Christmas Market Munich

Today was the last shopping day before Christmas because in Germany, nothing will be open tomorrow or Monday (well...maybe a few shops on Monday morning...). I.e., most stressful day to have to go out and get gifts. And needless to say, we were tasked with at least 4 gifts to manage, and ideally about 10. (We made it to 4, the rest will simply come late or are for my family so we have a few more days before we fly off to see them. :-) )

But thankfully, Munich Christmas markets are a fun place to hang out (with limits), and when good friends from Singapore are in town to hug and kiss, a warm mug of gluewein is in the hand, or one has a chance to munch on a giant marshmallow, it certainly helps make the time fly. Here are some photos of our afternoon, which we got to spend with Volker and Alex and their kids, gossiping about the old times in Singapore, and enjoying the frigid air (compared to the 35 degree swamp, which Alex was very happy to be away from...)

Tomorrow we head off to Pforzheim for the coming week.

On tippy toe among the Porsches

I'm waiting for the husband to get out of the bathroom so I can continue getting ready for work. And because I only left work at 10 pm last night, I just left work computer there, which means that while I SHOULD be hacking away on a presentation for a pitch we have this afternoon, I can't. Which means I have the luxury of posting one quick blog.

I've already rolled off my little Duesseldorf project (where I replaced Verena for two weeks while she romped around Thailand with her girlfriends), but this is one photo I definitely wanted to throw in before it was too late. That there is Torsten Schollmayer, one of my many new Sapient colleagues, who will be working somewhat longer term on the project I left.

Why is Torsten leaning against the Porsche of his dreams? What was really strange and funny, is that the client we were working for has a Porsche dealership smack in the middle of the office complex. We walked past hundred of Porsches many times a day. Walk to get coffee, drool drool nice porsche, drool, walk back to office, stare stare, nice porsche...and finally we gave up and of course went in and pretended to shop for a few minutes on our lunch break.

Yeah, well, when I win the Lotto. :-)

for vivek, from my new iPod touch

hi vivek, thanks for your SMS. I'm sorry it has been so long since I've written a decent blog. There are a combination of factors that contribute to this situation. Too much work at the moment is one. Then challenges with owning too much technology at the moment is another. I am carrying around two phones and sometimes even two laptops and also working with too many networks (home, work, client) that I can barely keep all the combinations straight, let alone try to blog using what I have. So here is a brand new experimental moment that is at one time super simple with no photo and only one finger typing, but at the same time incredibly brand new (for me) because I am blogging using my new iPod touch. Which is really blowing my mind. More blogging soon, I promise. We are headed to San francisco soon to celebrate the new year with my family. But I hope to get a few blogs in before we leave. Cheers.