Newley Purnell

I emailed the following to friends last week; figured I’d post it here as well…

—
After taking a few weeks to visit friends along the east coast, I
shall be seeking work in our nation’s capital. Below is a (somewhat
self-promoting) snippet describing my skills. Please pass it along to
anyone you know who might be looking to hire a guy who can write well,
is good with Web stuff, has international work experience, speaks
Spanish, and can count to ten (and say “beer”) in Mandarin Chinese.

Here’s my nugget of self-aggrandizement:

I’ve just returned to the States after two years teaching English
abroad–first in Ecuador and then in Taiwan. I’m looking for
writing/journalism work, as well as Web strategies consulting. (Prior
to my travels, I spent three years promoting non profits’ Web sites
for Burness Communications, a Bethesda PR firm.)

I’m in South Carolina now but will be living in Washington from April
25th through the summer at least. My freelance writing experience
includes travel/working abroad service pieces, as well as commentary
on effective Internet strategies for non profits. A list of some of my
published clips is here:

https://newley.com/clips.html

My Web consulting services focus on helping non profits communicate on
the Web; I can do anything from Internet strategy assessments to Web
site traffic analysis. More details here:

https://newley.com/work/web_services.html

I’m looking for short term, part time, and/or contract work that might
incorporate some of these interests; that said, I’m also open to
interesting opportunities of all stripes. (I’m proficient in Spanish
and speak a smattering of Mandarin Chinese.) My resume is available
at:

https://newley.com/resume.html

Thanks, Newley
P.S. Housing leads in DC are appreciated as well.

How can technology be used to help the masses in developing nations? Give people computers connected to the Interweb, right? Wrong. Give people cell phones.

You know you’re in South Carolina–or anywhere in the Bible Belt, for that matter–when you see a bumper sticker, as I did yesterday, that reads:

“And God created the earth in one day and one night–no matter what you learned!”

Funny thing about this car: it was in the Beaufort County library parking lot. An intellectual creationist, this person.

Mike W., ever vigilent, points out that I should have mentioned, below, that I’ve changed my email. It’s now newley@gmail.com. That’s Google’s Web-based email service, which is truly fantastic. (I have many invitations to give away, so if you want an account, just lemme know.)

Also, you might like to know that I’m writing this from Blackstone’s Cafe, in the heart of historic Beaufort, South Carolina. Using WiFi (that’s wireless Web access for you hopelessly un-hip.)

I made two recent gadget purchases.

The first: Just before leaving Taiwan, I bought an iPod photo. 30 GB version. I plugged it into my 12″ iBook (her name is iRene), and within 10 minutes my iPod contained over 1,200 songs (which I’d imported from CDs, over the last year, into iTunes) and 800 photos (imported from a digital camera using iPhoto). Total memory used: 3 GB. Out of 30. Very cool. It was about US $350. It has a color screen, and although it’s only 2″ by 2″, the photos look good on it. For an itinerant guy like me, the ability to carry around my entire music collection (it’s not all in there yet, but it’s coming) and a bunch of photos in a contraption the size of a pack of cigarettes is just too good to pass up.

The second: I recently picked up a Palm Zire 31 PDA. It’s the cheapest Palm makes: 150 bones. Color screen. 16 MB of space. I’ll use it to store my contacts and keep my calendar. My first PDA, after years of resistance. (Why did I resist? I don’t know.)

Finally, on a related note, a few of you have asked for a link to my “Thoughts on the Mac Experience” post, which I wrote after switching from a PC to my iBook last year. Knock yourselves out.

If you’re a high school slacker looking for a plagiarized paper, be careful who you IM.

I’m typing this dispatch from Beaufort, South Carolina. Back Stateside, baby. After over a year in Asia. Jill’s in Seattle–we parted ways for the time being in Tokyo.

I arrived here, to the Lowcountry of SC, late Friday night after a grueling five-leg jaunt that took me from Kaohsiung to Taipei to Tokyo to Los Angeles to Washington, DC to Savannah, Georgia. 30-plus hours of travel time. Torturous.

I’m working on posting the images from our exceptionally fun Vietnam trip. And in the meantime, I’m gorging myself on the fruits of the deep south: I speak, naturally, of down-home comfort foods like fried chicken and BBQ between slices of spongy white Wonder bread and golden, crispy hush puppies and bananna pudding. I believe I my waist has grown four inches in the last 48 hours.

I’ll be posting more regularly now that I’m a bit more settled. My current plan is to be here in Beaufort for a week or two, and then begin my journey up the east coast (DC, NY, and Boston friends: I’m lookin’ at you) as I clear the cobwebs from my cranium and begin to search in earnest for gainful employment. I’m back in the USSA throuh the summer, at least. I feel happy to be home.

Newley.com shall fall silent for the next two weeks.

Jill and I leave for Vietnam in a few hours. We finished teaching on Friday, have some time off, and then will be back in Taiwan on March 21st. On the 25th, we fly back ot the States. We’re excited to be heading to ‘Nam–we fly into Hanoi and then will likely make our way down the coast to Hoi An.

Bye for now.

Had a good time in Kenting. Decent sun. A little cold.

A few links for your enjoyment:

Inspired by some recent arguments, I present this, so as to elucidate the facts:

1) The Great Wall of China CANNOT be seen from space. Urban legend. Chinese commie propaganda.

2) People confuse the “Seven Wonders of the Ancient World” (a list that was compiled in Roman times) with some sort of official, immutable, mostly modern-day list. There are some other, more contemporary “Seven Wonders” lists, but the old compilation is the famous one, and six of the seven wonders it describes no longer exist.

Also:

–Have you seen these incredible, very sad photos of the recent tsunami? They were taken by a Candaian couple who perished; their digital camera was recovered and the images were intact.

—Jack W. sends along this unbelievable infomercial–Deion Sanders endorsing a hot dog cooker. Neon Deion must be hard-up for cash

Jill and I are on the way out the door for a long weekend with some friends in Kenting, a small beach resort on the southern tip of the island (it’s about a 2-and-a-half-hour scooter ride from Kaohsiung). We’ve got Monday off for a national holiday–the significance of which I must admit I don’t understand–but I’ll be rappin at you live come Tuesday.

In the meantime, meander over to my buddy Ben P.’s new Weblog–he’s just moved to Australia and is chronicling his exploits. (You may remember BP as the scientist who displayed his sizeable grey matter in the climate change discussions that took place in these parts last year.)