Category Archives: Work

Copenhagen- photo report

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As promised, here are some photos from my visit in Copenhagen.

Views from my hotel, not my room but the room of a colleague of mine who is here with me. Had dinner yesterday evening on the benches you see. Burger King burger and chips — and that cost 55 Danish Krone, about R72 .. yes you read correctly, R72 for a burger and chips.

While we are talking about my colleague, here is he (Andre) lying on his bed.  We have this joke about him staying in a real pimp room.  I am staying in the new renovated part of the hotel where the rooms are ultra luxury. Last night while beer drinking from pub to pub we came across this traffic light — The small green light on the right is a traffic light for bicycles.  Yes, they have their own lanes with their own traffic lights. 

We also met this “alien” that was dancing every time  somebody threw some coins in her tin .. she was actually very entertaining.  When she was not dancing then she was standing dead still like a statue and would not move even if people tried to make her move. The moment some coins was thrown she started dancing with her flags.

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Copenhagen, Denmark

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Arrived in Copenhagen at the Palace Hotel very late yesterday evening after 18 hours on airplanes and in airports.  Was touch and go in Frankfurt when I had to get from one airplane to the next one in under 30 minutes.  Assisted by a security guard through some back allies we eventually made it.  The fact that my luggage arrived with me in Copenhagen was a miracle.

Also the take-off in Cape Town in that stormy weather is not something I want to experience soon again.  Talking of the weather, it is a great sunny 22 degrees here in Copenhagen.  Eat your heart out, Cape Town 🙂

I have taken some photos and will upload as soon as I have some time.  It is beer drinking time so until later.

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I hate packing!

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My trip to IBM Denmark is just a bit too long to just take a small suitcase that will go through as hand luggage.  On top of that Denmark is moving from winter to summer so the weather can be anything from below 10 degrees to over 20.  This means one have to pack for both mild and cold weather.

I hate all this permutations … I am one of those travelers that like to throw something in a suitcase a hour or so before I am due to leave for the airport.  Do not think it is going to work this time.  Firstly I have to leave for the airport while I am halve asleep and I do not want to take the change that I leave halve of what I should take behind.  Since this is a business trip I should actually put some thought into what I will wear.  I believe the Danish people dress way more formally than us to work.  So more formal pants than just a couple of jeans which is what I wear to work here in SA.

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Denmark trip – Update

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I have eventually received my Visa this morning after the 3rd try and it is valid and correct.  Luckily it has now been issued for a whole year so any travel to Europe over the next year will be a bit easier.  The travel agent did manage to screw up my travel date so now I will be traveling a day earlier (Sunday, 20th) and stay one day longer in Copenhagen.  Will have to work in some sightseeing.

I have to be at the airport at some un-godly hour on Sunday morning — 7am flight out of Cape Town.  And I am landing back in Cape Town at just an un-godly hour.  Saturday morning at 5am.

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Danish embassy and Visa problems

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I was suppose to travel to Denmark on Monday the 7th, in fact originally planned for 23 April. Last Wednesday, 25 April, my Visa was issued just to find out that it was issued for the period 23 April to 28 April … in the past from the issue date. How can somebody issue a Visa knowing that has already expired? They then had to re-issue the Visa and today I found out that it will only be ready next Tuesday, 8 May — a day after I am suppose to leave.

This mean that I have no option but to postpone my trip to Denmark. I am now planning to travel to Denmark on 21 May but the way things are going who knows if I will ever get to Denmark.

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The joys of being a mobile worker

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As most of you that read this blog know, I work for IBM and they are very pro mobile working.  Think one of the last stats that I saw said that around 50% of IBMers are mobile workers.

Today is one of those days where I am one of that 50%.  What a pleasure not to sit in the traffic for a hour of so.  It is amazing how much more work one gets done without being interupted by people and your office phone ringing.  I think I got through the same amount of work this morning than would normally take me at least 2 full days in the office.  And all the time one is still in contact with everybody through the wonders of technology like Lotus Notes and Lotus Sametime.

Think one of the best things is that one does not need to worry about what to wear since one has no face to face contact so basically one can be naked and nobody would be the wiser.

More and more companies should encourage their workers to be mobile workers. Less cars will be commuting to and from work.  Companies would save on office space since they can allocate one desk to multiple people.  People that are mobile workers also need to be more mature in the way they work.  They should be able to work independent with the least amount of supervision.

I would love to hear comments form people that work from places that is not their normal offices about their experiences, what they liked about it, what they hated and just how they feel about it.

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IBM Software Live!

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Spend the whole of yesterday at an IBM Software Live! day presented by 2 of my American coleagues – Doug Spencer and Jeff Reynolds (Kelly, you probably know Jeff since he also originated from Rational)

As fairly new to IBM it was good to see the range of IBM software products and wow what a range .. Covered from Tivoli on the monitoring side, Lotus on the people side, Websphere on the middleware side, Rational on the development side and then Information Management on content/data side.

Also good to see IBM’s direction with Web 2.0 and products like Connections and Quickr.  And then the support for open standards and open source.

The venue was great (Mount Nelson hotel in Cape Town) and the food was great.  Oh and a customer of mine walked away with an Apple iPod Nano in a lucky draw. Good for you Simon. Yes, us IBMers were not allowed to throw our business cards into the bowl 🙂

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