It's been a while since we've asked the audience (whatever might remain of them by now) to participate in a back-and-forth, give-and-take, interaction style journalism approach on the GWMD. While the comments section has been open since time immemorial, sometimes folks need that extra little push to get them to keep the conversation going. And here we are...
It was a warm spring in Grenoble ten years ago when the (original) protagonists of this blog took a hard right (when looking north) turn in their lives and committed to -- or at least set in direction -- a life of liverwurst, wheat beer, incomprehensible grammar, lederhosen, edelweiß, pretzels, and other German or Bavarian stereotypes. But the original 2 protagonists in the meantime grew to double that original number and then we sort of kind of just went with the flow. But now the years start coming and they don't stop coming... Didn't make sense not to live for fun.
Despite the recent incredible performance of Pemulis's present employer on the stock market (for those who don't pay attention that is a joke; a very sad one), his life long dream has surprisingly not to be spending his days sitting at an Ikea outdoor patio furniture desk in his kids' shared bedroom having meetings late into the Central European night with Silicon Valley-based colleagues while half his salary withers away to nothing due to incompetent executive decision-making all the while watching the cracks on the walls of his disgustingly overpriced but cheaply made apartment building expand by the minute while impatiently waiting for the sunshine to return in the spring and/or to seek out the sunshine on the next trip to the Süden of Frankreich.
So we kind of need to do something. Take a hard left or a U-turn or a detour or something. Work from home has some serious benefits but the downsides also become apparent. No water-cooler banter, no lunches together, no free lunches, no good excuse to be in the city centre each day, etc.
Remember (I'm sure it's mentioned in at least one or two GWMD posts) that we almost went to Marseille after Grenoble. That certainly would have been interesting.
Now, though, we have a constraint satisfaction problem to solve. We need to keep an income somehow, the kids need to go to some stable school, we want to be able to keep traveling without having to fly all the time (and we don't count going to the Caesars Windsor as travelling -- sorry I guess we're elitists), we don't want Helga or Heinrich to lose their German (or Helga her French), it would be nice to be close to some mountains, I would like a lot less stress in my job, I'd like to work for a company whose stock has a chance of going up, Helga wants to live on a farm, we need to be fairly accessibly close to a hospital for Heinrich, it would be good if Joelle could start working again and doing something she likes and is interested in, and I would like to maybe become a wine maker (but I suppose that's not a must and if we were to translate our life problem to a weighted constraint satisfaction problem, though they're much more complex to solve, we could weight that requirement a little lower than the others at least temporarily).
So back to the original remark: we are asking our readers to weigh in with solutions. Any ideas on how to reboot the GWMD (and thereby the lives of its protagonists)? I'll seed the conversation with this suggestion: Pemulis's Dad offers to buy him a vineyard in Haute Provence. I think it ticks almost all the boxes. So Dad, what do you think? :D
