Getting ready

Less than a week to go before we fly to Paris and packing is already half way done. 

First time ever I have so many things packed in advance but let's face it there won't be time during the week.

The other half will have to be packed on Friday night. It's a good thing the flight is at 1am. 

Perfect husband

I have this cup from starbucks with Christmas decoration on it. I bought it several years ago in the US and have been using it every year at Christmas time. 

Last week it fell from my cabinet as I was getting it. Luckily the inside container was not broken so with tape we fixed it so I could still use it. At least this year. 

Today I received a gift from Wolfram.

Yes that's the same cup as before with just a bit more glitter but the two polar bear are there.

Wolfram has been checking every day at starbucks to find a replacement.

If that's not a perfect husband, I don't know what it is.

Fall in Singapore ?

We've had a very rainy week with cooler temperature. Singaporeans say it's the winter season in Singapore. 

They might be right. I just spotted mushrooms growing near a tree and there are reports of giant mushrooms appearing after the heavy rain.

Just missing trees changing color and we can call it fall.

This and temperature dropping :)

Mamma Mia, here I go again!

Following what seems to be our new trend of one show per month, November brought to us Mamma Mia. 

Yes that's the Abba show from which you probably know all the songs by now. We certainly did. Well except two of them.

We had seen the movie which was so so. Wolfram had concern that the musical would be very "Abba" and not better than the movie. I was hoping for a good show full of Abba songs and I was not disappointed.

The musical is a million time better than the movie. The cast really acted the story out and even if sometimes the songs are a bit forced into the story, it was good fun and great entertainment.

Cherry on the cake, Wolfram got us really good seats close from the stage. This time we could see everything comfortably:)

Now the challenge will be not to hear Abba songs in my head for the coming days. It's not going to be easy given I have Mamma Mia in my head already.

Mamma Mia, here I go again...

Almost time

It's almost time for our Europe tour to start. Only three weeks to go until we are reunited with our families, friends and the cold. 
Weather is kindly helping us getting ready. Today it rained all day long and it reminded of rainy Sundays in Belgium where you spend the whole day hiding inside. Except it was still 28C :) 

More seriously, the coming three weeks are going to be intense. Lots of work and packing ahead of us. And cherry on the cake for our last week in the office: an open house event for Wolfram and a director's visit for me.

We will make it to the plane for sure. Fingers crossed we won't forget anything critical for Oskar. 

Counting down the days!

New office uniform?

Seems Rhona and I were inspired the same way on Monday morning: black outfit, red shoes!

One more down

I killed another hard disk this week. It's the third one in two years.

It peacefully died on Wednesday night causing the loss of the presentation I had just finished. While this is extremely annoying as I had to rewrite the whole presentation, I was very lucky that apart from the three files that were open at that moment, everything else was saved safely in my box somewhere in the cloud. 

It took two days to get me a new hard disk installed and another day to download everything from the box. It may feel long, it's nothing compare to the seven days from the recovery company. Not only would they charge me 2500SGD for the recovery but on top it would take a week. They could do it faster but they charge extra for that. It seems that's one profitable business. Sadly for them my data were backed up in my box.

The funny part of this story is that on Friday night I received an email informing me that I was eligible for a PC trade up. It would have been smarter, maybe, to give me a new PC right away. But that's assuming that all those systems are connected to each others :)