David Jenkins' weblog

Life’s too short to drink instant coffee

Category: reminiscence

  • 5 life (career) changing decisions

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    Everyone’s life is the result of a mix of chance and decisions. You can’t do much about chance but it’s the decisions you make which map out your life. I reckon that there’s five decision which I’ve taken which, successively, have meant that I didn’t become an academic, a long term oil industry employee (and…

  • 5 business trips (which didn’t go to plan)

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    I’ve travelled enough so that I’m pretty adept at avoiding the pitfalls of business trips and the stresses that go with them but even then stuff happens which is outside your control and then you have to adapt. It’s happened to me several times, fortunately never catastrophically, but in today’s world the consequences of the…

  • That was 2020 that was

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    I generally keep a diary when there’s something special going on. That typically includes travel and special events so I’ve been keeping one over the last few days and included in it my reflections of 2020. This is what I’ve written. We’ve had no holidays. We were due to go to Italy in May but…

  • My mother didn’t have a happy life

    My mother didn’t have a happy life

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    I don’t mean that it was uniformly unhappy but after a promising start she suffered a misfortune which, despite her undoubted mental strength and determination, was to blight the rest of her life. Audrey Vickers was born in 1923 and as far as I know enjoyed a happy childhood in a stable and loving but…

  • What’s wrong with using the phone?

    What’s wrong with using the phone?

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    I know it’s already been reported that younger people don’t use the phone. It’s said that they prefer to communicate in other ways, mainly via social media and its associated messaging services. They do this because they’re all linked in and continuously online so I guess it works.

  • Leaders are only as good as their teams

    Leaders are only as good as their teams

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    The All Stars, Lensbury’s 2nd rugby team: I’ve always enjoyed sport, as a spectator and a participant. Unfortunately I’ve never been that good at it and in school, although I’d have happily swapped a few academic grades for a place on the school team, I never got the chance. However later on, first at college…

  • 5 German cities

    5 German cities

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    They’re not the most interesting German cities and this is certainly not any sort of in depth profile of them but it’s the five cities which give me good memories. It helps that I spent 13 years working in the chemicals industry in Europe and of course three of the biggest chemical companies were German…

  • 5 memorable flights

    5 memorable flights

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    I didn’t take my first air flight until my mid 20s but I’d have to admit I’ve made up for it since. It’s not something I’m necessarily proud of but in my time I’ve held gold cards with three different airline groups (British Airways, KLM and SAS) and in more recent times I’ve done interim…

  • Drink piss, screw women and drive fast cars

    Drink piss, screw women and drive fast cars

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    Parental advisory: this blog post contains no salacious comment. Despite the title. I lived for two years in Jakarta, Indonesia when I was in my late 20s. After nearly four years working for Shell in London I joined Mobil Oil. This took me firstly to New York and then to Jakarta where I worked in…

  • 5 pubs and bars I could call locals

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    The Old Quay House, Dock Road, Connah’s Quay, UK If The Yacht wasn’t my local (click here to go to my previous post about The Yacht) then maybe the Old Quay House was. It was the closest pub to my home in Garthorpe Avenue in Connah’s Quay and I did drop in often when I…