A couple of painful Christmas crackers!

This year is my 20th season playing competitive league hockey. I have had a few absences from the game, most notably when I lived in the US, but apart from that, hockey has been a very important and enjoyable part of my life since my early teens. Sadly, after one too many daring tackles, it seems likely that I'll be hanging up my hockey boots for good in 2008.

While playing at Rugby School on Saturday for my team, Stratford upon Avon, I fell in a tackle and dislocated my right foot to such an extent that my toes touched the back of my leg! In the process, I managed to break my tibia, fibula, ankle, shatter a bunch of tarsals and rip all the ligaments that connect my leg to my foot. Yup, I did a darn good job of it.

After a rather speedy ambulance trip to the Accident & Emergency Room of the Warwickshire University Hospital, I had my foot manipulated back into roughly the right position. An x-ray confirmed the surgeon's suspicions that a series of pins, screws and plates would be needed to put it all back together again. Sadly, the rapid swelling meant that the operation could not be done for another 5 days, so I'm back home for Christmas. It's back into hospital on the 27th for theater and then I expect to be out again after a few days. I'll then be in plaster for 6 weeks, followed by a lot of physio.

Now that B has a captive Daddy, I'm petrified what will happen to me next! The photo below is the result of a few minutes of his handy work!

Stratford upon Avon Christmas Lights

The Christmas lights have been switched on in Stratford upon Avon. It's very pretty around town at this time of year. Say hello if you are in the neighbourhood!

Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 08

My best bud, the incredibly talented Tom Pietrasik, has started to achieve the recognition he deserves--and will one day soon receive in spades--by obtaining a placement among the finalists of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery in London. If you are not familiar with the prize, it's a big deal. I'm immensely proud of you, Tom!

Here's a picture of the picture, but you should visit Tom's web site to see his photos in all their glory. Or buy a copy of the FT, Guardian, Times, Telegraph etc etc etc on any given day to see his photos on the front page.

Sydney: Post 6

This is the last post about my brief love affair with Sydney!

These photos were taken on the ferry to Manly, a short hop to a vibrant beach and surf community just 30 minutes away from the center of the city. The harbor is packed with all shapes, sizes and types of boat, especially the racing variety.

Driving north, we saw miles upon miles of beautiful beaches. Incredible!

Sydney: Post 5

During my early morning run in the city, I witnessed an amazing display of flying skill by a helicopter pilot who was lifting air conditioning fans from the street to the top of a skyscraper. The helicopter squeezed itself between the buildings, attached a chain link to the equipment and then slowly lifted it to the top. Standing almost directly underneath it (I didn't realize what a bad idea this was until I watched the video later), the rotor blades were literally just a few feet from touching the sides of the buildings and it was only 50 feet or so from the road. The down-draft was breathtaking and the noise deafening due to the confined space. The Australians must think that cranes are for wimps.

Video of helicopter coming into the street:



Helicopter above the street:


Directly above, connecting to the equipment to be lifted:


Directly above with the equipment, on the way to the roof of the building.

Sydney: Post 4

I read this morning that the Australian government is hoping that the new Baz Lurhmann movie "Australia" will revive it's ailing tourist industry. I was a little surprised that visitor numbers dropped in 2008 on already low numbers in 2007. I'm guessing it's less to do with the country and more to do with the distance/cost of flying. It's a long way and it ain't cheap. But the reward for those that brave the journey are quite amazing.

Here are some more pictures from Saturday, the day I had in the city before I left for London. Sadly, the weather was not so good so the shots look a little dull, but I can guarantee that Sydney is a magificent sight whatever the time of year.

Sydney Opera House.


Video of Darling Harbor.


View of Sydney past the Opera House.


Sydney Harbor Bridge.


Sydney Harbor Bridge with the city and Opera House in the background.

Sydney: Post 3

I think cities sometimes look most spectacular at night. Sydney is no exception. It's skyline is very impressive, especially when lights from the buildings reflect off the remarkably clear, still water in the bay. The full moon lured me into taking this shot.

Sydney: Post 2

For the past five days, I have been ensconced in the press room at the Sydney Convestion Centre in Dean Harbor, Sydney during our biggest event in the region. It's been a fantastic week from a work perspective, especially spending time with my local PR guru, but the toll of Orlando, Cannes and Sydney is starting to take it's toll. The lethal cocktail of Berocca and Red Bull for breakfast no longer does enough to kick-start my brain.

However, I now have a full day before I leave for the monster flight home. I'm going to see how much I can cram into 24 hours......

Here are a couple of pictures from my walks to / from the convention centre. Many more pictures to follow when I have access to faster broadband.

Reflection of Darling Harbor off the Conference Centre:


Some interesting shapes.


I have no idea what this is, but it sits in the centre of the city. Must look it up.

Sydney: Post 1

On the approach into Sydney airport this morning, I had the camera handy and I caught this incredible light effect created by the position of the plane to the sun and cloud. If you look closely (click photo for larger size), you'll see a halo-like rainbow effect and the outline of the plane on the cloud. There's a specific term for this phenomenon - I'll look it up in my cloud spotters book when I get home!

Here's the view of Sydney Harbour from the hotel, including the famous bridge. Boy oh boy, I just adore this city.

Hong Kong: flying visit

The flight to Sydney from London is 23 hours. It's 12 hours to Hong Kong, where I'm currently writing, and then 11 hours to Sydney. Believe me; it hurts.

The last time I visited Hong Kong, I spent a whirlwind 24 hours with my local team and saw a few of the main streets. It's like nowhere else I have ever visited (see my earlier blog post in Feb 2007). This time around, it's just another airport in another country on another timezone. Shame, because this is what awaits just a short train ride away:

Cannes

There are worse places to be in November than the beautiful French bay town of Cannes, but on this -- my eighth! -- annual visit, I could of quite easily traded it for a week at home. The reason? Rain, rain and even more rain. It was certainly warmer than the UK, but it was a lot wetter. Hey ho.

This is what the town looks like in better weather.

US election results as they happen!

Leaves falling after heavy frost

Whilst walking Hobbes early this morning through the Royal Shakespeare Gardens alongside the River Avon, I was struck by the rapid rate and loud noise of the leaves falling from the trees. The heavy frost last night must of taken its toll on the already shedding trees.

This could win the title of the most boring short video ever, but it was fascinating to watch (maybe you had to be there!).

Snowing? In Stratford? In October?

This is the view from my home office this evening. Yep, it's snowing in Stratford in October!

Royal Shakespeare Theatre Renovation: Update

I wrote last year about the renovation of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre here in my hometown of Stratford upon Avon. The framework of the building is 'listed', which means it can't be demolished, so they basically removed everything on the inside and they are totally remodernizing it - to the tune of a few hundred million pounds.

The disruption to the town has been quite minimal (but unsightly) because a temporary 1000+ theatre was built just a few hundred yards along the river Avon. It's affectionately known locally at "the rusty shed".

Here are some pictures of the renovation. The new auditorium, stage doors and the first section of a high viewing tower can now be seen. It won't rival Sears Tower or Empire State, but I'm looking forward to seeing the view from the top.

B's First Instrument

In our effort to introduce B to something beyond his current obsessions with racing cars and bicycles, we have given a new home to K's family piano. It's a beauty. B proceeded to immediately murder it, which he enjoyed greatly. So hopefully that's a good sign for his upcoming lessons!

I know a few of our friends will be pleased about the piano-in-residence, especially Chuck in New Hampshire. God help our neighbors when he visits.

Orlando, Florida

At about this time each year, I disappear to Orlando, Florida to work at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, the largest event of its kind in the world. It's five very long, gruelling, but immensely rewarding days as we manage corporate communications onsite. This year, we launched a YouTube channel, built on our Twitter profile, added to our Flickr photostream and kept our FriendFeed updated with media coverage. It was probably the most rewarding and exciting week of my career so far.

Sadly, we get to see very little of Disneyworld during the event, and it's not all sunshine and Mickey as this photo proves. When it rains in Florida, boy, does it rain!

A rose between two (very sharp) thorns

I couldn't resist this photo opportunity at Orlando airport yesterday. I didn't realize that McCain was so short - or that Obama was so tall. Maybe our good friends in the US need a third guy of medium height on the ballot paper to balance things out.

The World Population in Rice

"Gathered here are the 6.7 billion grains of rice, a grain for each person on the planet". That's how the Stan's Cafe 'performance' was described as we entered the disused factory in Birmingham. It was first performed at Warwick Arts Centre in 2003 and it has since traveled the world. It was inspired by a desire to get a better understanding of the world and our place in it -- through the visual representation of people by rice!

The organizers explained that rice was chosen to represent people for its size, shape, regularity and granular form. Using the Office of National Statistics, they counted/weighed out the rice to show different data points, such as the number of Welsh speakers in Argentina (a lot!), the number of prisoners in the world (almost the same as the number of millionaires), the number of people the hugging saint has hugged (you wouldn't believe it) and the number of people who listed 'Jedi' as their religion in the last census (at least half a million)!

Here are some examples. The picture below is the population of Pakistan (small) compared to the population of India (very large).

The picture below is very, very sad. It's the number of McDonald's customers worldwide in one day! Yes, one single day. To put this into context, this pile was about the same size as the population of England - that's approx. 45 million.


The picture below compares the number of people born in Australia now living in the UK (left) versus the number of people born in the UK now living in Australia (right).

And this is the population of Las Vegas.

Pain by Numbers

I attended an excellent training course last week at Cranfield University called 'Finance for Business Managers'. The intent of the course was to take general business folk like me and torture our minds with numbers until we come out the other end sounding intelligent and wearing gray suits with pens in the breast pocket.

Maybe not quite.

For five long days I learned all about income statements, balance sheets, cash flows, EPS, PE ratios, EBITDA, stock prices, company evaluations, discounted cash flows, NPV analysis.... stop, stop, it's too painful to live through it again.

I know why I didn't become an accountant, and it wasn't because of the gray suits. I find numbers tough, and especially business finance. But it's important I get better if I ever hope to progress. This course was excellent, and it even taught a number-dud like me a lot. Dare I say that I actually half-understand these concepts now. I'm even applying what I learned to my job. Weird, I know.

But it was still pain by numbers.

Image from here.

Off to School

Today was a big day. B went to off to school for the first time. Our little boy is off into the big 'ol world and we're going to have to face the fact that he's going to find people cooler than us. Gulp. In the blink of an eye, he'll be getting a tattoo and scraping my car. It's all part of the great journey of life.

New York Summer

The miserable weather in the UK this year has been a regular topic for this blog. What better place to contrast it to than New York, which we just returned from. We spent a few days together visiting old haunts in the city, but mostly spent time introducing B to his countrymen and their pursuits, such as baseball, model yacht racing, eating and dressing up in a Superman cape in order to rid the city from criminals.


Boat Pond, Central Park.

Brilliant Blog: Road Trip in Australia

I'm currently following a blog written by a friend I used to work with in Australia. He and his wife decided to take some time out with their children to do a grand road trip through their country. Not only do I admire their courage to undertake such an adventure together, I'm as jealous as hell.

Here's a link to their blog: http://wilsonsaustralia.blogspot.com/

New York Yankees

Finding time for anything but sleeping is rare during my regular trips to New York, but I had the spectacular good fortune of watching the Yankees play during my last visit to the city courtesy of a very generous friend. He and his family have been lifelong Yankees fans and they have been in the possession of season tickets for more than 20 years.


Their seats afforded a phenomenal view of the evening's game against the L.A. Angels. Sadly, after a close fought contest, the Angels scored at the top of the ninth and the Yankees couldn't respond in their last inning. Regardless of the loss, it was a wonderful evening of pure Americana; baseball, deli sandwiches, beer, peanuts, excellent company and renditions of patriotic songs before the opening pitch and at the top of the seventh.


The evening was made all the more special by the fact that the Yankees are finishing up the season in their current baseball park before relocating a few hundred yards down the street to a fancy new stadium. For loyal fans, it may be their last season due to the incredible hike in prices that next year will bring; a good seat will cost up to $850 a game! For non-baseball aficionados, there are nearly 150 games a season! It looks like I'll be back to the bleachers for the next game.

Lake District Camping in a Yurt

I finally got K in a tent. Well, a Yurt. And, okay, it contained a wood burner, feather beds, running water, toilet, bread oven and dining room table. So, no, not really a tent in the conventional sense of the word, but it looked like one, and that's what counts.


The wonderful thing about this particular Yurt-tent-like-thing was that it was on a working farm in Hesket Newmarket, under the shadow of Blencathra, an imposing mountain in the North East of the Lake District National Park. The farmer, John, turned out not only to be a wonderful host, but he also provided us with a candid, colourful and fascinating insight into the inner machinations of a livestock farm struggling to survive in the 21st century. B, on the other hand, just thought he was cool because he drove a quadbike.

On our first morning at the farm, we stood enthralled as the farm's 500 sheep were sheared by three men with steel backs from New Zealand.



The view from the Yurt.


The standard format of a day on the farm started with cooking eggs and bacon on the wood burner, playing football with B, walking around breathtaking lakes in the shadow of majestic mountains in the afternoon and reading by candlelight in the evening. All this before drifting into a cosy long sleep as the wind and rain lashed the tent through the night, safely in the knowledge that those nice folks at Featherdown Farms had designed this structure to keep it dry and warm enough for fair-weather campers like my lovely good wife.

We visited places of natural wonder, like this beautiful waterfall near Ullswater.


And looked around a couple of places associated with Beatrix Potter, the author of "Peter Rabbit". This picture is of her home at Hilltop, now in the hands of the National Trust, together with more than 4000 acres she donated to the preservation society after her death.


B also made friends with a couple of boys on the farm.


Wild ponies with Saddleback on Blencathra in the background.


John the farmer stokes the bread oven for cooking pizza.


The view to Fairfield from Lake Windermere.