knows another?
Ah! who knows his own?

Matthew Arnold, "Parting"

Mai