B U R N

With 14-hour working days at the moment, I find myself thinking about all the great places I want to go to this summer/autumn and all the things I want to do there. These include taking pictures of run-down military complexes under the midnight sun in Murmansk, the biggest city north of the Arctic Circle; making the trip from Montreal to Baffin Island to watch the fascinating glaciers; travelling along the coast of Croatia with a native tribe member and, of course, cruising on the Oxford canals with a punt full of friends and Pimm’s.

As you can probably gather from this picture, the Judge Business School appears to be the tangible outcome of a collaborative design process involving Ronald MacDonald, Willy Wonka, 15 dwarfs on acid and generous measures of playdoh. No Oompa-Loompas within sight though, and the conference was really refreshing.

It looks like one of my longstanding dreams is finally coming true, I am going to Siberia.

In addition to the view, working from home has another advantage: you can prepare your own food and eat it at your convenience. Here we have falafel, humous, olives, salami and salad. Notice the slightly disgruntled look on Paul R. Bear’s face in the background.

My friend, fellow footballer and office mate, Koichi, just got back from Japan and forwarded me a series of amazing pictures, including this one. This is what he writes about the blossoming trees:

This season in Japan is famous for its cherry blossoms. The last three years I spent my easter holiday in UK, so I was very happy to enjoy the beautiful scenes there this time.

There are lots of famous places for their ‘cherry blossom festival’, I went to one of such places, called Ueno. But what amazed me more is that the trees are almost everywhere, around universities, besides office buildings, on the way to the rail station, etc., and also that people are deeply fascinated with them. They waited for this moment and they enjoy the scenes
so much. The flowers definitely take on an important role in Japanese culture!

I am waiting for the invitation…

It is official. I am moving to the Netherlands from May to August in order to undertake my final empirical studies. It poses quite a few logistical issues, but there is no doubt that it will yield quality findings for my research. My base, which is particularly bureaucratic of nature, will be close to the sea.

So I stopped working in the company yesterday and today this happens!

GRRRR!!!