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Links
Who?
Boogie Church?
LINKS WHICH MIGHT
GIVE YOU A RATHER VAGUE IDEA
WHO I AM
My teacher
My teacher's teacher
I live here
I once lived here
My job
Where I dream of working
What's in my bag?
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WHO IS TO BLAME?
NAME: Matt Balara
AGE: 32
LOCATION: Hamburg, Germany
Considering I was born in the U.S. just outside of Washington D.C., moved to Canberra Australia at age 9, moved back at 16, back to Australia at 23, and for the last 4 years have lived in Hamburg Germany, I'm less confused than you'd expect, and consider myself extremely lucky to have seen a great deal of the world. How does a guy jump all over the world all his life? Well...
The moving around in my youth wasn't by choice. My mother was posted to the U.S. Embassy in Canberra Australia. Suddenly we were there. 7 years later she was married to an Aussie, Jim, who coincidentally was then posted to the Australian Embassy in Washington D.C. - the city where Mum and I were born. When Jim's post was complete, they returned to Canberra, but I stayed behind to study at Virginia Commonwealth University. Towards the end of my studies my Mum was diagnosed terminal - cancer of course. I pushed on and took a nightmare stressful job after graduation, but that didn't last long. I sold almost everything, dropped my life in Richmond Virginia and moved back to Canberra to be close to Mum. Smartest thing I ever did.
She died March 10, 1994, and I lost it. I sold, gave away or trashed all my stuff, took two credit cards and some inherited money, and started a 2 year world trip. Right at the beginning of this trip, I met a German lady who would later become rather important to me, but at the time nothing could stop me. I saw quite a bit of Australia, and then spent 4 months in India and Nepal, saw a little of Europe, before "stopping by for the weekend" to see that sweet German lady, Claudia Grimm.
Claudia Grimm is now Claudia Balara (sounds exotic, don't it?) and we've been living together ever since that first weekend when I stopped by. I surprised myself by learning German very quickly and almost fluently (so say the Germans). My wife's almost qualified to revolutionise the educational system of the Western world, and I'm designing web sites while teaching myself photography in order to become a world reknowned artist genius by 2005.
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