TheBanyanTree: introduction

[Jakob Straub]

Thanks everyone for the warm welcome and responses to my introduction 
and first story posted here.

@Julie: Yes, poems! :-) I'll make sure to post at least one soon. I'm 
not so sure about whether I am or have a new voice, but I'm eager to 
contribute here in every way. And as for challenging yourself on several 
fronts lately - that's a good thing, really. As for the physical, I've 
taken up rock climbing last summer and try to get regular exercise that 
way. Mentally, I try to instate the regular in my writing. To have the 
discipline to write daily. And oh, you reminded me: I didn't include my 
age. Not that it matters. I'm 29.

@Jim: Thanks - my English has surely improved over the years (at least 
in part due to espresso-fiction and creative writing, I guess) but it's 
still far from excellent. I have, however, been known to try and pass 
myself off as American with outcomes good and bad (always fun). 
Espresso-fiction was at times riddled with tech problems, most commonly 
the issue of posts not making it to the list or some subscribers. I 
remember you having subscription problems at a time. Golly, that was in 
2003. I remember your email address, just as I did Paul's. About your 
son, I'm not so sure. Were you the one to suggest we move the list to 
our own server running Linux? I've been a happy ubuntu user for a couple 
of years now, though I still wouldn't trust myself with setting up and 
maintaining a dedicated list server, otherwise I would have given 
espresso-fiction one more shot. Maybe. Then again, time-wise, it feels 
kind of good to be just a list member again.

@Dave: I remember how I felt when you trusted me with moderator and 
manager privileges on espresso-fiction back then; yes, gave it a good 
long run, but a part of me is really sad to see it go - as if I've let 
the list down. The important thing though is that we're still involved 
in writing circles. I remember that a while ago you had a group that met 
in person (offline, if you will). Are you still meeting up? Or is school 
keeping you busy? I met with a group here in Berlin just yesterday, and 
they're a good size (about 20) and mixture of older and younger guys. I 
hope things will work out well with them.
I had an FB account for a brief period, because in the summer of 2008 I 
made a lot of international friends and I thought it was the best way to 
stay in touch with them. It wasn't. :) I must say though that FB easily 
lets you build a network of friends from all over the world - one site, 
many different user interfaces in different languages, so you can find a 
person regardless of where on the globe they have originally signed up. 
Seems the natural way to do it, but other social networking sites have 
taken different approaches. As for assimilation: I disagree with FB's 
ToS, I must say. I use twitter, occasionally, and I've promised Leo to 
help out on Capital of Nasty more often. I also have a wordpress blog 
just sitting there and should get it going, I think. You see, so many 
things to do, so little free time. ;-)

Keep writing everyone!
Jake.


-- 
If you read, you'll judge; If you write, you'll invent.