Well, I spent the better part of 6 months in Hamburg, and it was super nice! until it wasnt. After living in australia for the past 20 years, I forgot that i just dont like the cold. And while it’s not exactly arctic cold, when it gets below around 15 degrees celcius, my body and mind just dont work. No problem I figured, Its only a few months, and I can get a whole lot of work done when im stuck inside… If only it were that easy. Luckily I had a 6 week performing contract in Macao through January - surely that would alleviate some of the winter blues. I had a super great time there, and didnt really want to go home once the contract was up. Initially i figured it was because I didnt want to leave my new friends behind. But once I arrive back in Hamburg, I remembeed the real reason I have been following the summer for the majority of my life.
I just don’t like the cold
Haha, I dont mind it really, I actually do like being cold sometime. But weeks and weeks of miserable overcast weather is really not my thing. It somehow gets into my soul, and slowely crushes it. Taking away any motivation or inspiration I have. So, I did the only reasonable thing, at least in mt mind. As a travelling street performer for close to 2 decades, I had no problem throwing away basically all my wordly possessions and jumping on a plane to a quasi random destination.
Athens, Greece
After a quick search online, I found cheap flights to Athens. Ive never been to Greece, so thats a bonus, but the best part, the weather was close to 20 degrees warmer! Nice. I ended up staying for 2 months, and grew quite fond of the city. Im sure ill head back. The highlights for me were all the orange trees right throught the city, literally everywhere! and the random turtles I would come across wandering through the hills as i would walk/excercise every night. The street workout complex right near the old olympic stadium was also super nice.
Bucharest, Romania
So here I am now in Bucharest, It’s been 3 weeks so far, and I will probably stay another month before I head back to western europe for a couple of gigs over the summer. After that… I have a vague inclination to head to Florida for the winter, as Ive never been. The added bonus of digital nomading are the cost savings, I tend to live better, and cheaper while abroad.
Working
While I was in Athens, with all the sun beaming life back into me, I finally got my motivation back. Cookie 6 is now being beta tested and should be released sometime in the next couple of months. Also, while here in Bucharest, I discovered that Apple had finally updated its Safari Extension APIs. Finally… Ive wanted to update it for a while, but it literally just wasnt technically possible before. So, the last couple of weeks were spent getting SessionRestore updated. Ive just uploaded it to Apple for review, and quickly threw together a product page for it. I should have the trial version ready and available on my site within the next day or 2. It was a total rewrite, obviously. As it’s now written mostly in Swift - theres a little Objective-C still, as some of the new APIs were so new, they don’t seem to work in Swift yet… Ha.