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 ☺
