graham’s blog

Moving on

After the last few “military” posts I think you’re ready for something else. So unless I get a comment encouraging me to write more about Swiss Military Life, I’ll just move on and resume my normal stream of posting.

We are thinking about changing our car. Historically we had a Seat Alhambra. I think we bought it in 1999 and had it for a few years. We figured it was too big a vehicle for our needs and we wouldn’t be moving any more furniture so a smaller car would correspond more to our real needs.

So we changed to a Seat Leon, a small compact car.

It was too small, too low on the ground and had inadequate luggage space. So after a year or so we changed back to an Alhambra and we are happy with it.

Happy because we sit higher off the ground and can transport a sofa or an Ikea cupboard. It has five seats (with a further two on option) and all the passenger seats are removable if needs be.

But it’s a big car and the kids are now adults, Jennifer is married and David doesn’t travel much with us. It also consumes quite a lot of petrol which is becoming, as you know, dearer and dearer.

(Alhambra - Leon - Corolla - Altea XL)

We have just under 24K kilometres on the clock and have had the car for three years.

We are looking at changing for a Toyota Corolla Verso or maybe a Seat Althea XL, both of which are smaller, consume less and have very versatile seat arrangements.

Either that or we’ll keep the Alhambra and drive it to the end of it’s lease.

Any ideas?

Almost recovered

In my last post I mentioned that we were going to Parent’s Day at the Swiss Army Barracks of our son in Frauenfeld. In fact he sleeps in Frauenfeld due to size constraints but spends all his active time at Auenfeld Barracks a few kilometres away.

I won’t go into the details of the day but we spent more than 7 hours in the car going there and getting back and almost an hour of that time was in traffic jams around Zurich.

We did have a great day though and it was interesting to see all that Davis gets up to and now we can fit images to the faces and places he describes.

Fortunately the sun was shining but it was still bitterly cold and we really got the feeling of real Swiss Army Life which my Son-in-Law described as “running to wait and waiting to run” which seems pretty accurate. I will be posting some pics on Flickr in addition to the few I’m posting here.

Looking forward to going home

I’m glad that this evening will be a quiet night at home.

Yesterday was the Opera and the day before we ate out at a really nice restaurant.

After the starter (a Tuna Sashimi), we had a whole Zander (I had to look it up in Wikipedia as although it is hard to find here, it was fished from the lake). The waiter prepared it at the table and we all had some (We were a party of three) Eaten with three dainty sized vegetables portions and “pommes frites allumettes” it was delicious.

So this evening we will eat a lot more modestly, but after I will have the time to relax and enjoy an evening with my Valentine. She is the most amazing woman in the world and I love her passionately.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you all wherever you are and with whoever you are with.

Love rules!

I was looking for a recent photo of the two us but as I am the photographer, they are hard to come by and I’m posting this away from home.

I started looking for photos of hearts and came across this very interesting photo through Google Image search.

As I don’t take without permission I read the blog that this illustration came from and it is a really nice blog in the inspirational vein.

I think it only fair to link back so here it is.

Effervescence over at Going Solo

As you know I’m a strong supporter of Going Far’s upcoming conférence, Going Solo in Lausanne. It will be happening just up the road from me in Geneva on the 16th of May. This is why there is a badge in the sidebar.

I learnt that registration was open the other day through Twitter and today through Facebook.

I also noticed that there is a special Earlier Bird price if you register this week and I wanted to draw your attention to it so you don’t miss the opportunity.

As for me, and as surprising as you might think, I’m hesitating. It’s certainly affordable and definitely worthy of my paid support but I’m not really a freelancer in the real meaning of the term. I work for the Geneva State at 90% spread over four days instead of five which doesn’t leave me a lot of useable time on my hands.

I am however launching my own business very shortly and definitely well before the conference day.

Why? Well it’s because I want to put the fun and excitement back into my professional activities and I regularly get frustrated in my main job as it is very conventional and far from social webbish. What excites me is the Social Web and the possibilities it opens for discovery and working together on media and projects. I have a lot of experience and I know how to use this to help and accompany others in setting up their web identities. It is a reality that decently priced quality hosting is available and that with open source software and some help from professional web developpers and graphists it is possible to establish your home on the web and sustain it either with a little help or with more substantial support packages. The hurdles are therefore financial, skill sets and disponibility. I can successfully address these issues and that is what I am going to do.

I am therefore launching for the experience and excitiement of doing something new and for opening up new horizons. At my age I don’t see myself freelancing myself to retirement and it wouldn’t be fair on my wife and children to jeopardize our current situation which is the fruit of our labours.

So to be brutally honest I’ve just reserved our holidays for September and have to put aside for the taxman and I’m finding it a little difficult justifying the expense for a conference that I’m sure will be useful, pertinent and fun but would only be of use to me. My wife and kids won’t get much from it directly.

I still have a few days to make up my decision though and there is a good chance that I’ll attend anyway. It’s only a fool that can’t change his mind.

It is going to be a fantastic conference from what I can see and we don’t have a lot of these in Switzerland. We are indeed lucky that Stephanie is organising it and this a pre-indication of how successful it will be.

This should work!

My daughter was “complaining” that I hadn’t posted a pic I took, with my mobile, of her cat with my wife. I told her that she would have to look on my moblog but that I had posted it straight away.

She wasn’t sure how to get there and I pointed out that there was a menu item in the left panel. For those who can’t find it here it is.

My problem is that I am unsure of the spelling of their cat’s name. Phonetically it’s Myla.

Excuse one line of french to ask her but this should work as she will comment!!

Jennifer Myla s’écrit comme cela ou bien autrement? J’aurais du demander avant

Update : The cat’s name is in fact Mayla. Merci Jennifer!

Thinking of Simba

It was two years ago that our cat Simba disappeared. We last saw him in the morning as usual but he never returned. We don’t know what happened and in spite of searching high or low we never found him.

I was thinking of him today while pursuing the scanning of our photos. Almost 800 photos have been scanned and a lot of them are photos of our past pets.

I think it fitting to remember him around this period and to wish him well wherever he is.

If you are wondering about the above photo, I came across it while scanning.

You can just make out (with a lot of imagination) my Sister’s dog Poppy that we had in London in the sixties. That’s my Grandad on my Mum’s side, my brother is on the left, my sister on the right and I’m in the middle. The photo was taken in our back garden in London.

Scanning memories

While cleaning out the basement over the Christmas holidays I came over our slide (transparent) collection which has over 6000 slides built over the years. So my wife and I got the slide projector out and patiently viewed and selected about 600 slides. We have already deposited 300 for immediate transfer to CD and look forward to getting the digital images in a week or so from a local chain-store. It will cost about 60CHF per cd of 100.

After the transparents (slides) I decided to do the same with some of the photo albums, specially those photos that aren’t in albums. It was a mild sunny day today so I stayed in and scanned about 350 of them.

Here I am in Paris in 1982. You could say that I’ve just escaped from an island like Tom Hanks in Castaway.

No guesses as to which country this was taken in.

Pas bien

I joined Vimeo a week or so ago and it is super friendly. Watching the videos of others made me envious so I thought that it would be nice to at least try. So I did. Here it is!

Happy Birthday Violet

Happy Birthday Violet. I hope you have a great day!

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Tags: birthday

The wedding

Here is a pic of Trevor and Violet just after their wedding on Saturday. It was a wonderful day and their hospitality was terrific. I had a great time and also learnt that Elizabeth, my ex-wife, also got married to someone she met before meeting me over thirty years ago so congratulations to Elizabeth and to Roy. In just a few days my family name has faded away which for the longtime happiness of all involved is a good thing.

Once again, congratulations to Trevor and Violet Roe and to Roy and Elizabeth Hammersley!

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Tags: marriage, wedding, family, england, derbyshire