First of all, Anne is me.

There comes a time in your life when you grow up and want to merge your e-mail accounts and that only makes sense if you also decide that you’ve now reached that fear-inspiring age when you don’t need a pseudonym anymore, because your real name really is fine. And that’s when you update your blog and suddenly it’s about Anne and not Jamie anymore.

I live in Düsseldorf, a town north of Cologne in Germany, and I spent most of my life in the Cologne area. The farthest I’ve actually come is the three years I’ve lived in Bonn, but don’t bother to get out the map, it’s not really that far from where I live now.
I have a love/hate relationship with Germany and a complete love relationship with Cologne. I’ve spent some time in great cities like New York and Chicago and my heart still aches when I think about New York, but I realize that Cologne is where I grew up and where I know my way around and don’t let anybody tell you that Berlin is better, because… so not true.

I started this blog in October 2004, back when it was still okay to write ‘target=_blank’ because browsers were just beginning to sprout tabs. At first it was called “Jamie’s Blog” (very creative, I know), then “The Wonderful World of Jamie” and finally, complete with a move from Blogger to Wordpress “Here Be Subtlety”. I’m very proud that I actually kept it up that long.

My list of things I enjoy reads like most people’s list and every time I go into more detail I get the feeling that I’m really just showing off.
But because I’m spoiled and oh-so-attention-seeking, here’s the showing off in a nutshell:
1. I can play four instruments (and all rather well) and sing. The singing part has been confirmed by various strangers, so I chose to believe it.
2. I can speak three languages and fight my way through easy and medium texts in a couple more. But there’s nothing so special about being able to read Dutch when your native tongue is German.
3. I love music, books and DVDs which manifests itself in shortage of money and/or storage space. We actually need a new shelf as I write, because I started second-shelving books again.
4. I watch too much TV. No, really. I realize that this doesn’t fall in the showing off part of this entry.

You might also want to know that I’m married, but still without kids and (worse, much worse) dogs, cats or other cute animals. I work as a software developer, but am not so very sure if that’s my dream job which, as I recently discovered, is actually loads of fun when you’re working for the right company. And - for what it’s worth - my birthday is 2 October, 1980. So if you want to get me a present, knock yourself out.

And just so you know I’m not perfect (although I did teach myself to read, because my kindergarten teacher practically held me hostage for a whole year) here’s some things I can’t do: knit, speak (or read) Chinese, skate backwards, do a cartwheel, sew, tell left and right apart, remember where that freaking folder is that Outlook stores your mail data in, whistle through my teeth, quote from The Godfather, rise-and-shine (it’s always more like fall-out-of-the-bed-and-stumble-into-the-bathroom).

My most charming quality may be my complete and utter confusion as to why I have to work to get money. I don’t get it. I’m so nice, shouldn’t that be enough? Isn’t that worth something?