Conceptual Clarity

So I've been tagged by both Andy and Andrew.  Here goes with five things that you may not know about me:

1. I have been known to cling to my inner child.  I still love the Muppets and my workspaces at home and at work are proliferated by desk toys and real toys.  Believe it or not I think this does help keep things creative at work.
2. I played tennis for around 10 years until my younger brother, Adrien (who is now a tennis coach) got better than me, this was around the time I switched to playing touch football.  The crowning moment of my touch football "career" was getting to play against Darren Lockyer in a H-grade social match.  For those who aren't aware Darren Lockyer is the captain of the Australian Rugby League team.  I'm not quite sure why he was there and our team lost by a considerable margin, but it was still a lot of fun.
3. I spell using The Queen's English and EditLive! (or Word/Outlook) corrects it to proper American English for me.  To be honest I prefer the Queen's version - give me "U"s and "S"es - but I know that many reading the things I write would prefer me to Americanize the spelling.
4. The first concert I ever went to was a Ben Folds Five concert in 1998.  The band has broken up but still remain one of my favorites.
5. My siblings and I have rhyming names - Damien, Adrien and Vivienne.  As a child this made it difficult when Mum or Dad was yelling at one of us from the top of the stairs…you'd often mishear which of us was in trouble at any particular time.

Unfortunately, I don't know of five other people who are blogging who haven't been tagged.  As someone who has just started blogging you know that something is at the end of the line when it gets to me.  So here's a super special bonus fact instead:

• I've been known to write a poetic verse or two and I am told that it's actually half decent.  For the record my favorite poem of all time would have to be Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 (also known as Let me not to the marriage of true minds).  If that's not a great poem then I never writ - little Shakespearean humor there.

Tonight I had my first class of the new year for my MBA.  So I'm back into it, at least one evening a week taken up with a class from 6 to 9pm.  However, it does mean that I reprise one of my highlights of the week.

Brisbane, is divided by quite a large river - the aptly named Brisbane River - and every night I go to class I park my car on one side of the river and walk over the Goodwill Bridge to the QUT campus on the bank directly opposite, right next to Brisbane city.  The walk lasts only about ten minutes, but it is one of the highlights of my week, yet I never realized the value of this simple walk until I started my studies (and discovered the cheap parking on the south bank of the river).

Over the course of these ten minutes I get the chance to clear my head, but the undoubted highlight is from the middle of the bridge at about 9:15pm on a weeknight.  It is then that I pause and look out at the myriad of lights that form Brisbane city.  The light glistens on the water and the sounds of traffic are somewhat distant.  On the bridge itself I'm often alone, though sometimes one of Brisbane's CityCat ferries will motor underneath but for the most part it's a serene and beautiful outlook on a city of around a million people (I will take a photo next week so you can enjoy it as well).  The moment passes and I am on my way again having enjoyed one of the highlights of my week.

This simple, little act of taking a moment, just a moment, from my busy week helps keep me sane between the rigors of work, study and everything in between.  Grab these moments when you can and appreciate them as you will, they may not come often, they may not last long, but it helps keep you in touch, after all, not everything is business.