monday 1 – up late, katie and i watched the maypole going up at marienplatz, really boring, nothing happened for an hour and a half

had lunch at the commercial in fünf höfe then walked back together over the wies’n

sabs out at the isar as was eve

tuesday 2 – we’re a little worried about sabs, but have to trust all will be well

wednesday 3 – went to guitar, still very difficult on note reading for me

sabs up late studying for her geography klausur

saturday 6 – spent most of day setting up eve’s new laptop:
HP 255 G5
Prozessor: AMD A8-7410 4× 2,20 GHz, Turbo Boost bis zu 2,50 GHz
Festplatte: 256GB M.2 SSD
Speicher: 8192 MB DDR3-RAM
Grafik: AMD Radeon R5, 2048 MB
Betriebssystem: Windows 10 Home, 64 Bit

sunday 7 –

surfing about chip set comparisons as was considering intel pentium N3710 for sabs:
http://cpuboss.com/compare-cpus
http://www.tomshardware.com/t/cpus/

but AMD A8-7410 makes more sense, then notice even an better chipset in the following spec targeted for sabs:
HP 15
Prozessor: AMD A12-9700P, 4× 2,50 GHz, Turbo Boost bis zu 3,40 GHz
Festplatte: 256 GB M.2 SSD
Speicher: 8192 MB DDR4-RAM, 2133 MHz (2x 4096 MB)
Grafik: AMD Radeon™ R7
Betriebssystem: Windows 10 Home, 64 Bit

monday 8 – checking some links for smart cities:
http://meetingoftheminds.org/top-10-smart-cities/people-profit-planet
https://www.arcadis.com/en/global/our-perspectives/sustainable-cities-index-2016/

tuesday 9 – wake up a little troubled and go for run having annoyed katie with discussion about eve’s subjects choice for abitur

wednesday 10 – guitar was hard work to keep up/play along, come back and rest on sofa then help eve with her wirtschaft and recht about exchange rates – we illustrate with a made up game where i played a car importer in the US, eve playing the car manufacturer in Germany and then reversed roles for both strong and weak currency situations

she had an interesting if very confusing graph on it all which seemed a little wrong, but she wouldn’t believe that it was wrong – with such confusion, no wonder she is not keen on pursuing economics and law further, which is a shame as I think she’d be good at it

thursday 11 – got up and explained the graph very quickly again, it having made sense a little having slept on it

working out at gbr and it was quite a productive day

went to swimming, quite good tips from martina and enjoying it. It is easy to get there: 54 or X30 bus to brüdermuhlstr then u3 train from there of course, The tips are:
– not to bend arms in on water entry but let reach out
– to grab some water upon entry rather than letting arms sink

friday 12 – watching eve off as she rings the bell and i bring a brolly down since it is rainy, although clears up for the rest of the day
hard work getting 3 documents out but manage it in the end and pleased with the results all told

go to band practice, first time with the new bass guitar and it sounds good

saturday 13 – went over to augsburg to see pete and roz who are staying there on their way down to croatia and slovenia
had a nice walk around the hofgarten near the cathedral, then the cathedral itself, think i have visited before and has some lovely corners to discover
meal at haus am dom, a nice restaurant nearby

got RE train back on the bayern ticket

sunday 14 – practising the guitar over and over the same song until it stuck and was more or less error-free!

then getting sabs’ computer ready for her use, did a bit of it together which was nice, then she got pulled into homework

monday 15 – went out for run

collecting some quotes, some from team meeting:

“Das Schönste haben wir noch vor uns” patrick stresemann

“If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten” marete asak

“I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance” steve jobs

“The companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies who have no conception of a good product versus a bad product. They have no conception of the craftsmanship that’s required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product. And they really have no feeling in their hearts usually about wanting to really help the customers”
steve jobs giving an interview in 1995, having been weedled out at Apple by John Sculley and surmising that empires could crash and burn if the emphasis was purely on sales rather than on product.

https://www.unglobalcompact.org/what-is-gc/mission/principles

think about the differences:
Was ist Achtsamkeit und was reine Aufmerksamkeit und Entspannung?

tuesday 16 – went to office, met up with rainer, mile, lunch with dan

wednesday 17 – guitar was good if as always challenging, been getting up and doing an hour these last couple of mornings, but was still way too slow; renate mentioned about keeping everything loose and without any tension

thursday 18, munich to clitheroe – got sabs computer sorted out with printer and scanner, also more or less sorted out with respect to SW now, looks good on office and everything, windows 10 is quite user friendly with the tool bar below and windows menu pull-up for apps/games etc

reading george monbiot’s article on the plane over:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/17/dark-money-democracy-billionaires-funding

wonderful comment from farz3450:
“That people still can’t see that they have been duped is truly astounding, and a testament to the strength of human denial.”
later “many do realise but don’t care. Some realise but are too embarrassed to admit they’d been duped.”

had been following this article at the weekend

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy

makes striking reading whilst preparing for the citizen test and learning about the democratic system in germany, think the most disturbing quote is:
David Miller, a professor of sociology at Bath University and an authority in psyops and propaganda, says it is “an extraordinary scandal that this should be anywhere near a democracy. It should be clear to voters where information is coming from, and if it’s not transparent or open where it’s coming from, it raises the question of whether we are actually living in a democracy or not.”

or:
Tamsin Shaw, an associate professor of philosophy at New York University:
“The capacity for this science to be used to manipulate emotions is very well established. This is military-funded technology that has been harnessed by a global plutocracy and is being used to sway elections in ways that people can’t even see, don’t even realise is happening to them.”

we just made it to the swan and royal for my favourite meal there, a cheese and onion pie

afterwards they bring us a couple of drinks on the house

friday 19, just outside york – drove over to just outside York for the meeting with Katie’s family, was a nice relaxing afternoon with relatives from the Carr side, aka the Carr lunch!

We stayed overnight and picked up beer and sandwiches from a Co-Op shop in a nearby village then eat together in Susan and Robert’s room, which is next door to ours, so we move cups, plates and chairs to make it comfortable – was better than any of the pubs we’d tried to get into before deciding on this option.

saturday 20, just outside york and clitheroe – up a bit later than we wanted and bumped into Susan and Robert who were having breakfast.

Drove to visit my Mum, then over the tops to Blackburn to pick up the tiles with katie

then we go and visit mabel, followed by meal at the lower buck

sunday 21, clitheroe – katie drives to airport as i get started on a few jobs on the house

monday 22, clitheroe and skipton – take early bus to skipton to pickup the van from SSD, then drive up to uplands to help steve take stuff to the tip with pete’s neighbor janet
finish after 3 trips then go onto embsay for lunch with steve at the elm tree pub

drive over to bright street and do rest of the removals there, getting rid of the carpets and meeting up with first tiler giving us a quote, he’d forgotten about our appointment, as did the second one later in the week

tuesday 23, clitheroe and skipton – woke up to hear about the terrible tragedy at manchester arena at the ariane grande concert

drive over to skipton with van and drop it off then get next bus back to clitheroe

get a jigsaw from dawsons and start on some of the work, speak with geoff about a few jobs, including trying to get the washer firmly installed

start making a plasterboard frame to block up the gap next to the radiator, now that geoff has changed over the vents

wednesday 24, clitheroe – finish plasterboard frame in kitchen to close up the gap there

thursday 25, clitheroe – tiler comes with his mate to look at it

finish getting washer firmly installed with kieran, one of dave’s workers and the plasterer comes in to finish off including the frame in the kitchen

finish the surround over water pipes

visit collins and white and on the way bump into a guy doing some roofing work who gives me number of jigsaw renovations guy, another recommendation for a tiler

removed skirting in bathroom carefully

have meal in swan and royal, a lady was celebrating her 70th with her husband and the staff brought out some extra drinks and a cake, a nice gesture

after the meal they walk out and I notice that the lady forgot her balloon, so I let them know before they leave the pub

friday 26, clitheroe and skipton – remove bath with geoff

travel over on the bike in the sunshine, takes 1 hour 45 minutes

pick up the van and then john at duckett st

we visit mum and then drive over back to clitheroe, staying at the rose and crown pub on the main street, just down from Cowman’s sausage shop!

there’s a band on at the pub which we watch a bit of, the song “run” by snow patrol sounded good

saturday 27, clitheroe and skipton – met up with jigsaw/last tiler to be seen and he impressed in the details of what we now are looking at, with special considerations:
use of tanking kit to seal the fresh plaster (better would have been the right plasterboard in the first place, the green, waterproof stuff!)
lagging of the bath since cast iron baths can get cold quickly in winter
he does not recommend that the bath sits against the tiles since it has a lip, he recommends channelling out the bath into the plaster, so that no water can rest in between the lip and the wall
starting a layer of tiles high, so that a future layer of tiles can be installed, when a more modern bath without a lip is used, ie. against the bath as the second pair were recommending, was not so far wrong, bit as i wanted it, all tiled, only it doesnt suit the older style bath we have

drove over to merrit and fryers and dropped off the stuff which i didnt need then the lad and two men – josh, john and i sat on the bench in the little corner are at the bottom of upper sackville street eating our fish and chips – it must have looked like something from “last of the summer wine”

having dropped off john now to stay at margaret’s, I drove over then to blackburn to pick-up some more tiles

sunday 28, clitheroe and skipton – start lagging the bath which jigsaw had recommended for insulation, then leave in a rush to make it to the service at the baptist church where john wanders in from the front about half an hour in

have meal at the bay horse pub in skipton with everyone including celine, who’d suggested it: she got first choice due to upcoming birthday

went to visit mum and then rest of margaret’s set turn up and we play i spy in the quit dining room, getting told off for creating too much noise, but it was great fun and mum joined in a bit – hardest words to get were watering can!

get a small tin of enamel for bath from boyles in skipton then drop off van and prepare to cycle back, since it was threatening rain for the morning, which was another option

took about an hour and a half, visited mabel on the way back

monday 29, clitheroe to manchester to düsseldorf – get up early and still finishing off the lagging of the bath

went up town to get internet access, having a tea at the alice in wonderland cafe on moor lane, which was interesting

did a bit more work on house, then horrible journey to manchester airport leaving just before 3pm to get first train, then bus to bolton, then another bus to manchester picadilly, finally a train to the airport, everything messed up since manchester victoria was closed

needless to say flight to düsseldorf left late, there was late s-bahn into düsseldorf centre, i got moved from my hotel into another due to overbooking, what a journey, made it to bed just before midnight

tuesday 30, düsseldorf – some work at düsseldorf, then a late flight on air berlin back to munich

wednesday 31 – last night of guitar course before whit holidays