Personal
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On August 1st we celebrated my first Swiss National Day as a Swiss National. After clearing up, on the 2nd, we packed our camping gear into a couple of trailers and started cycling across Switzerland, from Neuchatel towards Appenzell. Our aim for the first day was fairly modest: to go from our home to a campsite on the shore of the Lac de Bienne. We ended up fighting a couple of fierce inclines (by the side of a lake, no less!) so made much slower progress than Google Maps had predicted. (This did help us recalibrate expectations for the rest…
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Today is the Swiss National Day, commemorating the creation of the Old Swiss Confederacy back in 1291. It's an important one for me, as it's my first as a Swiss citizen. My kids have presented me with this fine creation: Yesterday we stopped down by the lake to watch fireworks and eat some traditional pea soup (or watch others eating it, in my case, as I don't eat meat). Today the garden has been appropriately Swissified, and we'll soon be roasting cervelas and melting raclette. After that I'll be taking a couple of weeks off work (and blogging, although I…
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On Thursday we celebrated Autodesk's presence in Neuchatel together, one last time, at the official office closing party. It was held at the new bar on top of the Beaulac Hotel… a fitting venue, in some ways, as this was for many of us the first place we stayed when we first visited Neuchatel for our job interviews (it certainly was mine: I stayed here back in July 1995 when I came across for my 2nd-round interview to join Autodesk UK, some years before I moved here). Anyway, the new bar is really nice, with interesting decor… … and stunning…
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Given the impending closure of our Neuchâtel office – we have our big closing party on Thursday afternoon, although a few teams will still have people in the office until the end of August – there are a lot of former (and soon-to-be-former) Autodeskers starting to look for jobs in the region. Most were offered jobs in either Barcelona or the new Dublin office, but – given the salary differential to work in these locations and the currently booming Swiss economy, which has around 2.5% unemployment nationwide – the vast majority have chosen to accept their termination offers and stay…
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On Friday lunchtime – after a great few days in Barcelona for the Forge Accelerator – I hopped on an EasyJet flight to Bordeaux for this year's internal Autodesk football tournament. I was one of the lucky ones: there was a later Vueling flight – which I'd very nearly opted to take – that was cancelled because of strikes in South-Eastern France. A bunch of players and fans from the Barcelona office ended up having to rent cars and drive them to Bordeaux to participate. Apparently a number of others from the UK and Italy were also impacted and unable…
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Back in the UK, during my teenage years, I got into field hockey in a big way. I spent several winters playing hockey on frozen grass pitches around the East of England. When I went to University I played a lot more (between the 2nd and 1st teams, this time mostly on astroturf), and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Once I started working things became harder… I still managed to play a few times, but mostly ended up joining teams to play other sports: Field hockey just turned out not to be a sport I could play regularly, for one reason or…
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To help celebrate Star Wars Day, I've decided to talk about an incredible concert I was lucky to be able to attend with my wife and friends last weekend. It's funny: I remember booking tickets for the concert way back during our round-the-world trip: it was a rainy day in Sao Paolo when I found out about it and immediately snapped up seats. The event was a ciné-concert of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope held at the Théâtre de Beaulieu in Lausanne with accompaniment by the 21st Century Symphony Orchestra. I hadn't realised before, but "film concerts" are…
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When I first visited Neuchatel I instantly fell in love with the city. This was back in the summer of 1995, during my second round job interview for Autodesk. From that moment I knew I wanted to live here, but it was only in early 1998 that I had the chance to do so: a colleague had moved across to San Francisco to join the Kinetix development team, which left a Swiss-based vacancy in the European Developer Support team. I was thrilled to have the chance to move across and fill that role. During my first few weeks in the…
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It's been a busy couple of months since getting back from our big trip (which, while incredible at many levels, was in itself not really a relaxing experience, all things considered). So in some ways it feels like a good time to take a break, especially as the kids have the week off school. We took the chance to head up to the Bernese Oberland for a bit of skiing and snowboarding, as we often do at this time of year. I'm working a bit in the mornings and the evenings – I have a few important projects to work…
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Last week I received an important letter through the post. It was final confirmation from the Swiss Confederation that I'm being granted Swiss nationality. This is something I could have requested some time ago – due to the years I've been married to a Swiss person (something I lovingly refer to as "time served" 😉 – but it was the Brexit referendum that pushed me over the edge. The day after the vote I requested the forms I needed to fill out. It took me a few more months to get around to submitting them, but Brexit was definitely the…