An anecdote about the German post system

Yesterday I went to the local post office in order to send a registered mail to a lockbox. Nothing thrilling so far....
... but: the lockbox of the receiver is in the same town where I posted the letter, more precisely: it is in the room right next to the post office.
So, while paying the postage I pointed out that the letter is addressed to a lockbox in the same town... and if it may be possible to transfer it right into the lockbox standing behind the next wall. Unfortunately it wasn't!
As it was not too urgent, I decided to track the letter via internet instead of starting to argue with the post office clerk. This morning, I did not trust my own eyes: our good, old, unbelievable flexible, efficient and eco-friendly German post system transferred the letter to the "next" logistics center (which is round about 30km away) and back just for dropping the letter into the lockbox... only 5 steps away. This nearly made me lost for words!

As there is so much about Iran, the protest and ...

... especially Neda on the news and in the web these days, I thought about writing... or not writing about it again here.
But the article I read yesterday on spiegel (a german news magazine) led me to the blog of my favorite writer, Paulo Coelho. There he shows the BBC's interview with Arash Hejazi, the man who tried to rescue Neda when she was shot. Coelho recognised Hejazi in the first video of neda that was on the web and contacted him by e-mail.
As this interview was so touching, I really had to tell someone about it - to spread that piece of information! I have so much respect for those two people, communicating to the world what Coelho saw the Hejazi went through. Hopefully this courage will somehow have a positive effect for the people in Iran.

Radeln in der Nähe des Gehrenberges

Vor lauter draussen sein und sporteln bei dem klasse Bodenseewetter komme ich gar nicht mehr recht zum schreiben hier. :-/ Neuerdings hat es mir das Radeln in der Nähe des Gehrenberges angetan. Hier ein paar Routen (weitere folgen hoffentlich ;-)):

• Kurzes Auspowern am Feierabend


• Training zur Bezwingung des Gehrenberges Teil 1 (inkl. steilem Anstieg am Anfang)


• Training zur Bezwingung des Gehrenberges Teil 2 (dank des guten Tipps eines Kollegen mit nicht so steilem Anstieg gleich zu Beginn)

Bei allen Routen kann ein kleiner, aber lohnenswerter Abstecher zur Hildegardshöhe gemacht werden - von dort hat man eine geniale Aussicht auf Weinberg, See und Alpen. Es gibt dort auch zwei Bänke und einen Tisch für eine längere Rast am Ende der Tour (sofern nicht jemand auf dem Tisch liegt und Stretching-Übungen vollführt... so wie heute erst gesehen... da traut frau ihren Augen nicht ;-)).

The greatest justice we face everyday....

... is that everybody's day has 24 hours. These were the introductory words to the short seminar about "timemanagement" I attended yesterday with some of my colleagues.

The seminar leader pointed out, as you only have 24 hours everyday you can't really manage your time - you only can manage your tasks you have to or want to do during your time. So it is all about task- or even better: selfmanagement!

For me the whole gist was that I have to organise my business and private todos, obligations, wanna-dos, etc. in a way that they conform with my personal values, with my aims and visions I have for my life. Sounds pretty easy, doesn't it? ;-)

Among other things, she recommended a book of Stephen Covey who is one of the founders of FranklinCovey; it is called "The 7 habits of highly effective people". It is not intended to change things quickly but to spark thinking about the whole subject.
She also pointed out the Eisenhower-method (you can easily google it) or the 72-hour-rule. The latter is really interesting; it says that for everything one really wants to do i.e. for an aim or a vision (e.g. running a marathon or even start running at all) one should make the very first step in the next 72 hours. With this rule you don't clutter your mind with things you may do "someday" and you quickly get feedback if you should stick to your aim or abolish it.

So I just ordered the book of the 7 habits online and now I am going to enjoy the sun and the blue sky outside - another essential aspect in selfmanagement: get your mind, body and soul in balance. :-)

I am excited to read what YOU think about the whole selfmanagement thing, how to cope with your tasks, stay in balance, ... so please feel free to comment.

So delicious

Call me old-fashioned! ;-) I just discovered managing my bookmarks on the web a few days ago. Now I have an account at delicious (formerly know as: del.icio.us) to manage my private bookmarks and of course to share some public ones; maybe you want to have a look at wombat on del.icio.us.
I just installed the firefox plugin for delicious and I am quite surprised how well it integrates - I think I do not need the firefox' internal bookmarking functionality any longer.

Maintaining the coffee machine

I nearly did not blog almost a whole month as there is a lot of work to do at the moment and spring is coming. So I prefer being outside - e.g. doing sports - instead of sitting in front of my computer in the evenings. Yesterday I had an amusing discussion with one of my office colleagues and as I promised him to blog about it - here it is: the ultimate maintaining-the-coffee-machine-discussion.
While getting a nice afternoon coffee from our comfortable full-fledged "Jura" coffee dispenser we started arguing if one has to maintain the coffee machine, e.g. disposing the coffee ground, or refilling beans/water, AFTER getting ones coffee (my opinion) or if it is legitimate to leave the company's kitchen as fast as possible without doing this - eventually leaving the next colleage the nice "present" of maintaining the machine before getting the vital brown hot beverage (his point of view).
He argued that using an ordinary coffee machine at home requires some steps BEFORE getting a hot cup, too. And of course the fresh tapped hot coffee gets cold incredibly fast - no time for emptying the coffee ground at all. :)
Another colleague who followed our (hopefully) not too serious discussion was on my side whereas three former team members I playing billard with in the evening shared my office colleagues' point of view. Altogether this discussion was a lot of fun - we laughed a lot in the afternoon (getting faster to knocking-off time the day before easter holidays) and in the evening. And now I know where to complain if I would like to have a quick coffee next time (probably in a hurry) and our coffee machine is demanding the "all-aroud carefree-package"... ;-)

höhenweg in meersburg

Eigentlich ist es schon eine Schande: da bin ich nun schon gute drei Jahre hier am See, war auch bereits mehrfach in Meersburg und habe dennoch erst vor kurzem den Höhenweg von Meersburg nach Hagnau entdeckt. Vielmehr habe ich diesen genialen Wanderweg bei einem Frühlingsspaziergang gezeigt bekommen - von einem Fast-Nordlicht :).
Der Höhenweg eignet sich wunderbar für entspannte Spaziergänge, da man immer wieder stehenbleiben und innehalten wird um diesen wunderbaren Ausblick zu genießen. Eventuell kann man dort auch joggen - wenn man öfters den Ausblick genossen hat, kann man sich vielleicht auch etwas zügiger dort fortbewegen. ;-) Ich werde demnächst berichten, denn der Frühling hält Einzug am Bodensee...