Ol_boss

Merry Christmas, or “Happy Holidays” for the PC-US. Hope you all had a great day sharing food and drink with family or friends, and took a few stuffed moments to reflect on things that ruled this year… And those not able to be there with you for their greasy share of the celebration :/ I’m on a United flight back to London after being bumped off a Delta one yesterday and spending Xmas eve drinking wine and eating turkey back at Salina and Ali’s place in San Francisco. I’m leaving really inspired, it’s Christmas Day and I can’t wait to get back to work! That sounds terrible, I know… work’s for the new year, and I’ve got more important engagements with friends in the interim, but taking a step out of normal life and hob-knobbing with ... read more

There are good times and bad times to be away from home; meeting new people, discovering beautiful landscapes, experiencing new, unfamiliar things… these are the key. Birthdays, Christmas, funerals, getting hit by a bus… always a good time to be with loved ones. Sometimes everything, well almost everything, seems to fall at once. That’s how I’d describe turning 30. I spent the day working, not a big deal, but isolated in the middle of a week-long trip with a group of international landslide experts. For them the trip was “50% culture, 50% work”, for me it was 100% free - not a bad mix. But for a birthday there wasn’t really anyone round, just a few colleagues, thirty-odd strangers, txt messages, and no net. A call from Mum at 2am let me know Nanna had passed ... read more

I've managed to fit a bit of snowboarding around a lot of working since I've been back. at the moment I'm sitting on a train to Zurich, full from dinner, and feeling pretty well worn after joining a few other ex-T&Ters for a weekend on the slopes of Lenzerheide. It's pretty good, but I'm still without a solid source of funding for work, so despite the full stomach and tired legs I'm still a bit stressed. You can only do so much though. Of the 6 weeks i've been back I've spent 2.5weekends working (a conference, and a huge EU proposal), and 3.5 weekends at least partly on the slopes. Flimserberg, Brigels, Andermatt, Lenzerheide, I'm yet to go back to the same field.. or with the same people come to think of it - hopefully not ... read more

Autumn has just flown by. A little over a month ago I was wandering round a tiny mountain village "perspiring" in a t-shirt and shorts. However, a week later things really started to cool off. Anja and I went up to her family's mountain place in Breil for the weekend. Kidding (as you do), while walking through the five or six streets that made up the village, the cool (but not cold) mountain air suggested there was no way we were going to be snowed in for the weekend. It looked a whole lot more likely when we woke up and the green fields had turned snow white overnight! Mountainbiking was out of the question, but the daily business of visiting the village bakery, butcher, grocer, and a real dairy for fresh 'squeezed' cream to make ... read more

Hey, big news this time... I've got somewhere to live!!! And it's pretty cool, a ground floor apartment with a couple of Swiss girls (who have a taste for red wine and understand a Kiwi accent). It's great, i've got a room - stoked! The girls are pretty relaxed, and fully subscribe to the Swiss tradition of filling the house with plants - the kitchen's covered in creepers, and their rooms resemble micro jungles. I was dreading having to get used to an upper floor apartment disassociated in all but noise from the outside world, but this area's really green, and we have a small deck that opens out to the lawn in the back :) After a year and a half on the move, even getting lost in Ikea with armloads of essentials (curtains, lights, ... read more