We decided to try our hand at growing green things this year. Ideally we’d love to have a whole garden and grow things in the ground, but our apartment living has relegated our experiment to our balcony and pots. This is our second round of growth. The first round of basil, mint, and cilantro was wiped out my some kind of aphid infestation.

All of our plants have come from seeds. We have used a miniature plastic greenhouse to start growing the seeds which has worked great, although it might have led to the demise of our cilantro by making them grow too quickly and getting top-heavy. When the seedlings reached the miniature greenhouse lid, we planted them in real pots and left them outside.

This second round of plants consists of basil (in the two small rectangular planters), purple tomatillos (in the large rectangular planters), and tomatoes (in the large pots). Hopefully the basil will grow big and strong and we can make some yummy pesto and the purple tomatillos sounded like they would make an excellent and visually stimulating salsa. The tomatos were given to us as seeds of two different types already planted in small pots. Of course we now have no idea which type is which because the cat knocked the pots, soil and seeds off the table before they could make it to the balcony. We were still hopeful and pushed the soil back into the pots and put them outside. Despite their rough beginnings they have grown big and strong!

Oh yeah… and our little aloe plant is as happy as can be, even if we do forget to water it!

Each year the World of Nations Celebration is open on thursday and friday for elementary and middle school students to come learn about different cultures. Asa fondly remembers going to the celebration when he was a little tyke.

We had a great time wandering around, sampling local cuisine, and people watching. We even got to sample some empanadas from Colombia which were very different from the ones we had in Uruguay.

Some fun facts we learned:

- The Ethiopian calendar follows the Julian calendar which has 12 months of thirty days each and a 13th month of 5 days. The calendar is 7 years and 8 months behind the Western calendar.

- The Taj Mahal only took 17 years to build with workmen working every single day.

- Nollywood is what Nigeria’s booming film industry is called.

- The South Korean flag has a representation of yin and yang surrounded by depictions of the four elements: heaven, earth, fire and water.

- Angel Falls in Venezuela is 19 times the height of Niagara Falls.

Although I have a job now, the path to getting a job wasn’t paved with rubies or any other precious stone. I imagine many other job seekers went through trials and tribulations similar to what I experienced over the last year. So here are a couple of my top observations while applying for and finding a job.

1. There are actually a lot of jobs available. The biggest advice I got while job hunting was “it’s a numbers game. Just keep applying”, so you might think that having a lot of options would be great. It’s only great until you get rejected from all of them… then it’s not so great.

2. The job market is saturated with overqualified job seekers. It seems like in my field (i.e., recent PhD graduate in the sciences) there are an awful lot of people that are super qualified for the jobs that are available. I’m not referring to the good student that got out of graduate school with a paper or two and some really awesome connections (that’s me). I am referring to the people that had NSF pre-doctoral fellowships during grad school, finished grad school having 4 or 5 papers in the journals Science or Nature, have now completed a post-doc in a high performing lab with the top brain in their discipline, and have a half million grant to do cutting edge research in their future job. Now its great that super qualified candidates are getting jobs at universities, but how overqualified does one really have to be just to get a job teaching at a small liberal arts college? Pretty damn over-qualified apparently.

3. Communication from potential employers is almost nonexistent. Now that most job applications are submitted online or via email, it is a rarity that job seekers ever hear back from potential employers. Some applications I filled out didn’t even have a contact email or phone number for a representative that knew about the job. I guess the motto is “apply blindly and ask questions later”. Don’t get me wrong… It’s tough to hear back from a potential employer that your application was great but they found someone else. But when you start to tally up rejections and take bets on when someone will finally email you with news, it would be nice to hear something, anything.

4. Employers have not changed their application process to accomodate such large numbers of applicants. Although the job applying process has moved to the realm of the internet, a few aspects make it tough for both job seekers and potential employers. For job seekers, I found any application that requested actual recommendation letters instead of contact information for references particularly annoying. I think I asked my references to send upwards of 40 recommendation letters on my behalf. All that work of sending and then reviewing recommendation letters just isn’t necessary, especially when potential employers have so many applicants to sort through. I would suggest sorting through based on resumes and other additional documentation (teaching and research statements) and then request letters if the applicant makes it past that stage. The additional documentation also bogs down the system. I understand that if the job is a teaching job, that a teaching statement or a sample course syllabus would be helpful in judging the applicants’ merits, but when there are more than 100 applicants, it takes forever. I am still hearing rejections from jobs I applied to in the fall (yep, 5 months later). Having rounds of sorting applications or having the job advertisement open for only a short period of time might curb these issues.

5. In the end, it still really does matter who you know. I have a friend who knows someone whose aunt works at …. sounds like some kind of scam, right? Not so! It’s the way to get a job. Employers would much rather hire someone that is known to a current employee or comes with a recommendation from a friend. This is in fact how I got my job at Westminster. Big thanks need to go out to the frisbee community and all it’s wonderful teachers for passing the word along that I am awesome!

Hopefully I won’t have to deal with these issues again any time soon, but for those of you that are dealing with them, hang in there!

I will be employed by the Westminster Schools in Atlanta as a biology and environmental science teacher for the coming school year. I will be teaching four classes of 11th or 12 graders. The Westminster Schools are one of the top independent schools in the Atlanta area and boasts class sizes of ~15 students, state of the art athletic facilities, copious professional development opportunities for teachers, and unique learning environments (e.g., a greenhouse, organic garden, and a creek running through the property). One of the things I will be focusing on is trying to contribute a projects- and inquiry-based environment to my and other science classrooms based on my experience with those learning techniques at the college level. It will probably take a while to adjust to the high school setting, but I am very excited to become a part of the Westminster community.

Asa and I are both very excited to be headed back to Atlanta come July. Asa will likely be playing with Chain Lightening again for the club ultimate season and I will hopefully be training for a half marathon with old running buddies. In the coming months we’ll be looking for a place to live in the Atlanta area; hopefully where we can stay a 1 car family. Although it still feels like we are in some kind of limbo, it’s nice to know that we have a place we need to be and a purpose for being there!

Stay tuned for a future post about some observations I made while job hunting.

When my friend came to visit a couple weeks ago, we also took a field trip to the Chamblin Bookmine. The Chamblin Bookmine is a new and used book store. It’s not necessarily the best place to find cheap books (all of their used books are half off the cover price), but if you are looking for an old or unique title, or 30 copies of Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club, you’ll be sure to find it at Chamblin. It is also a great place to “get lost” in books. There are nooks and crannies filled with titles including a closet without a door containing every Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew novel ever written. I found about 40 copies of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gastby in the classics section. They also have new books and books for every school list in the area displayed prominently near the registers.

Chamblin also functions as a book exchange. They will accept used books in exchange for a small amount of store credit. They also have numerous rare books that can be viewed on their website.

Wandering through Chamblin reminded me of my first week on campus at UC Santa Barbara so long ago. I went to the campus library several times during my first week. I never went to do actual work (that came later in my college career). I went to “get lost” in the stacks. I found copies of the journal Science dating back to the early 1900′s just sitting there on the shelves, I found a reading room on the top floor with a view of the ocean, I found maps of strange places. It was an eye-opening experience that I could have so many books at my fingertips, and near limitless knowledge within my grasp. I got that same feeling at Chamblin, like I could pick up any title and it would make me smarter in some way.

I would definitely recommend a trip to the Chamblin Bookmine if you are in the Jacksonville area and like books. They definitely have something for everyone!

I had a friend come and visit a couple weeks ago and we took a trip to the Jacksonville Zoo. When I first got to Jacksonville, my mom and I went to the Zoo and were both pleasantly surprised about it’s size, the activity of the animals, the set up, and the quality of the enclosures. They also have a great collection and diversity of animals. The next time I went with Asa and the rest of my family when they were here for the holidays. I picked up a yearly pass with a +1 visitor who can be anyone. It is a pretty fantastic deal.

Anyway, my friend and I wandered over to the zoo during the only non-rainy part of the weekend. The animals, as always, were happy and active (except for those warthogs, they are always asleep). We high-tailed it out of there when it started to rain, but not before I got some good pictures of the animals.

Well, I am happy to report that we moved into a nice two bedroom apartment near the beach in Jacksonville. We are planning on being here until August when I will surely have a job. Regardless of the job situation, we will find ourselves seeking a new abode somewhere.

Being near the beach is great and we are within biking distance of the grocery store, the gym, the bank, restaurants, the beach, and a dog park. Riding our bikes has been great and we hope to keep up the habit regardless of where we end up.

In other news, Asa will be trying out for Team USA (Ultimate Frisbee) in a couple weeks. This year’s competition is called the World Games and it will be held in August in Cali, Colombia. The USA is taking a 13 person mixed gender squad to compete. We’ll keep you posted on any news we hear.

With that, I think I’ve caught you up on the major events of the past couple months (yeah, not a lot going on). I will try to be better with posting fun stuff we do around Jacksonville. I even pulled out and charged my camera in anticipation!

I’ll just leave you with some nice pics of the St. Augustine Turtle Trot (5K) that Asa’s mom and I ran together a couple weeks ago. I won third place in my age group and got an awesome hand-carved wooden turtle medal (that the cat promptly knocked of our table and the dog promptly ate!).

Us after the race!

The beach at St. Augustine. Flat, warm, and sandy!

Cars are allowed to drive/park on the beach as long as they have 4-wheel drive and pay the parking fee. I had to laugh at the little sedan that we saw driving down there. Hope they didn’t get stuck!

Filed under: Living Conditions, sports, Things To Do, Ultimate Tagged: beach, biking, Jacksonville, Running, St. Augustine Turtle Trot, Team USA ]]> http://halupi.us/2013/03/12/back-for-2013-just-a-little-late/feed/ 1 mlwattsupp Us after the race! CIMG6486 CIMG6487 http://halupi.us/2013/01/05/matts-2012-in-review/ http://halupi.us/2013/01/05/matts-2012-in-review/#comments Sat, 05 Jan 2013 18:29:11 +0000 Matt http://halupi.us/?p=997 ]]> A Year of Uncertainty and Adventure

In January 2012, I left my job, sold almost all of my belongings, and said bye to family and friends to embark on a journey that I had no clue where it would take me.

In January 2013, I’m still on that journey, living on the opposite side of the world. This journey is transforming into a way of life, and different way of seeing the world.

We’re at a point in time that the internet allows us to create our own jobs, live anywhere in the world and work whoever we choose. Luckily, I’ve been able to keep in touch with friends and family online no matter where I’m at in the World. Skype, Google Hangout, social media, and this blog have been great at helping us keep in touch. PS: Thanks Randi for writing so much and pushing Asa and I to write a couple posts!

Here it is…

January was a month of getting rid of the last of my belongings (thanks to advice from Joshua and Ryan) and saying bye to friends, family, my job, most hobbies. Luckily, friends are always willing to throw a party, especially if it means it’s the last time they’ll see you in many months if not years.

Thanks for the yummy cookie cake Michelle

I moved down to Palermo, Uruguay with Asa and Randi. They were pretty much the main reason I’m doing this. If they didn’t decide it would be alright for me to join them, I might have never made the trip. Asa and Randi, I owe you guys the World. You guys freakin’ rock! I hope you will come visit one day!

This is a good hair day!

I became conversational in spanish down there. We could have probably been fluent in spanish in 3 months, but making fun of each other in English was so much fun.

I was bad at taking pictures in South America. I’m blaming it on the fact that I didn’t have a working camera most of the time since the lens’ dinner of choice was sand.

Carnival in Uruguay!!

Candle Festival in Montevideo, Uruguay. They send boats with candles, flowers, and decorations into the water for good luck.

I met Carlos, JuanMa, and Maru in Palermo after finding out there was ultimate frisbee in Uruguay. Luckily they spoke enough English to communicate with us.

12-hour travel to play in the Bahia Blanca Beach hat tourney

I sang karaoke with 4 others in front of hundreds (it was the US National Anthem)

Champions!

I wrestled an alligator (crocodile)

Hey Mom! I’m a foreign TV star… in 2 countries!

I played in 4 Ultimate Frisbee tournaments outside of the US

In the voice of 300 Spartans… This is CIMARRON!

The AFDC and Spin Ultimate made it possible to donate 80 discs and jerseys to help South America further Ultimate Frisbee as a sport

I learned to salsa in Argentina at 4am. (I wouldn’t call it learning, more like drunken wobbling side to side)

We played fun tournament games

I learned how to play the piano… with my feet!

I had another going away party. This time it was for leaving Uruguay.

Viva Las Vegas!

I got back together with the family in Vegas. I went to my Sister’s and Blake’s (now brother-in-law!) wedding. It was a gorgeous and awesome wedding. It was a lot of fun. I lost money at poker (it was overdue) but had a blast with Derek, Blake’s family and my family! So many good times and fun things happened.

Yum! In-N-Out Burger with a creeper in the background.

Ziplining with Dad in Vegas!

Off to Puerto Galera

After too much excitement in Vegas, I headed out to Puerto Galera, Philippines to get together with a bunch of people from the DC and the TropicalMBA. Joining the DC was probably the biggest game changer this year as far as business is concerned. I won’t talk about that now.

In Puerto Galera, I caught some amazing sunrises, had a birthday applechicken with the crew at Badladz and tried to swim with Dolphins.

Birthday chicken apple lunch!!

Taking a short break from work!

Beautiful view of Puerto Galera from the top of the jungle trek

Rented a villa with 2 friends for half a week in Puerto Galera. Our Dive master picked us up from our dock!

Survived a water buffalo ride!

The crew chillin on the beach

Tuk tuk transportation

Trying to swim with some dolphins

After this, I headed back to Manila for a few days to meet with some friends.

I slept on a boat in Manila

Enjoyed the Manila Skyline at night

Off to Bangkok, Thailand!

After the Philippines, I flew over to Bangkok for a big meetup of about 70-80 Dynamite Circle members from all around the World.

This was my view for three days in Bangkok.

We met for three days in a convention center. I met people who hide from the public, well-known influencers, people just starting out on their entrepreneurial journey, and established ballers who are all living the lifestyle of their choice from wherever they want around the World.

I was bad at taking pictures here.

In Chiang Mai

Posing at a temple

Words of wisdom at a temple

Met up with Joel within my first few weeks in Chiang Mai. I was introduce to Melina and Orn then, two awesome people. Robert was laughing so hard he forgot to open his eyes.

Sick mustache, Joel.

Marvin was traveling through so we went to the sticky waters where you can climb them. We decided some sort of Yoga pose would be best.

Cliff jumping in Chiang Mai.

Lantern release – sending bad thoughts away. Bringing in good thoughts.

Thousands of lanterns released at Yi Peng lantern festival during Loi Krathong. This moment was incredible. At one point in time, I couldn’t even see the sky there were so many lanterns right above my head.

Celebrating Turkey day with Apple Pie Shots

Temple in Chiang Mai

Manila Spirits 2012

Cabs R Here losing the 3rd place game to Derek Ramsey in Rock-Paper-Scissors

Was introduced through a Sam to Sam. Played with him in Manila

Dancing with the Aussies and Canadian!

Photobomb #1 – Beer me!

Photobomb #2 – epic makeout scene

Photobomb #3 – Like a Boss

Surviving the Mayan Apocalypse in style!

Taking pictures of myself… as always

Cabs R Here!!!

What the Deuce in Chiang Mai’s first ultimate frisbee league.

Family sent me awesome christmas presents!!

White elephant present – awesome Thailand Tshirt

Meeting up with cousins Jimmy and Janie and friend Sandy after their domination runs in Chiang Mai.

Coffee at Ristr8o with the #DCCM crew on Christmas day

White elephant gift exchange

Christmas day street food dinner with cousins Jimmy and Janie!

Some lessons learned:

People all around you have a strong influence on who you are as a person. Surround yourself with people you look up.

Different cultures around the World can take a while to adapt to. By having a strong core, open eyes and ears, and the ability to see other’s points of view, you can go extremely far in life and be extremely successful (no matter what “success” means to you).

When you let yourself be open to opportunity, doors start showing up in front of you and you just have to choose which ones your going to open and which path your going to go down.

Learning a language is hard, but you’ll get a lot more respect and your stay will be easier if you learn some basic language and show you’re trying. You’ll also get good mental benefits from learning to speak a new language.

Leverage your hobbies to create strong and lasting friendships wherever you go.

There is something unique about Ultimate Frisbee and spirit of the game. If you play ultimate frisbee, make sure to look for ultimate everywhere you go. You will instantly create awesome friends and people all around. I have made so many friends this past year through ultimate and everyone is awesome in their own way. Whether I was partying in Uruguay at 6am with you, dancing/drinking in Argentina, surviving the Apocalypse with the Aussies in Manila, or playing league in Chiang Mai, you guys have been freaking awesome!

This journey would not be the same without ultimate and all the people I’ve met playing ultimate along the way. If there is anything I can ever do for you guys, you know where to contact me!

The same can be said for anyone in the DC. #DCCM, you guys rock! I’ve had a blast in Chiang Mai. Now, it’s time to move it to #DCPai and get more serious about health, fitness, work, and productivity.

It’s not as easy as it seems…

Going out and traveling sure does seem like fun, but there are a lot things that make it difficult. In the beginning, you have to give up on a lot of things like going out and drinking with friends a lot, skipping over to another country for fun, doing expensive dinners. You really have to be the boring friend sometimes who sits inside on a Friday evening and throughout the weekend getting the work done. Your good friends will understand, but most won’t.

Whatever you do, just make sure you follow Derek Sivers’ motto: it’s either “HELL Yeah! or no.”

Most people won’t understand what you do. They see the great pictures, the travel, the fun, but they don’t understand the struggles and the work you do.

Leaving friends is hard. Sure, I’ve made great friends along the way, but with everyday I make a new friend, that’s a day that’s passed that I haven’t seen an old friend from backhome.

The hardest part is probably leaving family. Luckily I can video chat and skype with my family back home, but it’s definitely hard celebrating birthdays, holidays, especially Christmas without the family. Technology doesn’t always work and frustrating times come along that. You just have to accept the fact that s#!@ happens sometimes and there will be another time to say hi!

You have to be like water in a stream, flowing over and around the rocks, the hard times. I think there’s a Chinese proverb about that.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned this whole trip, and it’s something I knew and learned from Mo, quality relationships are pretty much the most important things in life. Without trust, friendship, support, prodding, and pushing from peers, mentors, mentees, friends, family, others, life can be A LOT harder than it has to be.

Go out and create great relationships. Keep in touch, help others, and connect people when you can! Be good to others.

I could write this post about business stuff, finances, etc, but the most important thing to me is connecting, helping, and having fun with people.

2012 was a year of travel and creating incredible friendships. 

I’m looking forward to 2013 to be a year of creating and deepening relationships and fine tuning my habits and rituals to be more productive and grow my business efforts this year. 
Don’t worry, Mom! I’ll work on taking more and better pictures and keeping everyone updated!

2013 is a year for shipping. Get your work out! Go big or go home (going home isn’t an option here). Do something that matters and the world will reward you for it.

Anyway, Asa and I were commandeered to help out in the boat of a family friend. She ingeniously decorated her boat in lights shaped like an octopus and needed help moving legs (yes a lot of legs!) and changing colors of the remarkably large octopus body.

It was certainly a site to behold from the dock and close up on the boat, but was even more astounding in videos taken from the shore.

“Octopus’s Garden” by the Beatles was also on repeat and blaring from speakers on the deck of the boat, hopefully loud enough for those on the shore to enjoy.

Check out this awesome video of the light parade on youtube!

After we made our two mandatory loops around the downtown area, we settled in at a local dock nestled between two of the downtown bridges to enjoy the fireworks. We had the perfect spot to enjoy the “waterfalls” of fireworks set off from both bridges during the firework finale.

It was a fantastic night out on the water! Oh yeah, the octopus won first place in the sailboat category!