Updates from Ed Ross

Mar 7 / 1:51pm

On to India - first few photos and videos

Well, it's about time I started highlighting some of the sights and sounds of India. There are quite a few photos in my India photos set, so I'll break this up over a series of posts, including a few of my videos on the way too.

This is the first church we were asked to speak at. It was funny: our guide had told us that we were going to a church meeting for "Seekers" - it turned out that they were five year olds, so we quickly had to re-plan our evening!

There are a lot of animals living wild all over India. It was sad to see so much rubbish strewn around, but to try to clear it up now would be a huge undertaking. It just goes as part of the different world-view of the people over there. I'm sure they'd be equally horrified by some of the things we do over here.

Mobile phone shops are everywhere - even just sitting on the street.

There are also a lot of posters for programming courses. Programming is a big deal in India.

People drive motorbikes in a very different way to here too.

Fortunately I only really suffered from mosquito bites in the first few days, but boy, did I suffer!

I guess I'm probably one of the only DTS team members to have brought an extension cable on a trip with them, but it seemed like a good idea to me. It turned out to be so, when we needed to power a speaker system to practise a skit. Having to use a combination of UK to Europe to Indian plug converters was not ideal, but it did work! (Those were provided by the other guy on the team though).

A few videos of the roads on India (which are quite hectic and a lot louder than UK roads as everyone is actually encouraged to sound their horn all the time!):

In other news: the first of the new episodes of the Geeks and God podcast came out this week: Geeks and God Episode 128: Reboot, so it would be great to hear your feedback on that.

Have a great week.

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Feb 28 / 4:30pm

The DTS course in pictures and video

Well, it's been a year since the DTS course finished, so really about time I start talking about some of the photos/videos that I took during that time.

Here is the first of my media updates, from the Pre India set:

The view of the manor on the day I arrived. I'd been there once before to check it out, so it wasn't entirely new. Although the journey from my parent's house only took about 20 minutes, I think the emotional journey from my old life to the DTS life had taken may twists and turns in the proceeding few weeks. Getting together with my now wife being top of the list.

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Feb 14 / 2:39pm

A Year in Review (Already!)

Exactly 1 year and a day ago, I arrived home from my two month trip to India.

A day later, I proposed to my then girlfriend, on the glass floor of Portsmouth's Spinnaker Tower.

We'd already booked the church and reception venue, and she'd bought her dress, so I was pretty sure that she would accept my proposal. I was very happy that she did.

Then for the next week, I went back to Holmsted Manor to complete the final week of my YWAM DTS course.

I'd loved being on the course, and you can read my past blog entries which talk more about what I did day by day - however, by then I was really feeling ready to move on to the next stage of my life.

I graduated from the course, had a short stay back with my parents, and moved back to Portsmouth, uncertain about what job I would find, and how I would find life as an engaged man.

Fortunately housing wasn't an issue, as some very kind friends let me rent a room in their house. Applying for jobs wasn't too hard either (finding one that I was accepted for was harder though). After a few interviews, eventually a job pretty much fell in to my lap, when I was asked to start working to see if I would be any good at the job, and they saw that I was.

With my job now sorted, the majority of my time was used being with my fiancé. When I started this blog before the DTS course, we weren't even together: she asked me out on the day that I left Portsmouth (actually in the car driving back home!). I'd liked her for quite a few years, but she always said she didn't see us getting together. Then when she understood that I was leaving Portsmouth for good, she had a change of heart, and realised that actually, she liked me too. And boy, did she leave it late to tell me!

Being away for the first 5 months, and being out of the country for 2 of those months was not how anyone would probably choose to start a relationship, but that's what happened, and I'm sure it was all in God's timing. Me getting back to Portsmouth was a bit of an odd time for both of us though, and we both had to adapt again to the new life we were living together.

It was somewhere around here that I found it hard to carry on blogging, with the time taken up with other activities, such as wedding planning. I'm sure I did some planning somewhere, really - I must have done some of it , right?

Well, my Bride-to-be and her Mum did most of the hard work, but I did my share.

And so from coming back to England and getting engaged, the other major event of the year was my wedding, and subsequent honeymoon in Paris, in October.

I enjoyed the day a lot. It was a great relief to get out of the Engaged stage of life, in which we'd both found struggles that we had not anticipated, and on to the Married stage, which has already had struggles, but ones that we create ourselves, rather than being forced on to us. Being October, we were glad it didn't rain, but the cold was quite harsh (I'm told - both my wife and I didn't really notice it). I was pretty sure I'd picked the right honeymoon destination, and my Wife's reaction to the news that we would be spending a week in Paris confirmed my suspicion: she was very pleased, and we had a fun time: three course meals in the Eiffel Tower, and on a river tour on the Seine, as well as a Segway tour of Paris and a day trip to Disneyland Paris were particular highlights.

Then we got in to the hard work of starting to live together! And then November and December flew past, and we got to Christmas, New Year, a bout of snow covering the whole country in January, and that brings me up to where I re-started this blog. 2009 was a pretty unusual year, dominated by a couple of key events: finishing off the YWAM DTS course, and getting married. Hopefully things can settle down for a bit, but we are getting ready for the ride of our lives: together.

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Feb 7 / 3:39pm

Tidy up!

It may seem like common sense to most people, but having a tidy, clean house, is quite a good thing! Shame it seems to get messy soon after you tidy it though. Our house hasn't quite settled down since I moved in after getting married on October, but we're getting there. Keeping the lounge nice and tidy and the kitchen clean are the most important. We're moving on to the spare room soon. Trouble is, we don't have much storage space left. Neither of us think we should pay to store things in one of those self-storage places, so we are really going to have to think hard about what else we will have to get rid of.

I'm still loosing weight on the diet, which is good!

Work is still very busy.

Have a great week.

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Jan 31 / 3:45pm

Gone preachin'

Wow - the end of another week. Almost forgot about my blog post, but here it is:

This week's been another busy week at work.

Most interesting stuff happened today:

My wife and I went to a church in Essex (as we had been invited by a couple of friends) and gave our testimonies to the congregation. It was quite a good experience, and something I'd like to do again.

There was so much to say about God's goodness: how He is the one we were created to worship, how His Grace is the power for forgiveness, and for enabling us to do his work and to live day by day for Him. Quite a lot of stuff that came out of the DTS course really.

Then we went out for a meal: it is quite hard to keep to a diet in restaurants - even relatively liberal diets like the "Slimming World" one we are on. Anyway, I've lost a bit of weight in the last week, which is good to know (for me anyway)!

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Jan 24 / 2:53pm

Busy!

Well, this has been another incredibly busy week at work: I'm helping to get hundreds of users on a legacy system to migrate on to our latest system. It's slow going, but we'll get there eventually.

Weight wise, I've lost a few hundred grams, so at least it's a loss.

I've been trying to use Google Wave a bit. It'll take to work to make it a non-beta product, but it's interesting stuff.

This week I said goodbye to a friend who's leaving Portsmouth. Was sad, but encouraging to know he's going off to do good things elsewhere.

Have a great week.

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Jan 17 / 2:35pm

4 point update

I have to keep this short this week, so here it goes:

Work was busy.
Having guests for dinner on Saturday night was good.
I didn't loose any weight on the diet, but I didn't gain any either. This week I should be able to make it the gym, so hopefully that will help too.
I'm enjoying being able to listen to podcasts at double speed on the iPod Nano I got for Christmas.

I see from my stats that people are reading my blog posts, so please if you are: what would you like to me talk about? What keeps you coming back here? What do you want to know? Please post a comment in the form below.

Have a great week.

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Jan 10 / 10:53am

Let it snow, let it snow, let it.....oh, it snowed!

Well, this week's been a bit on an oddity. The UK saw a huge amount of snow. More than I can remember, and it meant I had to work from home, rather than risking the drive in to the office. Given that we have a VPN with which I can use RDP, I wasn't too affected (apart from not being able to call any customers).

Given the schools were also off, and my wife is a teacher, it gave us time to be together during the week, while I carried on with my work. It was interesting to see some of the articles she was studying on Dyslexia (I'm Dyslexic too), and other special needs.

I had a thought today about TV shopping channels: it's funny how in a world of web based shopping, we still have many thriving TV shopping channels. I guess there is just a different market out there who are comfortable giving their credit card details over the phone to the people on the telly, but not over a secure internet connection, if they go online at all!

This week was quite a big one in the world of technology, with the Consumer Electronics Show taking place in America. There was quite a lot of talk about 3D technology. I'm not sure how many people are actually going to want 3D in their home. I think they have a few more years left to get the technology usable before widespread adoption. Given that many people might have just splashed out for a new TV, I don't see many, especially in this economic climate rushing out to get another new one, just for the 3D effect!

A funny thing happened yesterday: back in October, when I got married, a bag of cards was hidden in our house for us to open when we got back from Honeymoon. Only trouble was, the person who hid them for us forgot where they hid them, and when we searched the house, we couldn't find them either. But yesterday, they finally emerged from the one corner of the house we wouldn't have thought of looking in! So it was with surprise, fun and relief that my wife and I finally proceeded to open about 50 cards from the wedding. We must have seemed quite ungrateful to all those who had put gifts inside the cards and who we haven't thanked yet - but we just didn't know they'd given us anything to thank them for.

Oh, and my wife and I have decided to really go for it in term on weight loss. You'll be able to track my weight online if you really want, but there isn't much to look at yet, as I've only done one reading. I'm using an online service, Skinnyr, to track my weight. I actually signed up back in 2007, but didn't keep it up to date. Maybe this time - now I have someone doing it with me, I'll have a better chance.

I've received a message to say that the roads are clear enough to go back in to work tomorrow, so at least I'll be able to give customers a call as well as email them, which is handy, as I need to speak to quite a few of them.

Have a great week. Keep warm!

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Jan 3 / 12:34pm