2010 – a Review

I was wondering how to summarise 2010 but then I saw a list in Stylist magazine. I thought I’d share that first of all (even if from a slight British view). The things that were picked out for each month were the following:

January – Earthquake devastates Haiti, 12 January
February – Alexander McQueen dies, 11 February / Amy Williams takes Gold, 19 February
March – Kathryn Bigelow makes film history, 7 March
April – Ash Cloud causes travel chaos, 14 April / BP Oil Spill, 20 April
May – Brown out, Cameron & Glegg in, 6 May
June – Taxi Driver Killing Spree in Cumbria, 2 June / World Cup kicks off in South Africa, 11 June
July – Pakistan devastated by Floods, 26 July
August – End of Big Brother, 24 August
September – Ed Milibrand’s surprise Victory, 25 September
October – Chilean Miners emerge into glare of Global Media, 13 October
November – Prince William finally pops the Question, 16 November
December – Snowfall halts Britain, Again, December

Maybe just to explain briefly for non-British based people (no offence if you know this) – Amy Williams is the first British female athlete who won an individual Winter Olympic Gold medal since 1952. She won it in the single skeleton and she only trained on a dry slide in Bath, so a pretty remarkable achievement considering England has no proper winter sport training facilities.
And Kathryn Bigelow won the Oscar for her direction of The Hurt Locker, beating her ex-husband James Cameron who also was in the race with the biggest grossing film of all time Avatar. So well done girls ☺

Apart from that and the Chilean Miners having been rescued the news are pretty grim (I’m disregarding here news on BB and the Royal Wedding, PLEASE!). Even the World Cup has been really grim for England this year. I am not pretending that this didn’t cheer me up at the time though, hehe.

But I think this year is definitely the year where we literally get to see and feel what we are doing to our planet. It makes you seriously think about which country it would be best to live in, in future. We’ve known for ages that we are wrecking the planet (even if there are still some people who don’t believe Climate Change is happening!) but now it seems things really got ‘rolling’. I’ve heard the next ice age starts in 2014 (charming).

Considering all natural disasters and people killing each other it seems pretty self-indulgent to go into a big personal roundup of the year. Therefore, I will attempt to summarise, but won’t bore you with going through the year month by month. And well done in advance if you make it to the end.

The year started off well by receiving a permanent contract in the job that I started in June 2009. February 15th, I think it was, saw me receiving a full time contract as Project Manager for UBM (United Business Media) Built Environment. The plan was to produce 10 virtual events in 2010.

In March, Alex and I went to Rio de Janeiro for our annual holiday, his sister’s baby boy Christening and Capoeira training. We flew out of Heathrow exactly in the 2 strike-free days of that week (lucky), met Alex’s brother Ian in Paris and hopped on the fight to Rio. We landed very early, so the first thing I got to see was the gorgeous sky around picturesque Rio landscape. By 7am we were on the beach diving into the waves.
The next day we went out of town into the mountains and chilled there for 3 days (lovely). When we came back to Rio we pretty much started training Capoeira (wicked).
Then about a week and a half were taken out of exploring the city because of the floods. Torrential rains caused the North of the city to be in an emergency state over night. These were the worst floods Rio had seen since the 1960’s, and many people lost their homes or even lives ☹
More natural disaster was to come though when we were caught in the ash cloud flight interruptions on our way back. We were literally 2 hours away from London when the pilot notified us we couldn’t land in Heathrow. Now, if you’ve never heard of ash clouds versus planes before you sort of sit there trying to digest what the pilot just told you. We were redirected to Paris but about 45min before landing Paris was closed because it was overcrowded. So they flew us down to Madrid, which in the end probably was a blessing. TAM airline was absolutely superb. They put us immediately into a hotel, and there we stayed for 3 days waiting for updates every 3 hours.
In hindsight, it was like being in a film. There was no flow of information. In general, the whole thing seemed surreal. I even asked my boss on the phone whether there was any ash to be seen in London, lol. We checked the BBC website frequently, yet no information was really obtained apart from where the ash cloud was heading to. People were trying to find other routes by land or water, but by that time already Internet based bookings of ferries, trains or other transport was completely unreliable or wouldn’t even work because of over-usage. People also couldn’t get through any booking lines over the phone. TAM tried to find ways to get us back to the UK but were also unsuccessful. So they decided to fly their aircraft back to Brazil. We had 10min to decide whether to go with them or find our own way back. As we didn’t have hundreds of pounds to buy our way back we decided for the latter. So we flew back in a flight that felt like the last one being out of Europe (weird) as they were speculating that Madrid airport would close the following day.

Weather-wise it turned out to be the best week of our holiday and we even managed to go to the Pão de Açucar (Sugar Loaf) for a night Caipirinha. I spent 3 days trying to connect to my work email so I could start with some catching up. We had our first virtual event of the year coming up so some panic in London broke out ☺
All in all, Brazil is an amazing country with so much to explore that you’d need a year’s holiday to travel around and see it all. The best are definitely the fruits, which are just amazing, the long beaches and, of course, the Capoeira.

Ipanema Beach, Rio de Janeiro



Back to reality and my return to work was followed by 2 months full on virtual event production. Holiday relaxation was gone. A little mental break came when my friend Doreen and her son Tim visited for a long weekend in July.
The day they left I started a project management course, PRINCE 2, courtesy of UBM. PRINCE 2 is a project management methodology and a weeks training course with 2 exams. That week was undoubtedly the worst week of the year. I don’t think I’ve ever sat through anything like that, but miraculously I passed both exams and can call myself a PRINCE 2 Practitioner.

The course was followed by a work trip to Chicago where I would attend a training course of the InXpo virtual event platform we are using at work. I used that chance to see my friends Anja & Georg in Boulder, Colorado, who I hadn’t seen for at least 2 years and who had a daughter by now. I went a few days earlier and flew straight from Chicago to Denver and took a bus to Boulder. The very next day we made our way into the Rocky Mountains to meet friends of theirs in a cabin in the Rocky Mountains National Park. I was very excited as I’d never seen the Rockies before, and now I even got the chance to do a hike there. The hike was lovely but really cold although it being mid-August. The next day we went climbing in a massive climbing hall. I’ve only climbed once before on a little mountain in the Saechische Schweiz and the 10m walls in that hall looked somehow frightening. I’m not very good with heights but not looking down definitely helps ☺ And once gotten used to it, it was absolutely great.

View from the cabin

In the Rocky Mountains


A day later, I flew back to Chicago where we had our 2-day training course and a day of meetings with our sister company UBM Studios. Those 4 days were probably the funniest I had all year.

Chicago


Back in London, back to work, just for a week and a half though. Then I had a couple of days off to go to Niesky, my hometown, to take part in the annual decathlon, and of course, see my parents. That was really fun and I was also asked to come and compete at the National team champs (DAMM) for the LG Neisse team. When I heard that it's taking place in the town where my sister lives I had to go! So two weeks later I was back in Germany, this time seeing my sister and family, which was great, and compete again. The athletics final went really well and the Ladies and our Men team came both Third, wohoo!

Our silly men team

Daniela, Carola and Anke from our women team


That was literally my last holiday of the year, and I spent the rest from mid-September until the 23rd December working (I almost wrote slaving away) and finishing about 4 virtual events (njech). The only other thing I manage to fit in was a Portuguese class every Tuesday night, which sort of became the most relaxing hour of the week. Weekends were usually a write off as for most of them I was so knackered from the week that I didn’t even manage to do anything.

Frustration kicked in when getting injured during the last competition in Germany. It had started before and it would have been sensible not to compete. But that was not an option with the team counting on my participation. I had to get through that competition and I did but with quite severe consequences. The combination of athletics and Capoeira hadn’t worked for my muscles. Or let’s say if I commit to an athletics season I should train beforehand and not assume that Capoeira training will be sufficient. To cut a long story short, my entire left side went out of alignment and I haven’t been able to train, run or do anything remotely in that direction since. I am still receiving treatment, started swimming a bit and am hoping I can at least go back to Yoga in the New Year.

Alex and I decided to stay another year in our lovely flat in Lower Clapton. And we also decided to spend Christmas in London this year, which has been lovely even with its little hick-ups. It’s amazing that things break at exactly the moment you’ve been waiting for the last 3 months. One day before Christmas Eve our phone line breaks (because of the severe cold weather) and with it goes the Internet. On Christmas Day I wake up with the worst flu and cold of the entire year. On top of that the boiler decides to pack in. Luckily it was just a pressure thing and our lovely gasman George talked me through over the phone of how to fix it the next day. But despite all that we had lovely friends over, did some nice cooking and hanging out. We only got our phone line and Internet back yesterday.

Other general news would be that we definitely had confirmation on Alex being allergic to cats. Because of mice we got two kittens but 2 weeks later we ended up in hospital because Alex couldn’t breath anymore. 2 oxygen flasks and some steroids later we had to give up the kittens and let the mice back in. A couple of months later we tried Pickles, the long-haired cat we (2 friends and I) got when still living at Princess May. But that didn’t work either, and we ended up re-homing Pickles to an elderly couple, luckily still within the ‘family’.

Pickles, the wonderful and wicked character. We'll miss her.


And last but not least, I got a promotion at work right at the end of the year. I had to fight for it but it was well worth it. With it came also a pay rise, which also comes at the right time. VAT has increased to 20% as of yesterday, and although retailers won’t hit shoppers straight away and food is excluded house bills will go up significantly. Happy New Year.

For some reason I still have the feeling it’s going to be a good one ☺

The Bielefeld Conspiracy

29 August 2010 - I have just finished a decathlon at my home club in Niesky, Germany. Daniela and I are are doing a loosening-up walk on the lawn after the 800m when we are joined by Robert, a team mate. We come to talk about the DAMM (Deutsche Alters Mannschaft Meisterschaft), the finals of the National Team Championships, which are taking place in Bad Oyenhausen this year. I express how surprised I was when I heard the finals are taking place in Bad Oeynhausen, a small town near Hanover, and the place where my sister lives! Then the following conversation takes place:

Robert: "Where is Bad Oeynhausen anyway?"
Jana: "It's near Hannover, near to Bielefeld."
Robert: "What?! You've heard of Bielefeld?!"
Jana: "Yeah, sure, it's very close to Bad Oeynhausen."
Robert: 'What?!!!! Bielefeld doesn't exist!'
Jana: 'What?!! What are you talking about? I've been there!'
Robert: 'Whaaat?!!! I can't believe what I'm hearing. That place doesn't exist!'
Jana: "What the heck are you talking about?! Sure, it exists, I've been there!"
Robert: "I can't believe it! You are the first person I meet who knows Bielefeld AND has been there!"

This is the first time I hear about the legend of the Bielefeld conspiracy, which came into existence in 1994. Achim Held, a student of computer science from the University of Kiel, posted the theory on usenet, after talking to an avid reader of New Age magazines. The post was originally meant as a joke but spread through the Internet community and has not lost any popularity even after 16 years. There are several theories behind the joke but apparently the most popular is that there was a war between the Usenet admins and the Bielefeld based Z-Netz BBS (Bulletin board system) about text encodings.

So the theory posits three questions:
Do you know anybody from Bielefeld?
Have you ever been to Bielefeld?
Do you know anybody who has ever been to Bielefeld?

Guys, unfortunately I can answer 'Yes' to all three questions! One of my old school friends from Niesky even lives there today!

What I find amazing is that the myth is still very much out there. I told this story to my sister when I arrived in Bad Oeynhausen a couple of weeks later. She hadn't heard of it either and was equally baffled. I think next time I visit my sister again I'll ask her to take us on a day trip to Bielefeld, where I will take some pictures for Robert and meet my old school friend. :)

Another funny story that I read in The Week yesterday made me finally write this post:

'IT MUST BE TRUE... I read it in the tabloids':
A pensioner who dropped his trousers in front of female diners in a branch of Pizza Hut in the German town of Bielefeld claimed he was cooling himself down after inadvertently touching his private parts while chopping chillies. Hannes Maier, 68, told police: "I did not look to see who was there. The pain was unbearable and I had to get some fresh air to my member." Despite his plea, police arrested him after witnesses said they'd seen him with his pants down outside McDonald's, too.

Clearly, after this story you must believe Bielefeld exists! :)

Name-changing madness

This blog post is inspired by a - quite funny - discussion we had in the office last week about women changing their names when getting married.

One of our colleagues got married recently and we received her first email with the new name. My boss turned around and remarked on her new name to which I replied: "Well, why do women change their name anyway?" This made my colleague Liz, who will be getting married in March next year, turn around and say: "Well I'm not changing mine!", and I said: "I wouldn't change mine either.", to which my boss remarked: "What!? That is outrageous!!!", and we went at the same time: "What!? Why?!?"

We then went into this heated discussion to which other colleagues were drawn into and that latest 2 days. None of the people who were for the woman changing her name could come up with one reason why the bride has to change the name instead of the groom. Not one reason. That's because there is none. Even just the inconvenience of it all is alone completely off-putting. Back in the day, the woman didn't have a bank account, let alone a passport. The man managed everything. But nowadays, also with all the new Social Media tools, I can think of dozens of accounts where I would have to change my name, starting with my passport, ID card, driving licence, 2-3 email addresses, the house contract, the list is long. Why would anyone want to go through something like that when it is not even considered the man taking the woman's name?

The best part is when one of your best friends fail to inform you about their new husbands surname. One day you get an email from a person you've never heard of. Happened to me the other day where I had to read the email twice thinking: 'Who is this person?' before it finally clicked it must have been my friend who got married in February.

The worst part is the actual meaning behind it. There used to be the custom that the father is giving away his daughter - to the new man. That basically meant to change ownership of the girl/lady/woman. You basically become the new property of your chosen loved one. What!? Not is that only sexist but completely discriminating.

I don't judge women who change their names, I just don't understand them. Is there something wrong with your own name? Do you not feel complete as a unit when not having the same surname? You already share your entire household and life with the other person - is that not enough?

Recent study shows that we are going rather backwards than forwards:
Men want women to be more traditional - and women 'are HAPPY to be the housewife'

That's very sad... and there are enough saddos out there who wish they had a 1950's wife!

I only know one couple where the man changed his name to hers because he liked her name much better. I thought that was a wicked decision, so well done to the Koenigs! You know who you are :)

So to conclude, the list seems to be getting longer - there are the bridezillas, the mumzillas and now also the wifezillas. Oh dear. This can only end in disaster.

But well done Liz!

A Saturday in Pictures

When I get to have a weekend off, which is rare, I try to catch up with my friends. Two weeks ago this happened on a Saturday AND Sunday, which is even rarer.

I started off with meeting Anna (top left), which was more of a meeting about her current project, but also a short catchup. We hadn't seen each other since her last performance in the Cochrane Theatre at the beginning of March, so we were catching up on recent events and decided when to do the editing.

Then I met Jess (top middle), a friend and also director who I've produced a film for in 2007/08. We met on Newington Green (bottom left) - yes it was a beautiful day which makes the Green even more beautiful - in a Café. Again partly to discuss her new project, a music video, which she asked me to produce, but also to catch up on life in general. This is when I found out that I am not the only one being fed up with life in London, or the current job situation. Jess felt the same way, but at least she's still in work. She's about to buy a flat, which means she needs a secure contract as well. I was surprised that she is also willing, like me, to take on really any job that would come along. It feels many people have come to the point that trying to make it in the film industry is not on the main agenda anymore. Although nobody wants to give up there is only so much determination you can keep up. I don't know maybe I'm wrong.

A few bus stops down the road I met my friend Tim (bottom right) - in Angel. We sat outside on the balcony of the Tinder Box. Very nice, but maybe a bit chilly in the shade. Tim had just finished his job at the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival and bought a new iPhone. So I first got the lowdown of the iPhone - he literally showed me all applications he had downloaded - and then the LLGFF lowdown. Very entertaining and good!

For Lunch - yes we are only talking 2pm here - I went to Camden Town to meet Vlad. So he gave me his view and lowdown on the iPhone, then how to shoot with cameras. I had my new stills camera on me so after we had eaten we took some pictures outside. Then we went to a small Portuguese place to have an espresso and typical cake from Portugal.

Around 7.30pm I stumbled home, exhausted from all the meetings and talking all day. Sunday I was expecting a friend from Bristol who I also hadn't seen in months. I knew I would have to talk much more that weekend.

My niece and nephew in March 2009

I can't believe I am blogging about something that just happened a week ago. Could somebody acknowledge that please! :)

So in between my 8 days (spread over two weeks) of interviewing I went to Bad Oeynhausen to see my sister and her family for the weekend. It was time to visit because my niece wouldn't recognise her aunt on a photograph shown to her by my sister just before my visit. I arrived really late on the Friday night cause I was interviewing till 7pm, and it took over 3 hours to get to my sisters place. So the kids were of course long gone to bed by the time I arrived. My sister, my brother in law and I sat down for a while and went to sleep pretty late. My sister also casually mentioned that Tim, my nephew, had turned into an early riser, but she had told him not to wake me up before 8am. Well that didn't happen, and prompt at 7.30am he woke me up both days, Saturday and Sunday.

Then it was kids full on for 3 days. The only time without them was when my sister and I went to our brother's house about an hour away. I didn't expect that to happen, so it was a pleasant surprise when we managed to go there. It's very rare that the 3 siblings get together just by themselves, in fact, it must have been the first time ever. Our parents were in Egypt far far away :)

On Saturday we went to Tim's first outdoor football match. Anna was playing with my sister and myself while Tim managed to shoot an own goal to make the final score of 3:3. The devastation was huge and the own goal was not to be mentioned again for the rest of the day. Luckily I had bought him a box of Lego Star Wars stuff, so he couldn't wait to get home and play with that.




Perfectly timed my niece also developed the chicken pocks that weekend. So anything in the area of 20m could have been terminated by her. Luckily the rest of us all had that as children. I told my sister, if I would have gotten ill that weekend my employer would have killed me. But also the downside was that we couldn't take her anywhere public anymore. In the short clip I am posting below she says: Mummy, I have never looked like this before! - Oh my god, she is so cute and adorable.

It was great seeing the kids although they were hard work. As I said Tim woke me up really early both days, and their mouths don't stop until they go to bed at 8pm. So when I got back to Hamburg on Monday evening I actually felt like having been hit with a hammer against my head. And I couldn't believe that I had to get up really early again to get ready for talking about laundry detergents again!

Two weeks of laundry detergents

After two months being out of work I finally went to Germany to start working on this market research project that was suppose to be starting in January. A small market research company based in London were looking for a German speaking Filmmaker - me! :)

The research involved going to Hamburg and interview 16 people about laundry detergents. It was qualitative research - I had to spent 4 hours with each person in the interview! So needless to say that I felt shattered after each day talking, filming and generally looking interested in laundry detergents. On the first day I thought I must die. The thought of doing this for 2 weeks didn't really appeal to me. So the first few days I thought of the good money I was making from this. But then it was actually ok. All the women and the one man I had to interview were really interesting. It sort of made me think about what I will buy as my detergent of choice in future.

All of them seemed to have done market research before, and obviously loved to talk. Maybe just a couple really seemed to have enough after 4 hours, the rest really didn't mind. I also had to ask about their lives and what makes them tick. Probably the oddest things was a lady passionately telling me about her husband's various jobs, like working in a sex shop on the Kitz, now being a shoe maker for transvestites and a body guard for a dominatrix. But all of them were really cool in their own way, many of them I would have loved to have a coffee with and talk about life and other stuff.

I haven't dreamed about detergent yet - phew - but that might change after having logged and digitised the 26 tapes I shot over those two weeks. I now have to log and digitise about 5 tapes a day. Today I managed to do 1. :/ But then I was still collecting the harddrive and deck for doing the work. Any excuse counts. Wish me luck.

ps: I also heard from those women that Klementine, the face of German Ariel advertising, died recently. So this is a tribute to her too.

New Home - first pics

2 weeks ago Alex and I left the relaxed vibes of Stoke Newington and moved to a lovely one bedroom flat on Hackney Road. It's living on a main road as well, but the house is a bit away from the road, and it's definitely less noisy than in the old flat. And we even got our own street lamp in the yard!

Our friend and now landlady Eleanor came on the first day to get the dishwasher fixed. She brought these flowers, and as you can see, the light in the living room is just to die for when the sun is out. Looooove It!!!

The main thing to move when it comes to my possessions are my books. After heavy moaning of the two men who had to carry my boxes - Alex and Jonathan - my apologies again! - this was also the first thing I put in its place. My book wall. And I love every single one of them :)

The one thing that comes second is of course getting connected. So on Monday the Virgin guys came. - that sounds a bit strange... Anyhoo, it took them a while to sort everything out, so I thought I'd catch the moment.