Ricky Martin’s Blog

Ok, So I have been trying to get on this track to get going with my Certification, I picked up the set of books about 2 weeks ago. And brough 1 along with me during my trip to Tulsa. I didn’t even manage to crack it open once during the 2 weeks.

So I am now back home and it is now the second week home, I have managed to get through 2 chapters so far. well not completely through but I am at 2-30 in the book. I am hoping to try and manage at least 1 exam each month but that might be hard with travel for work. But that is my goal for now lets see if I can keep on track to do it or not. will keep this updated with my progress.

I read this book a little over 6 months ago, it is quite interesting. I kind of stumbled upon after reading a few blogs and finding the book mentioned several times. I then found the website and blog associated with it The blog of Author Tim Ferris. It has an interesting perspective, you have to give the author credit as he has managed to generate quite a bit of buzz for the book, and has managed to get around as result, if you follow the blog at all you can see what I mean as he has traveled quite a bit as part of the promotion of the book in different countries.

I did enjoy the book, and I am trying to take away as much as possible from it. One of the themes that is repeated throughout and is a staple of his setup is to have a business that sells a product that you can almost run on autopilot. Which is something I can agree with, if you can have a revenue stream that doesn’t need you to make it work, that is the way to go! with that in mind you can achieve a lot of the things that he mentions, but probably the hardest part is finding that product or system that works. I know I am still working with it.

Once you can manage that part the rest of it is quite simple to start to put into motion. I have managed to get some of the steps working, but can’t go into too much details yet.

Well, I had my first service on my car here in the UK. they do things a bit different here than in the US or Canada for that matter. Here in the UK they have a different system than what I have seen anywhere else, you actually have to have what they call an MOT done on your car each year, basically it is a test to make sure your car is road worthy. if not you have to correct any issues that they find before you can get your MOT certificate. I have not had to do that part of it yet luckily. That adventure comes in January of next year. The other interesting thing is they need to have the MOT Certificate to get your Road Tax paid here in the UK, which is basically similar to your registration in the US or Canada. you have to pay the road tax is based on the size of your engine and year of your vehicle. for Newer vehicles they have gone the route of the paying related to your emissions. Given the fact I didn’t pay all that much for my car, I don’t really want to spend loads on it to keep it running.

So now on to the actual service. I had it serviced here in town by the local dealer, they had a special for “Legacy Service” which is basically for any car more than 3 years old. which my car qualifies, it is 12 years old. So basically what they call a service here is an oil change, inspection, road test, and then they valet your car afterward. So after all that the damage to my wallet was about 200 GBP(approx $400 USD). which is quite significant if you consider that they do the same in the US for about $50 maybe $100. With that in mind though the difference being here the manufacturer only recommends a service every 12 months…not every 3 as in the US and Canada. After the inspection though they found a few things “of concern” as they say. nothing major but it could be in a few months. the total of their major findings to get repaired came up to almost 1400 GBP. Now comes the point where I have to start looking at the cost/Benefit of getting things fixed on this car or getting rid of it and getting a new one.

Well Today is my first day officially back in the office after my trip to Tulsa. Not much going on as you can imagine, just getting back in the groove catching up on e-mails, etc…Managed to get all my Expense reports sorted out, that was a big thing to get done. Looks like things are already getting started for the next trip out to Munich. Other than that things are still the same, no new tasks for now, have to wait and see what tomorrow brings….

Well after a long trip back to the UK from Tulsa, OK USA we finally made it back home. Was a very long trip, not quite as long as going there from the Uk. We had a small layover (3.5 hours) in Chicago and we had a bit of a delay landing at Terminal 5. We had about 20 minute delay in the air and then another 15minute delay when we landed waiting for a gate. After the usual fun of waiting to get off the plane we finally got to UK immigration. Which is quite interesting, we finally get up to the agent and they just glance at my wife’s passport (She has an EU Passport), and they proceed to ask me many questions, I guess it’s because I have a Canadian Passport with Work Visa’s for both the US and the UK. Well we Finally get through and get down to baggage claim and have to wait another 20 minutes for all our bags to come out. We then made our way to the bus stop for the long term car parking. Finally we get to the car, and are on our way back to the flat getting in around 9 AM Uk time after leaving our hotel at 9:30 AM Tulsa time the day before.  As I said not quite as long as getting to Tulsa but still a long trip back especially since I managed to only sleep about 20 minutes the whole trip back. Well next trip for work is going to be to Munich as far as I know. as far as personal trip’s planning to go to Disney in Paris in about a week….should be fun…