Tag: life

Sunday Column (100)

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100 Sunday Columns. My wife was hoping the wee man number 2, or as the FT columnist would say, “cost centre number 2”, had arrived by now. But no sign yet. However, this week I spend the day at work, the evenings in the hospital, and the nights working more….where to start? My wife has a high blood pressure resulting in her having to be under observation, so she was in hospital. My MIL is down and looks after the boy, so things overall were well planned and worked out very well. Thank Buddha for MILs and family 🙂 Now work was busy with meetings. Most of them with my boss who was over from Germany. We achieved a milestone this week for some meetings, and also in regards to recruitment. Things are going well. We also open more international offices, so things are overall on the up. All week, particularly on Friday, I had some problems with my waterworks. That resulted in me calling in sick. After a handful of pain killers, a GP visit, I decided to drop my wife off for another check up. I ended up spending my afternoon in the car park, working via mobile

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Sunday Column (85)

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I might be a bit lazy writing my blog at times, but you might have seen the posts last week. An up and down that usually depends how much time I have at the weekend. This week I had a good week. I think anyway. No alcohol all week which was nice. I even managed to meet some friends without drinking. Whilst this sounds awful to admit, I think we all drink to much. Tony Blair admitted it in his book too. The whole society likes a tipple. It is just when you decide not to, you stand out, and almost feel awkward. Like an alcoholic because you don’t do it. It will be, similar to smoking, one day socially unacceptable to drink. It’ll come. This week had one story. A story that will write or already wrote history. The story of the rescue of the 33 Chilean miners. 33 men. 33 stories. 33 families. I was crying when I saw the first one coming to the surface. It is human tragedy, and we all like to watch it. But it is real. The psychological pressure, the strain on the health, being separated by their families. I remember more human

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Sunday Column (65)

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Wow, what a week. Hardly saw the office this week, or home. But absolutely loved this week too… Dear work diary, I spent all Monday in meetings and late into the evening to do work in the office, whilst on Tuesday it didn’t look much better. However, I made it home for Colin’s bath. Wednesday, whilst my boss was over from Germany, we spend most of the day in meetings, decided on a new office and I made it to Manchester and back before having a great time with clients in a Thai restaurant and club called Bam Bou. After a short night we had more meetings, and the week was finished with a day in the office. Dear life diary, I had a fabulous week, seeing my son grow up, clapping his hands. He also almost walks and is very cute to watch in the bath. At the weekend we met a lot of his friends. Friday night my wife convinced me to go for an Indian which was a fantastic idea. I was met at the train and we took Colin along. On Saturday we actually managed to spend the day away at the sea. We went to

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Sunday Column (49)

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What a busy week lays behind me. After a weekend, which wasn’t a relaxing weekend, I found myself being off sick on Monday. Some virus got me down and I worked from home with more breaks and naps than I would normally have. I wasn’t well. I felt better over the next few days, partly because I had to. I had a lot of social engagements and meetings at work. Networking parties, a trip to Leeds and Manchester and more meetings, emails etc. You know the drill. So work is very busy at the moment and things are going well. I cannot believe it is February already and I have been in my new job for a month. Time flies. Colin, who I saw little of this week, is growing up. I believe he develops his own character, slowly but surely. He is playing by himself whilst I watch him. However, we believe it is due to his teething, he seems to have a bit of diarrhoea. Shall see and hope it is nothing serious. Tai chi this week was good, and it will be one year next week. I believe that this is the first activity in a long

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Gedanken = thoughts about a boy

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Since I started my new job, I have been busy, and I have been speaking more German than I used to. I believe that Colin is benefiting from that, as I try to make the extra effort to speak German to him. Fingers crossed. I also thought I just write a few lines about his development. My wife already said that I missed things out in Sunday’s post. But I would – I only see him a few days a week. Tuesday is one of them. Tuesdays I make an extra effort to be home early and try to bath the boy and put him to bed. Tonight I managed. It is great to see him grow. I don’t believe that he is over 7 months already. Before we know it, he is going to be a year. He is sitting up right already, bouncing up and down and says “dada”, not quite in relation to myself yet, but the sounds are there 🙂 My wife has done a fantastic job of taking some new pictures of Colin. If you are in our distribution list you will get a link to all of them. We love to share these pictures,

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Sunday Column (33)

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Here we go again. Another week, another Sunday. I like writing these columns as it gives me some time to reflect on the week. Monday: a client meeting, it was raining and I arrived there soaked. Met an ex-colleague and got some good gossip, and some good insight from a different perspective. Sometimes it is really good to just sit down and talk openly. Tuesday: we had a workshop at work which worked out very well and I think we made a lot of progress, followed by a Wednesday where we had a great team night out. I really like the guys I am working with and it is great to see everyone working so hard to make things happen. Thursday I went back to Tai Chi after a week’s break and enjoyed it a lot. And, before I knew it, it was Friday. Some positive comments from my boss which made me feel great. So the whole week ended on a positive note. Saturday was divided into two – on the one hand I enjoyed myself and went for a massage. Stopped at McDonalds for a dirty breakfast, Starbucks for a coffee and read my FT. Me time, very

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Sunday Column (30)

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Alright. This week was nothing like the ones before. It started off with a revelation I had seen coming and since, I have been thinking about “the meaning of life”. Funny that every now and then you get thrown off your path and then you start thinking about purposes in life and what you want to achieve. However, maybe I should just sit down and map out life regardless of how it develops. Maybe I should make my own master plan. Tuesday was my first pitch at work. I enjoy it very much and things are going well. Time for things to pick up of course as it is September and budgets are made for 2010. I hope 🙂 On Wednesday I caught up with a good friend who runs a successful business and on Thursday I met with a friend from the CMI who I enjoy meeting, unfortunately not often enough, for a Harvey’s Bitter in the Ole George in Beckenham. So this week was very social. Oh, almost forgot that on Monday I met another friend which works in the same industry and emigrated to London a few years ago from Germany too. So plenty of thoughts and

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Sunday Column (25)

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Oh dear, this week was full of swine 🙂 2 if not 3 of my work colleagues went home and 2 came down with the flu. You already know how paranoid I am, so it didn’t help. Still feeling ok, however having a sore throat and itchy ears. The curry on Saturday night surely helped to get any viruses out of my body – I hope so anyway 🙂 Vodafone exchange my Blackberry Bold within 24 hours and the new one runs fine. Either Ubertwitter caused a crash on the system, which I doubt, or the first one was faulty. Not sure. Fingers crossed! The new one is working so well, I absolutely love it. Will write a review at some point. Need to insure that the Bold though, don’t want to pay for one, in case anything happens to this one. I am far from having installed a lot of programmes but just for my emails, Facebook and Twitter, it is great 🙂 I know, I will install more programmes, but currently I think a lot about complexity in life. But I write about that later this week on Thursday! Then, I bought myself an ugly and awful alarm

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Once a year – being foreign

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Once a year I seem to get to this melancholy state of mind thinking about where I am from and what I want in life. Probably very normal. Last year I wrote about “am I German?”. And of course I am German, and I am proud to be German. Not proud of what Germany has done over 60 years ago but proud to come from such an advanced country with a good reputation for schools, universities, engineering products etc. Just the other day I realised that it has been 20 years since the Berlin wall came down. Time has passed. I won’t forget the moment when I woke up, watched TV and saw my parents in tears seeing the wall coming down. I was 12 at the time and only knew Germany being divided. I didn’t have a clue what was going on and that I was witnessing history in the making. It has been eight years this year that I flew from Dusseldorf to Aberdeen to study in the UK and haven’t been a resident in Germany since. I lost my taste for some German food and for a while I almost hated Germany. I believe that most people

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Sunday Column (1)

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Hello Readers, After a long weekend, or should I say I am still in it as I am off work tomorrow, I decided to write a Sunday Column. Just really a personal update, some thoughts and some ideas on life, work and anything I feel speaking/writing about. Am I well? Yes, I think I am. Have been back to the gym, exaggerating it and feeling rather knackered for a week or so. Also, had two shows over the last 2 weeks which drained a lot of energy out of me. However, being off really helps and the blackberry is off and I haven’t checked my emails. This weekend we went for a meal. I will write more in detail about it but I am still wondering about the horrendous prices for going out in the UK. With or without wine you hardly get away with less than £50, or if you really go for something fancy it easily adds up to £100 or more. So mark up prices in the UK are still the norm and sometimes I ask myself why to support it? Probably because I really fancy doing it and I (still) can. Once our little baby boy

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