Autumn in Aberdeenshire

Autumn in Aberdeenshire

Pittodrie House Hotel is based at Inverudie in Aberdeenshire. I spent 4 days there attending a project management course.

Camilla turned 18.

Copenhagen (Camilla 18)

Google is dead...

Yep who would be thinking of this......

Google quickly became the most favourite web search engine because of its simple white design - without any reviews, news, weather forecasts, financial news and what else the competitors are still busy loading when you have already got your results from Google.

Simplicity comes at a price though and tests have shown that a white screen consumes more power than a black one. As Google's screen is obviously white, a considerable amount of energy globally is spent on this display.

Subsequently a media company has gone ahead and created a simple version of Google but with a black screen:

Allow me to mention Blackle.

I have asked them to confirm if they are recording search results but are still awaiting feedback.

Playing with pigeons in Venice

Playing with pigeons

Rovinj and Venice 2007

Rovigno & Venezia

It is a small world - the model

Now when I am in the writing mood it is obviously important to emphasize an old point, that I (Michael) has got the honour of knowing Miss US Virgin Islands 2006 a runner up for the Miss Universe 2006 competition.

Whilst I researching I found out via Wikipedia that Je T'aime is also a contestant for the Miss Earth 2007 competition to be held on the Phillipines in November.

Anyways how on Earth (sorry about the punt line) does it happen that I know Miss Virgin Islands.

Well Je T'aime has been close to her grandmother, Eleanor, whom is a close friend of my Far via the Danish - Virgin Island society, that my Far has been heavily involved in for the last 15 years or so.

Back in the mid 90-ties Eleanor and her two grand-children Je T'aime and P.J. visited Denmark and we took them to Tivoli gardens. I will never forget when we sat in a restaurant in the garden and the 10-ish year old P.J. disappeared for a while. He went to buy a long-stemmed rose for all the Girls: Eleanor, Je T'aime and my Mor - vauw

It is a small world - the pop singer story

I am sitting here at work reading my Danish newspaper. All of the sudden there is in typical Danish manner an article about a pop-star that has been declined a tax rebate on clothing and make-up, essential to her work...

Although that is obviously a story in itself, plenty of news papers are covering that and hence I rather want to focus on her, the singer...

Last year you were bombarded on the radio with the track "From Paris to Berlin" and although I knew it was Danish I never got as far as to know it was by a band called Infernal.

So when I all of the sudden see the singer of Infernal is named Line Rafn the penny has dropped. Line is the daughter of my favourite teacher from primary school, Lone.

Besides from being my teacher through out many years, Lone was also one of the key people behind the AIDS information and event group (Ung Sikker Sex), which I was heavily involved in back in the early nineties. Lone ALWAYS had her guitar with her, hence the family must have a musical gene

I remember that Line back in those days where quite involved as a DJ at Niverød Lokal Radio or Kanal 100 as I recall it was also called at some stage.

Anyways no time for writing, I must get down to HMV before they close to buy the album...

Work visit to Stavanger and family visit at Copenhagen

Stavanger 2007

How to get rid of telemarketing in two minutes.

Press play to hear the best and funniest way to get rid of that annoying tele marketing caller

Michelle's baby shower

Michelle's baby shower

Nicole in New York

New York (Kinetic Partners)

Gold diggers in Sunbury ?

Late Sunday evening, some thieves stole 4 material bags from a small factory in Walton on Thames, just next to Sunbury on Thames.
The 4 bags contains cyanide and is used in some chemical reaction to modify metal. Maybe the thieves thought they could break the ancient secrets around alchemism and start producing gold ?
No I think not. It is just another day in Sunbury.

Struck by disappointment the thieves must have escaped by train from Upper Halliford station, which has been closed today.

Upper Halliford train station is the concrete slap just next to Acergy's office building. So when I say closed, I mean two police cars were parked on the pavement of the walkway leading from the bridge and beneath.

Click here to read article from BBC News

The neighbours grass is always greener

Only minutes after Nicole has landed from her business trip to the ever vibrant New York do we dig out a travel guide from the New York Times, describing how the quality life is lived in the green and peacefull Whiskey Belt, stretching from North Copenhagen and 40 kilometres up along the coast line to Helsinore.

This is the area where I have grown up and I recognise his desciptions very well.

The thing is, having tried that, there are other things here in this world to explore so maybe there is an adventurous New Yorker that want's to swap green card ?!

Click here to read the article from New York Times.

The photo is of Arne Jacobsen's Bella Vista at Klampenborg. Arne Jacobsen is taken a large credit for the beauty of the design along the coast line.

Photos from our stay in Rye (and a few extras)

Rye & more

www.copetown.net

Finally there was sparetime to look back at the old domain name http://www.copetown.net.

After we've got this blog I have deemed it double work to maintain both the old website and the new blog.

There are significant advantages of the blog as it is easy to update and enables for posting stuff from e.g. work or BlackMail.

The copetown domain name is however Nicole and my personal brand and it would be a pitty not to utilise it. (we still use the personal email accounts and so on).

Now when you enter the http://www.copetown.net domain name, you will automatically be re-directed to this site.

Nicole however liked the rotating pictures very much and hence they have been embedded on this site. Best of both worlds.

Snow in Plettenberg bay

550 km east of Cape Town lies the quaint but in the sumer time rediculously busy town of Plettenberg bay.

The observant holiday makers will remember this is were Bernadette let me in on her holiday enterprise by enabling it for online shopping.

Something tell me, I should have kept the domain and sold it for a mint, as the new owner of it seems to make good bucks out of it : "The luxury Bed & Breakfast with exciting views"

Anyways this story is about how we were there only at the end of April, when the weather was absolutely fantastic.

Now check how the snow is covering the town at seaside level... (Right picture is a reference as to what is SHOULD have looked like, if you ask me).

Airport security on its highest

The trip to attend the Hyperion conference in Lyon, turned out to test
my patience to the largest extent...

Arriving at the airport and walking through the standard security, I
was pulled aside to participate in their ongoing experiment, the "pose
nude machine". Partially intimidated by being in the securityarea, I
told the officual, I was NOT happy about this. To this he answered
that is fine, just sign on a refusal form. I wonder how many similar
to me does not realise this is a test and let their fatrolls blossom
in the middle of the airport...

Anyways this was only the start. Wait for the rest. It is priceless

What can the Danes teach us about happiness

The following is a transcript of an article in BBC News:


Danes are the happiest people in Europe, a survey suggests. But what is the secret of their contentedness?

Something is markedly unrotten in the state of Denmark.

Asked to rate both their happiness and long-term life satisfaction, Danish people trounce their European cousins.


Many in Denmark put this regularly-surveyed contentedness down to a dynamic economy and a pleasant work-life balance, with people leaving the office on time, jumping on effective public transport and heading off to pick up their delightful children from a shiny, well-run kindergarten.

But there are others out to savage the myth of the happy Dane, arguing that low expectations of life account for their unusually happy disposition.

Kevin McGwin, from Maine in the US, works on the Copenhagen Post newspaper, and is well-used to surveys suggesting the Danish love of life. It could all be down to a pleasant quality of life, he suggests.

"Denmark is very consumer-oriented and very family-oriented. People are sure to leave work at 4.30pm. They work their eight hours and go home. Pressure to work overtime doesn't exist."


Denmark has a 37-hour week. Parents get 52 weeks of maternity/paternity leave to be shared between them - 24 weeks is usually at full pay, with the rest often at as much as 90% pay. Much of it can be spread over the first nine years of the child's life. Childcare is subsidised with no parent being asked to pay more than 25% of the cost.

Danish ambassador to London Birger Riis-Jorgensen says he doesn't find it surprising Danes rate themselves as happy.

"In other parts of Europe globalisation is perceived as a threat. For Danes, 78% think globalisation is an opportunity.

"We have high taxes but we have generous unemployment benefits, a lot of life-long learning. We feel secure and we feel that we have opportunities.

"We have a lot of faith in government as an institution. The authorities are normally competent, uncorrupt and approachable."












Public transport is ominously clean

Danes fundamentally believe their state is well run, Mr Riis-Jorgensen says, but citizens are still capable of complaining when there are problems with public services.

"If 5% of trains are running late it is a political problem."

And the safe streets of Copenhagen can be a surprise to foreign visitors.

"When foreigners are finding out they can safely let their children bike to school in the suburbs of Copenhagen they get pretty amazed."

But a study by the University of Southern Denmark earlier this year found success in happiness surveys might be down to low expectations.

Fears not realised

Researcher Kaare Christensen looked back over three decades of surveys that had created the legend of the "happy Dane".

"In countries such as Italy and Spain, people have much higher expectations for what the coming year will bring, but they're not especially happy or satisfied with their existence."

But Danes take a more realistic view of life, he suggested at the time.

"Year after year we're just happy that things didn't go as badly as we'd feared."

And even McGwin, who is married to a Dane, is sceptical that Danes' happiness is all its cracked up to be.

"The weather here is pretty lousy and half the year it's dark. They are as depressed as Hamlet some days."

South Africa 2007

South Africa 2007

Well we are now back after celebrating Bernadette's 60th birthday in Cape Town.

This time around, Nicole went a bit earlier and Michael was trying to catch up on the tan as I arrived 2 weeks after.

Whilst in Cape Town, Nicole, Michael and Bernadette went off to Plettenberg Bay. After 2 weeks in Cape Town, we finalised the trip, visiting family in Johannesburg. Whilst in Groburg, we also visited Soweto.

Bloukranz bungee jump

Bloukranz Bungee

Nearly 600 km east of Cape Town is the Tsitzikama national park and
the bridge over the Bloukranz pass.

The bridge is more than 500 metres long and 220 metres above the
bottom of the pass.

The bungee jump from just beneath the road on the supporting arch is
with its 216 metres therefore the biggest Bungee jump in the world.

On Friday 30/3 Nicole and I went to checkout the scene from where
Jesper jumped exactly 2 years earlier.

I decided to also make the jump and after having paid the ZAR 580.00,
Both Nicole and I were fitted with a harness and taken on a tiny foot
bridge the 260 metres to the centre of the arch.

The music was pumping and first a girl called Tracy was hooked up and
jumped. When she was back up, it was my turn.
The staff was joking away and doing all sorts of bloke things, and I
thouggt to myself, surely they could concentrate, whilst they were
connecting me to the "elastic band".

Anyways, after having been checked they asked me to step forward to
the edge and put my toes over the edge, hmmm.

After a countdown from 5, I kicked off. That VERY second when my feet
lost the connection, I thought to myself - what have I done...

Whilst accelerating to 120 kilometres an hour I got to admit that I
screamed a bit uncontrolled...

When the cable was fully expanded and I could enjoy the upside-down
view of the valley and the sea in the background, I shouted Yahoo and
waited to be lifted back up on the bridge again.

I was very happy to see Nicole again.

£809,995 car crash

I Shepperton only a few miles down the road from Sunbury there was a car crash on Sunday. I am sure there is almost every Sunday but this particular one was interesting.

An GBP 800,000 Bugatti Veyron was hit by a pregnant lady in a Vauxhall van. No serious harm to the involved drivers but the insurance companies are VERY interested in witnesses... More so because of the 800,000 bill than the Vauxhall repairs...

Bugatti has only made 300 of the Veryons and there are only 12 (sorry 11) in the UK. This particular one is going to be a write off.

Eartquake in Kingston?

On Sunday the 25/2, Nicole and I sat in the car, pulling of to go and see
Elvira.

All of the sudden we heard this rumbling and the one of the 4 rubbish sheds
belonging to our property collapsed right in front of us......

We think that the lady in the blue Beetle may by accident have gone forward
as opposed to reversing. Still the shed should be able to withstand a lot
more pressure than that. Particularly as there was nothing but brick dust
on her front bumper.

The lady was a bit shaken and was quick to light up a cigarette.

When we got home in the evening someone had removed the rubbish from under
the rubble and fenced off the area.

We will let you know, when the shed has been rebuild.

Logitech Harmony 1000

We all know of the clutter on the coffee table and we have also all heard about the universal remote.

I am tempted to say that B&o pioneered the universal remote some 30 years ago however only supporting their own products in the same range.

More successful were those remotes that you could teach the signal of your old remotes.

For a long period of time, I have been using one of the latter from Cambridge with anice touch screen and everything. It has however always been a problem that the icons were fixed and not everything was available for all devices.

I believe Logitech's new device, the 1000, will cater for this.

The remote comes with a 3.5" touch sensitive color screen as on the picture. You can modify it with a USB connection to the PC but the best part is that most modern devices have already been coded.

Should you want to control devices in the cupboard or in another room, this can also be done by the optional radio transmitter, you then place in the neigbouring room.

This beauty obviously comes at a price. Around GBP 220,00 is the current price for it.....

Motor registration in Denmark

Many times, I have with friends and family discussed the outrageous car taxing policy in Denmark.

Lately we attended a football match between Denmark and Australia in Shepherds, here in London. On the one wall, there were advertisings for Danish viewers to buy a Huyndai Getz for DKR 117,000, which for the same amount of money could buy you a Minor ONE, Small VW Golf or Citroen C4 Picasso in the UK.

Disregard the fact, that I would rather spent DKR 117,000 on busfares than being the owner of a Hyundai Getz, I thought it could be funny to compile a chart of what are the manufacturing prices versus the street price in Denmark.

As an example DKR 300,000 will buy you a very nice car in Denmark but of that price DKR 294,000 will got to the tax man...

When mentioning a very nice car, I refer to a Volkswagen Passat or a well specified VW Golf. Both costing around GBP 15,000 in a reasonable spec....

Christmas in Hawkshead with Brian & Bernadette

During the period from 22/12 to 29/12 we visited Hawkshead in the Lake District with Brian and Bernadette, whim visited from Cape Town.

Click on the picture above to see our 35 favorite photos from the festiver period.