Bionic Man - Part 1

I’m a free man once again, a “titanium-free” man that is. The 35 minute operation at the Polyclinic d’Aguilera to remove a two year old metal plate from my left arm went well yesterday. And a rather nonchalant but business-like surgeon packed me on my way this morning as I stood in front of him in my throwaway hospital underpants with my razor in one hand and shaving foam covering half of my face (no fear of my morning ablutions disrupting his morning round).

As ever, it was an interesting 36 hours in the hands of the world renowned French health service. The quality of the medical care was clearly very high (from reception staff to nurses to anaesthetist to surgeon), although neither the food, nor the 1980s style décor of the two bedroom unit where I slept were in the same league. In fact it’s really quite interesting to see how the hospital has changed over the six year since they repaired my arm after the first break… In short: food worse (or have my standards just increased?), medical care much improved (e.g. local rather than general anaesthetic for the same operation, and a more aesthetically pleasing scar after the fourth operation), nursing staff – the same, literally – when the nurse this morning said that he recognized me from before, I suddenly thought I should probably stop breaking things (that’s not true, I actually through I’m glad I’ve bought an air jacket which means I have significantly reduced the chance of serious injury when riding horses). On reflection, maybe the nursing staff isn’t exactly the same – this is the first time that one of the (female) nurses offered to help wash me in the shower. They were never so forward in the past, or was it just because I’m now older and more wrinkled? At any rate, it’s just a shame it was the wrong one…  

A couple of other things also dominated this latest stay with the infirmières. The first is that after my recent Facebook clean up, the social networking site along with Frankie Boyle on Twitter, really helped me pass the time and keep family and friends up to date with events. Hopefully I wasn’t guilty of the TMI (too much information) syndrome… On balance, I think that next time I won’t have any requirement to spend the additional seven euros which grants one access to very poor French daytime television. The second thing that struck me is, in these austere times in a country which hasn’t balanced its books for over thirty years, is the amount of waste and inefficiency; why, if one is required to use 60ml of disinfectant for a pre-operation shower, is it supplied in 250 ml bottles? I really need to be buying shares in whichever company makes Betadine rouge 4% scrub. The other thing which shocked me was the grey-green form that was handed to me as I left which officially gives me the right to remain off work on virtually full pay until February 10th (even despite the fact I told the doctor yesterday that I had no intention of stopping work). If you don’t fancy working in this country unfortunately it’s all too easy… Anyway, all’s well that ends well… now to do some babysitting (I have had a whole day off you realize; surely you don’t think Sandie has planned any time for convalescence in my schedule do you?!) and prepare for next operation on my eyes next Friday.

Bob the Genius

On the subject of doing or not doing things yourself, check this story out. Top marks for originality... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/16/developer_oursources_job_china/ 

Bring On Film On

If I thought the Nebraskan and the Chinese had changed my life, then my old friend Neville has probably just rocked the worlds of both me and Maxime... www.filmon.com - finally Maxime can get cbeebies on the internet in France. As for me, not only can I get all my favourite UK programmes such as MOTD, X-Factor, the Inbetweeners etc... I also discovered that Film On also offers not one, but two, "bikini channels". From the sublime to the ridiculous, but at any rate, Maxime and I have many hours of Makka Pakka and Gary Lineker on the large screen Apple Mac ahead of us...(although surely having Channel 4's "The Undateables" on in the background whilst I do Facebook updates and work emails is absolutely unnecessary).

If it’s worth doing, then use the Chinese, safer than the Afghans…

My Dad’s latest maxim is that if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly. He also told me that he now reads more book reviews than actual books. Whereas I’m still trying to work the first idea, I have to confess that I’m probably exactly the same as him on the second point, especially ever since I managed to get over the bad habit at work of always practising “if you want something done properly (or in my case, perfectly) then you should do it yourself” (I hear many of the same former Accenture analysts now shaking their head in disbelief). The latest book review I read, or more precisely film review I listened to (yes I am so lazy or “time-poor” that I now even rely on film reviews for my opinions and yes I listened to the review using the audio edition of the Economist whilst driving because I don’t have time to sit in a chair and read for pleasure), was for Zero Dark Thirty (http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21569006-obl-thriller-has-landed-american-night and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1790885/). I was quite taken with the review. Given the fact that the last au pair Jessica changed my life with 1channel.ch (free video streaming website) and the fact that 2013 has started fairly quietly for me for various reasons, I decided to grab the technological bull by the horns and watched the film last night despite the fact it was only released on January 11th! Apart from the obvious horrors of waterboarding and Bin Laden, the film brought two key things home to me. Firstly, that as much as I can get passionate about what I do, there are people in life who have jobs that matter much more than mine. And secondly, despite what I might think as I travel through my sixth airport of the week, there are people in life whose jobs do not let them lead such a balanced lifestyle as my own. A film well worth the 2 hours or so…

Design infiltrates the boardroom

Many people at work frequently rattle off the maxim of content being more important that format. Whilst I have never said that content wasn't important, I always felt that one should also pay attention to the look and feel of documents and information - for me it was a sloppy cop out if you didn't do both (I hear many of my former Accenture analysts nodding ruefully after having learnt that lesson the hard way with me). Indeed I always thought that if you could present information concisely and professionally, then there was a good chance you had spent more time thinking through the content. I also remember blogging about Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind book (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Whole-New-Mind-Right-Brainers-Future/dp/1905736541/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1358169562&sr=8-1) where he said that design is one of the key things which will enable right brained people to rule the world. If only I was right brained...When I joined my current company I was extremely excited to find that they had a real user experience (UX) group - finally a way to present technology in a cool way (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_experience). The following article seems to suggest that this view is now moving into the mainstrean...http://redmonk.com/jgovernor/2013/01/07/on-the-importance-of-design-at-ibm-love-and-margins/#ixzz2HxMCDxcy. Some of my choice quotes from this article are "I am fond of saying that The Best Packager in any Tech Wave Wins and Wins Big. Great UX is a function of masterful packaging. Its not about building the best components but doing the best job of integrating them; so from a CEO perspective (if) you’d want to increase value without increasing investment – design is potentially a means to do just that: refactor the corporation; IBM certainly isn’t alone in recognizing the power of better design. Design is finally breaking into the boardroom; Samsung has underlined its emphasis on design as a differentiator by making former Creative Chief Choi Gee Sung its CEO last year; and, IBM now has a General Manager of Design, a role across all 400k employees and all business divisions". This feels right. Wouldn't it be great if I could help EMC harness this to make one of its three key messages in the market place work better...

Rain, 4 points and a bowl of sick

It may not sound like it from the title of this post, but the weekend was an extremely good one apart from a sick little girl at the end of Sunday. We got back to Biarritz on Friday for a series of appointments about some work we’re doing on the house and at the hospital ahead of the operation to remove the metal plate from my arm next Friday. I should have known that it was going to be a good weekend when the French anesthetist was on time for his consultation at 6PM on a Friday evening...

Saturday was focused on a day of show jumping in San Sebastian in Spain. It was the first competition of 2013. I was keen to go because over the winter I really felt that Pich and I had made some serious progress (despite me also feeling sure that I’d said that before). I really wanted to see if what we were doing in Orthez could be replicated in a real competition. Thankfully the news was good. Whilst we did have one bar down (my fault), no-one could deny the fact that Pich jumped superbly and that there was a huge difference between what we achieved yesterday, and what we have been used to over the last two years. There’s another competition again in Spain in mid-February so we’ll see how quickly I can get back in the saddle after recovering from next week’s arm operation. Yesterday was also the first run out for my new personal “air-bag” – a rather sensible middle-aged gift I bought myself just before Christmas. Check out http://www.point-two-airjacket.fr/ to learn all about it, and also look at the short Karim Laghouag – championnats d’Europe video to see why it’s probably not a bad investment (http://www.point-two-airjacket.fr/videos.php). It’s just a shame that my coach, Michel, wasn’t wearing his when he took an uncharacteristic tumble in the afternoon and broke a couple of ribs as a result.

The plan for Sunday was to get out and about in and around Biarritz but heavy rain for most of the day put paid to that. Because it’s France, Sunday was lunch at the in-laws. I personally thought the duck and foie gras was excellent. However Gaston came out in a rash three hours later and Capcuine has been vomiting ever since. Her first projectile effort came whilst she was in the bath with her brothers. Maxime was extremely displeased. As he climbed out of the bath in disgust, he severely scolded his younger sibling at the same time as peeling half-digested magrets and canard cuisses off his little torso.  Gaston sat on looking vaguely perplexed still trying to work out if he was hungry enough to eat the little floaters. If managing that little watery circus wasn’t enough, I then had to pack the car in the rain. After that I had just time to tumble dry my jacket before we set off for Pau. For the next two hours poor little Capcuine did an admirable job of combining sleeping with dredging up seemingly endless quantities of bile (her little stomach long since empty). I had opted not to drive, meaning I had the pleasure of multi-tasking the mopping up of Capucine, and the feeding of a MacDonald’s happy meal to the other travelers in the car. Life at the head of a little family surely doesn’t get much better than that. Thankfully Capcuine’s now sound asleep, although I doubt she’ll be at crèche tomorrow. 

Multi-tasking vision of a bleak or bright future

Japan's lost decade and economic collapse in the 1990s and 2000s is well documented (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decade_(Japan)). Some have wondered whether or not we in Europe (and the US for that matter) are headed for a similar fate following the 2008 crash in the western world. Thankfully some say no, check out http://www.slideshare.net/IndraPratama6/japan-lost-decade-vs-us-ez which gives a good summary of the differences, on the other hand some such as Paul Krugman say that the Japanese policy response is potentially much more effective than our own; http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/is-japan-the-country-of-the-future-again/. All I know is whilst riding my bike this afternoon in my garage, at the same time as looking after the sleeping babes, I started to thumb threw a few back editions of the Economist. I stumbled across this article from September... http://www.economist.com/node/21563765. All I say is that wherever we end up, I hope and pray I'm never asking Sandie for my pocket money to go out drinking.