Google Buzz has highlighted the problem, but it existed anyway. If everything feeds to everything else then best case: you hit many of your friendlies with same update many times, worst case: you create some crazy feedback loop.

The fact of the matter is that just because we’re friends or friendlies doesn’t mean you have a commitment to be my ‘friend’ on every platform or subscribe to every place where I write.

So here is a list of the sites I participate in and why. You can choose, with impunity to unfriend me in as many of them as you like. Certainly, as you’ll see, unless you live in mainland China, you probably don’t need to be my friend on Google Buzz.

Twitter: For the world at large: What I had for dinner, etc.; Feeds to Buzz for China based people.
This Blog: For the world at large: Same ramblings as ever; Has RSS feed and slugs are sent to Twitter (and therefore buzz).
Triviality Posterous: For the world at large; I use this to share pictures and video Twitter and Facebook: No need to subscribe directly.
要学就说 Posterous: For the world at a large; My Chinese blog: Also feeds to Buzz for China based people, I occasionally cross-post to Facebook when it’s relevant.
Facebook: For actual friends: Er, Facebook; It’s mostly a different group of people to Twitter but for the few who are in both lists I try not to cross post too much, honest.
LinkedIn: For colleagues, past and present; My only remaining professional networking site: Status updates here very rarely.
GoogleBuzz: For the benefit of those behind the G-F-W; Fed by Twitter and 要学就说 purely as a way to reach people in China.

So there you go that’s the method in the madness for, *chokes on the words* social media; unfriend me with impunity folks.

I passed through Philadelphia airport (nice refit btw) on Sunday on my way back to Florida and was hit with a wave of nostalgia. Nostalgia for Pennsylvania, a little, as I spent 6 weeks there in early 2003 and nostalgia for who I was then but not, thankfully, nostalgia for the future I was envisaging for myself when I was there.

I think the reason I was so affected by being there, other than simple tired-jet-laggy-haze, was because it represents such an obvious bookend to so much of what has happened in the seven years since.

It was my first overseas business trip and I remember it made me think for the first time, in a not very serious way, about living overseas. It’s seems incredible to me now that it was only 3 months later I made my first trip to China and not much over six months later I was living there. That trip to China turned into six amazing topsy turvy years that led me the Czech Rep. and where I am now.

But it all started with a conversation, sat outside of Wendy’s…

“You think you could live in another country?”
“Yeah, just for a little while, but probably not the U.S.”

I think the most interesting thing about being in Philly (airport) for a few hours was that back in 2003 the US trip was a big thing to me and consequently I have very clear memories of what I was thinking about, how I felt at the time, who I was. And it seems like a long time ago.

Click the photo for more.

So, did I mention we’d been in Rome? It was a couple of weeks ago now and in the end (because of work) I ended up flying to Rome from Orlando via (all too briefly) Prague before returning more or less directly here (Orlando). Rome is a long way to go from Orlando for a long weekend but quite apart from the obvious chance to see E, Rome itself was also, well worth the (long) trip.

It comes as no surprise, of course, that there is a lot to see in Rome, but just how much there was to see came as something of a surprise. Two thousand eight hundred years of history, much of it as the centre of it’s own empire, is apparently a good way to build up a stock of tourist attractions.

We saw as many of the ‘must sees’ as one can reasonably see in four days and I left content that I’d seen more than enough to have done justice to the place but with the pleasing sense that I’d be happy to come back and see more of it.

The biggest and nicest surprise though, was how much I enjoyed being in the city. I’d rather expected to be amazed by the sites while feeling the city was a battle. This just wasn’t the case. We got RomaPass when we arrived giving us free run of the public transport system and free entry to a couple of museums to boot.

The RomaPass and basic tourist map together served to make us feel that we could easily get two and fro around the city as we wished. The metro system, while not pretty was pleasantly not crowded and provides a serviceable backbone, augmented by easy to navigate bus system to get you around the bits where there is just too much history to dig a metro tunnel under. We also walked a lot of it.

The food was, it goes without saying, wonderful and we ate, I think, every meal outside. Everyone we encountered was pleasant and helpful and at no point did I get that ‘arg, tourists’ feeling.

The water pumps, dotted around the city and from which you can fill your water bottle are a great idea that should be implemented everywhere!

Overall I just liked being there and instead of feeling like I’d survived the city to see its sites I left thinking… You, know, if someone offered me a job in Rome…

The other day, after marvelling at the prices of iPhone desk stands, we built one using these instructions from instructables.com. Photos below demonstrate the stand in action and give you a sneak peak at my most used iPhone apps.

iPhone Geekery Aside: The top photo is taken using my iPhone 3G with the Griffin Clarifi case with built-in close-up lens (thanks L&M). The second photo with a 3GS, demonstrating the difference with focal length with the case (the 3G is of course only 2MP vs 3MP for the 3GS).

Go on, laugh it up!

During February most (but not all, shame on you!) of the guys in our company grew a moustache.

The actual rules were more complicated but basically…

• You had to be clean shaven on day one which wasn’t so bad for me but E wasn’t best pleased.
• Then let it all grow for two weeks, during which time we all start to look like backpackers.
• Week three was freestyle week and a return to normal for me.

But in week four, you had to be sporting just a moustache ALL WEEK.

That’s twenty metro rides, ten trips out to lunch and as few social engagements as I could manage!

No offence to the happily moustached of the world, but it just wasn’t me, as I think you’ll agree…

Me @ Velká kunratická

Well, it’s not been a great year for running events for me. Changing cities, countries and indeed continents coupled with a few calendar clashes meant that I didn’t get to the events that I hoped to and there were too few of them.

Fortunately it won’t be a completely event free year as I managed to squeeze in a little local event here in Prague a few weeks ago.

I ran the 76th Velká Kunratická Race. It’s a 3.1 k race through some hilly woods here in Prague. The event was smallish but well attended and very well organised.

Running a 3k race is certainly not something I’ve trained for but it was good fun to be out there trying work out how to pace yourself for a race that’s only three k but is comprised almost entirely of steep hills.

Ran it in 21:10 which considering I hadn’t trained for the distance, or at all for that matter, I thought was none to shabby.

Great fun, highly recommended.

UPDATE: My Twitter account has been unblocked as of some point on Saturday. I’ve still not found any information about how the account was compromised.

My twitter @triviality account has been compromised. A tweet appearing to come from me was posted during the night. The tweet read:

Hey evry1, peep http://high-profits.org ! ez way to make some extra cash!

Twitter have suspended my account, which I guess is a reasonable response in the circumstances.

I’ve logged the incident with Twitter using the support system here. There is currently nothing posted to the Twitter Status Blog, or in the known issues list. The only information I’ve found so far is on mashable, that at least suggests it’s a wider problem affecting 1000s of accounts and not just my account.

I’ve temporarily removed the Twitter feed from the sidebar of this blog as it was throwing a diaglogue box asking for login details, apparently an odd symptom of the block.

I’ve no idea at this stage how the account has been compromised. I’ll update this post with any new information.

So my Toastmasters Competent Communicator Certificate found its way to me here in Prague a couple of weeks ago.

My Toastmasters journey has been an interesting one. I’ve also got a lot more out of the experience than I originally expected.

First, quickly, for the uninitiated what is Toastmasters? Wikipedia describes Toastmasters…

Toastmasters International (TI) is a nonprofit educational organization that operates clubs worldwide for the purpose of helping members improve their communication, public speaking and leadership skills. Through its thousands of member clubs, Toastmasters International offers a program of communication and leadership projects designed to help men and women learn the arts of speaking, listening, and thinking.

The Toastmasters club mission statement reads…

The mission of a Toastmasters club is to provide a mutually supportive and positive learning environment in which every individual member has the opportunity to develop oral communication and leadership skills, which in turn foster self-confidence and personal growth.

I became aware of Toastmasters gradually as I heard recommendations in various places suggesting it was a good thing to do to improve your public speaking skills. I felt that my public speaking skills needed improving, so the idea stuck. A the time there were no Toastmasters clubs in Hangzhou. A colleague at work arrived at similar conclusion and it was an email from her that started the ball rolling.

A group of us visited a Shanghai club to learn the ropes and began setting up a corporate club at work. Toastmasters supports corporate clubs within work places and the more common, community clubs.

What then, is the value of Toastmasters?

At it’s core, Toastmasters is an education programme that develops public speaking skills. The initial qualification that members work towards is uninspiringly titled Competent Communicator. To attain this qualification a member must successfully make ten speeches to the club. The competent communicator manual provides guidelines for each speech giving the member specific skills to work on for each project that gradually build confidence and effectiveness at speaking.

The skills start with basic speaking confidence and build gradually project by project through skills like, speech organisation, vocal variety, using visual aids, etc. Each speech is evaluated by another member verbally during the meeting then in a written form within the manual afterwards. This process of learning through doing and constructive evaluations is the real core value.

I have to be honest, despite my enthusiasm for the idea I was a little sceptical at first. Like any organisation Toastmasters has it’s own language and tends to feel a little bit hokey if not cultish. It was also all a little bit self-consciously ’self help’ for me. I began working through the Competent Communicator manual seeing it more as a means-to-an-ends. The value of ’stage time’ and evaluation was obvious to me but the real logic behind the manual and the process didn’t become apparent until part way through.

Toastmasters meetings are structured such that there are also opportunities for improving imprompu speaking skills which is definitely an area of further work for me. It’s worth noting also that learning to provide other members with effective evaluations of their speeches is at times harder than giving speeches itself and is certainly a great learning experience both for effective evaluation and improving your own speaking skills.

Toastmasters also has a leadership education track which promotes leadership skills through taking roles in meetings and the running the club. I learned a lot through the process of creating and running our corporate club, as I have done with organising running clubs too, but I didn’t feel that I got a great deal from the Leadership Manual and it’s projects. It is likely though that this is very different for members who are nearer the beginning of their professional careers and that Toastmasters provides the same supportive and positive learning environment for developing leadership skills as it does for speaking skills.

I expected that, like many people, I would achieve my Competent Communicator certificate and feel that Toastmasters had runs it’s course for me. To my surprise, that’s not been the case.

While my public speaking skills are vastly improved (even if I do say so myself) the standards I apply to myself (and others!) have been raised sufficiently by the process that I’ve now decided I want to pursue the Advanced Speaking qualification.

Moving to a new city, as I have recently done, joining the local Toastmasters club has given me not just an opportunity to continue developing my skills but a great way to meet new, interesting, like-minded people in my new home.

Moving on (up)

Well, my dear reader(s) this is one them posts you rarely get, that’s actually about my life. The sort of post I feel that I should be writing but never do.

So the headline, in case you’ve not heard, is that I’m leaving Hangzhou and moving to Prague. Why? Well, as you know I have one super amazingly good reason and a bunch of smaller ones. Overall it’s the right thing to do and the right time professional, personally and it terms of my development and my life’s journey.

In a way I feel like I’ve grown up here in Hangzhou. I guess you grow and learn a lot in any 6 (almost) year period of your life but changing countries makes it really easy to identify what you’ve learned and how you’ve grown in a particular place. I’ve been here for the last 6 (almost) years so looking at life from this moment in time they are the most important years. It also, as I’m 30, works out to be half my adult life, more than half my professional life (if somewhat artificially measured from graduation) and one fifth of my life as a whole. That’s significant.

Changing jobs* and countries at the same gives an unusually obvious sense of the end of one era and the begining of another. I’ve learned more generally, and specifically more about myself, in the last 12 months than in any period I can recall. I find myself excited by the many possibilities that are in front of me for all aspects of my life. Whatever happens from this point, this is going to be one of the best decisions I made because it is time to move on to new challenges and the next stage of the journey.

* I don’t have one, if you’re reading this and also happen to be in the process of recruiting an IT support / project manager in Prague, then we should talk.

I’ve been asked some interesting and some strange questions as I’ve talked to many people about ‘the plan’ so I thought I’d try answer some of these as a way to sign off on my time in Hangzhou.

Will I miss Hangzhou? Gosh yes. Hugely. What will I miss? First and foremost the people. I’ve been so lucky to meet the most amazing people here over the years. It’s a transitory place, people have come and gone over the years which has just made it all the more interesting, you have this fluid group of people that slowly changes over time. It’s an international group so I’ve been exposed to different langauges and cultures, not just Chinese, though that’s been a huge part of it, but also people from all around the world. More than anything the lifestyle makes it possible to connect with people that I just think is much easier than in home country and home culture. Most people you meet are actively looking for possibilities to grow their circle of contacts if not their circle of friends. I can’t stress enough that the most amazing thing about my time here is the people I’ve enjoyed it with both colleagues and friends. You are all amazing and you know who you are.

One final thing that is specific to Hangzhou and has been such a huge part of my time here is the brilliant contrast you have of large cosmopolitan city with a lovely lake (14km around) with landscaped gardens around it and bordered by the wonderful hills dotted with tea fields. I shall very much miss my Tuesday night runs by the lake and weekends of hiking and running in the mountains.

How have I changed? Like I said, you change in six years anyway but I think that my time in Hangzhou has certainly changed me in different ways compared to having spent the last 6 years in the UK. I’ve traveled way more than I think I would have ever done. I’ve been forced to challenge assumptions about the world, about the way to live one’s life and the way to relate to other people in a way that is a unique product of the things I’ve done and the people I’ve met. Oh and apparently I now have a funny accent and use funny words, so I’m told.

Has it been a waste? This question took me by surprise. Is time spent here a waste now I’ve decided to leave? Certainly not. I’ve got so much out of the experience, learned so much and had soo much fun that, absolutely not. I’ve also got a great group of friends. I speak serviceable Chinese and something tells me that’s going to be useful again at some point in the future. As Gandalf says, “Even the very wise cannot see all ends.” I am also applying the lessons I’ve learned in acquiring my second language to dramatically improve my effectiveness in acquiring my third. Czech study has begun in earnest. I’ve also got some great experience of working and living in a multi-cultural / multi lingual environment and it’s hard not to see those as skills that are directly relevant to my immediate future .

I’ve learned so much, made so many great friends, been inspired and challenged by so much that I’ve seen and done and heard.

And we’ve had lots of fun.

I don’t want to cause a diplomatic incident (and I can see Geordieland withdrawing their ambassador over this one) but my local here in Hangzhou is serving cocktails in Brown Ale glasses!