Diversions Manifold

Shanghai. From words-chinese.com So, after a totally manic Monday, racing around Bürgeramts, HR departments, getting signatures from executive directors, answering technical questions during a telecon and then driving up to the Chinese Consulate in Frankfurt, only to arrive after their 11:30 am closing time... I don't have a visa. And, thankfully, I don't need to go. Not yet, anyway. The main justification of sending me to China this week was to pacify the customer and to show that we have people who know what they're talking about, technically. However, I am present in nearly all of the meetings via telecon, so they know who I am and that my company has me on board. The benefits of standing back a little and waiting to do things better are now clear. Firstly, somebody realised that by the time I arrived in Chongqing early next week, the people I'd need to talk to would be on holiday, leaving me with not much to do other than some sightseeing. And parts that

I'm in a strange sort of limbo this Sunday evening. On Friday I was directed to go to China this weekend to help our colleagues who are in a bit of a technical pickle. The trouble is, I need a visa and the normal application process takes two weeks. S o I'm sorting out my travel to see when I'll be able to get there. View Larger Map There is a procedure for obtaining an express visa, but this entails heading up to the Chinese consulate, which I will do tomorrow. However, the application itself involves a paper chase that isn't yet complete. Currently - I need evidence of health insurance (which the company should provide on Monday morning - I don't know what time). I need an invitation letter (received) and a letter of urgency (not yet), plus a travel itinerary from my colleagues in China - again, hopefully that'll be waiting for me when I wake up on Monday. I need my "Anmeldungbescheinigung", Registration certificates, which I couldn'

Source: Getty Images via BBC I'm certainly succumbing to the elation surrounding Bradley Wiggins' current lead in the Tour de France; he's looking like becoming a great winner as part of an amazing team. What sums it up for me is the photo of him slipping into a winning reverie as his colleague Chris Froome drives them both up to the mountaintop finish at Peyragude. Such daydreaming can be fatal to a sportsman's chances, but in this case, Froome woke him up again soon enough that he didn't drift off the side of a mountain or simply let the competition drift past him. Nothing is certain until it's over - but it's looking good so far! Allez Wiggo!

It's the end of another series of concerts with the Musikfreunde Heidelberg Symphony Orchestra; one I was very close to skipping entirely. At the end of the previous concert, I'd had enough of orchestra for a while, and overall I was feeling uncomfortably stretched. Orchestra had become another stress raiser rather than reliever and I needed to give myself some breathing space for other things in life (like composing, biking and "just" family, for example). In the end (of the beginning of term), a lack of alternative trombonists meant that I stuck with MFH for this programme, too. Through house searches, potential job offers, overloaded drudgery at work and general family life, I managed to attend most rehearsals - and the three concerts this semester made it all worthwhile. We played in the Neubausaal in Schwäbisch Hall, then at a school concert in the Gymnasium in Neckargemünd and finally in our standard main venue, the Stadthalle in Heidelberg. There was someth

Arithmetic, from University Department of Computer Science Years ago, Dad bought a lovely little book called Figuring, by the arithmetical genius Shakuntala Devi. It's a book on the joys of numbers. According to the rather short Wikipedia article on her: "On June 18, 1980 she demonstrated the multiplication of two 13-digit numbers 7,686,369,774,870 x 2,465,099,745,779 picked at random by the Computer Department of Imperial College, London. She answered the question in 28 seconds. However, this time is more likely the time for dictating the answer (a 26-digit number) than the time for the mental calculation (the time of 28 seconds was quoted on her own website). Her correct answer was 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730. This event is mentioned on page 26 of the 1995 Guinness Book of Records" I am of course light years away from such talents, but I was never really terrible at it. However, I notice more and more that I have given up on trying to work out

A dramatic day in Hannover After what seems like an age, I've been on holiday. And after what seems like an age, I am blogging here again. Loads, and and not much has happened since I last managed to post anything here; drafts started and never completed, a few posts written and published on Engineer Blogs and Canny Engineer, many thoughts thought and not brought to maturity. It was time to enter into the spirit of the holiday refresh; physically and emotionally to slough away the encasing skins of work and immerse myself with the family in discovering the city of Hannover, catching up with friends in Rastede and then off to the beach and onto a fishing boat in Eckernförde were great ways of getting the drudgery of work out of the system. Equally, it was good to get the kids to sleep, leave my wife ensconsced in a book, and to set myself at a keyboard to type. Most of the four thousand words and upwards were written in a holiday diary, offline. But I was able to chip away a