No Es Lo Mismo

It's hard to believe that 2005 is over. The 90's feels like last week, the 80's like last month and the 70's like last year. Time flies faster than a bat out of hell.

I got a good feeling about 2006 though. It's going to be damn fun, a personal turning point and in some cases mindblowing. Never let the tick-tock define you, always let the tick-tock stay far enough behind. Let it nibble at your butt but never catch you.

Stormy Weather

The turbulent ending of 2005 is evident to everyone living in Northern California. The winter storms are here and more vicious than in many years. The loud rain pounding on our westly windows kept us up most of the night. The wind was so hard that it felt like the windows were going to burst at any moment and our bedroom fill up with water. But luckily, that didn't happen.

The rainy season in San Francisco is just a few weeks per year but when it happens staying inside, ordering groceries from Safeway and having a stack of new DVD's is the preferred way of living.

Partying Like 2006

I've never been a big follower of the Santa Claus order. The whole holiday is too dogmatic with all the traditions and rules. Never been a big fan of rules either (except my own).

December is my personal hybernation month. I try to avoid as much Xmas stuff as possible and focus on the countdown to the following year. Once in January with longer days and shorter nights I perk up and become more willing to do things. The winter is in the end of the tunnel, springtime just around the corner and summer just a few months away. See, that's positive thinking.

Goodwill Hunting

We attacked the closets like the most savaged beast sucks the bone out of real rock'n'roll. It's that time of year when charity is creating more space in your closet, a thicker wallet and a warm heart. Supply and demand, mon cheri.

Anywho, we have been faced with crucial decision-making over the past few days. What should we keep and what should we Goodwill? They finally got our old clothes and we got a well deserved tax deduction and a lot fewer things to keep track of. We even went down to the storage unit to see what we could live without. As we learned - quite a few things.

About-o-graphy

My first devilish idea, and it seemed to be a pretty darn good one at the time, was to cram as many potatoes as I could into a single jar. It’s actually not that hard.
The trick is, as usual, to get them out of the jar and back to where they belong before dinner. That, my friends, is virtually impossible. At least if you are only four years old and never been outside the neighborhood block.

The second adaptation of the adult world was to replicate the latest history class at my very leftist and progressive grade school. I had just learned that you should feel sorry for all the African people cause they were oppressed. And it was all due to the imperialistic western world. And yada, yada, yada…
My young political mind, which was too far ahead for it’s own good, decided to join my fellow brothers in their struggle for freedom. I armed myself with some black shoe polish and a brush and started to convert my fair skin into the darkest of chocolate.
I think I was grounded for about a week, which I later learned is the average amount of time it takes for good quality shoe polish to wear off. You can’t beat mother nature.

The third and last premonition of my future adaptive unconsciousness must have happened (yes, it’s rather unclear) when I was roaming around Europe pre-cell phone era. I had just spent a year at an American high school in Los Angeles and returned back to Europe with a larger-than-life persona. Non grata I might add.
The zest for life, freedom and liberty was awoken at my European return and I wanted to burst out of my post-modern, suburban and predictable life into an adventurous and animated future. But my whole surrounding was stuck in a post-war socialistic depression that felt like a gray, wet wool blanket, ready to suffocate any passionate thought or desire. No one had seen Ferris Bueller’s Day off but they all knew The Seventh Seal by heart.

So I embarked, as all heroes do, on a journey – both geographical and mental. I took the road less traveled, emptied my bank account and decided to follow my spiritual fathers in their quest for life as it should be lived, as it could be lived if all but’s and dont’s where shaken off like an old dead skin. My first destination was New York. I arrived a very cold January evening with no place to stay. I knew I had found was I was looking for when I walked around Times Square trying to find a cheap hotel to crash at. I had a small bag pack and was dressed for Paris in the springtime. But still to this day I remember the excitement, the pulse and the eagerness I felt when I knew that my life had started.

Let It Ripp!

The Christmas holiday is the perfect time to just lounge around with a new book, DVD or CD. Just found a pile of non-ripped CD - about 100 - which I'm going to ripp today. The great thing with ripping CD's is that you run into old songs, albums and artists that you almost forgot. That creates a chain reaction and within seconds you're at the iTunes site, recovering and discovering new music.

PS. Just got a shocker - didn't have Back in Black with AC/DC ripped. How could THAT have happened? Puzzled!

Energy Preservation

It's interesting how energy preservation gets subconsciously factored into the physical decision-making. The more out of shape you are the more important energy becomes in choosing daily strategies and activities. Simple supply and demand.

The human being is the laziest of species. We are always trying to find faster and smarter ways of doing tasks to preserve energy and save time.

That's why high-energy people are highly valued in our society. Higher energy equals productivity which equals growth with equals monetary value.

In general, are high-energy people smarter than low-energy people or is it more about how well you preserve and use your personal energy?

The Best Week Ever

You know how some weeks just sucks and some just kicks the perilious butt. This week has to be ranked in the latter group. First, the missus hit her yearly target. Secondly, all the Christmas shopping is done - yay. Thirdly, just learned that my mother-in-law is hosting an art exhibition in the spring - dress code guevara shirt. I mean seriously, isn't that just swell.

PS. We celebrated this weeks achievements with a bottle of 1997 Leoville-Barton.

Sweating Again

Just returned from the sixth time at the gym since I became a member two weeks ago. I can already feel how I'm losing weight and getting more energized. A positive bi-product is that I also sleep much better.

Wine by the Glass

Most wine by the glass taste crap. Why is that? Well, why sell great wine by the glass when the restaurant can make more by selling it by the bottle. So to people that just want to have one glass you sell them crap wine for a premium. They wouldn't go for seconds anyway, right. The key sober question for the day after is: Why did you?

Lucid in the Sky with Diamonds

Hold on to your wine glasses, I signed up for a gym. Well, it was actually the missus that signed me up. She came up with the whole idea that if we did a joint-membership it would be much more cost effective. Who am I to disagree, especially when the suggestion comes rapped in one of my favorite argument: cost effectiveness.

I've now been to the gym for some light 20-minute biking every second day since end of last week. Not bad for a middle aged man. Tomorrow I'm going again and I'm actually starting to look forward to it. It's the endorfines that are kicking in and I must say I like it. I feel a little bit 'high' after every session and who doesn't want that feeling on an every day basis. I know I do.

Plan B

Without a backup there is no plan.

Goodbye, Appointment Viewing!

We finally pulled the plug on Comcast in favor of a life free from appointment viewing. Sure, we could have signed up for Tivo to be able to filter out all the meaningless commercials and be free to watch when we wanted to. But that's another X dollars every month that could be spent on better things. And I hate paying big corporations lots of money for crappy services. The only sell argument the Comcast representative could come up with when I told him I wanted to cancel was: 'It's only $40 per month'. Pathetic!

So no more movies, huh? Au contraire, my dear reader. It's all about Netflix and iTunes. Netflix is shipping 4 new movies every second to third day and from iTunes I can buy TV-shows (even my old favorite Night Rider) and use them on our Mac-Mini, PowerBook, LCD Screen or iPod. THAT rocks!

But, but... what about News? Glad you asked! Yahoo! News and RRS is delivering anything I need to my desktop. I've never enjoyed the snippets of news that most networks provide, chopped up in small easily digestable pieces wrapped in degrading commercials and repeated so often that your desire to hurl surpaces any other reflective reaction your body can muster.

That said, I like solid, informative and objective news (think BBC or PBS) without all the small talk and without commercials. The killer app would be a subscription offer for commercial-free news automatically downloaded to the iPod or iTunes, just like podcasts but with video.

Finally, I'd love for Google, Yahoo! or a smart startup to offer broadband for free. Then we could delete our relationship with one of the last big dinosaurs - at&t. But I'm confident it's just a matter of time before that happens. Until then we can always free-ride on our neighbors WiFi. Who said there is no free lunch?

My New Job

I realized yesterday night what my new job is. We hosted a dinner for a few friends and during the conversation it became very clear. I've learned so much about cooking, investing, wine, cineography et cetera during the past few weeks as a man of leisure. Most people exhaust themselves working (mostly for good reasons) and are too tired to learn. In the short-term that is obviously sometimes a necessity but long-term intellectual suicide.

I spend my days learning new things, accelerating my knowledge within areas I really care about. Last week I learned everything about strategic options investments and this week I plan to learn everything there is about winemaking in the Mendoza region in Argentina. The following week I'd like to deepen my knowledge about Oysters. It's definitely an aquired taste but so are the best things in life.

The desire to find the truth about things really made the corporate world challenging for me. The truth was very often put aside in favor of the political game. I obviously realize that politics are the measures you take to make your agenda the objective truth. In many cases they go hand in hand but it also happens very frequently that the overall long-term mission is suffering due to the short-term political gains. That's a very destructive and demoralizing situation.

But these days there are no political games to worry about. Only the drive to learn more cause it answers the questions I have and satisfies my curiosity. Life to me is about learning about the world and about oneself. Yes, it would be great if I could do things while sitting in a nice Eames soft management chair but the personal pleasure is no less while doing it in an old replica. It's the path and not the goal that makes the journey worth travelling.