A more positive tone...

Well after my annoyance at losing the entire "Time Flies..." post a few weeks ago it took me more than a few days to get back to trying to write it all again.... and naturally that process kept falling by the wayside with other things to focus upon... work, work, work and occasionally the family!

I've decided to drop that post from mind and blog for now, as it was rather weary in tone and basically consisted of a mini rant about how work continues to consume far too much of my precious family time. Which is true, but I'm not sure it was going to come across as anything other than a whinge, and nobody likes a whinger after all, so today I'm going to reflect on some positives and remind myself of how lucky a blighter I am, generally. As a normally-positive person I think I should show that side off instead.

Family wise things are super; my wife tolerates and loves me even when I'm being a right pain in the neck and spending far too much time on work stuff, and the kids just humble and delight me every day.

My eldest, Gummisen, beat me in an across-the-car-park race this morning when I dropped her off at Kindergarten. She remarked, after I had been soundly beaten let her win, that "you are EVEN slower than Flisan (who is two...) at running Daddy". To hammer the point home, she switched to German, which has become her wont of late, and said "Du bist soooo langsam, alte Mann" (you're so slow, old man). Clearly, wearing work shoes and having had a late night which included a big steak and a brandy yesterday meant this was no contest, and the rematch will result in her being shown a clean pair of running shoe heels. In the meantime I will stock up on sugary carbs by eating all of her advent calendar chocolate tonight as a punishment for beating me.

Flisan is rejoicing in her role as the middle child. Loves her big sister like the hero figure she truly is, and shares toys with her on the understanding that Gummis has the ultimate power of phsyical and mental superiority anyway if it comes down to it. First words from her mouth most mornings are "where is Gummisen?" which brings a gladness to my heart that I can't quite explain. To see my children rejoicing in each other's company and attention hits chords inside me I didn't realise I had.

Flisan's older sister role, to Gubban the all-eating all-exploring "baby" boy (he's about the size of a 16 month old, at 10 months...) is less simple. When he was a younger baby and therefore not mobile or able to investigate things quite so actively, he was seen as the cute baby brother, to be stroked and occasionally cuddled. Now, he has suddenly gained the ability to move and hence crawls about at light speed, finding things to play with which might be, in Flisan's opinion, hers. Or at least, she may have earmarked them for playing with at some point in the next day or so. Hence a quick "Nej nej nej Gubban" ensues and a rather quick grab of said item, which then elicits a yelp of frustration from Gubban who, it must be said, is soon going to be big enough and strong enough to hold his own in any tug-of-war contest among the kids. Deep joy. I can sense I need to brush up on my conflict resolution for kids skills. Lucky I work with so many children :) So Flisan is in a strange spot, where she wants to keep liking this cute little brother but can't abide by his downright cheek and thiefery when it comes to toys. Hopefully only a phase!

Gubban is just in that "wow look at THAT" phase about everything. This is quickly followed by the "can I eat it?" question and exploratory nibble / chew, and if this test fails the "can I make a noise with it?" issue arises, followed by clonking said item on the floor. Not ideal if he's just found your mobile.... He is also really enjoying being able to communicate a bit more, and is a non stop babbler with lots of "daddapappamommayehyehyeh" combinations that make me wonder if we have the first Swenglish rapper in the making here...

It's Non Farm Payroll day today, when the USA tell us how many more unemployed Joes there are over there. Traditionally the busiest day of the month and one that has got my trading juices flowing a lot over the years. Today though I just want to get through it and get home to see what the kids have in store for me tonight, followed by a 5-month-delayed joint birthday party for the girls (Gummis fell from a climbing frame the day before the last party was planned and we spent a night in the hospital as a result...) . I do wonder what Gubban is going to make of 20 sugar-dosed 4 year olds wanting to play with him :)

Time flies when you're having fun....

Arrrrgh I just lost the entire post.... having a problem with the font size and for some reason losing the drop down menu to sort this.... I highlighted the reams of text I had typed (in order to try and resize them....) and somehow deleted the entire page...precisely 1 second before the Autosave now feature helpfully kicked in and rendered my draft of this post completely blank.
Rowlocks.
I'm off to bed, rather peeved. I'll come back tomorrow with Time Flies Mk II.
Grrr.

Get(ting) the balance right...

Almost the name of an early Depeche Mode song (a favourite band over the last 20 years I confess..), the opening lyrics of which are:

There's more besides joyrides,
A little house in the countryside,
Understand, learn to demand,
Compromise and sometimes lie (get the balance right, get the balance riiiiight... )

Back when I just thought this was a cool song to throw shapes to (although in fairness that was never really the point with DM tracks - I just liked the music and didn't really 'get' the darkness, eroticism or satire of any of their stuff until, ooh, last year :)) I didn't realise quite how relevant these opening lines would become later in my life.

Now I'm in my mid 30s and "successful" in my chosen career, with three children and a wife that puts up with me pretty well, I am finding myself assessing the work/family balance more often than ever before.

So, about those lyrics...

Back in the day, I was a bit of a joyride kind of chap. Not the stealing cars kind of joyride (although in the part of Birmingham I grew up in, it was indeed a very popular pastime..), but certainly the kind where "my wheels" were very important to me, and I tended to gauge which rung of the success in life ladder I was on by the speed and snazziness of my motorised transport. I can still remember being absolutely gutted inside when my wife (at the time my brand new girlfriend) asked if my Alfa GTV V6 was "some kind of sports car?". I mean, it did 0-60 in about 6 seconds, had a V6 engine that sounded like it ate small children and, well, back then it was one bloody sexy car to have. Those words were perhaps the first sign that life would change in a manner that would render the number of horses under the bonnet rather less important than the number of seats in the back!

We are in fact about to take delivery of a new "car". This description is perilously close to breaking various goods description laws I am sure, but it does have four wheels and it drinks diesel and, well, it kinda resembles a car. With a small village inside it. The "people carrier" behemoth will arrive in a few weeks time, and with it the certain knowledge that my speed induced joyriding days are over.

Still, this is something I am happy to "give up" because what has come in the place of fast cars and motorbikes is a family that makes even the most sedate drive to the shops a joyride in itself. Even when there are not comedy moments like the "Nottthiiiing" episode going on, just knowing that my growing collective of great little people are (probably up to no good) in the seats directly behind me makes me smile inanely to myself. I look like a bit of a loon when I am driving you understand.

The little house in the countryside.... Well there's something that would be nice actually! That said, the kind of house we live in is rather less important to us these days than where we live. Proximity to playgrounds, parks, kindergartens, schools, shops and of course Starbucks are of paramount import. When all of these things turn up in the middle of the countryside, that little house is a done deal!

Understand, learn to demand... Nothing changes one's ability to understand different points of view like moving in with a partner, and then having kids. Many years ago, it took me a long time to understand why my discarded socks lying on the lounge floor for two days (or more if I am honest!) annoyed my soon to be wife, although I eventually got to grips with her viewpoint.
Now I find myself regularly jabbering after the kids about discarded clothing and they make NO EFFORT to understand my view! Honestly, kids today. I blame the parents. Anyway, my understanding of just about everything in life has changed exponentially in the last decade; I'm happy to have had my perspective broadened by the kids in the latter part of this, and will strive to make sure that I do really understand their viewpoints when I ground them for bad behaviour in the future :)

Demanding things has never been my strongest point, at least not in an outright sense. I think in the early days of our relationship I probably demanded quite a bit of patience from my wife (see sock issue above for example!), but overall I am generally demanding by behavioural omission rather than by requisition. This has begun to change, as I find myself demanding that Gummisen's teeth be brushed or demanding that I get signoff for recruiting a new team member at work. Perhaps due to my lack of practice in the pastime of making demands I do tend to find that I am thus far rather ineffectual at it. The kids being able to wind me round their little fingers is clearly not a help on the home front! It is a work in progress...

Compromise is something that has had to feature regularly on the agenda in my household over the last decade too, sometimes as a result of my not being good at making demands, and sometimes due to the everyday stuff that comes with a busy family life.

Of late, I have been rather pushed around on a professional front despite trying to demand otherwise; this has led to my family having to compromise a lot of the time, with me spending more and more time on work related matters and spending increasing amounts of time either in the office or typing like buggery on the damn crackberry. Compromise is actually meant to be a concession by both sides, so where my family gives up seeing me for dinner or kids bath and bedtimes a few nights a week, my employers should return the favour by allowing me to start late a few days a week so that I can have breakfast with the kids and take one or two of them to kindergarten / playgroups. Needless to say, I am working on the rather unfulfilled latter part, not aided by the current environment in the banking world and my relatively recent promotion to global Spot monkey herder (which apparently has to consume at least 16 hours of your life every day or you are not doing it right!).

Lie? Me, well, I have been known to fib on occasion but generally I try to avoid this behaviour. It would probably make my life easier sometimes, certainly on the working front, but I find it makes me feel quite uncomfortable and weary. I recently was forced into some pretty duplicitous behaviour in my work role, and found it to be extremely stressful and unpleasant. Some managers evidently find this a relatively easy behaviour to live out - perhaps I'll always be limited by my unwillingness to do it, who knows?

Where this whole post leads is to the balance (Daniel San, I want to add when I hear that expression - Karate Kid is scarily one of my most oft-quoted movies...). Right now, my balance-o-meter is pointing firmly in the favour of the work part of my life. Granted, the aforementioned promotion was expected to carry with it a certain amount of extra workload; my predecessor and good friend Somnam was always in the office later than most people, and I know he took a fair chunk of work home with him too. However, banking circles have changed a lot in the last year and there is now a great possibility that the bonus payments which used to make the level of commitment demanded by this kind of role more acceptable are no longer on the table.

The crunch point I guess is whether the balance is right when you consider the equation :

time spent working plus remuneration (and sense of professional pride) minus time missed with family = happiness? or?

I'm definitely enjoying certain aspects of my expanded role, and generally prefer to be challenged in the workplace. Challenges are certainly not hard to find at work right now; I am juggling more issues than I care to think about too closely at this just-before-bed hour!
I also enjoy all aspects of being with my family, and definitely prefer to be involved and present whenever possible. Spending a week in Asia recently with another one to come and various other "absolutely necessary" trips during the next quarter makes a big dent in the family part of my life, and I am struggling to convince myself whether the equation will ever be properly balanced up by my employers. Maybe I am lying after all, to myself....

I could do with Mr Miyagi stopping by for a quick lesson on finding the balance, UDH San....

The best bit....

Like most things in life, how I feel about travelling changes as I get older and my priorities and outlook change.

As a youngster, the best bit about going on holiday was the anticipation and the START of the trip. Like Christmas eve, I could never sleep properly the day before we went off on holiday, and the excitement of travelling to the airport, and then getting aboard the plane, often seemed to outstrip anything that followed during our week or ten days in Magaluf . I remember being particularly excited about the taxi-ing and warm-up of engines part, rather than the take off itself. Even ear popping on the descent was something I looked forward to!

As time wore on, I began to enjoy the 'middle bit' of travelling most, particularly when my wife and I got married abroad and spent a fantastic few weeks in sunny luxury and the worries of the world were distant. We are fortunate to have been able to travel to a lot of nice places in arelatively short space of time and I cherish the relaxed and romantic memories as travelling with the family obviously changes that to quite an extent!


Travelling with the kids has several especially good bits in fairness - normally the first one is the "aaah... we're finally sorted" part of having arrived at our destination and got the little treasures to bed. Our last holiday had a particularly good part early on in the trip when our eldest girl, having had a sudden and irrational fear of getting into swimming pools that lasted for 18 months, suddenly decided it was brilliant again, and that Daddy and middle girl had to join her at every waking moment. The pride I felt as she thrashed her way along with a veritable assortment of flotation aids attached, shouting "I'm swimming I'm swimming" will never leave me.

Getting home again with the kids is also a triumphant moment, especially if the return trip has gone smoothly, without any projectile vomiting on the plane or tantrums or little people getting lost in the airport. We're blessed (touch wood) with three kids that have thus far been pretty tranquil about travel, so generally we get back to chez UDH feeling pretty happy about the whole experience.

Travelling alone for business has one truly good bit. The coming home bit. I've spent a week or thereabouts away from home now and it feels like a year. I fully expect to find Flisan, my middle one, has dyed her hair green and got a nose ring, and that my eldest Gummis has started dating a kid that plays in a rock band at school. My little boy Gubban, who was 3 and a bit months old when I left a week ago, is probably walking and all of them will have steadfastly forgotten who I am.

Thankfully I had a super-enjoyable last 5 hours in HK, systematically trying to shift some wealth from Germany to HK in the form of credit card obliteration, and the assortment of presents for all will hopefully refresh their memories.

I've missed them all SO much. The best bit is definitely the coming home bit.

Hong Kong (not) Phooey?

As a young kid I always thought the Phooey part of 'Hong Kong Phooey' was a naughty word along the lines of a 'number two'. (I think in hindsight it was related to our hero's Kung Fu skills, but you never know...).

As an adult, or at least as a 27 year old FX trader (which some would say is more along the lines of a 15 year old pre pubescent boy...) I visited HK for the first time and began to wonder if Phooey really related to the stinkyness and unpleasant fug that lingered perpetually in the air there (unless it was raining like the world was going to end...).

So it was something of a surprise to visit HK this last week and find a lot less smog than London has and clear blue sunny skies on several days. It seems that the closures of so many mainland factories in neighbouring provinces, along with some half-serious attempts to cut down on industrial air pollution, have completely changed the mucky face of HK and allowed the sun to shine on this amazing city once again. I also couldn't help noticing that the streets were much cleaner than I'd remebered from the previous trip - perhaps the Chinese regime is harder on litter louts than the Brits were (handover was just a year before my last visit)?
I was astounded that HK Park has a crystal clear lake, devoid of even a scrap of litter and the massive Koi carp mooching about in the sun didn't appear to be under threat of being fishnapped into a dustbin and turning up on eBay.(Its happened in Hampstead!)
Meanwhile the expat community is declining as the banking world capitulates and the uber-rich elite local Chinese landlords nervously eye rental rates that used to reach eye-watering levels ratchet lower and bigger percentages of their portfolios sit empty than ever before.
HK is bizarrely on the way up and down at the same time, but for the short term visitor appears to be a much nicer place to be than it was 10 years hence.

Literally...

Having three small kids is great.

It's bloody tiring (my wife cops for more of that side than I do in fairness as she's nursing our 3 month old boy, "Gubban", whilst I do any nighttime requests for the girls, who are 21 months, "Flisan", and 3 yrs 9 months old, "Gummisen" or "Gummis"), but you never stop learning new things or seeing life in a whole new perspective. The names by the way are their Swedish nicknames as my wife is Swedish. Still not entirely sure about putting their real names on a blog so that'll cover them for now :)

The amount of speaking and listening in a literal (and logical, really) sense that gets done is mind boggling.

Tonight my wife asked Gummisen, having found a box of contraband candy stolen from a visiting playmate hidden in her room, if she "had anything to tell Mummy?". Funnily enough the pause and reddening cheeks betrayed her protestations of innocence, and she came around quickly to the fact she had some "godis" (Swedish for sweets) in her room.

"Where were they?" I asked, actually directing the question at my wife but getting a quipped but quiet answer from Gummis "errr, under my pillow Daddy".

"Why did you put them there Gummisen?".

"So Mummy would not find them....". Ask a dumb question, get a straightforward answer!

Poor Gummis has copped it a bit from Flisan of late. The younger lady is learning to play together quite well, but still has the limited attention span and occasional "clonkiness" of a toddler that makes it hard for them to play together for any length of time. Still, this does not stop her from trying, so when Gummis is a bit bored of her younger sister and makes a break for freedom, Flisan has taken to deliberately winding her up, in an effort to regain her attention and "make" her play with her again.

This effort is sometimes not without amusement for the adult audience, even though Gummis would not appreciate the funny side. A few days ago, after taking Flisan in the car to pick Gummis up from Kindergarten, my wife felt it was a shame for Gummis that Flisan basically shouted LALALALALALALAAAAAAAALALALALALALALAAAAA at her incessantly in order to try and force her to engage. Gummis was trying to have a little bit of quiet "come down" time after a particularly frenetic morning playing so got genuinely upset and kept begging Flisan to be quiet. My wife somehow defused the situation, and then told Gummis in a semi-conspiratorial tone that, next time Flisan kept doing the LALALA treatment the best way to get her to be quiet was to say nothing. Gummisen, ever the conscientious learner, asked if Mummy was sure, would that really work? My wife reassured her that the best way to make Flisan stop with the loud LALALA stuff was just to say nothing to her.

The next day, during the post-kindergarten trip, Gummis again had to endure some LALALAAAAAAs of stentorian nature, before she remembered the advice her Mummy gave her the previous day. Quickly and calmly she turned to Flisan and said "Nothing. Nothing. NOTTTTTHIIINNNNG. NOTHING NO..... This is NOT working really Mummy. NOTHING, NOOOOTTTTHING Flisan. Flisan, I SAID NOTHING!!".

As the LALALALA / NOOOTTTHING battle raged in the back of the car my wife was spluttering her coffee all over the car and trying not to cry....

London stalling

Today I zipped back to London for about 8 hours, and realised that I am missing the place less and less as time passes. 3 hours would have been enough and that was only because a friend cooked me a lovely breakfast in Crouch End before I headed into the City!

We've been in Germany nearly 3 years now, and although society here is undoubtedly more (insert as appropriate, depending on how controversial / xenophobic you feel...) formal / uptight / rule driven / boring / staid than that of the big smoke, I don't miss any of the everyday aggravation that comes as a freebie bolted onto the side of 'normal' life in London.

After living in Blighty's capital for some time you become accustomed to the way life is there, which is to say consuming and stressful, in the main. Desensitisation takes a while, but soon everything becomes "just the way it is here" and everyone soldiers on with a very British acceptance of how cr@p it actually is!

Everything is expensive, the place is absolutely filthy and gangs of malevolent knife wielding youths are seemingly sprouting up on every other street corner. (Certainly I managed to see one fight between quite a few 14/15 year old kids and another rather unpleasant group of kids "wid baaaad attitude" that I wouldn't fancy strolling through the middle of... at 9am, in Crouch End, a "nice" part of town!)

But the thing which struck me most, as I crawled into the City in a beaten up mini cab, is that getting from A to B whenever anyone else is awake takes bloody ages (whether by car or public transport). Crouch End is about 6 miles from The City, and using the bus/tube combination to cover this "commute" could sometimes take up to an hour each way. A good time was 30 minutes. Driving to our closest Tesco or Safeway at midday on a Saturday would be a traffic-jammed nightmare, although one plus in the UK that has not reached Germany yet is online grocery shopping. By using "green delivery van" options we used to feel ecologically okay about getting a big van to trundle through the traffic with our three bags of frozen veg in it :)

Here in Germany I live around 3 miles from the office. I drive to work each day, and when the traffic is REALLY bad it takes me 8 minutes. My record on a bank holiday is under 5, although the polizei might have had something to say about my speed along the way. Contrary to popular belief in the UK, we actually have regular (lower than you!) speed limits over here on approximately 98 percent of the roads. The 2 percent where you can do what you like are generally over crowded with BMW M5s and Escort Cosworths from Essex "seeing what it'll do (mister)". Anyway, I digress. Sometimes in the evening the whole city is logjammed and I take 15 minutes to get home, which is pretty stressful. So much so that I want to order a good Chinese takeaway for dinner....and then realise what it is I REALLLLY miss about London!!!