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Before I start with the news, though, you might remember that I misplaced my camera early December last year and hence didn't have many shots from events, such as the SAP Christmas Parties, both in Melbourne and in Walldorf. Since I recently uncovered the secret (at least it was a secret to me) location of my camera I can now show you some shots from those events.
Just to update you on that one as well: Before leaving to Europe last year, Matt, Jan and I actually won the tennis club 1st place in the local tennis tournament.
Illustration 1: The Winner of Last Year's Tennis Tournament in our Club: Jan, I & Matt (left to right)
Illustration 2: Some real action shots from the battle for the title
Illustration 3: Of course we had a well-deserved Beer afterwards!
Here are some shots from our SAP Melbourne X-Mas Party.... basically it started at 12pm and didn't finish for some of us untill the next morning. It was a very hot day with no clouds whatsoever and our first stop took us to the Prince of Wales Roof Top Terrace. From the top of the Building you could see the Melbourne Bay, St. Kilda Beach and the Famous Fitzroy Street in St. Kilda. After a good meal and a few beers, we decided to move on to the Metropol Bar just up the street.
Illustration 4: SAP Melbourne X-Mas Party at the Prince of Wales Hotel - the Beginning
Illustration 5: the Beginning (2)
Illustration 6: Dan and Anthony (left to right)
Illustration 7: Gerard and Patrik (left to right)
Illustration 8: Praneel and Sonja (left to right)
Illustration 9: View from the Roof Top Terrace
Illustration 10: We shifted to the famous Metropol Bar - Suzi and Clinton (left to right)
Illustration 11: Leon, Cameron & Peggy (left to right)
Illustration 12: Gordon... after a few beers already that's not a bad trick, huh?!
Illustration 13: Halde, Matt & Anna
Illustration 14: a bit later it was getting packed
Illustration 15: Matt, Paul, Kal, Mikael
Illustration 16: it was a beautiful day to chat with friends and celebrate the upcoming Christmas Time
Illustration 17: Praneel and I
Exactly one week later and after travelling over 20,000km to the other side of the globe I was lucky enough to get invited to the SAP Walldorf Christmas Party 2006. It started quite a bit different - under closed roofs and within the SAP Arena Stadium in Mannheim. Classical Music, Rock, Alternative Drumming (don't know exactly what it was) and thousands of colleagues from the Headquarters. I caught up with my Business Consulting Colleagues, and so many other friends I had made over the years working with SAP. Here are some impressions:
Illustration 18: SAP Walldorf X-Mas Party at the SAP Arena in Mannheim - Some Classic Music to warm us up
Illustration 19: Myself and Frankie Boy, my ex-Supervisor
from SAP Business Consulting in Europe
Illustration 20: Edgar and I have met in
Walldorf, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne over the past year...
I'm planning to visit him at his wedding next year
Illustration 21: Andreas and I
Illustration 22: Oli and I
Illustration 23: Juergen, I and former Business Consulting
Colleagues from Germany
Illustration 24: Tatjana and I -
I'm still using her approach and methodologies around
the Value Assessment of SAP software
Illustration 25: Some really good Rock Music on the Main Stage
Illustration 26: Quite Impressive Light-Jockying
Illustration 27: Frank and Henrik :)
Illustration 28: The real party took place in the Field Services Tent
after 2am in the morning -
House Music, R&B and lots of cocktails (and people)
Since the last newsletter I was invited to two weddings which I really enjoyed celebrating :). I also flew to Europe (Poland and Germany) twice this year to visit my family and friends spending close to 6 weeks in the home continent.
The first wedding was Matt & Mels' Wedding taking place in really beautiful Rose Garden Estate around 60km south of Melbourne... It was a great day (30+ degrees and no clouds) and the wedding was absolutely beautiful.
Illustration 29: Matt and Mels' Wedding in the Rose Garden
Illustration 30: Kasia and I after some great picknick overlooking the ocean
Illustration 31: Kasia and I were once of the first to swing our legs on the Dance floor
A few weeks after the wedding I went to Europe together with Kasia were we visited our Families and Friends, unfortunately I didn't have a camera with me, so no photos from this Trip. In short I zig-zaged between Bermany and Poland a few times. I managed to visit Warsaw, Nowy Sacz, Katowice, Frankfurt, Koeln, Essen, Nuremberg, Cracow and Pultusk. After coming back to Australia, I convinced a few of my friends to join the Polish Communities 24th Anniversary Party in Melbourne. As you might suspect the vodka was finding its way into our glasses all by itself. Great Party!
Illustration 32: Polish Party 24th Anniversary in Melbourne - Want a shot of Vodka?
Illustration 33: "Na Zdrowie!"; Clinton and Tal in the pictures
Illustration 34: Clinton, Tal and Sophie (from left to right)
Illustration 35: On the Dancefloor: Christoph, Sophie and Clinton
Illustration 36: Christoph looks a bit scary here?! ;p
About four months ago, I shifted places from good old St. Kilda to a newly developed and still developing high rise suburb named Docklands. Living on the 13th floor I'm 10 minutes away on foot from the Melbourne Central Business District enjoying an improved living standard and a lot more comfort (i.e. gym, sauna, swimming pools, room service). It's much more quite and peaceful than St. Kilda. The apartment itself is a one bedroom 50 squaremetres place with a huge balcony and beautiful views over the Docklands marina and City Skyscrapers.
Illustration 37: 180 degree view from the my new place in the Docklands
(you can see Melbourne's Yarra River, the Docklands Marina and parts of the City on the bottom picture)
As already mentioned there was a second wedding this year which I attended, taking place in Warsaw, Poland. Marcin & Magda, also known as M&Ms married in the beautiful church of Vilanow, close to the city centre of Poland's Captiol. I flew in and combined attending the wedding with seeing my folks in Katowice and Warsaw. My Grandma, Dad and myself then went for a 4-day trip to Slovakia in order to spent some quality time with each other and to relax. We visted a beautiful place in the high Tatra Mountains with natural hot spas and beautiful fresh air around us. Throughout my trip to Poland and Slovakia I also met up with some friends from my school days. All together it was a very short trip but an exciting one.
Illustration 38: Warsaw Paparazzi Bar - Gosia, Rafal and Marysia - I studied with these guys (from left to right)
Illustration 39: Warsaw Paparazzi Bar - Jurek and Marzena, my Polish friends from Sydney
Illustration 40: Christine, Stephen and Marcin
Illustration 41: Christine, Marcin, Marcin and Tina
Illustration 42: Karol, I, Bartek and Jurek
Illustration 43: M&M's Wedding - The Chapel in Vilanow
Illustration 44: Stephen, Tina & Christina
Illustration 45: The Wedding Couple: Magda and Marcin
Illustration 46: The official M&Ms
Illustration 47: Inside the Chapel
Illustration 48: After the official Wedding - look at those happy faces!!!
Illustration 49: Classy Car to take you to the wedding party, check out the registration!
Illustration 50: I finally managed to get on the picture with the wedding couple :) *happy*
Illustration 51: 150 guests from 8+ countries...
Illustration 52: Wojtek, Kuba and Tomek (left to right)
Illustration 53: The food was fantastic!
Illustration 54: not quite sure what Christine is trying to tell me here?
Illustration 55: do the locomotion ...
Illustration 56: ...and the dancing, and games are starting
Illustration 57: ...Games, Games, Games ;)
Illustration 58: ...and dancing...
Illustration 59: Magda, after she changed into something more comfortable
Illustration 60: Slovakia Trip: Castles on the Border of Poland and Slovakia
Illustration 61: Beautiful Surroundings in the High Tatras
Illustration 62: View from the Hotel Balcony
Illustration 63: My super-cool Grandma
Illustration 64: The place was as small as one street long and didn't even have a street name,
but only numbers
Illustration 65: No street names but a beautiful and very modern catholic church
Illustration 66: Beautiful Surroundings in the High Tatras
Illustration 67: Beautiful Surroundings in the High Tatras
Illustration 68: Beautiful Surroundings in the High Tatras
Illustration 69: Beautiful Surroundings in the High Tatras
Illustration 70: Beautiful Surroundings in the High Tatras
Illustration 71: Beautiful Surroundings in the High Tatras
Illustration 72: Beautiful Surroundings in the High Tatras
Here are some more shots taken this year....
Illustration 73: My friends from Univeristy (Marysia, and Gosia)
Illustration 74: Christoph and I partying
Illustration 75: Aki, Edgar and myself rocking on the roof top of the Watershed Hotel in Melbourne
Illustration 76: St. Kilda Peer (Tal's first shot with his new camera!)
Illustration 77: Edgar and Erik partying in Melbourne!
Illustration 78: Nobbi and Akis' Housewarming party - Tobi, Adrian, Matt and Nawid
Illustration 79: Nawid's Birthday - Dasha flew in from Moscow as usually - vodka vodka vodka...
Illustration 80: Timmy's 21st Birthday party - what a blast!
Illustration 81: Kasia (right) and her friend Mel after a theatre performance
Illustration 82: Christoph, Tom and Mikael in the Belgian Beer Cafe! This was just before we took Tom out
for his "unofficial" Bachelor Party...
Illustration 83: Kasia (right) and her dear friend Marina
On the professional side of things it has been a slow starting year which has accelerated tremendously over the past five months. I'm very happy with the results year-to-date. My most outstanding achievement was the successful introduction of a new Service in the Asia-Pacific region which resulted in exeptional customer satisfaction. The service is called the "Quick Upgrade Analysis" and helps customers estimate the cost and benefits from Upgrading from a SAP R/3 System to the new SAP ERP 6 version. Based on the the high satisfaction I was able to convert 30% of my customers to become a reference customer for this new service. Additionally to the introduction of this service I focused this year on Value Engineering activies, showing customer the value of new functionality and persuade them to make a positive buying decision. Work aside, we had quite a bit of fun this year at our quarterly meetings - below are some photos from our last one in Sydney.
Illustration 84: Business Consulting Quarterly Meeting in Sydney - Bala, Melissa, I, Loreen,
Pierre-Francis, and our Instructor forming Team number "ONE"
Illustration 85: Jan, Poul, Cooking Instructor, Trevor, Christian and Tom forming Team number "TWO"
Illustration 86: Look at the Love and Finesse Poul is putting into the finish of the desert! Fantastic!
Illustration 87: Smile for the Group Shot!!! ;)
Illustration 87: I'm cooking HOT food only!
I hope you're all doing fine and hope to hear from you soon. Grettings to where-ever you're just now when reading this and all the best... btw. you can reach me over my skype (username: "vamplasma")
Live your
dreams,
Victor |
