I love the autumn. It is my favourite time of year. I love it how it brings colours; yellow, orange, red, and brown. I enjoy the fresh morning air that hints towards Winter. But perhaps what I like most of all, is the cosy atmosphere one can create at home by lighting candles. The light of a candle brings me calm – whenever I feel stressed it always helps to light a little around the room.

Tomorrow I’ll be heading off on business. It is a small upgrade project and I will be away from home for two weeks. But that is alright, because this time of year, I got a lot to look forward to. However, I wonder if they’d let me lit candles in the hotel room…?

A lot is going at work for my part. I remember how I had a discussion with my manager when I recently started this job, about my personal development. I remember him saying he’d like me to take an active role in our department’s business development (verksamhetsutveckling) program. At the time I had no idea how I would be able to contribute, but then again, you need to have gotten into working properly before you can really see any areas of improvement.

Perhaps one of my ”problems”, if you will, is that I tend to get overly excited about things that I think can (and ought to) be improved in order to create more efficiency, standardization, and most of all structure. Whilst I’ve come up with several ideas I also stumble upon the fact that not everyone shares my point of view – an elder colleague said it very well:

It is always exciting with new people coming into the company because you see things with a fresh eye. There is just the not so little challenge of convincing all the stubborn ”oldies” that its time for something new.

So I suppose I’ll have to take it slow, make one change at a time, and kind of ”grow” on the senior engineers so that they have a change of heart.

During this week I have had a meeting that has cleared the air concerning my involvement in the EWIC (video) project. A person like me enjoy having things around me under control – acting on a whim has never been my strong side. So it was decided then that despite being responsible for all documentation on the department towards EWIC I will also be working closely with the two commissioning managers in managing and planning the commissioning of the two stations. My manager made it clear that he sees this project as a definite step towards my goal to be a commissioning manager myself.

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Microsoft (Clipart)

Last weekend, we spent the day with my fiancés’ parents at the Swedish annual Book Fair (Bok- och Biblioteksmässan) in Gothenburg – the largest event for book lovers in Sandinavia. On my way there however, the following thought crossed my mind: Would the book fair be as interesting as earlier years now that the e-book is on the market?

The whole market of e-books is something that I support completely (and also take advantage of) – perhaps even more than the general book reader since I tend to travel a lot in my work, and the fact that ten hardcover books really causes a lot more trouble than tens of e-books in a 200 gram package. But as it turned out we left with a total of eight hardcovers (+ one e-book)… cause they have their charm after all… when they’re signed (!).

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Peter Temples’ new book ”Truth” in Swedish translation

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A whole new world opens up at the book fair where you got every opportunity in the world to really meet face to face with the author of that 1000+ pages book that weighs like a brick – then its worth it to bring it home because it suddenly is more than ”just a book”.

Perhaps that is the future for the book industry? The e-books may perhaps replace the paperbacks completely, while the hardcover books become those rare, exclusive editions. A future I can definitely imagine.