The Haircut
I have always detested having my hair cut. It seems such a bloody waste of time and besides, I really don’t like looking at myself in a mirror for 30 to 40 minutes. For this reason, I always tend to leave it a bit longer than I should. However, this morning I had my haircut. I go to an old fashioned barber’s shop in Prague where they really do a good job, use old fashioned blades and you get a good head massage as well. Of course, I had to look at myself sitting facing that mirror. Perhaps it was the background music – a mix of seventies and eighties classics like Meatloaf and Patti Smith. Perhaps it was just my mood and state of mind right now. Who knows?
Read More »Customer Service East of the Rhine….
I love living in the Czech Republic I really do. It is beautiful, relatively inexpensive (outside of Prague), full of very nice people and has great beer and food. One thing it lacks however is an understanding of what customer service is. When you live somewhere like the Czech Republic you really do begin to yearn for the American customer service experience. I say American because to be honest, British customer service isn’t all that great either…. but, its not this bad! Let me give you a small example. In an earlier post, I mentioned a bill for natural gas. The company in question is RWE, a major German energy company. You would think then that customer service would be high on the agenda of a company supplying energy to
Read More »Moving Back
At the end of this month, we will be moving back to Brno. Its just a couple of hundred kilometers down the D1 (main highway in the Czech Republic). We’ll be moving back into our place which means we might finally finish it. I will miss Prague mainly because of its open spaces. Behind us is a huge valley that goes on for miles and in front of us a huge park. Of course, there is the old city and the castle and …. well I could go on for a long time about Prague and how beautiful it is. But its also quite a big city and getting places takes time and is often inconvenient. Brno on the other hand is considerably smaller and to be honest, uglier. Its
Read More »People….
You have to wonder sometimes exactly how people think. We own (well the bank does actually but that’s by the by) an apartment in Brno. We will be moving back there in a couple of months. It’s the ground floor flat in a four story building meaning that we have three neighbors above us. Various services are shared between the tenants and accounted for at the end of each year such as common power, water and a cleaning. Really, the building is a microcosm of the world I should think. It’s like a bloody soap opera as well. The people who live at the top of our nice building seem to believe that the common funds are there to pay for their improvements. In the hallway outside of our front
Read More »Ice Symbols
Finally we have some snow here in Prague. As I look out of the window today of the room that serves for my office, it is that beautiful grey sky, leaden with intent, snowflakes falling gently and undisturbed whiteness everywhere. I love such days. Its forecast to be this way for a few days too so maybe we will get some sledging in before it all melts. Snow is marvelous if you think about. Unique crystals of the stuff that show the miracle of creation in every flake. A warm blanket of cold stuff for Mother Earth. Initially perfect in every way. I say initially because it melts eventually turning into freezing cold puddles of brownish mess. Before it melts, it gets hardened and compacted and covered with yellowish patches
Read More »A Phase
I commented somewhere recently – I am in a Goddess phase – and I really am. She is on my mind – I even had to write a poem about it. Today, I went down to the forest and, choosing a part of the path deep in the forest where a small stream passes, I called on Her. I lit and placed a small candle and left an offering. She was all around and everywhere. I have periodically dreamed of Her. She is the beautiful woman of my dreams. She is also the deep and strange fears that I harbor deep inside. More importantly, she is the inner me – my anima. She is every woman I meet. She is the temptress, the sexy vixen, the aloof and haughty woman,
Read More »Fog
This morning, for the first time in a very long time, it was really quite foggy here in Prague. We live at the top of a hill and it was quite bizarre driving up the hill into the fog. For a moment, my imagination was off and I half expected to emerge on the other side of the foggy wall in a parallel universe. Most disappointingly, I didn’t. When I was a boy, there seemed to be much more fog. Maybe there was as in industrial Britain of the 1960’s it was smog rather than fog that we were dealing with. Perhaps, it was just Hull situated between the coast and the River Humber on the flat plains of Holderness. Always damp and cold, fog just seemed a natural part
Read More »And Finally….
Yes…… the sun is shining here in Prague. The rain starts again tomorrow though. So, I am going to keep it short so I can sit in that strange thing called sunlight for just a little while. The Last Observer is selling already – very slowly but it has some pre-orders and this is great news….. Meanwhile, I am working on Astral Messages – a new book of poetry. Can’t stay still for a minute….. Nice weekend folks!
Read More »London Here We Come!
Well, unless by tomorrow early afternoon we are finally under water after all the rain we are having, I will be headed to London for a couple of days for a business trip. This most likely means I won’t post anything on my blogs….much to everyone’s relief. However, I did have a guest article published yesterday on Dee Doanes blog so possibly y’all could go check that out while I am gone??? Instead of writing I hope I will get to do some reading as I have loaded my iPad Kindle app with some good stuff….. Wonder if it will ever stop raining here in Prague? Normally by now I’d have a tan. This year I am rusting. See ya…
Read More »Tripping Down Memory Lane
The last few work days have seen me visiting innumerable websites of software vendors and service providers in the commodity trading and risk management space. Here I am sat in my apartment in Prague visiting the sites of all of the companies dotted all over the world and for 90% of these companies I have done some sort of business with them. Each site conjures up a whole bunch of memories going back 20+ years of people and places. It makes me feel somehow sad that so much time has passed and yet glad that I was lucky enough to visit these places and interact with many of these people. I was just visiting the website of a company in Calgary, Alberta. I used to visit Calgary and Vancouver perhaps
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