I’m grown up now :-D

Yes, and its very special this year because I was born this time over 50 years ago! I am finally grown-up 😀

I will post more later, but it’s been a pretty busy month. I am growing s new business first-off. I have been knocked over with a virus beginning of June… it probably didn’t help that I was cycling in storms just before and sat in wet cycling clothes a couple of hours. I’m not 20 anymore!

Anyhow I was meant to do Tjejvattern (a ladies 100km cycling race in Sweden) but I never made it as I was still very weak. Next year I will be more smart in my training. After all when I was training this time around I was still not 50, but now I am grown-up and wiser 😉

I had a great birthday party in an old fortress. Luckily I was well enough to get up on my 2 pegs with help from some ibuprofen and a glass or two of champagne 😛

There’s been an awful lot of interesting stuff going on recently in the security arena that I’ve been dying to post on, the Snowdon leak for example. I will get onto that during this weekend.

An interesting demographic shift is happening

Yes.. about five years ago I moved to an island that has no bridge connection, so you have to take a boat to get there.. five years ago this was considered to be quite impractical, although I did not see it this way as I work remotely quite a lot, we have broadband on the island and also it is only an hour travel to get into the centre of the city.

Seems that the idea is catching on, just this year at least three of my work colleagues are moving from out of the city into the country, one is moving into the mountains and another 7-8 hours by car up north back to her roots. The question that has driven them is why live in the city when we can work wherever we like!

Broadband is changing the demographics, along with changing expectations on work/life quality. And imagine if the dispersed family unit were to start being closer, not just virtually, but physically too again? No need to move to the work, the work can work where you live.

The wonders of technology 🙂

The quality of time

Occasionally I am writing a post that is more personal than professional, and today is one of those days. Over the weekend a member of my new family, that is the amazing Swedish family that I married into some years ago left us at the beautiful age of 84 (or something near ;-)). I say beautiful, because in the short time I knew Rune, he gave me hope and aspirations for the future. He was full of energy and interest in everything in life. When he talked about the past, it was with passion, always funny things never anything negative. He walked 1-2 hours every day, or he roller-bladed or skied when up in the Swedish mountains, and it is these times I remember best!

I remember the many times on the ski lift that we were often together, and how he used to talk about everything, he was so full of life! We used to race each other on the ski slopes… for a Brit I’m not so bad … however I remember one time when we were skiing down the slopes hot on the heels of my viking husband (who is wicked on skies), when I lost Rune, he took another route and I continued on the track of this red hed man, when, it felt like slowly, I understood why Rune had taken another track as I hit a jump and was flying in the air, skis still attached to my feet.

You know its amazing how time can change its character when the situation is so. I must have been up in the air just seconds, but I had time to think about lots… like: umm that was stupid, looks hard down there, oh it is going to hurt when I land…… Well it was stupid, it was hard and it did hurt… however what is so funny is that for some reason I have these thoughts linked to Rune, because he wasn’t there with me at that moment in time because he knew what was coming.

Smart man. I will miss Rune. He was a man that only remembered those things that gave him positive energy in his life.. and he shared with those around him. He, the same as any of us had less good things that happened to him, but he never talked about it, they weren’t important. For Rune, life was one amazing journey!

happy birthday to me :-D

Yes that’s right, today is my birthday! And it feels amazing to be… well on the other side of 45, getting closer to 50, and yet a part of this amazing information age with you!

I was thinking how much things have changed on my birthday over the years. This morning when my dear daughter woke me, the first thing I did after feed her, was go down and make tea, go to my study and work on my MBA paper. Well the making tea bit is quite a normal day, in fact, as is the studying, but before the study bit I couldn’t resist going online to check Facebook. Here my friends had already started posting on my Wall birthday greetings from Australia, Middle East and UK, and it is only 6AM here in Sweden 😀

And this is what has changed, despite all its warts, Facebook enables my “friends” to share in my special day. Give me a great feeling that others are interested in what is happening in my life. In fact it doesn’t matter how lonely we may have felt in our life before Facebook, now, today in this most amazing information society that we are all a part of, we will never be lonely again. We get so many “flowers” as it is called in some European cultures (which means nice words) when we login. We are all a part of a conversation. This conversation enables each one of us to feel part of a community, a community that matters, where each on of us have a voice and where we can be sure that someone out there is listening and interested in hearing what you and me have to say.

I just love this quote from Mena Trott, President of Six Apart…..

“Many ordinary people are scared of blogging because they feel that they have nothing to say. Yet mundane is interesting; it’s OK to talk about your sandwich. To a handful of people in the world it may mean a lot.”

This just about sums up the beauty not just of blogging, but of social networking. It has changed over the last 10 years the dynamics of how everything is working in our world. The world is smaller, cultural boundaries are being crossed, it is almost as though we have found a common language to speak, and this is not just English but something more profound. True many of us are communicating online in English, an abbreviated version, spelling and grammatics have lost their importance. We can write blog posts, post how we are feeling on Facebook, or twitter, or both. We are communicating with pictures, audio, video, everything that enables us to reach out and share how we are feeling and seeing the world outside of the boundaries created by the language that we may be imprisoned by, or empowered by. And this is what is so amazing!