Scandinavialicious
Stockholm, such a charming city, at least the stuff dating before the end of Art Nouveau. Good food at good prices (compare Amsterdam or Copenhagen), nifty shopping, wonderful streetscapes, fabulous galleries and museums and a very pleasant bar culture.
Some disconnected thoughts: Swedish design veers, like Japanese, between stunningly direct and minimal to awfully kitsch, but the natural landscape, quality of light, and pure "texturality" of nature in both places seem to me to be utterly transcendent. I wonder if sometimes the design people just give up? (I had a scandinavian design moment at the hideous airport looking at an ugly brutalist 80s carpark, with the glorious orange yellow sunset light turning it into a marketing photo, and don't get me started about the astonishing red tree trunks peeking through the leaves on the forest along the very long highway to the city...)
Unpacking at home proceeds in fits and starts, with about 3 boxes a night processed. At this rate, I'll be ready to move again sometime in 2010 :-) Ah well, my houseguests last night (remember I'm travelling, but that should never be a reason not to have houseguests, laugh) did about 10 hours of hard work sorting out the kitchen. I love my friends, and am looking forward to what the pixies managed to do!
One of the reasons it's going slowly is the travel. Laugh. Barcelona was on the agenda last two weekends, to see Bec and two of my friends who are moving to Amsterdam for a year or two. Park Guell was again a high point. As always, fabulous food and drink and wonderful company. Is there an unsatisfactory bar in that whole city? Let alone La Rambla 101 which so should have been a tourist trap, but where the service was personal, charming and the food divine (especially dessert, but since my friend Wash is the pastry chef there, no surprise!) and the bill terrifyingly low (yay mate's rates). Have I ranted about the up-and-coming Spanish wine district of Ribera del Duero yet? If you eat roast lamb, explore their tempranillos, it's a revelation.
Work is going surprisingly ok - I should be overwhelmed and depressed, but a lot of the work from 6 months ago is finally bearing fruit, even if my (modestly) more brilliant ideas have been abandoned by the various powers-that-be recently. I'm pretty proud of my role in the evolution of our infrastructure delivery approach, and expect we've managed to avoid the go-live disaster that was almost inevitable only a few short months ago. We'll know in November if it's come together anyway. If it has, I have a suspicion that the entire product structure for telecoms will be changed forever (ie less than 5 years, haha) in this market. I wonder if the suits have any idea of this? Laugh.
Some disconnected thoughts: Swedish design veers, like Japanese, between stunningly direct and minimal to awfully kitsch, but the natural landscape, quality of light, and pure "texturality" of nature in both places seem to me to be utterly transcendent. I wonder if sometimes the design people just give up? (I had a scandinavian design moment at the hideous airport looking at an ugly brutalist 80s carpark, with the glorious orange yellow sunset light turning it into a marketing photo, and don't get me started about the astonishing red tree trunks peeking through the leaves on the forest along the very long highway to the city...)
Unpacking at home proceeds in fits and starts, with about 3 boxes a night processed. At this rate, I'll be ready to move again sometime in 2010 :-) Ah well, my houseguests last night (remember I'm travelling, but that should never be a reason not to have houseguests, laugh) did about 10 hours of hard work sorting out the kitchen. I love my friends, and am looking forward to what the pixies managed to do!
One of the reasons it's going slowly is the travel. Laugh. Barcelona was on the agenda last two weekends, to see Bec and two of my friends who are moving to Amsterdam for a year or two. Park Guell was again a high point. As always, fabulous food and drink and wonderful company. Is there an unsatisfactory bar in that whole city? Let alone La Rambla 101 which so should have been a tourist trap, but where the service was personal, charming and the food divine (especially dessert, but since my friend Wash is the pastry chef there, no surprise!) and the bill terrifyingly low (yay mate's rates). Have I ranted about the up-and-coming Spanish wine district of Ribera del Duero yet? If you eat roast lamb, explore their tempranillos, it's a revelation.
Work is going surprisingly ok - I should be overwhelmed and depressed, but a lot of the work from 6 months ago is finally bearing fruit, even if my (modestly) more brilliant ideas have been abandoned by the various powers-that-be recently. I'm pretty proud of my role in the evolution of our infrastructure delivery approach, and expect we've managed to avoid the go-live disaster that was almost inevitable only a few short months ago. We'll know in November if it's come together anyway. If it has, I have a suspicion that the entire product structure for telecoms will be changed forever (ie less than 5 years, haha) in this market. I wonder if the suits have any idea of this? Laugh.