Outside myself

I've been somewhat timid in the adventurousness stakes, of late. I have kept to the sphere of known things - namely, home and work. Reading has been a good refuge too. But this week I have done and seen a couple of things beyond my safety net.

The first thing I did was do my first volunteer shift at TAC, the Temporary Art Centre in Eindhoven. I'm translating (Dutch-English) their print and online collateral. Aside from practising my Dutch and making new friends, it's a brilliant way to guide my Dutch vocabulary collection and recording. Check out my first piece of voluntary translation which is the March programme, at www.tac.nu or http://tac.yabu.nl/english/. (n.b. I didn't translate the 'Welcome' - I'm working on that right now!)

The second thing was witnessing my first lunar eclipse. A colleague from work texted me from a hilltop graveyard, far from any other light pollution, where he was enjoying the earth cast its shadow over the full moon. Edwin and I lay perpendicular on our bed and hung our heads over the edge to gaze long and dreamily at the moon, upside-down, through our bedroom window. From moment to moment, Ed took video footage or a digi-snapshot. We saw the earth's shadow become larger and watched the moon become redder and glowier. I believe everyone in Australia will have the chance to see this phenomenon in August sometime. The next full-moon lunar eclipse will happen in 2010.

To some, these two things may not seem hugely adventurous, but both experiences this week have brought me outside of my comfort-zone, and forced me to think about how to contribute to my new community, and how all my struggles here on earth are really just feeble tremors within the grandness of our universe.