10 pennies and 2 shopping trolleys off the old block

Sandie is very good with managing her money. I hadn’t realized how much Maxime was like her until I spoke with her this afternoon. She had taken the car to the garage because we had had a problem with a malfunctioning CD player which rattled every time we drove around a corner. Given that we don’t live in Australia or the Mid-West in the US, this became quite annoying quite quickly. Upon examination it was found that the rattling was due to not one, not two, but twelve different coins (including two plastic shopping trolley tokens) that had been popped into the CD slot. And the price of a new CD player (which turns out to be tightly integrated with the GPS system)? 1500 Euros – now there’s a false economy if ever there was one… In hindsight we should never have given him his first money box for Christmas last year which is no doubt the root cause of this overzealous popping of things into narrow slits. Thankfully for us, Nissan graciously suggested that we claim this under the guarantee!

The sum of the parts

I was meeting with a major bank in the Netherlands today. The meeting was most interesting for lots of reasons. At one stage the (British) client told me that there is a widespread belief in Holland in “general management” i.e. a good manager can manage anything without any need to understand the content. This reminded me of my days in Accenture… When I was an analyst and consultant in Accenture, I was always troubled by the fact that the manager always got the junior people to do the effort estimates on projects. This to me always seemed to call into question the credibility of the manager – surely he had to understand what was going on otherwise he was no more than a well paid fraud? Whilst I still don’t believe that a manager can run things successfully without any notion of the detailed content, I do however now believe that the job of the manager is to work out how to bring together lots of complicated sub parts to create a cohesive whole, rather than having to develop every single complicated sub part himself. Bringing everything together is already pretty complicated, and it’s something that I am pretty sure that I couldn’t have done as a lowly analyst or consultant.

Cloudy twitter

Arrived safely in Amsterdam where it is overcast. In the hotel lobby doing emails and conference calls. Should this type of post really be a tweet? Do I need a Twitter account as well?! (Yes if I want a new job in the future I suppose - see earlier posting).

Alive and kicking, just

Mr. Wall is still with us despite his being home alone this weekend as the whole family trundled off to Barbaste for the first major show jumping event of the season. A good weekend was had by all. Sandie even suggested that it was an excellent competition (through gritted teeth) and that it was very do-able from a small child perspective. On top of that the horse jumped really well. A clear round on the last day was very satisfying and just shows what happens when the rider applies himself properly (two small errors in the two previous rounds had blotted my copybook). Maxime needless to say very much enjoyed both the aperos in Michel's truck on Saturday night and also pushing his little sister into a door. She now sports a lovely black eye and Maxime a red handprint on his bottom. No sooner as I was at home I was packing a suitcase to head to Paris this morning. The day has gone well although I am tired....tired enough to go to the wrong hotel. I comforted myself with two pancakes before jumping in a taxi and going to the correct Crowne Plaza. I now need to get to bed sharpish before an 8AM flight to Amsterdam tomorrow....I'm already looking forward to getting back home on Wednesday for a full 8 hours night of stilted sleep.

Welcome Mr. Wall

Thanks to the generosity of our neighbours Franck and Beatrice, we are now a real family…we have our first family pet; a goldfish named Mr. Wall. Mr. Wall will reside in a rather splendid aquarium in my office (which has a mantelpiece high enough out of reach to prevent small children from trying to see if Mr. Wall can survive outside a shattered tank and 5 litres of spilt water). In my day, goldfish languished in a simple glass bowl – I suppose this must be the fish equivalent of our own “Generation Y” and constantly increasing expectations. Given the copious amounts of food on offer and the luxurious surroundings in which Mr. Wall lives, life expectancy is looking good (for him). The feeding of Mr. Wall will now actually be integrated into Maxime’s bedtime routine (which seems to be getting longer rather than shorter. It is currently; bath, food, pi-pee, teeth, nappy, wrapped up like a sausage in his quilt, prayers, lullaby routines, granting of iPad, removal of iPad, kiss from Mum, kiss from Dad, leave the door open, close the door but leave the landing light on). Anyway, a new chapter of the O’Brien family has started, and it is infinitely more palatable than a fourth baby – Mr. Wall comes fully house trained and he rarely cries, vomits or punches his sister.

And they’re off

A clear round in the preparation class, one refusal in the vitesse and a horse that jumped sublimely all day signaled a decent start to the show jumping season yesterday. While there was one notable blot on the copybook (a turn too sharp which was my fault), it’s nice to see that the three months of hard work over the winter paid off. The only downside was the cold, wind and rain that meant that family and friends couldn’t stay longer to enjoy the day. Not to worry, there’s another competition this weekend in Barbaste that’s on the cards – Sandie is particularly motivated because of the hotel which also boasts a swimming pool and spa – I suspect she’ll not be seeing much of the horses next weekend either!

The Council Will Meet

It’s been a busy few days (why do I keep finding myself writing that)…Within EMC I have become the executive sponsor (read owner, organizer and facilitator) of what’s been labeled as a technology council. Last Thursday and Friday saw the first meeting of that group. I had planned to make things as easy as possible on myself by ensuring that the gathering took place in Pau. So far so clever. However a plane, train and automobile (taxi) strike in Paris and the South West of France made things inordinately more complicated on the Wednesday as people battled to arrive from London, Amsterdam, Munich, Rome and Stockholm. Oodles of credit have to go to that group because we managed to get everyone together only one hour after the original rendezvous for the opening dinner on the Wednesday evening. The meeting itself was a success as we covered a lot of ground and got a lot clearer on what we should and still need to do. It was most refreshing because we were essentially cut off from the connected world (i.e. no internet and therefore no emails), and because we were talking about topics that we don’t normally have the time to talk about, it really felt like we were in some sort of vacuum which enabled everyone to focus and concentrate. These days, a meeting without people multi-tasking and doing their emails at the same time as supposedly listening is most definitely something noteworthy!