Emma

Those are photos of Marcel and Emma. :-)
It's nice to work in a pseudo-agency environment. Marcel (new colleague of mine who works in Duesseldorf), brings his pup Emma to work two or three days a week. Sooooooo cute. She snuffles and grunts her way around the room and gets boiled vegetables as treats. I only got a few minutes to hang out with her because I was working on the client premises, but a cute little doggie adds a whole lot of character and fun to an office. And she's quite well behaved, so I guess completely unproblematic to bring in. Now I need to think about bringing Sammy and Sophie in to work when I am in Munich, I guess. :-)

You know, it's winter here

The snow has started to fall. Quite early this year. And while it gets wiped away a day or two later by a warm slushy breeze, it's quite impressive in its white lacy grandeur for a fleeing hour or two. The trees outside our windows get painted with the white stuff and take on a whole new character. It's like they have seasonal personalities.

We went to see American Gangster on Saturday night (Good! Except for I hated the scenes with the needles and shooting up and the scene where the bad cop shot the dog). As we walked from the strassenbahn stop to the theater (about 300 yards), a teeeeeenie tiny little BMW pulled up alongside us. I stopped in my tracks and asked Andreas, "What's that?" The tiny thing was barely bigger than the woman sitting in it. "Isetta," said Andreas. "Made just after the war cause they were cheap." CUTE! Probably ridiculously dangerous. But I grabbed my phone and stole a shot. The woman inside the car smirked and watched me shoot her. She probably gets photographed all the time in her little lawnmower.

Cozy cozy cozy

Just lit the fireplace for the first time. Drank hot chocolate. Listened to the storm raging outside. Pet cat snuggled on sofa. Can you imagine it? Doesn't that sound nice? Of course, was reading "Web Analytics for Dummies" which sort of ruined the spirit of things, but then I haven't managed to buy any good fiction recently. hehe.

No Place Zone

Andreas just left a couple hours ago for a week in China. He's happy to go (I think) because it's his first business trip in 6 months...and...it's China. In Singapore he really got used to traveling somewhere about once a month. And often it was somewhere in Asia that he hadn't been yet - where he got to meet new people and check out a new city/culture. Before he left he told me he was really looking forward to eating Chinese food for a week.

We were both reminiscing on Singapore in the last day or two. I keep having these really strange moments. I'll be doing something completely normal - walking down the street, working out at the gym, eating at a restaurant with work friends - and suddenly I'll feel incredibly out of place. That's not even the way to describe it best. I'll have a brief feeling like: "what am i doing here? How did I get here?" Then I'll spend a minute thinking about what I would have been doing during that moment in Singapore. It's very strange. Almost a bit like multi-tasking too much. You have 20 websites open and you're flipping between them (ok, actively using maybe 5 of them, the other 15 are just open for later), and then suddenly you lose your train of thought and you have to peek at them to remember what you were in the middle of doing. If you can imagine that - but happening when you're walking down the street. You shake your head and think to yourself, "wait...how did this happen?"

Andreas asked yesterday (or was it today?) "do you want to move back to Singapore?" And honestly, I don't think I do. Which is not to say that I wouldn't want to go somewhere else in Asia - I'd love to move to India for a couple years - but I think in the long run I wouldn't be happy in Singapore.

Anyway, this is just a Saturday evening blog where you have a lot running through your head, (I need to take notes when I have good blog ideas...I have them all the time and then forget during the moment of truth), and can't express everything as I'd like to.

Two photos from our living room window again. Phone does a terrible job, but here are the really gorgeous trees outside just days before they drop all their leaves...

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This just in...

I'm not sure it's a good thing when I get a call from the husband, newly arrived in China, who declares: "It's nice to be back in Asia! I got here and it felt immediately like China - warm and muggy and dirty air. It's great!" Hmmm...I mean, well, we really liked living in Asia, but I'm not remembering the filthy air in the Chinese cities as fondly as he is, I guess.