saturday 2 – reading about tidying up:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/an-economist-reads-marie-kondo/392921/

tuesday 5 – clearing out some cuttings and interesting quotes:
“Der Mensch ist ein Lauftier und kein Faultier”, Prof. Kladny, orthopedic surgeon, another doctor in the article (in tz) doctor emphasises need for compensating movements and no head tilting at phones and laptops – preferably position these at eye-level, so neck and head are more or less vertical.

thursday 7 – checking and Christine had sent a nice message to have a great year, and be blessed. This ended up being 3 treats throughout the day an email in the afternoon from Klaus and then Tosh came round briefly in the evening as we sat around discussing things and opening stuff, needless to say having to think of wishes:

My own wish is to appreciate, cherish and exhaust what I already have (become less consumerist and less environmentally impacting).
And a desire to create order to my life and complete those projects I start, rather than more chaos and more unfinished tasks.

went to huggendubl for lunchtime treat and had coffee and soft cheese bagel, overheard conversation with older lady seated in a luxurious armchair, surrounded by 2 younger girls who were listening to her and at times she made a few comments about what she’d want at her funeral, thought what a nice way of getting things sorted beforehand when she was still in command of her faculties

turned out to be my last visit to this huggendubl shop since it closed later in the year, so this visit was more special than i thought at the time

went to doctor’s in the evening and sat reading GEO from 11/2015 with 2 interesting articles:

a fashion designer, samson saboye asked what he found “beautiful” in a person and identified 6 properties:
Einstellung und Haltung
Selbstwertgefühle und Zuversicht
Respekt und Bescheidenheit.

an article about bread-making in germany where there are now only 13,000 bakers left who still make own dough, as opposed to taking frozen forms or delivered dough if part of a chain
long interview about an independent baker, whose aim is to make bread so tasteful that it reminds one of how bread tasted in childood – he was concerned how the major retailers are selling tasteless stuff assuming a dumb consumer
a few interesting facts:
white bread automatically means that gluten has been added
how to recognise bread which has been baked additive-free – ie. without enzymes, ascorbic acid
when additives are added, the rolls are pumped up and split, whereas those without additives are not split and smaller, compacter

friday 8 – still off work and clearing out office and making more pleasant, took following inkjet printer cartridges for recycling, over say 3 years of using the printer:
black hp 301s – 19, say 200€ worth
colour hp 301s – 16, say 150€ worth
total 350€ or about 7 times the cost of the printer, no wonder printer cost is so negligible these days.

monday 11 – arrived in the office and dan informed me about bowie’s death, big shock which dominates the news for the next few days

wednesday 13 – went out to meet Guan at Leopoldstr. he mentioned he was reading a book about Charlie Munger’s psychology. He has read 100’s of biographies – learning about what makes others successful or not, is a fast way to get smarter and wiser without a lot of pain, “I observe what works and what doesn’t and why”; as life happens as it does to all of us, but the difference is he thinks deeply about why things happen and works to learn from experiences.

Buffett says “investing is simple, but not easy”, Munger’s version of this is “take a simple idea and take it seriously”. Key is avoiding emotional and psychological mistakes.

thinking also about the RBS warning in the guardian yesterday and also worldwide a lot of turmoil from the far east – but what if they are completely wrong and asset prices, or at least of stocks, actually dip and then massively increase.

successful investors read voraciously, into the small print of reports etc

rely heavily on the Benjamin Graham system, graham is a true contrarian which takes both courage and calm, his system is:
1. treat a share in a company as a proportional ownership of the business.
2. buy at a significant discount to intrinsic value in order to create a margin of safety – since the one risk you cannot wholly eliminate is risk of being wrong, therefore only by insisting on a margin of safety, can this risk be minimised, ie. never overpay, no matter how exciting an investment appears.
3. make a bipolar Mr Market, your servant, not your master.
Mr Market is here a metaphor for the unpredictability in the short-term of the black/white nature of the stock market wherein it will sometimes sell an asset at a bargain and sometimes pay more than an asset is worth.
according to graham, the market is a pendulum swinging between unsustainable optimism and unjustified pessimism – the successful investor is a realist who sells to the optimist and buys from the pessimist.
4. be rational, objective and dispassionate.

develop discipline and courage, refuse to let mood swings of the market or other investors influence you, in the end, how your investments behave is much less important than how you behave

reading Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor, a nice quote which they wrote for women was “buy stocks like you buy groceries, not as you buy perfume”.

thursday 14 – flying up to hamburg for the day and meetings

friday 15 – snow was falling during the morning
working from office and a videocall with boss
dan plays some david bowie as the weekend nears and reading later yields some interesting links:
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jan/12/20-david-bowie-songs-you-dont-know-but-should
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/articles/d5c291be-258c-4217-922e-38f9d78de878?

saturday 16 – reading some emails and interesting quotes:
“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” Frederick Douglass

“Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.” William Faulkner

sunday 17 – doing some work on the digitisation and found two assisting programs in:
http://ffmpeg.org/
http://www.universalmediaserver.com/
still a few issues to iron out running DLNA on the mac, but is working from the NAS, the internet radio in the kitchen can read FLAC, the internet radio on the hifi needs mp3 or aac.

tuesday 19 – attended smart cities and sustainability webinar
http://cityminded.org/cal/human-capital-for-sustainable-cities
iottalent.org
http://cityminded.org/a-dutch-city-makes-room-for-its-river-and-a-new-identity-13348#comment-16971
more as ideas for sabs, but she was too busy to listen in

then went along to schubeck’s orlando for meal with team colleagues from spain

wednesday 20 – working at home, went to guitar, lots of focus on blues playing which is quite tough (shuffles, solos and blues ‘core’ elements)
went out for evening meal with spanish colleagues, petra and colin, first to spatenhaus opposite the opera, next to bar muenchen along maximilianstr. late back, since spent too much time trying to get u-bahn or s-bahn rather than going for night bus at sendlingertor, where one had just pulled off, took a taxi since the next was due in 50 mins. Taxi from there to margaretenplatz would be less than 10€, rather than going all the way round.

couple of phrases are standing out over last couple of days:
(advert for fitness club) “i am balance, power, passion, decision, energy”
(advert for 007 pen) “be exceptional”
(telefonica motto) “discover, deliver, disrupt”

thursday 21 – went out to work at hallberg and meet up with alberto and hector to complete our planning exercise

friday 22 – working at home, on line to beijing with guan to finish our responses

saturday 23 – some flac’ing, visited the salgado photo exhibition, got guitar stand from hieber-lindberg

sunday 24 – took older children to the salgado photo exhibition, helped by katie and sabrina to shepherd everyone on the tram, although they were remarkably well-behaved and streetwise, we were 16 in total, 5 “adults” and 11 from the class, seemed to go well all round, got the book to discuss further in the lessons

resting in the afternoon as had not slept so good

made flights booking for the summer at rewind and london

monday 25 – still feeling pretty lazy since start of year and this continues into this week as well

thursday 28 – stephan has infection so I’m not swimming (again!)

strong>saturday 30 – had a look round globetrotters for tents which they had on show, then went to gasteig then got back
afterwards went along to sportscheck which only had them packed away, then got back home and continued the flac digitisation work plus completing more bookings, for rewind and the london hotel

sunday 31 – katie playing at church went along and reiner preaching, talking about the song amazing grace and its writer’s background, john newton as slave, then slave manager, then campaigner for slaves’ freedom
how grace can be interpreted in many ways, maybe best is not as something patronising but simply as “nonetheless”, don’t remember sources of quotes, here is the sermon though:
http://peacechurch.de/Amazing_Grace.pdf