New Year´s Greetings

Hi all !!

A shorter Christmas letter this year, we are both full in stress both at work and to pack and get organized for the New Year´s trip to Laos.

This year started with loads of snow and some of the best skiing we have had since we moved to Munich in 1989.

I joined Monica on a business trip to California, lost some money in Vegas and had a great wine tasting weekend in the Santa Barbara wine country highlighted in the Oscar-winning (and fantastic funny) movie Sideways. Link to movie here, link to Wine country here.

I started a new job at Strategy Analytics, a very good market research company in the areas of Wireless Telecom, Internet and Automotive Electronics. I run the Central region office (it is a small company) with sales into Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Eastern Europe.
http://www.strategyanalytics.com/

Easter was spent partly in Nice, partly in Daglösen (Värmland) – getting summer house (Swedish term) in order, planning for the summer work of converting the outside to being red with white corners (ie traditional Swedish).

Also managed to get to my Century goal of visiting 100+ countries by taking the motorcycle to Bosnia and Republika Srpska. Now at 101 and Laos will be 102...

Summer in Sweden, great time with friends, family - boating in Stockholm as well as on our own lake in Daglösen. Evening parties, BBQs, fireplace by the lake, getting the house converted to wood facade - lots of work and lots of fun with lots of help from Monica´s family.

Even had a kräftskiva (crayfish party) again and managed to catch 40 crayfish just off our own dock - fantastic on a warm but dark August evening.

Autumn has been work-work onlym briefly interrupted by my 45th birthday (with friends and with George visiting from Toronto for a very wet club evening) and by Monica´s ?? larger birthday celebration last week.

Now off on 16 days of vacation.

Hope to see many or all of you in Munich, Daglösen or Nice in 2007.

As always - Musings blog, Life blog and Picture blog are to be found at www.gustafsson.com

All the best for 2007 and beyond,

Håkan and Monica

hg@gustafsson.com

monica.berggren@nsc.com

Monica´s birthday party

Had a fun party Saturday - lots of friends, singing and dancing. Pictures are up online. With some writing on the other blog, not so much going on here - but at least periodic updates.

Still alive

Peter and I were out yesterday evening at Kilian´s, a good (but loud) Irish pub. As Peter complained that I so rarely post on my blog, here at least a tip for a good Guinness and live guitar music.

Kilian´s
Frauenplatz 11 (just next to Frauenkirche)
http://www.kiliansirishpub.com/

Another year gone

Birthday yesterday on Nov 10. Looked up on INternet what other people have same birthday, found Martin Luther, Bill Bryson and Richard Burton (the actor, not my favourite explorer).

Had a very wet night at the Schrannenhalle leading up to my birthday, with George from Toronto and his friend Bruce. Way too many tequila shots, champagne and the house special, which consists of taking sparkling crystals from the bag into your mouth, then have a large shot of vodka and shake your head to mix the drink. Say no more...

And birthday evening at Brenner with good friends, great food, wine and catching up - we all work too hard and don´t meet as much as we used to.

Web 2.0 from Focus

Just reviewing all the cool Web 2.0 web sites listed in the German magazine Focus some weeks ago.

www.last.fm took a while for me to understand, but what I see is very nice. Download the SW (what a bore, but needed), then whatever you listen to in eg iTunes, Winamp etc is also being shown in the last.fm viewer, with loads of information about the song and group currentlu playing. Actually very good for me, I like music, have loads on my hard disc and iPod, but rarely know what I am actually listening to, now I do.

www.myspace.com is so famous now, both because of all the people using it (ie real users) and in the media space because Murdoch paid so much (580 M USD I think) for it. Cool to look at, I am sure you could spend the rest of your life interacting with all the people here. My take: Not for me - way too old for this - this is desktop publishing gone crazy, with colours, fonts, backgrounds made by people on some serious drugs :-) I am sure all the dating sites around (which I just don´t have time or need to be on) look very similar to this. www.lunarstorm.se in Sweden is probably the same. Very happy for the kids who use this - but I won´t use it.

www.facebook.com is just way too complicated to get going on, hopefully this means that US users who go through the hoops to register then actually only find their true friends. It is so famous that there´s got to be something good behind it, but I won´t care enough to find out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPrqsBMzW6s is just a great use of YouTube and video on the Internet. This 79-year old guy is posting videos online and millions of people are watching it. He is basically just venting on life, his experience of life etc - sharing and letting as many people as he wants to listen in.

All in all - a good description of Web 2.0 in this Focus Germany article - if you are new to the concept. Otherwise it lists no new things. The original article on Web 2.0 by Tim O´Reilly is still the definition of the "new" Web for me. Link here.

Klasse on YouTube

Here the link to Klas skiing extravaganza - just an old movie but looks pretty good - and I thought it was fun to just try out posting to YouTube

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IyGZN8tv1w

 

Autumn in Munich

Gorgeous fall day in Munich - we have had such a great indian summer this year, called "Goldene Oktober" in German.

And here we go...

Ok - just gave up on 1) not having a blog and 2) working with local software like MS FrontPage to publish to my Web site. This just takes way too long and can only be done from my home PC etc etc - hey, I have embraced Web services in the rest of my life, so here goes for my web site as well.