Lyon - La Part Dieu

A recent business trip France had me located in Lyon. I had not yet been there and was hoping to be able to see something of this southern French city. Arriving there I took a taxi and asked the driver if she could bring me to my Hotel located in La Part Dieu. During the trip we had a pleasant conversation in French. Now, my French is not really up to standard, which is a bit embarrassing considering the fact I have a (beautiful) French girlfriend and thus plenty of opportunity to speak the language. Nonetheless, I managed to understand her and make several coherent replies. It seemed they had some problems with brouillard that day, which resulted in some delays on the airport. Nothing serious, but nonetheless inconvenient.

The hotel I was booked into in La Part Dieu was nothing special (don’t believe a word of people that brag of super nice hotels when traveling for business purposes, most of them exaggerate), but it served its purpose and was conveniently located near a taxi stand and a Centre Commercial. The taxi stands facilitated easy access to Lyon centre. The behemoth Centre Commercial had every magasin you can imagine. Though I was a bit surprised it only had one Pharmacy, normally France is littered with them.

In Lyon itself I had a lovely dinner in Le Sud, a brasserie/restaurant of The French Michelin awarded Top chef Paul Bocuse. Normally eating at a Michelin awarded cuisine is expensive. However, to allow the plebs to experience his cuisine the (¿arrogant?) Chef opened one affordable restaurant for all four winds. But I admit that the food was good and indeed very affordable. Bravo Chef.

Next week I’ll be there again, although located in a different hotel in a different area of Lyon. No Centre Commercial, but alas only a 5 min drive from the city centre. Hopefully I will have the opportunity to see something more of the old city of Lyon. I am told it is lovely.

Maybe I’ll try the menu in Ouest.

Curious

It was displayed in the airport bookstore. I think the cover print fascinated me or the handy pocket size… or maybe the red color was simply standing out from the rest of the books on the same display. Or… oh whatever.., marketing people come up with all kinds of tricks to get you to buy the book they want you to buy anyway.

They made me buy The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, the little red book with the fascinating cover.
I read it on the plane and finished it before landing. I loved it. I laughed, cried, grinned and experienced many other emotions (with related facial expressions!).

Probably the best mystery story I read in a long time. The story is about a little boy who is autistic. When something big happens in his world he starts an investigation. With his logic and literal thinking he starts mission impossible… or not? I didn't regret the buy for a moment.

Just buy it yourself and tell me here what you think about it. And maybe you’ll have a recommended read for me in return.

ISBN 1-4000-7783-4 (copy & paste in an online bookstore of your choice)

Exciting & Fun in Luxembourg City

We’ll be visiting the sister of my girlfriend coming weekend. She moved apartments recently from a suburb to a location more close to the center of Luxembourg City. Her boyfriend will be over that weekend too.

I’m very much looking forward to seeing them again. Because they are nice people, but also because of ulterior motives (:wicked:). You see, when they’re around, something fun is always happening. Of course fun is relative. But, let’s presume for the purpose of this blog-entry that the happenings are fun.

For example, the last time we were all together we brought down a 15 meter high tree with only an axe, saw and a rope. Really exciting & fun. There was a catch though. The tree was standing in a garden of 6 square meters surrounded by garden sheds…. Pure manly fun you’d think…... However, the garden was ours, the sheds were not. I never knew chopped down trees created such chaos. Only last week, when I had the perfect opportunity, I finally finished clearing up the mess. Alas, details details.

A tout, I’ll be away next weekend having excitement and fun in Luxembourg City.

Page Blocked: Social Network

If you work in a corporate environment and browse the web then there is a chance you have encountered a message saying: Page Blocked.

I admit guilt. I sometimes surf the web during work hours and have seen Content Blocked a few times. I never really thought twice about it. I even thought I was the only one annoyed by it. Up until recently… when from a cubicle a few meters from mine a voice shouted:

"What! They have blocked Facebook AND MyPage."

Shortly followed by;

"Don’t they @#% trust me, it’s not like I don't already spend most of my time working."

It appeared that my colleague had been robbed of his Social Networking Tools. And was pretty annoyed too.

Apparently not everyone can use Facebook after all.

My colleague was truly upset. He was now deprived of his (webbased) Social Networking Tools. With which he maintained and expanded his social network, while working all over the world and not only during office hours, as he himself mentioned so eloquently. Isn´t it strange for a company, which values Integrity, to monitor their employees behaviour. Shouldn´t a company evaluate employees by their performance instead of monitoring their behaviour?

The event made me wonder. Why do companies block access to these Tools and to a lesser extent websites in general?

After browsing the web (at home!) I found lots of reasons that a company, who actively blocks content, provides. And funnily enough I also found a lot of information why other companies, for the same reasons, do not block content. I’ll present you with the two most common and likely most recognisable reasons why active blocking occurs. Additionally, I’ll present some facts that prove them wrong.

1. It reduces productivity of employees - Apparently, some companies forget their history lessons. When the email technology appeared it reduced the size of our world as we knew it and it is now an integral part of our corporate and private social life. Even tough in the early days companies objected to email when it was new, fearing that email made it too easy to inadvertently (or intentionally) leak proprietary information and cause a drop in productivity. Can you imagine work without email today? Would you be able to do the same amount of work without it.

2. It has no business value - Some companies already embrace new Networking technologies and use them to improve networking. Webbased Social Networking Tools are one of them. Other examples are Instant Messaging, Blogging (seen those quirky Corporate Blogs on hobbies and the latest best read?), Video conferencing, RSS feeds. The most extreme may well be Second Life, a MMORPG, were an impressive number of companies have embraced the opportunity to build their Network and gain a market advantage ($$$). All are examples of technologies which take advantage of new ways of communication and information transfer between social networks.
Link

Can it be that one company uses these new Networking Tools to their competitive advantage, while another ignores them. No, even worse, fights against them? Does it all boil down to one thing.

"Don’t they @#% trust me."

Or are there other reasons these companies choose to stay behind?

Home Alone

My girlfriend is currently in the LA area for work. It’s a new job as Manager of a L&D Department for a US listed company. She is there to meet some of her overseas colleagues and attend several courses.

Great you’d think. Sadly I must admit that I’m worried… Common guys, wouldn’t you be? First thing that pops in my mind when thinking of LA is not very comforting.

So I gave her some instructions when she left.

1. Text me when you arrive (I think that is were it all started to go wrong…




2. Have fun (awww, yeah I’m a nice guy)




3. Stay away from the most dangerous people in the LA.

She arrived at LA Airport (texted me ^^, instruction nr 1. met - check the box) were a rental was ready for her to drive to her hotel. Now I know for a fact she is a good driver, but the thing is I’m not so sure about the Americans in their big cars.

Would you not see that huge yellow bus? What was the driver thinking in that Hummer.

However, good thing is that so far she is enjoying herself. I am happy for her. I am also happy she is back with me in 51 hours 24 minutes and 12 seconds.

Bisou ma cherie.

First Post!

I’d like to write a meaningful introduction in the first entry on my blog. But I won’t. Instead I want to take this opportunity to get something in the clear.

There is a tradition among forum trolls and generally “funny” people. To get that tradition out of the way, once and for all, I bring you:

First Post!


Naturally there are always some stubborn epeens. For them:

Second, Third!


With that cleared I would like to point you to the disclaimer on the bottom of my shiny new blog. Read it? It probably has no legal merit and some may find it over the top, however I think a disclaimer makes my blog look nice and finished.