Hello #Hive community,
my name is Bart, I'm 28 years old and I'm a bit of a mix between Italy and Poland, my parents are both Polish and you would probably say that I also am Polish (you and my passport 😆) but here's the thing, I was actually born in Italy.
That's me, you can see me sitting somewhere in Rome in a very intelligent pose... lol
Or drinking some beer...
Back to my story...
My parents were in Italy for their honeymoon, Rome exactly (the eternal city - la città eterna) and they just fell in love with the city and couldn't leave it, a year after in 1993 I was born, right there in the eternal city.
[Picture Source - https://viaggi.corriere.it/eventi/roma-citta-in-festa-da-scoprire-con-la-mappa-di-dove/]
[Picture Source - https://www.mbamutua.org/lavoce/roma-citta-sporca-europa/]
I was raised there and I grew up there, lived my life and did most of my experiences and that's why, even if on the paper I am a Polish citizen, I do feel Italian inside.
Like I would say in Italy to my friends : più che italiano me sento romano! (more than Italian I feel roman!) well probably in English doesn't sound as good 😄
Anyway all of the fancy stuff you see in the pictures for me growing up was pretty much the normality, I spend my early years going around the city with my mom, I remember she'd show me everything, with accurate historical facts as well, not that I remember any 😅
We'd spend entire days out just going around the city and oh boy! it was beautiful!
I had a normal childhood I can say, time went by and I grew up to become a perfectly functional adult 😂, at times I still can't believe how fast time flies!
I finished my High School and started looking for a job - I always had a passion for IT from as little as 9 years old, I used to be the PC nerd that fixes everyone's issues, yeah funny stuff! - Anyway back to the job, I couldn't find any no matter how hard I tried. Italy is famous for high unemployment and it's especially bad for young people, eventually my mom convinced me to get into Uni.
Engineering with a bit of IT, I don't know which one it is in English, maybe Computer Science or something like that... Well, bad idea!
Long story short I didn't take that seriously at all and wasted 2 years of my life, yeah it was fun meeting new people and having crazy fun at times but thinking about it now I wasn't in the right mindset and probably should've just ignored my mom 😂 I do like learning though I just wasn't ready for a commitment, I will most likely get some degree at some point later in my life, I see it somewhere at some point in time...
After the failed Uni experience I decided to completely change my life, it just wasn't working and I wasn't going anywhere! It was around the summer of 2016 and I remember that summer spent planning my future, new city and new goals, London, I'll get that IT career I'm meant to have - I thought...
Let's go to London!
[Picture Source - https://london.ac.uk/ways-study/study-campus-london/member-institutions]
I always loved English as a language - I grew up listening to American rap and by the time I was 13 I knew some of my favourite songs word by word with the meaning and all, maybe some of those songs were bad for me at that age but that shit helped me a lot with my English later in life, aka now 😂 sorry for the swear word but I just couldn't express myself without it.
Well anyway I arrived in London and I already had a plan. I was here to start my IT career, if I had not found anything in 2-3 months I would have come back to Italy, I would not settle down for a different job I said to myself!
All of this was possible thanks to the support of my family that helped me financially in the tough moments. (During the first year of my life in London during the apprenticeship, before I managed to completely set up myself and become independent, as you know the money you get from an apprenticeship is not that great...but it definitely paid out in experience and personal growth)
I didn't have good spoken nor written English at the time so I focused on learning that while I was looking for a start in IT on a daily basis, I remember applying to thousands of apprenticeships and job offers.
The only jobs I managed to do at the time were some part time hospitality at stadiums or big events, and that was ok, I didn't want a full time job, that would have distracted me from my main goal!
Thinking back about it now, it's fun, the first few weeks all the job calls I was receiving were a mess, I couldn't understand much and in the end they all hung up on me.
I kept studying and practicing my English every day and eventually after 2 months my level was not bad, I finally had a great opportunity call and I could understand it this time 😂 - It was an IT apprenticeship as a Junior Network Engineer in a very big venue with a huge network inside.
[Picture Source - unknown - Google research keywords "IT networking"]
And that was the start of what still today is my main job, Network Engineer, I kept studying while working and in the beginning of 2020 just before the Covid spike I managed to get a CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) Certification in R&S (Routing & Switching) - I was very lucky, getting the certification also got me a pay rise at work and you can understand how that helped me get by during what was about to come... the Covid pandemic and all the lockdowns around the world.
Luckily I still have my job, we work less now but my company managed to survive and we still have a salary and can pay the bills. 😃
Other than that I can say that I'm a bit of a nerd, I like playing videogames with RPGs and JRPGs being my favourite games usually, games I enjoyed quite a bit lately are Ghost of Tsushima, Jedi Fallen Order, I did finish Cyberpunk but didn't really love it, if you know you know... ahahaha
I'm currently playing Nier Replicant and I think it's brilliant (I also played Nier Automata in the past and it's something else guys... incredible...)
I do like reading a lot but lately I kind of stopped, I was reading Stephen King 11.22.63 but stalled in a boring bit.. then I got lost in cryptos, markets, blockchains and stuff, crazy world, I need to get into meditation and get a bit of peace of mind!!!
Some of my favourite books are: The Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit, IT (Stephen King), actually I still have to find a Stephen King's book that I didn't like, Pet Cemetery was a crazy read, not easy but CRAZY! ahaha
I do like reading articles as well, try to keep myself informed about the world, especially economic and crypto news lately are almost the only things I read.
I'm fascinated by Linux (I do use it a bit at work as well but I'm nowhere near the level of expertise I'd like to have, this is another of them things I'm meant to focus on but life gets always in the middle...)
And one day I'll sit down and start learning that bloody Phyton. 😂
And last but not least I'm an ASRoma fan since I'm a kid and my Dad got me to see us playing in the Champions League... I grew up seeing Totti playing and it was awesome, I even met him a couple of times and once in 2002 I won a Football signed by him, he signed it in from of me and I couldn't believe it, one of the happiest days of my life! If I had it with meI would show you a picture but it's in Italy in my parents house (technically it's also my house 😂 )
[Picture Source - https://forzaitalianfootball.com/2019/03/legend-of-calcio-francesco-totti/]
I saw Chelsea - Roma 3-3 at Stanford bridge when Dzeko scored this beautiful goal, INCREDIBLE! (I live in London how can I not go and see such things ahahhahaha!!!!)
[Picture Source - unknown - Google research key words "Dzeko goal chealsea"]
WHAT A GOAL! GUYS WHAT A GOAL!
This pretty much is my story.
During this free times I discovered many new cryptocurrencies and new ecosystems, Hive being one of them, Wax is another that I try to use on a daily basis, I managed to stake some NFTs on rplanet and now I have a bit of a passive income, not much but the aether I get usually I sell it (if the price is dipping down a bit I usually wait for it to recover while I keep accumulating my aether).
I also try to check if there are any upcoming projects worth buying, I got lucky with the Alien World TLM thing on binance, I bought like 5 dollars of gear and TLM few months ago and got something like 2300 WAX from it that I have been using since to explore the WAX blockchain.
I do not have much HIVE at the moment and still do not understand completely how the whole ecosystem works, I try to play Rabona but maybe it's not my game lol, I wanna try to get into Splinterland as well but I need to spend a bit of time on it and do some DD on some cards and stuff worth to get to start. 😃
Anyway this is my presentation post, I hope it isn't too long or boring 😃
Hive looks like a great place to be and I'm happy to have found this community. I hope to be able to get into it and understand more on how to interact with this blockchain.
One thing I do understand is that here blogging is a big part of the whole ecosystem and the main way to earn Hive or the other cryptos (leo finance, pob...) so here I am trying to start blogging a bit about myself, my life and my passions.
I see the POB community where you need to have a brain to participate and I like that, I see a huge opportunity for personal growth within this kind of communities on Hive.
I'm planning to study for my CCNP (Cisco Certified Network Professional) and will do a post about it probably, maybe POB could be the right place (I wanna see If anyone could be interested in me posting a study guide - well, not really a study guide, I'm not a teacher, more of a study path, basically I'll be posting what I'm studying, the main concepts, how-tos and more about the arguments I'll be going through), maybe someone will find it helpful, but anyway that's another post, follow me if you think you'll be interested in something like that. 😃
Thank you for reading, I hope I did not bore you to death! 😂 😂 😂
Feel free to correct me if I did any grammatical error, give me any advice or simply post anything you feel like posting 😃
Have a great day Hive community
Peace!