thursday 1 – lovely first day of the month, fresh sharp sunshine, perfect oktoberfest weather, although I haven’t been yet and it doesn’t look like I’ll get there this year.

went to Waterboys concert at freiheiz in the evening with kats, we enjoyed listening to Freddy Stevenson as warm-up, interesting guitar arrangements, each song different whether strumming or picking; accompaniment was a girl on harmonium and older guy on fender, his side was a little quiet but it worked well and all half a dozen songs were good to excellent

hall was full of older set, a lot of brits for the main act, all members of the band were pretty old, especially ryhthm of bass and drums; keyboardist (hammond sounding organ?) and violinist were real virtouosos and enjoyed it from start to finish and of course, mike scott, had massive stage presence. some good songs and the couple of classics.

friday 2 – reading in the “long” weekend SZ which katie had bought for sunday school, about what typical germans eat and drink, for instance:
per day a man eats around 100g and a woman 50g of meat
per day a bavarian drinks 350ml of beer and a woman 60ml; although overall the figure for the year is 106l across germany; whereas in Czech republic this is 154l.

in an interview with Axel Milberg, talking about Agression (he mentions Jesper Juul) and recites a quote from Charles Bukowski:
“We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other. But it doesn’t. We are terrorised and flattened by trivialities. We are eaten up by nothing.”

saturday 3 – getting up early on call until noon

reading reference on handsfree site, to a book called – “30 lesssons for living” by karl pillemer, comments/ideas:
“appreciated the lessons on honesty and saying yes to opportunities … get more out of life and have fewer regrets.”
see review section of the blog

reading the review, someone had added 5 of their own:
1. Treat your body like you’ll live to 100.
2, Balance work with play; don’t forget how to have fun and do it, play like a child.
3. Find something that you love to do and do it.
4. When doing something you enjoy; slow down and really become a part of where you are and what you are doing.
5. Keep a stash of “mad money.” And use it to make yourself or someone else happy.

we went on a walk along the river, eve wanted to walk with katie, which gave us a laugh from what she said, about how to form a song from the line:
“and i just want to walk,
with you again.”
and what we could rhyme it with, “not you again”, “it’s you again” etc.

sunday 4 – not feeling too good, too stressed from work and stuff to do

monday 5 – reading in the newpapers that the oktoberfest was 400k visitors down from the previous couple of year’s figures, 6.3/6.4M, interestingly especially the first week was quiet and the italians came for the last weekend, not the middle weekend – just as I had felt from observations.

setting off to krakow, stressed with this hackathon going on till 23rd october

took train from airport, noticing how the metal “sleepers” are curved, interesting concept for providing strength not only laterally
the conductor on the train was so happy and even helped mothers with their prams on to the train train!

initial impressions – very modern transport, airport and rail system, if a little smaller scale than munich; bit disorganized or poorer service however, eg. at cafe for lunch, but incredibly cheap

tuesday 6 – in krakow for the hackathon event, then went on a whistle stop tour of the sights before stopping for a couple of beers with aliaksandr and evgeni

wednesday 7 – mad rush to get flight, after combination of bad judgement: left late without checking in, got off tram too early, then too late, train to airport was late and the check-in was quite a way from departures, still made it just!

got back for about 4.15pm very tired then went to VHS for start of guitar course again

friday 9 – went to programming course after going out to office

saturday 10 – went to breakfast at zöttl on the corner with katie, as the girls were overnighting for the book event. picked up stuff for run tomorrow, then some shopping from edeka on the way back, then went to pick up the girls.

watching strictly didn’t work this time, so we made our own entertainment by singing, eve was hilarious at “this landis your land” in a country drawl with the guitar

sunday 11 – made fruit yoghurt for breakfast, eve so loves this, said it makes me the best dad and that i have to make it for her wedding, which i agreed to!

went for 10km at the muenchen marathon as usual the wonderful feeling of running into the stadium and this time savoured the delights of schneider-weiss tap 7, my times were destroyed by a very slow 1st km to get out of the narrow lane of joggers, it took me over 6 minutes, which made it impossible to make up for getting near to 50 minutes, but interesting to see that i was faster in second half:
5 km 00:27:08 27:08 05:26 11.06
Netto 00:53:46 26:38 05:20 11.26
so around 5m 20s per km, sure I can work on that.
interestingly looking at the AK50, under 50 mins would get around the top 30, i came in at 52 out of 180, not bad but at the end of the day, you only get out what you’ve put in in training

friday 16 – went to programming course at the MVHS
reading the SZ New York Times insert for today with an article by David Brooks on “Inspiring Education”, his main points for American Universities (which were founded on spiritual and moral principles, but are now largely secular and to offer something additional, now that the distribution of information is commoditised with the internet (witness the courses you can do online and obtaining nano-degrees etc.). He offers suggestions to break away from the narrow professional/academic disciplines and leave a mark on the full human being, bringing out something more philosophical, transcendental.

sunday 18 – harvest festival, the usual mayhem as the auction takes place, but it get done with for about 2.15 and raised €2400, a record. Christine quoted from a social media link which said
“if you have more than you need, build a longer table, not a higher fence”

tuesday 20 – we watched “big eyes” about a female artist, whose work was wrongly credited to her then partner in the 50s and 60s

friday 23 – miscellaneous links via linkedin to:
http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/10-reasons-people-really-don-t-like-you-and-how-to-fix-that.html
http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/6-habits-of-remarkably-likeable-people.html
http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/8-habits-of-remarkably-successful-people.html

whilst reading about:
Jeremy Rifkin’s “The Zero Marginal Cost Society”

saturday 24 – we talk about the tudor period in english history, triggered by the 400th anniversary of Agincourt as mentioned in Henry V and teh wrecking of good which Henry VIII wrought, all trying in vain for a son.

am having to work on a document with guan but reading some book reviews/summaries: William B Irvine, the philosopher has a wonderful quote in his book “On Desire: why we want what we want”:
“Little is needed to make a wise man happy, but nothing can content a fool. That is why nearly all men are miserable.” also:
“All the passions cause us to make mistakes, but love is responsible for the silliest ones.”
by Francois duc de La Rochefoucauld

sunday 25 – took middle ones in sunday school, went ok, happiest when they were making the paper TV with pull through pictures or learning to tie a tie or shoelaces.

“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”
(Walt Disney)

monday 26 – went out to office and called to clarify bahncard situation, although i had cancelled less than 6 weeks to end of contract, payment was by vorkasse and since i didn’t do the transfer payment, the system simply cancelled and cleaned up the details of the reminder for payment and debt processing etc. Called at 8.45am and Herr Altmann confirmed definitely that it was ok simply to purchase a new card from date needed and everything would be rectified and it definitely wouldn’t land in an Inkasso (debt situation) or that it would be backdated. So am basically free to choose again what best suits.

wednesday 28 – working out of office on the proposal with guan

went to guitar course, still learning the melody to ’yesterday’

thursday 29 – again out at the office

we watched singing in the rain in the evening, as saby so wanted to, hadn’t realised there so many things in the first half hour, also what a hotch potch script it is

friday 30 – last python course and then back for mozarella pizza
girls watching a tv series together which katie had got them for the holidays, funny they seem to get raucously well now, having gone through the troubled patch when eve was getting too sloppy for sabs’ tastes and they were fighting one another about 2 weeks ago

saturday 31 – girls chatting away quiet happily at breakfast like best pals

went to research a new notebook for katie at saturn – the smaller/cheaper ones all seem like toys and am glad i didn’t buy a larger 15” one on spec, because that is way too big for our needs. got collared by a person with orange specs on looking like bono on the asus stand, as i was quite keen to get the same make, the EeePC has served us well, eh showed the range, but the entry level models look and feel like toys, the detachable screen turning into a tablet, impressive at first, bit gimicky.

went to look at b-b-q sets for sabs birthday bash she is planning and fortunately bauhaus has them in stock, a nice portable one which takes smokeless wood-based fuel, then as look would have it, decided to look into staples and hit upon a winner with the notebook:
Toshiba Satellite L10W-B-101 29,5 cm (11.6”) with spec:
Intel Celeron N2840 (2 GHz, mit Turbo-Boost bis zu 2,58 GHz 1 MB 2nd level cache)
TruBrite HD TFT Touch-Display, HD Webcam, HDMI and USB
Akku: 5 Stunden Akkulaufzeit, 2 Zellen Li-Ion Akku
fitted the bill perfectly, screen is attached but goes a full 360 degrees into a tablet.

got back and katie was making the tea, pasta with kurbis from the veggie book, another hit, both with the meal and the new notebook!

shared a mini bottle of wine between us, watching strictly – my how times have changed for my alcohol consumption

we got 2 visits from children trick or treating, 3 from inside the house and 3 from outside, was nice to see them all dressed up and putting in the effort

later about 11 ish, eve arrives back with all her mates from chatting on the stemmerwiesn and generally getting cold!

sink into bed, been really tired this month, all brought on by that early rising to see the moon at the end of september!