friday 1 – went to art exhibition “strokes”, as sabby wanted to visit

wednesday 6 – travel up to düsseldorf for meeting, train came to a halt and we had to go over a makeshift walkway to the adjacent train to travel further, delayed 1.5 hours and only just in time for meeting

thursday 7 – swimming and back in the middle lane with stephan and bruno, managing to get lapped only twice in the evening.
we did 1l breast, no legs, 1l free, 1l breast, 2l free, building up to 6 coming back to 1 again, then repeating, which we didnt finish of course, but wow, it is building the endurance

tried to go to bed as early as possible

friday 8 – after being restless but sleeping as much as possible, got up at 4.30am to watch the results of the election come in

reading the inevitable blurb after the election and was watching the bbc coverage with andrew marr, this quote from the guardian about what he said:
“Some of the sharpest commentary on the BBC election programme is coming from Andrew Marr, who is effectively back in his old political editor role. He has just made the point that electoral reform has traditionally been a leftwing cause. Now, in the light of what has happened to UKIP, it is set to become a rightwing cause.”

actually this mirrors, what I’ve been saying/hoping will happen, that voting reform won’t come from the left, but the right ie. UKIP side

in terms of fairness, conservatives on 36.9 get 51% share of MPs, whereas in 2005, this was 35.2 vote share and 55% share of MPs.

saturday 9 – inheritance tracks from mary porter
van morrison – into the mystic
gavin clarke – folk singer

still quite “hungover” and blue (bad phrasing) at the results of the election, don’t know where to start so will leave comment for now

sunday 10 – mrrc olympiapark triathlon results:
Schwimmen 00:07:40, actually pretty good time, last year’s was 07:56 and the year before at 07:44
WZ-1 00:02:07
Rad 00:45:55
Nach Rad 00:55:44
WZ-2 00:02:22
Laufen 00:24:51
total: 01:22:58
52nd out of 99 for age group

nice quote from hands free mama on this mothers’ day – had got some flowers and been to get croissants from the u-bahn today to smooth it along.
“It’s what you’ve done with your time, how you’ve chosen to spend your days, and whom you’ve touched this year. That, to me, is the greatest measure of success.” ― R.J. Palacio, Wonder

still some aftermath of the election forecasts:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/10/tories-govern-alone-britain-2020

monday 11 – It’s sickening listening to the BBC, they seem to bury any debate on legitimacy for example FPTP pdq. (and for all the arguments the tories said about labour and snp being illegitimate!!), but they have always done this as they did with Brown and just solidify the party in power, pure main stream puppets of the system.

tuesday 12 – thoughts springing up still about the election and farage’s comment about beginning to see that the root of the problems with westminster are to do with the FPTP system, am beginning to feel actually it is much deeper than that, bec. of the anger and powerlessness i feel, as must be replicated 1M times, that this is the root of the problems with the country! people feel disconnected, not listened to, alienated, frustrated which leads to all sorts of problems, tax evasion on the right, social unrest on the left

wednesday 13 – go out to the office, pick up good book suggestion from ute:
ulrich cuber: linux scripting, franzi

thursday 14 – father’s day/day off from work
went to german restaurant on lindwurmstr. and had the whole restuarant to ourselves, lovely atmosphere and discussion about china plans etc

eve mentioned just how she felt fortunate to have parents like us, then annoyed that we hadn’t acknowledged it or appreciated it – perhaps it’s because for me, i realise that although we do our best, we have made mistakes and there are regrets

sabs talked about how she saw a busker singing “il mondo” in south africa and how it reminded her of me, was touched and said i was getting to like that song even more

friday 15 – working at home until 3.15pm then go to hi-fi show with jens

saturday 16 – wiling away some time chewing over the guardian and also some old newspaper cuttings about the “black spider memos” from prince charles – a calligraphist, says his style – complete words and curved letters – indicates a desire to take things to completion and to want to communicate, am contrasting this with my own handwriting and wondering how valid this appears.

trying to repair the motor on the turntable without success

helping eve with her homework, about dublin, she has to stand up and talk for a minute about the city, so we talk about the history of ireland and some famous dubliners, including james joyce

repairing the puncture in Eve’s back tyre, attempting inner tube repair, if not have to replace it’s a Kenda 700×35/43C

go for swim before tea, becoming the usual core of 3x400m now interspersed with warm-up 200m and 2x100m between 400s crawl legs, crawl arms using paddles and snorkel, seems to help and keep some variety

take eve’s fixed bike to see if the puncture repair had worked and it looks good!

after tea sitting down in the living room reading and eve comes in with her beautiful book which she has made of photographs of the family and the various outings; she explains it all and it is clear she feels so grateful – i tell her why we maybe were not so touched by her comments previously, because we know we make mistakes

sunday 17 – go to hi-fi exhibition again and attend a couple of lectures

just going through some links:
http://www.handsfreemama.com/2015/05/15/a-list-worth-printing-posting-remembering-living/
http://www.poetrysoup.com/poems/
http://www.story-telling-around-the-world.com/

tuesday 19 – interesting guardian article, could also have applied about the election:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/18/britain-political-elite-fooled-us-again

thursday 28 – paul visited to go through ideas for his house renovation project, sat outside to eat at kebapo, girls all away – eve at tonhalle with katie and finia – they were going to a youtube gang tour event – loud music with lads rapping and jigging about, eg. apecrime

friday 29 – someone on the today program in the business section from 7 to 7.30am talking about UK at 15% renewable energy being produced and the fall in price over the last 3 years for solar by a factor of 8 (thinking about that article by Thomas Friedland)!

funny email signature:
No trees were harmed in creating this message.
However, a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

saturday 30 – go to http://hifitreffpunkt.de/
to listen to Block CVR100+ through the B&W CM5 which Jens is considering buying, unfortunately, fell in love with another DAC to test, what is good about this is the ability to complete replace an analogue pre-amp (eventually!), which would then feed into the creek power nicely, oh, can’t wait to try it!
http://exposurehifi.com/products/item/2010s2-digital-to-analogue-converter.html

having to work in preparation for the next 3 weeks of testing in London

made eve’s pudding for tea after the brocoli bake which Katie made

sunday 31 – hard at work, then go for swim to get rid of some energy and stress
“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” Thomas A. Edison