I came back home yesterday after an intense 2.5 weeks of traveling, partying, work, a wedding in Mallorca, Misha’s Birthday, more work with some insomniatic all nighters, a quick stop at home, more work, Kristel’s wedding and now home home with my angel…for a month, yay!! 🙂
I am really looking forward to spend quality time with Misha the coming period, three years old now so never a dull moment, I love it! 🙂 Quality time was also the visit to my 94 year old (!) grandma last week, it is always good to see her, and while life is not easy for her these days, I feel fortunate to have her around and being able to see and talk to her…below a follow-up to the four generations photo from 2011:
As an Apple fanboy (and heavy smartphone user 🙂 ) I couldn’t resist the temptation any longer and treated myself with a brand new iPhone 6! Or better said; I just ordered one and it should be delivered in 1-1.5 weeks! Pretty neat as I remember waiting for my old iPhone 5 to be delivered for nearly 2 months in 2012! A nice upgrade that corresponds with my iPhone ownership history of having a new one every two years (a trend which was only broken in 2011 when two iPhones got stolen at the Pohoda festival); I owned the first ever iPhone (which was released only in the USA, though it worked perfectly after a jailbreak 🙂 ), and then went for the iPhone 3GS (skipping the iPhone 3G). Both of them got stolen and I got the iPhone 4, then the iPhone 5 (skipping the iPhone 4S/’for Steve’) and will soon have the iPhone 6 (skipping the iPhone 5S), yay! 🙂
My ‘old’ iPhone 5 will become my ‘new’ dutch phone and I am not sure what will happen with the slowwww and sluggish iPhone 4. 🙂
Though first I will send the iPhone 5 for repair as it qualifies in Apples’ free battery replacement program after they determined that a very small percentage of iPhone 5 devices suddenly experience shorter battery life or need to be charged more frequently…ha, ain’t that so! At the moment it lasts just a couple of hours on a full charge, and while some see me as a heavy-user, it definitely should last waaaayyy longer than that! 🙂
I did quite some airtime the past weeks, and have some ahead of me the coming weeks; I flew to NL last Friday and after a fantastic Summerlake festival on Saturday I flew to Macedonia this Monday. Skopje means working longgggg days (ok, a tad of social fun as we went out Monday night which was enough to kill all other initiatives that were planned hahaha) and I came back in NL tonight, ready to fly out again tomorrow morning (eaaaarlyyyy, the 6am pyjama flight bluhhh) to sunny Mallorca for a wedding! ‘A’ wedding?! Well, not just ‘a’ wedding as over 150 guests are flying in for this event…it is gonna be GREAT!
Anyway, I will turn into flying-mode once more on Sunday night, so I am back in NL in time for Misha’s 3rd Birthday on Monday (yeah, he is a real boy now, time uuh flies! 🙂 ). Tuesday is flyway once more (working from Skopje that week) and back to NL on Saturday morning (once more pyjama flight bluhhh). Finally, Saturday nightI will fly home to Norway…that’s quite some flying, oofff! (oh, the Wednesday after I am flying to NL for Kristel and Herman’s wedding on the 10th, how I love to fly haha).
In a way I am looking forward to be ‘stuck’ at home from October 11 until November 7 without any flying as my then 3 year old angel is with me all those weeks yay! 🙂
Hard to miss, once again Apple managed to keep ‘the world’ busy by releasing/announcing new goodies during their Event last Tuesday. The highlights:
– iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus; bigger screens, a design that goes back to the original iPhone having round corners yet thinner than any other smartphone, full specs though not too shocking improvements (the innovation curve is not as steep as it was 6-7 years ago), to be released in Norway pretty soon, on September 26, yay! And yes; iWant! And iNeed as the battery of my ‘old’ iPhone 5 is extremely bad…I actually qualify for a battery replacement but that process means I am without a phone for some weeks which is (professionally) a no-go. Get the iPhone 6 (-Plus), then have the iPhone5 battery replaced and use it as my dutch phone sounds just fine for me! 🙂
– Apple Watch; I am not a watch person, and unsure if this is for me. That said, it seems as an amazing product which seems to raise the bar considerably for the tech wearables industry. Other attempts in this category don’t come close to what the Apple Watch will bring…do we need it? Will it be the next cornerstone for Apple’s business? Not sure about that, only future can tell…as long as they are able to ‘solve’ the battery-life challenge it might…
– Apple Pay; Finally, Apple’s first steps into becoming a bank which is not strange as they have been sitting on 500 million creditcard accounts for years…from the demo it seems a HUGE improvement in the way we will/can do payments, yet it won’t be for me soon, as this will be US only for some time
– U2 album give away; Apple gives all its iTunes Store customers the new U2 album ‘Songs of Innocence’ for free!! This can very well be seen as *the* major thing from last Tuesdays event. And with the cash Apple has, this is actually an easy one for them while generating a lot of attention and traction towards iTunes. It can also be seen as ‘proof’ that Apple fears its iTunes business model is failing and needs adjustment (in the direction of Spotify-like services).
The event started with an inspirational video called ‘Perspective’ which is too beautiful not to have it on the blog…Here’s to those who have always seen things differently…Njoy!
Just days before the much anticipated and hyped Apple event this coming Tuesday, when ‘the world’ will finally see Apple’s new iPhone and perhaps the iWatch, IKEA comes with a brilliant persiflage of a new product release video, Apple style; the release of the IKEA bookbook TM!!
“At only 8mm thin, and weighing in at less than 400g, the 2015 IKEA Catalogue comes pre-installed with thousands of home furnishing ideas”…ROTFLMAO! Perhaps something for you? 🙂
It is *that* time of year, the weekend of all weekends, Lowlands 2014 is here!!
We have followed a proven concept; started the day nice and sweet, feeling happy that last nights rain clouds have vanished and today the sun will be doing its best to warm us up, as always we are packed to travel light (and probably still have too much with us), had hardly any traffic on the way to the festival terrain and we are feeling secured with our ‘set-up-the-tent-within-10-minutes’ talent…Lowlands 2014; here we ARE and we are ready to PARTYYYYY!! 🙂
Sun, fun, music, friends, drinks and then some…rock on, HELL YEAHHHH!!!
PS. join us in some freaky sun dances and voodoo tricks to make sure that the predicted rain will not fall!! 🙂
Misha’s Birthday on September 29 is only 1,5 months away (ain’t time flying!!) and I have been planning to give him his first ‘real’ bicycle for his third Birthday. Summer though is a much better season for cycling than autumn, particularly in Norway as rainy days are high on the probability list in the few months before snow comes to town, so I gave him an early Birthday present last week. He was sooooo happy, ha even now, days after he got it, a ‘Look daddy what I got…beautiful eh?’ is the first thing he says when he enters the living room in the early morning! Feels good! 🙂
He didn’t have any problem mastering the bicycle, and I believe he will get rid of the extra side-wheels sooner than later, my little angel is on a mission haha! 🙂
W00t! I have, or actually my company has, sent out my first invoice today! A pretty big milestone (and a pretty important one too 🙂 )!
Work has been good so far, pretty busy, just the way I like it he he and loads of new things to take care of. The transition from non-working to working has been smooth, it turns out that it is just as easy to start working as it was to stop. 🙂
My garden’s call for water is heard and its wish has been executed; for the first time in weeks we’ve had some serious rain in the past days. I’d like to believe that summer just took a short break instead of the more worrying idea that autumn starts really early this year. 🙂
The plants loved the change of weather, though I would have preferred it to be done a little less loud; internet at home has been down for the past days, 🙁 I suspect that a voltage peak over the phone line blew up the DSL port of the modem during a spectacular thunder and lightning show outside…hopefully a new modem will resolve it, the shipment takes daaaays though… 🙁 Luckily I know many more (and nicer!) things to do during these days of twilight disconnect than the suggestions made in the picture below, still very funny though! 🙂
I guess most realize that Apple is a pretty big company, but I think most will be surprised when you see how big Apple really is. They announced their financial results for their fiscal 2014 third quarter a week ago, presenting a quarterly revenue of $37.4 billion (!) and quarterly net profit of $7.7 billion…well, well, ain’t that a *shitload* of cash! 🙂 And that despite the fact that the third quarter had no big new goodies (iPhone 6&Air as well as iWatch are all expected later this year), it is traditionally the quarter with the lowest results.
So, numbers say something, yet charts (below) say more…
Assume that the iPhone were its own company, it generated $19.74 billion in sales last quester making it bigger than Amazon, or Coca-Cola and McDonald’s combined (!), while Google and eBay combined are barely bigger…WTF?!
And even though iPad sales (($5.9 billion)) are ‘just’ 1/3 of the iPhone sales, it would still be greater than Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Groupon, and Tesla combined…huh?!?
In this age of technology directed human behaviour (unfortunately), the following YouTube video could serve as an eye-opener for some (perhaps many…). There is no replacement for real contact, real-life interaction between humans *without* any technology in-between.
In the end (actually in the beginning, along the way AND in the end 🙂 ); sharing unconditional LOVE is what life is all about really…indeed, technology will never replace love!
Lovely summer weather, my angel back in Norway and loads of redcurrants and blackcurrants in the garden…I’d say, more than enough ingredients for a lovely weekend!
I went through the 30,000km mark in my Nissan LEAF today, not bad after 2,5 years (of which 1,5 years without regular commuting 🙂 )! The experience of driving an electric car is still as fantastic as the day I got it, I can really recommend this car to anyone. Nissan has been quite successful with the LEAF, even in ‘crisis’ years; I got a letter from Nissan yesterday in which they mentioned that the 100,000th LEAF was sold in the UK last January! As said quite a success and for a good reason; great drivability, lots of nice features, and above all; environmentally friendly (specifically in Norway with its hydro-electricity! 🙂 )fdf, oh and probably the main reason for most; it runs cheap! It gives more kms/NOK than a ‘normal’ car and is highly subsidised (no VAT, virtually no road-tax, no toll payments, free parking in Oslo)…he he 🙂
This is an amazing clip about an Unsung Hero, a must watch!
Yeah yeah, I know, it *is* a commercial (disclosed at the very end), yet not the normal kind of rubbish you see on TV. This one has a powerful message of love and a believe in doing unconditionally Good…I *love* it! (and wish more commercials were made like this…)
…
What does he get in return for doing this every day?
He gets nothing.
He won’t be richer
Won’t appear on TV
Still anonymous
And not a bit more famous
…
What he does receive are emotions
He witnesses happiness
Reaches a deeper understanding
Feels the love
Receives what money can’t buy
A world made more beautiful
And in your life?
What is it that you desire most?
My first week working has been quit busy, it seemed I missed working so much that I worked through the whole weekend, ha! 🙂
Not so bad as it may sound though, as I worked from Skopje, Macedonia (or formally F.Y.R.O.M.), though that sounds more exotic as it was; unfortunately there wasn’t any time to see much of the city other than the 5 minute walk from hotel to office and back (plus some occasional restaurants for lunch and dinner and a bar or two for a beer or two on Saturday 🙂 )
There are some amazing buildings along the river as you can see below. The historic structures gave me a ‘Rome-like’ feeling, though the truth is far from it; everything has been built only in the past years (!) giving Skopje a brand new city skyline for uhhh a lousy 500 million euro (!!). One could conclude that Skopje does extremely well in the ranks of wealthy places on earth, but that ain’t true; unemployment is high and wages are low; waiters for instance earn just 5-8 euro, a day!!
Still, Skopje left a great impression and I hope to see a bit more when I am back mid August for work. 🙂
I am well aware that I made some people pretty curious as to where my ‘first and second step into something new’ blogposts would lead to…well, ‘disclosure time’ is finally here:
After a period of 1,5 years in which I haven’t worked (at least not in the routine rat-race way that everyone seems to love so much 🙂 ), in which I took the opportunity to self-reflect as well as self-study, helped out people left and right with their processes and practicalities, was able to intensely enjoy the freedom to have an almost daily choice of what to focus my energy on, and above all; a period where I have had an invaluable opportunity to witness Misha grow from ‘non-speaking-just-started-walking’ baby boy to a ‘hey-daddy-look-how-fast-I-can-run-away-from(-or-towards-to)-you’ little child…it showed me how valuable time is, and how needed change can be.
Today has been the day that this phase of my life transformed into something new: yessss, I started working again!!
I decided some time ago to start my own consultancy company, and I found my first customer; my former employer! (or at least, a sister division of it, meaning I will work together with some very familiar faces, again!) 🙂
This morning I enjoyed a warm welcome in an environment that I know all to well, with enough challenges to keep me sharp…yeah, it is good to be back in business!!
Time flies when you’re having fun, the last night is about to start…not a bad one, as we’re catching the party at Ushuaïa with Armin van Buuren on stage, woohoooo!!
Party onnnn!! 🙂
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