jalléCafe

Summer evenings

Zurich returned to summer temperatures for a week or so.  I've been busy preparing for my next business trip. 

What's great is that it stays light late enough that I can grill a healthy meal, even perhaps at an unhealthy late hour - after meetings and deadlines.

Don't we often ask for "more" in our lives?  For me the "more" is usually for more time.

I read a book titled Less while traveling to Argentina a few weeks ago.  It said, take a look at the things causing your "busyness" and see what you can do about that. 

Taking time for my little grill picnic and even to read a magazine happened because I finally set firm dealines for "stopping" other work.

Hope it lasts longer than sunny weather usually does in Zurich!

Fresh edges

I took this photo a few weeks ago while walking to a first meeting with a new client.  Focused as I was on the new project, this innovative garden compelled me to pause a moment.  It's an old factory site, with the edgy structure of an old building grown over with flowers.  A shadow of the industrial age blooming in the sunlight. 

I love that contrast of old and new, artfully combined. 

I felt that contrast last week during my first trip to Buenos Aires.  Jet lag occasionally reduced the artful charm and brightness for me, but I can appreciate the contrast of doing something from my old life (the topic in this case) in a new environment, in a new way, with new people.

That's the challenge of life, isn't it?  Reinventing, remaking, recovering - without losing our own edges.

When everything is interesting

Hola!  Yesterday, I flew 13.5 hour for a business meeting in Argentina.  My first visit.  Every moment of the travel gave me a new view.  RIght over Africa!

I sit here drinking a cup of coffee that tastes different than any coffee with which I've started my day.  Hoping my Latin American clients will truly live up to their  "8:30 means more like 8:45" cultural reputation.

They didn't - adapted to living in Switzerland like me I guess.

Must run.  I think this trip will remind me of my first travel to Asia.  All senses involved.  I am, of course, hoping that includes the taste of a nice, thick Argentinian steak!

Why do you always have to wear red shoes?

I heard this voice chanting through my head as I listened to the sound track of Chocolat  while taking a warm bath to relax my muscles.  In my bright yellow bathtub.

I first watched Chocolat on a transAtlantic flight during my big travel years. Soon, I'll be back at that travel again.  Sometimes anyway.  It was, in fact, my best way to watch movies.

"Why do you always have to wear red shoes?," Vianne's daughter cried as she scurried in from being picked-on at school. "Why can't you be like all the other mothers?"

"Well, it's not always easy being different," Vianne replied. 

I've always remembered that line. I began wearing red shoes when my triplet brothers were born.  I had no more choice in being different then than they had in being the same.

Then I moved away.  Finally overseas.  Thought I might try a new lifestyle.  A new profession.  A new life. A new business.

Why can't you be like...?  I even ask myself sometimes.  Life would more simple if I had just stayed in my hometown, or in the States, or in my marriage, or in a big company with perks...

But I realized between client meetings, working with our team, chatting with friends and generally getting through the week - and especially cleaning closets this weekend - that then I wouldn't be in Zurich, growing my little idea of a business that has my heart and intellect in it.  Living among my friends here who help keep me alive and active and always learning.

Today I watch Roger Federer win the French Open, worked on my accounting, answered PWG emails, made a short jog and finally took that bath in my bright yellow bathtub.  BUT my first accomplishment this cool Sunday morning (after a cup of coffee of course), was miraculously finding a good way to keep so many of my shoes found in my closets and cellar organized and easy to find.

So I guess I'll have to just keep walking in them.

Happy feet at last on the ground

Uploaded by jalléCafe.

After 5 years, I decided to use part of my time off to kick-start cleaning my last bastion of full disorganization: the basement storage room.  Well, actually, I hired help.  :-) 

The highly efficient man taking away about two dozen empty boxes went through everything carefully.  And he found something I had been frustrated about losing in the move: brass feet to my stereo speakers. I thought I had looked everywhere for them and took it as a sign of too busy a life with too many moves that their location had escaped my memory.  (I only remembered the US mover saying, "Now remember, I wrapped and put them here!"  I couldn't remember where was "here.")

This week, as I put them in place, I felt I had finally, properly moved in. My stuff is fully unpacked and available for living, like I feel now too.