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Dear friends,

Have you noticed how we all have changed during recent years and I do not mean that we have got more grey hair, at least some of us, or that we actually are older. I'm thinking of how we act during meetings. 20 years ago or even 10 years ago we paid attention during meetings. We took a break when it what scheduled and we normally took care of whatever telephone call or other matter during that break.

How about now? If you look around a meeting or conference hall today you can see most attendees busy on their Blackberrys, IPads, lap-tops or other devices.

Is this showing that you are interested or that you contribute to the meeting?
What is more important, is that respect to the person or persons that are talking??!!

I have seen participants that do not let go of the Blackberry for one single moment during a meeting, I have seen the use of IPads being used constantly during meetings. What is also becoming more and more frequent especially in larger meetings is that independent discussions start amongst the delegates resulting in everyone getting disturbed.
Now you will most likely say that I do the same which I have to agree is true. I do act the same way during meetings and I think this is showing how bad it has become. I have advocated for a long time that this is a very bad habit and I very clearly have the view that all these devices should be left alone during meeting, still I act the same way!
It is now my clear view that we should respect the meeting, this would benefit all of us!
The next meeting I attend my Blackberry will stay in my pocket

Once upon a time I used to travel quite a lot to Turkey, and especially than to Istanbul. I have not been there for many years now, so I am not sure if it is as fascinating as it used to be. At the time you could really feel and see how east meet west at the Bosphorus strait.

I am very much interested in history, buy I am not really a museum guy. IMHO most museums make history quite boring. Of course there are very good exceptions around the world but generally speaking I stick to my opinion. In Istanbul though there are many exceptions from this general rule. Topkapi with the harem and the treasury chamber is one of the most fascinating places I have seen and so is Agia Sophia, the Blue Mosque and the subterranean water reservoir.

Although the coved bazar, close to Topkapi and Agia Sophia, is not a museum I have to say it's like being moved back in history when entering this maze of shops inside a building that was erected sometime during the 15th century. If you want to buy gold, rugs or antiques from the orient this is THE place to go.

And it was here, in a gold shop, I met the best sales man in the world, maybe of all times.

My wife was about to have an even birthday and I thought I should have a look at and maybe buy her some jewelry when in Istanbul. So I went to the covered bazar and entered in to a shop that had pictures of Bjorn Borg and some Swedish politicians on the wall showing how they, with a big smile, bought jewelry in this particular shop. Quite trust worthy indeed.

Got contact with one of the sales guys and told him I was interested in buying a ring - tiffany style. No problem at all. He draw a picture based upon my description and since the design looked really good I approved it. Three days later I could pick up the ring and it looked just as nice as on the picture. The ring made quite a success at my wife's birthday, so you could say I was quite a happy customer.

Four years later we had our first child and a couple of weeks after the birth of my daughter I found myself in Istanbul once again. I had some spare time so I thought I would go to the covered bazar and see if I could find a birth gift (don't know if you say like that in English but I guess you get the meaning) to my wife. Thought it would be a good idea to buy a pair of earrings in the same style as the ring I had bought four years earlier.

Of course I went to the same shop - nice service and good craftsmanship is always a good basis for recurring business. When arriving to the shop it was full of American tourists busy checking in the merchandise and discussing with the sales persons behind the counters.

At the back of the shop I spotted the same guy I bought the ring from four years earlier. He was quite busy servicing an American lady, but since he did such a good job with the ring I decided to wait till he had finished the business with the American lady. So I kept a low profile at the entrance of the the shop, waiting for my turn.

After abut five minutes my guy suddenly looked up and in to the shop, scanned the customers waiting and then his eyes stopped on me and ....

"Mr. Hakan! You are back!" he shouted out in the shop. I was looking around to see if there were anyone else he could have addressed, but it was quite obvious he meant me.

"It's impossible", I said.

"You can not remember me! It's four years since I was here".

"Of course I remember you Mr. Hakan. One month after you were hear I had my first child, a son, and I baptized him to Hakan. Of course I remember you!"

"Wow, that was very nice of you, but still ....".

"Baptizing his son after me", well, that sounded a bit to much of a sales trick to me.

"Wait, wait", he said, "I make a drawing of all the items we produce and sell. I'll show you."

He ran off to one of the counters and picked up a little black book and then came back to me.

"Look, look" he said. And there it was, a sketch of the ring I bought four years ago and along side the sketch a neat little note that said "Sold to a Swedish gentleman named Hakan".

Did I buy a pair of earrings to my wife from this sales man? Of course I did! Did I pay to much? Of course I did not! I paid exactly what I thought it to be worth, no more or no less. And to me it was worth quite a lot to be recognized as Mr. Hakan in this gold shop in the covered bazar in Istanbul!

In southern part of Sweden, there is a small beach resort called Falsterbo. This little beach resort became popular at 1904 when the railroad came to town and with that also the summer tourists. In those days particularly, Falsterbo had an air of sophistication. If you spend your summers there you play golf or you go the beach; apart from that, there is really not much else to do. The main reason for Falsterbo’s claim to be the "Nordic Riviera" is the endless long and white sandy beaches with crystal clear water. The sand on the beaches is so fine that in the past, it was exported all over the world to be used when manufacturing hourglasses.
A peculiarity in Falsterbo is the widespread use of what Swedes would call "badhytt": a free translation would be "bathing cabin" (see enclosed picture). Here people keep their swim wear, bathrobes, chairs, maybe swim goggles etc. But most importantly, they use the cabin to change their clothes and to change from wet swimwear to dry swimwear. This will play an important role later in the blog.

I have had the privilege to spend practically all my summers in Falsterbo and this is something I really enjoy. In fact, I have just ended a three week vacation there. Over the years, I have been able to study different people’s way of enjoying the sun in Falsterbo. For example when you go to the beach, do you sit in a chair on the beach or do you use a towel directly on the sand? Some people bring a truckload of stuff e.g. beach tennis, inflatable boats etc and others are minimalistic and bring simply a towel. If they’re feeling excessive, they might bring a book. Many people have the habit of eating on the beach and bring for this purpose large coolers that can serve lunch to 15 people, while others bring a thermos flask of coffee and some biscuits.

I belong to the group of people that lie directly on the sand. I might bring beach tennis and a parasol but not more than that. I love to eat on the beach and put a lot of effort into preparing nice lunches for me and my children. I never wear wet swimming shorts. And it is here the problem begins.

The majority of visitors on the beach are clearly not experienced or sophisticated sun bathers. These days, few people change swimwear having had a swim; they simply sit directly on the towel with their wet swim shorts. Young boys even use underwear beneath…After a while, the towel is wet and sandy so it is no longer comfortable. So what do these people do? They stand up, take their wet and sandy towel and shake it vigorously in the wind, without no regard for wind direction or other people. So where does all this sand end up? Well in many cases, it ends up in former friendly beach neighbours’ eyes, in their well-prepared lunches or just in their coffee. Everyone that has dropped a sandwich on the beach and has tried to eat it afterwards knows that this is a truly unpleasant experience.

Now to the crux of my little blog entry. How can I avoid getting sand in my lunch in the future? Well, I can start educating the masses in how to shake a beach towel.
There are some basic rules: 

1) Always sit on a towel with dry swimwear – not wet.
2) Check the wind direction and estimate the wind speed carefully.
3) Estimate the distance between you and your beach neighbours.
4) Drag the towel carefullly on the sand until you have reached your optimal shaking position.
5) Shake your towel with a charming smile so that your neighbours recognize you as a friend.

If you follow these simple steps, I will gladly welcome you to enjoy summer in Falsterbo, the Nordic Riviera.

Attached Thumbnails

 

Here’s a photo of me thoroughly enjoying a bike ride with 700 other people. This is a rare snap at the beginning of the day – rare because there is someone behind me. He, and all his buddies, soon overtook me. We have only covered about 500 metres and I’ve already hit the wall (or, as we say in the trade, I have bonked, something that I thought was going to have more enjoyable connotations). Only another 70 miles to go!

This was probably the low point (early days, mind you) of my pitiful cycling career. Apart from finishing dead last, and suffering from hypothermia, it also proved to me that I was nowhere near as fit as I needed to be to cycle across my village, let alone the entire country. I had a clear choice: I could either continue unwaveringly with my rigorous regime of fatty foods and strong ales, in the hope that the benefits would eventually work their way through, or I could follow the much riskier course of putting in some extra training whilst switching to a so-called ‘healthier’ diet. Believe me, I did a lot of soul-searching as I considered the options with the help of two tubes of World Cup Pringles and a bottle of Amarone.

The results of my long dark night of the soul – rounded off with a couple of well-earned snifters of Armagnac after such an exhausting burst of cerebral activity – were immediate. First, I bought bigger, baggier cycling clothes so that the most obvious flabby bits no longer featured so prominently. Second, I entered another sportive: a 60-mile slog around Kent taking in such glorious scenery as Dungeness and Camber. And so it was that last Sunday, I flew away from the start in a blaze of burning rubber and Lycra static. My wise breakfast choice of an egg mayonnaise sandwich powered me through the first 15 miles, after which a flapjack and swigs of Powerade propelled me past several octogenarians and a stationary milk float (which, admittedly, later caught me up). Bursting through the bonk, I crossed the line in 3h50m, a new PB (although, in fairness, there hadn’t been an old PB). I was garlanded with certificates and medals, as well as a much-appreciated celebratory flapjack.

Which might have been it, except for the fact that I had promised myself to go out again the following day and cycle for at least three hours. Conditions were painfully different. Not only was it horribly windy, but I also discovered that muscles that had worked perfectly acceptably the day before had mysteriously withered on the bones and would not respond to the usual stimuli of Snickers bars and furious grunting. Three hours can be a very long time when you’re cycling into a headwind at the sort of speed normally associated with a mobility scooter. But...I made it. I got back home, dismounted and lay on the lawn in a twitching heap. The dog glazed my face in an effort to revive me, but he knew a lost cause when he tasted one.

The next day I felt fine – as long as I didn’t try and walk up or down the stairs, stand up or sit down quickly or turn my head more than 2.7 degrees. I have used a value-sized tube of nappy rash ointment and still the sit muscles complain whenever I so much as look at a photo of a saddle – but nothing can detract from the fact that I did two strenuous days of cycling without a call-out to the emergency services. And pain, after all, is good, right? Let me get back to you on that one, as soon as the codeine kicks in.

365 miles in six days: what’s the problem? After all, being a dedicated gym bunny and spending most of my time in Lycra as a lifestyle choice, how difficult can it be? Especially as I shall be cycling across Britain, so there’ll be no hills, right?

Back in the real world, where a walk down to the paper shop leaves me gulping for air and wondering whether VO2 Max is a new shampoo endorsed by Penelope Cruz - because I'm worth it, for sure - I feel that a little more application may be required. Where do I start? Can you get a personal trainer who can help you to develop your 'sit' muscles? When I did Biology at school, people didn't have sit muscles. Quads and glutes? Aren't they part of an orchestra?

So here is my starting point. When I did my first ride for forty years, a little pootle around Bath last summer that had most of the emergency services on red alert and a helicopter tracking my every cadence (note technical term), I thought that was it. I made it to the finishing line, we had ales to rehydrate, I tried unsuccessfully to sell the bike, and then I was off home. Au revoir to the peloton. I tossed the chamois cream in the bin and dreamt of what colour Quattroporte I would buy, once I had traded in the 1998 Ford Escort. And that really was meant to be it.

Except it wasn't. One year on, I am still complaining, I still hate hills, I will not shave my legs and will definitely never wear the same gear as Lance Armstrong - but I'm still on the bike, and still training in the gym. Recently I managed to cycle 70 miles in a day, as part of what is jokingly called a sportive. Apart from a little episode in which breakfast made a brief re-appearance, the onset of hypothermia, the loss of most of the important gears on the bike, the absence of fellow riders (I never appeared to be part of the peloton after the first ‘slight incline’) and an unfortunate incident with my gloves, it was highly successful. And yes, before you ask, I did finish last. By some distance. With a certificate to prove it. Even buying a new bike has not fundamentally altered the basic problem: I am not a cyclist. Proper cyclists are whippets who weigh roughly the same as one of my thighs.

But, undaunted, I am pretending for the next few months that I am a part of that exclusive club. Why? Because I've agreed to cycle across Britain - and back - in aid of a local charity. Worse still, I'm doing it alone. No buddies or broom wagons to help me along. I have to take all my stuff with me, including nappy cream and flapjacks. I think I was somewhat over-refreshed when I came up with the idea.
This, then, is what the Late Mid-Life Crisis looks like, close up. And, of course, it is all in a good cause, so I must carry on without complaint. As if...