This wakes all my urges to go out, see the world, and have fun. I know you’ll like it too.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Almost everyone who saw the assortment of NERF guns which is loaded and ready right to the door of our apartment had a puzzled look on their face.

Almost everyone who has been to one of our parties knows that they are a lot of fun (and Michael knows that they even work in a pool – unfortunately, that pool is in the US and not next to our apartment in Hamburg).

What you can find here, however, is so much better a full fledged NERF-office-war! I need to go stock up on NERF guns immediately! I don’t feel safe anymore!

IMGP0757, originally uploaded by floho.

Hey there,

I was lucky to get two days off last week, so I could join Tine and the Lawyer gang, who were on vacation in a lovely house on the danish cost for a week. And even if it was just two days, it sure felt like a long time – it was SO GOOD! We went to the beach, had BBQ, went Bowling, played games until late at night – even had fun like little children with balloons – and on the day when we returned, we found that huge trampoline-like thing which Mareike, Tine, Konz and Alex are enjoying in the picture.

You can find the whole set (including many more jumping happy people!) here on Flickr.

Today, Tine and I went on a little adventure. From my company, I had the invitation to go to the factory outlet of G-Star (a jeans/clothing brand), with the promise of good rebates. The outlet is about half an hour out of Hamburg, and given the sad selection of jeans left in my closet that are wearable, this was something to try.
So we drove there – really in the middle of nowhere – and entered something like a small warehouse, full of clothes. We were greeted by a shop assistant, who looked and acted more like a bouncer in a nightclub. He asked me where exactly I had gotten the invitation from, and what company I worked for. He wanted to see my passport and proof that I worked for the company (glad I had a business card in my wallet). Then, in a very serious tone, he continued like this:

“Alright, I will give you the hardcore introduction, because if we go into detail, it will take us ages. You are entering a contract with us. You may never, ever, re-sell the clothes you buy here, not in a store, not on ebay. If you do not comply, we will sue you. Whenever you come here, you can bring two persons with you. You are responsible for their actions as well. When you come, you need to present your store ID and your passport. If you cannot produce a passport, we will keep the store ID and you can get it back when you bring your passport to identify yourself. There are no refunds, so look at what you buy beforehand. No go over there to the other clerk and pay three Euros for the store ID.”

Tine suggested that probably, we would need to do ten pushups whenever we did not put something back in the shelves correctly after looking at it. The shop assistant/bouncer guy was only mildly amused.
After this initial shock, it was quite a good experience. Prices were really good, although I understand that I am not allowed to publicize the discounts they give… so I bought myself three new pants – a jeans, a pair with pinstripes that is missing some buttons, and a pair that has a checkered pattern on it… makes me look like a punk, but in a fashionable way. (I hope).

Now if you’ll excuse me, there is some serious weekend-relaxing to do. And some work, unfortunately… but for that work, I get to help giving a training in our company’s university on Monday and Tuesday – how cool is that! I did not expect to come back to that great place as a trainer anytime soon, I certainly feel honored… now I have to meet expectations, of course.

The last weeks have been busy – I am on a new project at the same client that will last until April 4th approximately, and of course I’ll tell you where I am heading to afterwards (once I know it myself ;-> ). Besides work and enjoying the spare time, I also set up a new website lately. It is called KillerConsultant.com. It does not have to do anything with the Mafia – that name is explained in the slogan: “Doing a great job while having fun would be killer, right?” (so, in this case, “killer” means “great”). KillerConsultant is a site from a consultant (me, obviously) for consultants… because there is a lot of career-related info on consulting out there, some blogs for fun, playing with the clichees of the industry, but I could not really find a website that is centered around the day-to-day life of consultants. So I made one. If you are interested, please feel free to head over there and let me know how you like it!

Cheers
Florian

(who is totally ripped of by the hotel right now, because they changed the internet connection, and now one hour costs three euros… hilarious. Not.)

Adding to the good mood: Yesterday we went on a team event – my five colleagues and the two leads. We did a three hour introduction to improvisational theatre – that was awesome! The course was conducted by a professional actor who is playing impro for years now, and he got us to do all kinds of things – mostly being spontaneous, developing and continuing a train of thought, finding associations… we went through all kinds of exercises, all of them really fun. We worked really well together – the coach did not want to believe that we all know each other just from a few weeks to a few days. I am happy to be in an environment where, when it comes to play, hierachy really is not played, and I had terrible fun with my folks here.

Looking into the weekend: This is gonna be gooood! Tine came back from Marokko yesterday, so there will be lots of stories to tell and pictures to see. Oh, and of course: Serious relaxing to do! Maybe I’ll even get to go for a run – I was a good boy this week and spend the lunch break on Tuesday and Thursday running through the Tiergarten here in Berlin, so this might expand to the weekend

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Getting some sleep. Definitely. I am pretty tired, yesterday was long. All in all the week in Berlin was good: Three new people on the team, two new leads (=coaches/bosses), new assignments, lots of fun. But work is work, and work sometimes is quite time consuming

What else matters? The small good moments. Laughing with my colleagues. Receiving a letter from my godfather in the mail when I came home today. Finding great ideas on how to present data (Edward Tufte).  Watching the sun set over Berlin from the 10th floor.

As Tine is in Marokko, it is a  work/xbox/books weekend for me – I have quite a long list of books to read here, and while I am at it, I could finally finish organizing the library (just in case that boredom REALLY hits)

Watch the video here

This is SO cool! I never thought I would say that about a Bill Gates video, but gosh it is. Of course having Bono, Steven Spielberg, Jay-Z, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and George Clooney making guest appearances in your little home video DOES help

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