Czech him out...it's Tim's day

Tim came to visit almost a month ago. He came on a whim, a wing and a prayer (with an assist from his mother and father!), no plans, no firm prospects back home.
Machiavelli wrote that Fortune favors the young because they are willing to seize her firmly with both hands.
Tim may not have read Machiavelli but he gets him (on this subject anyway). He came here armed with a camera (two actually), an inquisitive spirit, and an exquisitely maintained network of personal contacts. Both Tim and I have each lived in many different places but whereas I have tended to neglect relationships and thus fall out of contact with people,







Tim has lovingly and painstakingly cultivated them - the result being that he now has friends all over the world it seems.
Shortly after he arrived Tim's unerring pop culture radar helped him discover that there was a Gay Pride event scheduled to happen in Bordeaux while he was here. I took him to Bourdeaux the day before and together we scoped out the city on foot. The next day he took the bus back there for the celebration. 24 hours later he came home with a new friend, Thomas who has since visited us a couple of times. Niether Thomas nor Tim speak each other's language - not yet anyway. It's amusing to be useful to your son as a translator in this kind of situation. Of course some things are better left in version originale.
On another front, Tim got a message from a friend who now lives in Prague saying there was a job opening up in a night club there that would be perfect for him. It came out of nowhere but Tim seemed unfazed and he quickly responded that it sounded interesting.
Flash forward to our boat trip. We're going down the canal de Garronne when Tim gets a phone call. It's the woman hiring for the job in Prague. Tim goes to the back of the boat and has a job interview. Ten minutes later he comes into the cabin and announces that he's got a job in the oldest nightclub in Prague, the Radost FX, and he's flying there on Friday instead of going back home. This is the way it works in Tim's life...imagine being able to say, I landed a job in Prague while vacationing on a houseboat in southern France. Tim has permanent bragging rights to that story. We're all rooting for him.
Tim's presence here has been an enormous gift. We've had lots of time to catch up and to pick each other's brains about things like music, pop culture, art, life and language.











Tess and Colm adore him and will miss him terribly, I fear. The timing of his visit has been impeccable. He's helped so much during a time when my work schedule got a little crazy.

















In return we've had a chance to show him around and give him a good look at life here.









If his visit, and this entire year, have underscored any one theme it might be the sacred triangle of life, learning and love and how inseparable they are from one another.
To top it all off, Tim turns 28 on Friday, the day he flies to Prague. Not bad, huh?
I guess life really is like a box of chocolates.
So, Happy Birthday Tim! or as they say in Prague -

Všechno nejlepší k narozeninám!

much love,
K