2005 : A tale of two five cities

Firstly, I should point out, as did last year, that this annual summary is no longer as detailed as it used to be. That is is because I am making almost daily entries in my blog. If you click on any of the month titles on this page, you will be taken to a list of all blog entries for that month.

Last year we worked up until a few days before Christmas, then, with heavy heart, left Norway, our part in the project there being complete. We really miss Norway, especially the great bunch of guys with whom we worked.

This year is '05 - fitting enough, as I managed to spend an approximately equal time in '05 countries, more of which below ...

From this : to this to this

And from this to this to this .

January

For a few years now we have been idly toying with the possibility of opening a business and in the last few months we have returned to the topic more and more often. Since the recruitment market is, obviously, not quite "buoyant" over Christmas and New Year, we gave it even more thought. I purchased a great deal of books on starting one's own business and even began drawing up a business plan or two. And a fairy mixed bunch we dreamed up too:

Chrissy and I had previously discussed importing goods from Asia, she thought of upmarket handbags, I thought perhaps furniture, although I admit that that is probably more risky.

A friend suggested opening a test house in Shanghai for telecoms handset developers.

And I went back to an idea first raised last year. Sunny, the manager of Shanghai Sally's (I will leave you to guess what sort of establishment it was), seemed to think that all westerners were rich (true, perhaps, comparatively) and, therefore, business savvy. Like most Chinese he was always looking for a business opportunity. One evening I was giving general advice along the lines that he should look for a business which had been proven successful in Europe, but had not yet taken off in China. Since there is an ever growing middle and upper middle class in Shanghai, I suggested to target the nouveau riche and remembered the wine bar phase which swept the UK in the 80's when there were a lot of nouveau riche there too.

Of course, all good things come to an end, and managers began to return from holiday and the interview cycle started again :-(

February

We are now in Vienna , on a GSM-R project (you didn't know that there is a standard for railways?!). Chrissy is a system architect and I am a test manager (probably because I like to wear suits, rather than for any technical ability). I hope to be able to go to Finland later in the summer for live system testing, which involves riding around with the drivers, making calls. My very own - life sized - train set!

Frankly, there was nothing else on offer, so we wimped out and went for this, instead of launching our own business (since we can't yet decide what to launch).

The Shanghai test house looks like it would need at least U.S. $5 million to start up, so unless we mortgage our souls to the venture capitalists ...

The wine bar doesn't look like good prospect either. It seems that too many "licenses" are required and one needs too many "friends" in various government departments. Since the day of our arrival in Vienna coincided with the worst snow in ten years, my latest escapist fantasy is a beach front bar in Thailand, possibly with a dive shop too. I still spends my evenings reading "start your own business" books an honing my business plan preparation skills. I wonder if this is my mid-life crisis? Otoh, after a quarter of a century in telecoms software, I really could do with a change, or a rest.

March

We still don't seem to be settling in - either to the job or to Vienna. I have been resuming contact with every agency whom I have ever noted as having had some positions in Asia, just reminding them that we would still be interested ... I am really unsure how I will feel if they ask us to extend here. Given the state of the job market, I may not be able to refuse, but I don't like the work and I don't like the rate. If I do agree to stay, I will have to pressurize them to transfer me to a system architect position; I can't afford to be in testing too long, even as a manager, or I may never get back to design work. Still, that might be academic if there is no design work on offer :-( or if we do start a business :-)

As to Vienna, I hope that we will develop a better opinion of it as the weather improves, which it should do any day now.

Before moving down here, we found an apartment, which is only 300m from the office. Public transport here is good and parking places almost impossible to find, so I have left the car in Munich and we commute by train (a 4.5 hour journey). The apartment is large, light, convenient and reasonably priced, compared with Munich.

The best thing about Vienna - and the worst - is the apartment. We rent it from the owners of an Italian restaurant at the front of the building (there is also a courtyard in the rear which should be opened next week and which our rear window overlooks). The only drawback to the apartment is that whenever we have to discuss anything about it (can we have another key/the lights don't work/there is a problem with the washing machine/etc, etc), we have to pop into the restaurant and we invariably stay to eat - which is not helping my waistline at all.

There are some Vienna photos here.

April

Another month, another business idea. This time it was performing testing for companies which want to market their mobile 'phones in China. Normally they will have to test for every country to which they want top market, which entails flying a couple of guys over (business class for long flights like China), putting them up in a hotel, hiring a car, a per diem allowance for meals, etc and, of course, they are not available for other work.

We figured that we could get some China based software engineers and get companies to send us their handsets and test plans and we could run the tests and provide a test report, making a profit for them and for us. Unfortunately, most of the tier 1 manufacturers such as Nokia already have a presence in China, so that idea fell by the wayside too.

I decided to get fit again and started jogging, after quite some time off. Since we live just 1km from Schloss Schoenbrunn, with its lovely gardens, if I did not start again here, I was not going to start again anywhere. Everything went wonderfully for a few weeks, I even entered for a 7km fun run, then one evening I sat down awkwardly and twisted my knee, which had me limping for several months as I repeatedly strained and twisted it again and again. Moral - don't sit! It didn't stop me running in the fun run, though.

We had a very pleasant break when we spent a long weekend in Prague for my birthday (photos here). A beautiful city, with a very large old town. In some ways reminiscent of Venice, without the canals. I would highly recommend it.

May

Three public holidays this month, so we had to have at least one long weekend away. We chose Budapest; much cleaner than Vienna, perhaps not as picturesque as Prague, but certainly picturesque and very well worth visiting (photos here).

By this time, we had become even more disaffected by our current contract, so when agents began to call, we were lulled by their seductive tones. If we decline the offer of an extension, it will be the first time ever. Until now we have always stayed until the project was over and no extension forthcoming. However, their is a very seductive 18 months in Denmark in the wind, not to mention an extremely comfortable (and well paid) gig at "a certain company" in Sweden.

June

Last year, much of our summer was sacrificed to overtime and to my spending a lot of time in Burum, in Holland.

This year, I spent the first three weeks of June and of July in Kouvola in Finland, integrating the product in preparation for acceptance test with the customer. And if you think that Burum looks rural. then Kouvola gives the impression of being a one horse town, which only has the horse on loan a few days a week from a neighbouring town; and when I was there the horse was on holiday.

Doing a sort of air traffic control for railways is as best as I can describe it. Interesting enough, although I strongly prefer design and implementation to test. We spent our time underground, beneath a signaling control tower, in a concrete bunker, with heavy, metal doors such as are usually found on board ship.

On the first Saturday morning, I was up, showered, breakfasted and out to explore the town before 9.a.m.

And back to the hotel before 9a.m, having walked the length of both (arguably all two and a half) shopping streets.

Still if did have some good points, such as the woods, which I soon put off bounds, owing to Finland's national bird, the mosquito, but, being in the country there was some good jogging, and, when we finished work at 8 or 9p.m, we had the option of a salad or a sauna before dropping into bed. The sauna was excellent, but for some ineffable reason it was closed on the weekend, when I had free time.

There is normally much to do in Munich in the summer months. We did manage to visit the world's largest mediaeval festival, as we do most years, but missed a series of open air classical music concerts which we like to attend. Simply being in Munich in the summer is a pleasure (especially our local beer garden :-) and we would have been back every weekend, were I not in Finland. Another summer gone.

July

See June.

August

We started the month with a well earned rest. Chrissy headed straight from Vienna to London, to visit her parents and I drove back with our belongings to Munich, where I spent a few weeks jogging, sitting on the balcony and watching the squirrels and cycling to the beergarden, before realizing that I was becoming even fatter and flying over to London to join Chrissy.

I took the chance to meet up with a few agents so that we could put faces to voices, but the job market was in general slow, owing to the European habit of taking long holidays in August. The only interesting possibilities were something in San Diego and something in Singapore. Alas, neither of them came to anything.

Other than that, I spent an hour or two per day playing online poker, with quite some success - a new career path, perhaps?

September

Chrissy spent the month in London, while I split my time between London and Munich, where I talked to a few companies about jobs (and went to the Oktoberfest). In the end, though, we accepted a three month contract in Singapore. The pay is poor compared with Europe, but money isn't everything and it promises to be a great experience (we can treat evenings and weekends as if we were on holiday). We are scheduled to start mid-November.

October

Another month spent betwixt Munich and London, whiling away the time in idle unemployment, killing time until Singapore.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow ...

November

At long last, we have arrived. We came over a week and a half early, to have a holiday before buckling down to work.

Sine the contract is only for three months, and since we haven't had a wonderful year, and since the pay is so low that we were unlikely to be able to save anything anyway, we have decided to treat it like a holiday and, instead of renting a service apartment, we decided just to book into the hotel where we have always stayed when holidaying in Singapore. As long term guests, we got a considerable discount, although it still takes a major portion of our pay.

We also got some special treatment. I don't think that they are used to having people stay for several months, so the head of guest relations interviewed us and wrote a little biography, then took out photograph and circulated it all staff, so that we can be greeted by name wherever we go.It is certainly helping to have bar bills waived :-) and we are invited by the general manager to social evenings for those guests whom he wants to keep sweet.

The hotel itself is on the beach on the holiday island of Sentosa, just off the south of Singapore. A true tropical paradise (photos here), it has made me much more enthusiastic about jogging.

We popped into the office a week early, just to introduce ourselves and, without even having started work, they are already hinting at an extension of the contract. Wonderful news, on the face of it, but I am not sure how long we can stay at such low pay, and I doubt that we could continue to stay on the island. At the same time, though, we have gotten wind of a project looking for 50 to work for the Hong Kong government which pays acceptably, and they have a 15% quota for foreigners.

We soon settled into the work and seem to have made a good impression; they offered us an extension to our contract after two weeks.

December

Lots of work, offset by lots of play (if lying in the sun by the pool all day on weekends counts as play) and an all night music extravaganza, with imported DJs and home grown live bands (and wasabe ice cream) on the beach outside the hotel, attended by eighteen thousand.

We are currently seriously contemplating franchising a Hog's Breath Cafe - how's that for a change of pace?

And there I will leave you. Tune in next year for another exciting episode.

Can't wait? The follow the blog.

And, please, please, write to me and tell me what you are up to.

As always, feel free to forward this mail to anyone with whom I have previously worked, but whom you don't see on the mailing list. Once again, I would ask you all to provide me with a personal e-mail address, not one from your employer. You would all be well advised to visit Bigfoot and get a forwarding address; that way, when you get a new address, you just have to change it once, you don't have to write to a few hundred people, telling them of your new address & almost certainly forgetting someone. I'd hate to lose touch, so ...

Missing - inaction

If anyone has e-mail addresses for any of the following, please let me know and/or forward my mail to them. Thanks:

Firstly, those to whom this year's mail bounced ...

Blair Bulloch

John Bouma, Esther.Hageraats , Bram Brammering, Diana Jiang, Bryan Sullivan, Bernhard Koegle

Andy Strittmatter, Ian Andrews, Setve Jones

Peter Mueller

Doris Sachsenweger, Satu Suomalainen

Donal O'Shea, Wayne Lennon, Marianne Bolinder , Magnus Persson, Chris Horner

and those from earlier times...

Kevin Glencross, Alex Watt, Neil Anderson, et al

Derek Blacklock, Dave Kennard, Mandana Salehi, et al

Anyone at all from STC, East Kilbride, 1980 - 1982

Pat O'Brien, Lou Caltrider, Jack Beauchain, Jennifer Rodeniser, Toni Crowe, Hershy, etc

Henna Nadu, Pam Brown, Ed Draiss , Steve Levy, Randy Wohlert

Utz Robrade

Why not make it your new year's resolution to click each of these every day?