Empty bags…full imagination

Thanks Paul Feltham for this lovely pic. Endless possibilities. Got it from his Facebook.

Pinterest

I’ve just joined Pinterest and have no idea what I’m doing however, given I’m looking to start a few businesses, am going to link here until I have a) funds b) products c) websites.

Apologies if I mis-use/credit your image, just let me know via email and I will happily rectify (if I can work out how to). I decided this on seeing an image on my friend Paul Feltham’s Facebook but I don’t think I could pin from Facebook (least, that’s what Pinterest told me, so this is my bumbling workaround. pinterest

Needless to say, I’m a girl in a hurry, so hopefully the news sites won’t be too long, but in lieu of a sugar daddy/lottery win, I’m doing it via the old-fashioned hard graft and saving way. 

Lest We Forget

As we stand united and communal in those who fell for our freedom, and those who serve for our freedom, let us remember also to choose freedom in our attitude towards those around us so that days like today commemorate only the past, not future wars.

 That person is your neighbour, your friend, your frenemy, your family, your stranger, the person with the hijab, the person with the Southern Cross, the person with the kippa, the boy who loves boys, the woman with no children, the unmarried mother and the pension you barely acknowledge.

Let us forget petty aggressions and grievances. Let us treat fellow adults with the respect and transparency afforded to children.

We all share fears, hope, love, intimacy, desire, a need to belong, a need to be loved, respected and acknowledged.

A little more kindness, a little more patience, a little more tolerance, a little more courtesy, a little less hurry, a little less judgement, a little less arrogance and a little less fear.

Lest we forget what freedom truly means. 

Ich bin (sic) ein Berliner

Vital statistic: 030 (null-drei-null)

As I mentioned in a previous post, Berlin is my spiritual home.

My dear friend Christina lives here in a grand building in Prenzlauer Allee. I met her while studying at the Humboldt University when I was 21. We can’t agree who was in the wrong queue to sign up for the Italian course, but it’s irrelevant given I have made a lifelong friend in the process.

Christina is a true German and, with that, a true European. Her politics are egalitarian, liberal and passionate. She is open-minded, chilled out, super sharp and really good fun.

I’m not sure how Berlin hit me so hard. I’d studied German since I was 12, and on giving up French when I was 18 to study Italian (and German) at university, fell head over heels in love with Italy. Germany was somewhat neglected (which I think it generally is) and for my year abroad, I was so passionate about Italy, I couldn’t have cared less which German university I would study at, because it was all about Italy.

My Dutch lecturer (I also studied one year of Dutch as part of the German course) suggested I might like Berlin. I really didn’t care so much for coming to Germany and, arrived from six months in Florence in my silk dress and patent shoes, brokenhearted, to this raw, urban and grey city.

It took about a day to fall in love, and it has never left me. This was in 1996 and I often wonder why I am not living in Europe, given I love it so much, and feel so passionately myself when I am here, feeling slightly alien, but speaking the languages. Could I live in Berlin? Well, I don’t, and have never experienced a winter here – and they’re brutal.

However, Berlin appeals to so much of me – egalitarian, open-minded, literary, cultural, creative and innovative but process-driven, structured and honest.

An ambition is to come back and spend some time in Europe getting my languages back up to scratch. Perhaps next year!

Lardaß

Vital statistic: eight

Despite me technically a marathon runner, I am, right now, a bit of a lardy bottom. I have a pretty strict diet and exercise routine in Sydney, generally at least 2 runs, 1 yoga and 1-2 core/cardio sessions per week.

I’m eating approximately four times what I would usually eat and in 3.5 weeks, have done under half of what exercise and intensity of what I usually would do. A list of what I’ve done (and where) is here:

Suffolk run 1h30m

Suffolk bike ride: 1h

Suffolk: 20 reps of 3xlegs, 3xabs and 3xarms

Riga: 20 reps of 3xlegs, 3xabs and 3xarms

London runs: 45m, 30m, 1h, 30m

For those who don’t exercise, you would think, well, who cares. But if you’re anything like me, where you exercise to keep sane, keep calm and keep the kilos off, you’ll understand that the bloat I’m acquiring and tightness of clothes is a little alarming. I didn’t realise how addicted to not feeling flabby I’d become. And I try not to be boring about it, it’s just that my family genes and my age work against me. I look at cheese and it goes straight on my thighs.

The attitude to exercise is different in Europe – in the UK, people look at me running like I’m mad. Unless they think I’m running to the pub or to catch the next tube because I can’t obviously wait 1 minute for the next one.

Sure, there are some sporty people in the UK, but by and large, it’s nothing like Sydney, where ultra-marathons and ironmen competitions are as commonplace as boob jobs. And I guess therein lies the reason. When you’re getting your kit off on the beach (as I eek, will have to do in about two months) showing your flabby white bits ain’t pretty.

Problem is, I also can’t lay off all the treats that I enjoy in my home country, and in Europe. More on that in a separate post.

I’m glad I signed up to the Sydney Half Marathon in September, it’s going to be painful but it will keep me slightly honest while I’m overseas (I also took my measurements before I left).

Like a Duracell bunny, still working

Vital statistic: 1:40am

I’m having one of those days I’m grateful no-one can see my work set-up. I arrived in my spiritual home, Berlin, last night, to get a handle on the local B2B and tech market, courtesy of a dear friend, Christina, who works in communications for a an energy efficiency (part private, part public) organisation.

A lot of people, quite understandably, don’t grasp that I’m still working, and that’s it’s taking quite a lot of motivation, discipline and planning to make this all still work. It’s hard to avoid massive telco fees and stay online during the Aussie working day while moving from City to City, country to country (you can check out the list of what I’ve done here should you not prefer to stick knitting needles in your eye).

Trying to organise my trip here has been a labour of love in itself, as I was hoping to go to Lugarno (CH) and BASEL (CH) in the same trip. However, painful and expensive flights did not permit, and I chose Berlin. It still cost AU$430 to fly, one way with Lufthansa (which was not Lufthansa but British Midland) and back with Ryanair.

I mentioned to Christina that I needed to work while I was here, and asked about her wi-fi. Regrettably, her modem does not want to share with me (or anyone it appears) and on landing at 6pm, with no immediate opportunity to buy a broadband stick or local microsim, I was feeling a little nervous. A client was due to release a fairly big media release and we were exchanging edits and counsel around it, looking likely that I would need to be up either Tues or Wed between 12-3am to issue and follow up on calls and interview requests. Obviously, I needed a) the internet and b) my computer with c) my contacts in the address book and d) my keyboard. I logged on to webmail on her (Germanic keyboard) Mac (I work on a PC) and literally transferred across some documents and emails I’d pre-written on the plane via USB to send. All from her Berlin apartment after a few glasses of wine and way too much tapas.

I then awoke in the middle of the night, 1:40am, slightly panicky, and checked a few more emails, replied, and then woke up again this morning, shattered to do the same. Her Skype is working but the internet keeps dropping out.

I bought a Skype headset which is working a treat and definitely the go.

I have found that calling 0800 numbers from a local mobile phone is super expensive, you need to do it from Skype, a calling card, or preferably a landline from which it’s free.

Calling people in their Aussie day is definitely the hardest thing as it’s a) early i.e. 6am is 3pm b) I haven’t been quite sure where I’ll be and what the internet connection might be like and c) don’t want to wake my hosts up with me doing work calls.

I did wake up slightly panicky on Sunday night and called a client at 1:40am just to check in. The rigmarole of trying to carry my laptop, headset and make sure I had the right number to call him on was fiddly in the dead of night (quietly).

So yes, today I’m working from Christina’s German Mac on webmail, where the x is a y, the @ symbol requires as control and key to the right, and the apostrophe is an ‘a’ umlaut. And it simply will not open the Word doc I urgently need to review. Very frustrating!

Like I say, you need to be motivated, and the next key step – getting a German micro-sim and broadband stick. I wish the iPhone had some kind of USB so you could copy stuff across when you don’t have the internet from a computer but do from a phone.

Quite a long and dull update – the trials of mobile working between cities and countries. Especially when your base country is 8/9 hours ahead.

That said, just like when I ran the marathon, I’m already thinking about how I would do this again – but perhaps one country, one house, one internet connection and desk set-up.

 

Nose for news

Vital statistic: 13 years.

I’ve been involved in the business of news for the last 13 years, through working with journalists and working with clients to amplify and create (and limit) content and angles.

Training at my first PR agency was tough and ruthless and gave me a great sense of what makes news. We learnt through fear, but, 13 years on, I’m grateful for the training. Journalists often feel that PRs don’t know news, I believe that’s a sweeping over-generalisation. Some journos are amazing writers and story creators, but are not necessarily newshounds. One doesn’t necessarily preclude the other.

I miss the UK media environment, and while Australia’s is stronger and more critical than most around the world, I really believe the UK is unique in in its volume, range, consumption and approach to reporting and creating news.

Arriving just in time for the News Corp/Int’l debacle was fascinating, and reminded me what a thriving media industry there is here. It was incessant for about three days and disappeared. Well, it hasn’t disappeared but it has quite seriously faded. Most people were fascinated, and it gave them the opportunity to slate Murdoch and his empire. I’m not altogether sure how much worse TNOTW was at sourcing news compared to other newspapers and magazines, but it’s been interesting to observe how little mud-slinging was partaken by the other publishers.

It’s been nteresting to see how most people outside of Australia see Rupert Murdoch as Australian, while I don’t think it’s the case at all in Australia, unless they think about Lachlan and his super-model wife, Sarah, with their mammoth pad on Bondi Beach. I do love a good headline, and The Times’ “Crouching Wendi, hidden dragon” was worthy of, well, a tabloid really, if a little obvious if you have any proximity to Asia.

The Euro-Zone Greek bail-out then hit because of the Wed 20th Euro meet-up and deadline. The hint of a second recession is lingering strongly in the back-ground here and it feels very uncomfortable.

Intermittently both of the above were replaced with ‘news’ about the East African countries and the heartbreaking situation there. However, as a broadcast news journo friend said, while it’s absolutely worthy of news pages, the poverty and lack of food, combined with government participation, are simply not new news.

This was then replaced by the hard news of a bizarre and devastating massacre in Norway. I still can’t quite get my head around this one.

Only to be followed by the news that Amy Winehouse had died. Whether this is news in the strictest sense, it is pretty sad for music fans out there. It sadly has always appeared largely inevitable, so if news is ‘tales of the unexpected’ and ‘man bites dog’, there’s not too much of either of those about her death. The UK’s brilliant Daily Mash has this excellent article: http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/britain-decides-not-to-boycott-every-last-detail-of-winehouse-death-201107254115/

In my own personal news – the yellow shiny thing in the sky was out yesterday which the city has been desperate for. Two friends, Darren and Charlotte got engaged (I predicted this one prior to coming), and two male uni friends have separately announced their others halves have new jobs leading to potential moves to Australia around Christmas-time.