A couple of months ago I mentioned that I’d been accepted into a graduate program to learn more about adult learning.  To try and keep my thoughts straight I’ve setup a separate blog about in+formal learning and teaching over at http://learninglearning.wordpress.com/

When I changed battlecat servers at the end of last year I briefly read over my previous I Would Like list and removed the list from my major links. I’d just moved to Berlin and was feeling very unsure of myself, so I didn’t take the time to review what I’d achieved in the 2 and a half years since I wrote the list, nor did I consider adding any new goals.

This week however, there’s something in the air which is prompting me to look over the list, refresh it and then work on it. Maybe it’s the slightest hint of the forthcoming spring, the return of my beau from 3 weeks abroad or the realisation that I’ve now spent more than 3 months in Berlin. Realistically I think a lot of this feeling has to do with the latter idea, specifically with the knowledge that I stop subletting and move into a permanent flat with a great flatmate this week.

For more than a year now I have been hopping from country to country and from temporary housing situation to temporary housing situation. The last year hasn’t been about travelling, and it hasn’t quite felt way I imagine a nomad’s lifestyle to be either. My experience has in some ways been exciting, but primarily it’s been exhausting and unsettling. While I wouldn’t say that my relatively privileged position of some saved funds and usefully flexible citizenship is anything like that of a refugee’s situation, I now have a greater understanding of the feeling of displacement.

So, this weekend I’ll finally have A Room Of My Own again. I’m not sure whether to panic and run away, or to celebrate and invest in very heavy objects that are difficult to move. Even though I’ve spent the grand sum of 9€ on an extremely portable desk lamp, I think that I’ll be commemorating this move with reviewing these lists and working out how I can move forward without having to move for at least 6 months.

Over the last couple of years I’ve become increasingly interested in a few Masters programs that offer technology and interaction theory and design along with research and arts practice. I’ve also thought idly about studying sociology, sustainability and urban design too, you know, just because I’m interested in way too much different stuff.

Then lately, as you might have noticed, I’ve become rather interested in friendship and how society and community forms.  There’s a little bit of sociology in there and some psychology too.  Considering that friendships form in physical space and online, I can then tie in the urban design and digital / media interests too.  Representation and recording of relationships? Well that connects the art and design threads too.

At this point, it seems like a big ask to find a graduate program that allows me to explore all the above (and more) without paying vast sums of money and moving location yet again.  So, I’m going to try and create my own part-time, unofficial ‘Masters’ program right here in Berlin.

To start with, I know a rather handsome guy who can teach me electronics. This teacher also has an extensive library incorporating philosophy and reference materials such as my .

I’m starting on a intensive course in the German language come January, so I’ll actually get some formal learning too.

After those two immediately available topics, I’m in need of some direction, so if you have answers to any of the following questions, please comment away:

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There’s far too much to say about everything right now, but after an inspiring Futuresonic conference in Manchester I followed a hunch and visited a fellow conference attendee in Sheffield. We don’t know what it is yet, but there’s something good going on.

Rather than regret not doing anything and returning to Australia in the next month or so, I’m going to take the safer risk and stay in Sheffield for a while to actually get to know this young man. So, the hunt is on for a job, a flat, some dirt to garden in and new experiences.

More to come…

The last two months have been strange. Good though.

I arrived back in Finland one year to the day after leaving. And my plan at that point was to stay here for a month or so, to make some side trips to visit friends living elsewhere in Europe and then to go home. I had sworn to myself that I would not want to stay away from Adelaide for any longer than 3 months – to do so would be in contradiction to what I stand for. I had plans you see, plans to save my hometown single handedly and to make it an exciting and dynamic city that draws young people from the world around. I had to go back home and do that.

I still do have those plans, but somehow they’ve become terribly confused in the last few months. Friendships that I’d begun when I was first in Helsinki became even more strengthened. There were offers from my old boss to work at a new club he was going to open – only a week later I became adamant that I’d never work in a loud bar again. At the same time Toph (who I worked with at Ratbag) had moved to Helsinki too – I had yet another friend to hang out with in this town. Then, I started to think – if I don’t want to work in a nightclub, but still want to stay in Europe for the summer – what could I do instead?

I also made other new friends and went to Pixelache Festival which ultimately deserves an entire (very belated) entry of its own as it sent me on a 10 day bender on the internets as I read and linked and thought [almost] far too much.

Suddenly I was overwhelmed with information about art, technology, collaboration, sustainable travel, ubiquitous computing and subcultures. I was reminded that my loves of gardening, urban design theory, architecture, craft, literature and culture actually can be combined with my technical background. Even though traditional games programming hadn’t been the ideal career for me, that didn’t mean that being a geek was a bad thing that needed to be completely written out of my life. Most importantly, I began to realise that there could actually be work that I would love to do if I combined my technical background with urban design. Most importantly this work could tie into the slowly gestating radelai.de concept: how can cities and towns best use communication technologies (web, mobiles, social networks) to become more vibrant and sustainable communities?

This of course is great. After a couple of years in the professional wilderness I have a path to follow. But after a bit of research into Urban Design degrees back in Adelaide I found out that I can’t actually start studying Masters until the beginning of 2009. Which has left me with 9 months to kill.

So I’ve been thinking once more about working somewhere in Europe for that time. It would give me a chance to live overseas again, I would be earning money – and there is so much more work related to my long term path in Europe. But I have two major problems: I left my house in the care of a housesitter with NOTHING packed up AND all the jobs that I’m seriously considering would be permanent positions. And before any of you suggest that I take up a job “permanently” and then quit 9 months later… Well, I’m pretty terrible at lying (even by omission) and that course of action would not really be in my best interests.

But then again, to not take the opportunities for doing this kind of work would also not be in my best interests – particularly when I could learn so much at any of the companies that I’ve been looking at. Would working towards this goal be better than formal study?

Ultimately I need to go back to Australia to organise my “stuff”, but after that, I’m not really sure what could happen.

I really am trying to summarise far too much in too few words – when ideally I should have been blogging about this all along, though my Twitter and Facebook updates have been fairly confusing reading for a lot of my friends!

Anyway, what I started out to say was that decisions about “home” and life are difficult, and even when you think you have plans, a path and a place to stay – your situations can change drastically.

Today, I went with Toph to the airport, just two months after he arrived in Helsinki to start a new stage of his career. A week ago, he found out that his mum was sick and understandably he chose to go back home to Australia for at least the next two months. I truly hope that everything goes well for Toph’s family, and I really am going to miss hanging out with him here in my other home, Helsinki.

In a move almost as embarrassingly bad as crying out a previous lover’s name whilst shagging someone else, I accidentally wrote Ratbag Games on the delivery instructions for my new Nintendo DS Lite.

I have to admit that despite working in the games industry – I don’t really play games that often. Though, working on the principle that the DS has converted a lot of non-gamers to addicts I thought it might be a worthwhile tax deduction. But the DS isn’t just for games as I’ll be getting the web browser eventually, and one of those brain training types of games as well as Animal Crossing.

Luckily Nintendo industrial design is almost in the same league as Apple – so my shiny black DS will sit very happily alongside my iPod and presumably a black MacBook sometime in the future.