Delayed, Boarded, Delayed, Delayed, … Cancelled!

The Title pretty much sums up my yesterday’s experience at London Heathrow Terminal 1 and my try to fly from London to Amsterdam !

Nothing more to say!

Eiffel Tower in blue

Although i have been living in Paris for 3 years (between 2003-2006) i never saw the Eiffel tower being lit in total blue, so here is a shot of it from the balcony of my room at the Hilton Paris tonight.

Sorry for the poor quality, but that is all my mobile phone can offer.

I’m in …. by mistake!

I made a big mistake by agreeing to something after i had a couple of beers too much during my recent Malta visit. I sold both of my guitars (acoustic and electric) way back in 1999 when i moved from Berlin, Germany to Budapest, Hungary and haven’t played ever since.

During the Malta trip i was out one evening with my maltese colleague. We went to a pub which featured live music and started talking about playing instruments. Apparantly he is playing guitar since more then 30 years and even performs live in bars in Malta. After some more beers he somehow ( i blame the alcohol) talked me into playing a short 5 song gig together with him during our European Meeting in Cyprus, which takes place end of September 2008 (unfortunately not 2009).

Back home i knew that i am in real trouble once i received the mail with the songlist:

1. The Who – Behind Blue Eyes

2. Eric Clapton – Wonderful tonight

3. CCR – Proud Mary

4. Whitesnake – Here i go again

5. Pink Floyd – Wish you were here

Once i realized out that there was no way to escape from this event, i had to take action. So the first thing i did was to search the internet and buy this beauty of an electro-acoustic guitar

And now it is all about practicing again, oh looks like a long way to go.

WISH ME LUCK!

Empty

Echooooooooooooooooooo. I spent half of the day to throw out the final things out of my appartment in Amsterdam, so now the whole place is totally empty. Then i took care about what i like best : Cleaning

So now both bathrooms and the kitchen are shining like brand new and i am sweating all over.

Guess it is time to call it a day and head to the hotel for a nice shower and a couple of cold beers.

Insurance Bastards

This week i completed the administrative run linked to my moving, meaning i phoned up or visited every company, where i had to get my adress changed or had to cancel a contract.

One of those things was to cancel the contract for my appartment insurance. In all honesty i simply went to the place told them that i’m going to leave Amsterdam and that i want to have my insurance to be cancelled for the 31st August(the day i move out). Today i received the confirmation for the cancellation, with a nice new one year invoice attached to it. The letter was telling me that they have fixed the end of the contract for the 31st of August, however as the first date of the contract was 26th of August 2006 and it is a yearly contract i would have to pay one more yearly fee. 179.92 Euro for 5 days of insurance – BASTARDS.

So now i’m looking forward to call them again tomorrow and try to get the cancellation date changed to 25th of August, so that they cancel the invoice.

Oh well , somehow a good customer service would have informed one about this 5 day discrepancy , but nowadays it is all about cheating…

Goodbye Amsterdam or Moving again

Hi All,

two years and two months have passed (that means June 2006) and i have now decided that it is time to move again. While there are no changes to my job, i felt the need to leave Amsterdam to move on to another place.

In those two years i have actually only spent a limited amount of days in Amsterdam, mainly due to the reason that my work consits out of nearly 95% business travel. As i know that i will return to Amsterdam regularly due to my work (my Office will still be located here) i do not have any regrets at all in moving on.

So as of September 1st i will become resident of the UK, namely of the city Apsley, Hertfordshire close to London. Most of the moving is already done, thus i will spare you with moaning and complaining about it(i fucking hate it).  I have the final handover of my Amsterdam appartment on the 27th of August and until then i have only to do a major cleaning of the almost empty place.

Stay tuned for new updates ( i know a long time has passed since the last post )

Malta – Day 1

I’m lovin’ it. Working in Malta is definitly always a pleasure. There is nothing more motivating then knowing that one can run down to the pool after work and still enjoy a nice sun bath and swimming in the warm waters.

Yesterday after work and pool we went down to Sliema and had dinner sitting outside at the Tex-Mex Restaurant http://www.texmexmalta.com/

Different subject for Business Travellers:

If you ever need to go to Malta on a business Trip avoid flying AIR MALTA, they have the ridicolous rule that hand luggage may not weight more then 5 Kilos (WTF!!!) . This forced me to check-in my usual carry-on cabin suitcase, run around with my laptop in the hand on Schiphol Airport and ended with 30 minutes additional wait at Malta-Luga Airport for the luggage.

Short note to AIR MALTA : This was this last time i travelled with your airline. Cheers to loosing a customer due to your weird hand baggage rule.

Quick Post

I just finished packing my suitcase and will leave in a couple of minutes to Schiphol Airport. Destination : Malta

It is one of my favourite places and unfortunately i will only stay until wednesday, but i’m really looking forward to catch some sun after working hours…finally this year.

System Administrator

I like working in IT, …normally….Today was one of those days , where it came to my mind that it is actually a much better job without users. I was working on the system at one of our hotels and needed to get everyone to log out of a specific program, 99% of the users managed to do this without any issue, except for one. As the guy still logged in was sitting on the same floor then me, i decided not to use the phone,but simply walk over to his office and here is the conversation.

Me: Hi there, could you kindly exit program XXX for 5 minutes, i need to reboot the server.

User: I have already closed the program 5 minutes ago, when you sent the message to log out.

Me (looking at monitor) : A yeah, I see. What is that little thing hiding down there on the task bar?

User (clicks on program box and the program jumps to fullscreen) : I’m sure that i closed it.

Me (turning my face away,rolling eyes): Yep, let’s close it again , i think it was a computer bug.

These are the moments when i head back to my desk and always start this song:

http://www.deadtroll.com/index2.html?/sysadmin/index.html~content

 Apple Quicktime needed to play.

Spray, Stick or Roll-on?

Travelling controls a big part of my life and from time to time it even forces me to change some of my habits. Last year in october new regulations for liquids in handbaggage have been introduced in Europe, which disallowed items of more then a 100ml Volume in the carry-on luggage. This forced me to change from Deodorant Spray to either Stick or Roll-on , as those are normally sold in sizes of 50ml or 75ml, whereas the normal spray comes in a 150ml and is therefore not allowed anymore.

I started of with using a deodorant stick, but somehow i am either to stupid to use those or my skin ignores that i put deodorant on, when using them. The result was unsatifactory, therefore i swapped over to Deo Roll-on and since them i am stuck with these, as the result is good and the content of one bottle is sufficient for my week trips.

So what type of Deodorant do you use? Spray, Stick or Roll-on?