Calling Peter Pan
Last night Mimi and I were off playing VB again (and winning the league tournament, I might add - yay for us!) When we got home, Lima (9) had the following story for us:
Tara (7) is obsessed with Peter Pan. She reads the book, listens to the tapes, and wants to see the movies. She is totally in love. At various times she's told me she's going to marry John, Michael, and Peter. Too cute.
Last night while we were away it got to be more than cute. She decided she needed to speak to the characters. It seems she got every worked up about it, on the edge of being hysterical! She was yelling and crying and making life hard for everyone home.
So Liam got an idea. He told the babysitter to go out into the garage with his (the sitter's) cell phone. Then he got out phone out and called the garage. He handed the phone to Tara and told her he had called Peter Pan. She was ecstatic! She talked to 'Peter' and the rest and had a great night the rest of the night.
I don't know how the sitter pulled off the voices so well, but there may be a career on the stage for him after this!
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Thursday, August 07, 2008
An American in Poland
I was in Poland for business this week. There were 4 days of someone else's meetings, then 1 day for my global team to meet. Since I'm a very informal guy I made a point to my team that dress for the day was casual.
Before I leave for a trip to Europe I make a decision. Do I want to try to blend in (pack earth toned clothes) or not (my normal stuff). On this trip - for no real reason - I decided not. So I just packed whatever was on top in my closets.
As I came down for the Friday meeting I had basic clothes on. Nothing special. Well, at least not to me.
I turned the corner and ran into Andy. He's my business partner. He's an Irish who grew up in England. He take a quick look at me, gives me the kind of look that suggests I should maybe check my zipper, then says in his very cool English accent "Denis! Could you *possibly* look any more American?"
I took a moment to look at myself. American flag motif polo short, blue jeans, bright yellow running shoes I won in a race a few years back, and a black Starbury baseball cap. Hmm. He may have a point.
Andy was still incredulous. He went on "Really! I mean it. This is the equivalent of a French guy coming down with a vest covering a blue and white striped shirt wearing a beret!"
That was pretty funny. But it had no effect on me - I headed of to the meeting with me team softly humming the "I'm proud to be an American" song. Now of course I'm not always that proud, but in this situation I really couldn't escape it.
Now I really have to think hard about what I pack next time over...
I was in Poland for business this week. There were 4 days of someone else's meetings, then 1 day for my global team to meet. Since I'm a very informal guy I made a point to my team that dress for the day was casual.
Before I leave for a trip to Europe I make a decision. Do I want to try to blend in (pack earth toned clothes) or not (my normal stuff). On this trip - for no real reason - I decided not. So I just packed whatever was on top in my closets.
As I came down for the Friday meeting I had basic clothes on. Nothing special. Well, at least not to me.
I turned the corner and ran into Andy. He's my business partner. He's an Irish who grew up in England. He take a quick look at me, gives me the kind of look that suggests I should maybe check my zipper, then says in his very cool English accent "Denis! Could you *possibly* look any more American?"
I took a moment to look at myself. American flag motif polo short, blue jeans, bright yellow running shoes I won in a race a few years back, and a black Starbury baseball cap. Hmm. He may have a point.
Andy was still incredulous. He went on "Really! I mean it. This is the equivalent of a French guy coming down with a vest covering a blue and white striped shirt wearing a beret!"
That was pretty funny. But it had no effect on me - I headed of to the meeting with me team softly humming the "I'm proud to be an American" song. Now of course I'm not always that proud, but in this situation I really couldn't escape it.
Now I really have to think hard about what I pack next time over...
Statistically Impossible Encounter
I have been a FaceBook user for many years. Initially you could only be on FB if you had an EDU address. But even back in those days P&G had a relationship with the founder and we were allowed in. It was a brave new world - the future of society. So naturally I signed right up.
Every now and then I'll get blasts from the past through it. Someone from work who I haven't worked with in many years will send me a friend invite. But never anything like this.
I was in Budapest for business (see my other post!) and had finished the meetings for the day. So I was back in my room, taking advantage of the in-room internet connection (Only $70/day!) As I was going through my email I saw a FB friend request. So I opened it up.
Initially I didn't even recognize the name. This is not unique. I am horrible with names. In fact an old HS friend recently told me that this is nothing new - I was even bad with them in HS. This actually cheered me up - at least it wasn't an effect of getting old!
Anyway - since I didn't recognize the name I clicked the link. As soon as I did the memories started flooding back. I remember this guy. Drew - I went to college with him at Beloit. He lived on the same floor of the fraternity house as me. I could picture his door - he had a poster of Marilyn Monroe on it, and an article from a newspaper with the title "Kids are Tools." He was a good guy. We weren't close buddies or anything, but I knew him and thought he was cool.
As I looked at his profile a couple things were odd. I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to them at first. I was in Budapest so I was thinking that maybe the Hungarian FB servers were overlaying info into his profile. But after I had seen enough curious entries I really started to wonder. There was a lot of Hungarian written on the page, and something about a place called budacast.hu. Finally the incredible dawned on me - Drew lived in Budapest!!!!
Now c'mon. How do you even figure the odds on something like this? Haven't seen the guy in 21 years. Never really close to him. He had no connection to Budapest in college. Hell, I don't think he even knew I had gone there. I haven't been to Budapest I 22 years. And the one week I return is the week that he finds me and reaches out through FB? I think million to 1 is way too low for something like this. It's just not possible.
And yet there it was. Of course I immediately sent an email off to him. "Hey man - I'm here in Budapest too!" was the essential gist. I got a quick reply "Yeah, right." It took me describing my hotel for him to believe the unlikely. I don't blame him, it took me a while to believe it too!
Clearly the fates clearly wanted us to get together. So we got together for dinner and a few drinks. It was great seeing him again. He's exactly the same as in college. A little quirky, but smart, funny, and fun to be around. We had a great night. He's lived in Budapest for something like 15 years. Budacast is his work - he does podcasts. If you find this all hard to believe I don't blame you. But check out his podcast entry for the week after I was there:
http://www.budacast.hu/shownews.php?newsid=255&cat=5
I have been a FaceBook user for many years. Initially you could only be on FB if you had an EDU address. But even back in those days P&G had a relationship with the founder and we were allowed in. It was a brave new world - the future of society. So naturally I signed right up.
Every now and then I'll get blasts from the past through it. Someone from work who I haven't worked with in many years will send me a friend invite. But never anything like this.
I was in Budapest for business (see my other post!) and had finished the meetings for the day. So I was back in my room, taking advantage of the in-room internet connection (Only $70/day!) As I was going through my email I saw a FB friend request. So I opened it up.
Initially I didn't even recognize the name. This is not unique. I am horrible with names. In fact an old HS friend recently told me that this is nothing new - I was even bad with them in HS. This actually cheered me up - at least it wasn't an effect of getting old!
Anyway - since I didn't recognize the name I clicked the link. As soon as I did the memories started flooding back. I remember this guy. Drew - I went to college with him at Beloit. He lived on the same floor of the fraternity house as me. I could picture his door - he had a poster of Marilyn Monroe on it, and an article from a newspaper with the title "Kids are Tools." He was a good guy. We weren't close buddies or anything, but I knew him and thought he was cool.
As I looked at his profile a couple things were odd. I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to them at first. I was in Budapest so I was thinking that maybe the Hungarian FB servers were overlaying info into his profile. But after I had seen enough curious entries I really started to wonder. There was a lot of Hungarian written on the page, and something about a place called budacast.hu. Finally the incredible dawned on me - Drew lived in Budapest!!!!
Now c'mon. How do you even figure the odds on something like this? Haven't seen the guy in 21 years. Never really close to him. He had no connection to Budapest in college. Hell, I don't think he even knew I had gone there. I haven't been to Budapest I 22 years. And the one week I return is the week that he finds me and reaches out through FB? I think million to 1 is way too low for something like this. It's just not possible.
And yet there it was. Of course I immediately sent an email off to him. "Hey man - I'm here in Budapest too!" was the essential gist. I got a quick reply "Yeah, right." It took me describing my hotel for him to believe the unlikely. I don't blame him, it took me a while to believe it too!
Clearly the fates clearly wanted us to get together. So we got together for dinner and a few drinks. It was great seeing him again. He's exactly the same as in college. A little quirky, but smart, funny, and fun to be around. We had a great night. He's lived in Budapest for something like 15 years. Budacast is his work - he does podcasts. If you find this all hard to believe I don't blame you. But check out his podcast entry for the week after I was there:
http://www.budacast.hu/shownews.php?newsid=255&cat=5
Return to Budapest
As you all know, I went to Budapest for the first semester of my Senior year of college. I was there for 3 months, went to school, lived in an apartment, and dated a wonderful girl (Noemi).
I had always planned to go back, but somehow never got around to it. I had been to Europe several times, but never with enough time to space to make a return visit.
In April I started to hear of a work meeting that was going to take place there. I made sure to get myself invited to it! I was overjoyed at the chance to go back.
Mimi was something less than overjoyed. Not only was I going to go back to the city of a previous girlfriend (and see her!), but also I was going to be there over our wedding anniversary. To her credit she didn't complain about it. She only had one rule - no hanging out with the ex on our wedding anniversary. That was more than fair! Actually she had one more rule. She said that Noemi had to be fat (in my friend Drew's parlance - that she had been hit by the Babushka bomb). Well she wasn't. But I stayed true to the first rule!
I got in an Sunday morning. Noemi met me at the airport and brought me to my hotel - the West End Hilton. It carries that name as it is next to the West End train terminal.
Coincidentally this is exactly the same terminal I arrived in when I took the train from Brussels 22 year previous. Just walking through it was a personal time warp for me.
Over the course of my time there, Noemi and I went back to our old apartment building, to my old school (try as I could I could not find our classroom!), on the old trams and busses I used to take, and through tours of various parts of the city we had traveled in our previous life together. It was wonderful.
Weird too though. You know how when you're with someone you have a really strong bond with that just being in their presence is enough? You don't have to have deep conversations to make it meaningful? This was one of my first times experiencing that. We would be together having an ice cream on a bench talking about the weather. And I was having a great time. I kept thinking to myself - you've only got 6 days here, talk about something important. But I didn't have to. The weather was plenty.
Obviously the last time I was there the country was under communist rule. So what has changed? Not a whole lot from my brief tour. The people don't look over their shoulders when they talk. They don't lower their voice mentioning their disapproval of the government. And they have no visible ties to the Soviet Union any more.
The biggest physical change was the buildings. I remember Budapest being a very dirty city. Not trash on the road - that was swept by the babushkas every morning. The buildings looked dirty. Like the beautiful architecture under them was of no particular interest. Many of these buildings have been cleaned up now. They are nicely painted in attractive colors. And they look wonderful. It's like someone has removed a film from the entire city. There are still visible war scars, but even they look better with this refurbishing.
Leaving this time wasn't nearly as tough as the last time around. I took a taxi to the airport again, but it was at 5am, so Noemi didn't accompany me. I think the fact that I was 1/2 asleep kept me from welling up the emotions of my previous departure. It was a wonderful visit - my only regret is that it took me 22 years to get around to it!
As you all know, I went to Budapest for the first semester of my Senior year of college. I was there for 3 months, went to school, lived in an apartment, and dated a wonderful girl (Noemi).
I had always planned to go back, but somehow never got around to it. I had been to Europe several times, but never with enough time to space to make a return visit.
In April I started to hear of a work meeting that was going to take place there. I made sure to get myself invited to it! I was overjoyed at the chance to go back.
Mimi was something less than overjoyed. Not only was I going to go back to the city of a previous girlfriend (and see her!), but also I was going to be there over our wedding anniversary. To her credit she didn't complain about it. She only had one rule - no hanging out with the ex on our wedding anniversary. That was more than fair! Actually she had one more rule. She said that Noemi had to be fat (in my friend Drew's parlance - that she had been hit by the Babushka bomb). Well she wasn't. But I stayed true to the first rule!
I got in an Sunday morning. Noemi met me at the airport and brought me to my hotel - the West End Hilton. It carries that name as it is next to the West End train terminal.
Coincidentally this is exactly the same terminal I arrived in when I took the train from Brussels 22 year previous. Just walking through it was a personal time warp for me.
Over the course of my time there, Noemi and I went back to our old apartment building, to my old school (try as I could I could not find our classroom!), on the old trams and busses I used to take, and through tours of various parts of the city we had traveled in our previous life together. It was wonderful.
Weird too though. You know how when you're with someone you have a really strong bond with that just being in their presence is enough? You don't have to have deep conversations to make it meaningful? This was one of my first times experiencing that. We would be together having an ice cream on a bench talking about the weather. And I was having a great time. I kept thinking to myself - you've only got 6 days here, talk about something important. But I didn't have to. The weather was plenty.
Obviously the last time I was there the country was under communist rule. So what has changed? Not a whole lot from my brief tour. The people don't look over their shoulders when they talk. They don't lower their voice mentioning their disapproval of the government. And they have no visible ties to the Soviet Union any more.
The biggest physical change was the buildings. I remember Budapest being a very dirty city. Not trash on the road - that was swept by the babushkas every morning. The buildings looked dirty. Like the beautiful architecture under them was of no particular interest. Many of these buildings have been cleaned up now. They are nicely painted in attractive colors. And they look wonderful. It's like someone has removed a film from the entire city. There are still visible war scars, but even they look better with this refurbishing.
Leaving this time wasn't nearly as tough as the last time around. I took a taxi to the airport again, but it was at 5am, so Noemi didn't accompany me. I think the fact that I was 1/2 asleep kept me from welling up the emotions of my previous departure. It was a wonderful visit - my only regret is that it took me 22 years to get around to it!
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