After-work talk
Scandinavians go skiing in the winter since our winters feel too long. I’ve also tried Canada for skiing, plus six European countries. To people from the latitudes of water-skiing, I explain this in terms of export-driven industrial economics: you let an external mechanism (largely beyond your control) take you uphill, where you make the PR-pictures and start a zigzag run downhill on your own while the camera is off. The straight, shortest path to the valley usually turns out to be the time-consuming bumpy one. Visibility is limited so you’re not sure where you’re going and it all looks risky (if it looks anything at all). This provides you with the handy option of blaming external circumstances if you fall; some people claim this is a project-management checklist for software projects... :-) The survival of humans in Scandinavia of course depends on supercomputers to predict & control our weather accurately ;-) I like Norway for skiing. The language melody seems to mirror the topology there and the only thing smaller in the Norwegian mountains than elsewhere is the liftline.
Back to my professional background.