Game over 2008. One and a half day are left over of 2008 and than a year full of amazing, surprising, shocking, … things becomes history. 2008 for me was like a roller coaster. There were one major event in my private life: I got noticed that we will get a little daughter in 2009. So my little family will grow again and the first son will get his little sister.
There were also bad or annoying things in 2008:
First of all the company that I work for (AMD) runs deeper and deeper into a bad economic situation and a lot of employees got laid off during 2008. So some of my counterparts and colleagues are not anymore with AMD. Thanks good that the work force reduction did not happen to the production plant site in Germany, where I’m located. The downside of this story was: in Q3 AMD accounced the building of a new company „The Foundry Co“ (interims name) together with a Arabic investor. The TFC will consist of the German plant sites Fab36 and Fab38 and later also a new fab in USA New York state. So 2009 will be definetly a challenging year full of work to make the TFC company real and split of the production sites from AMD into the TFC.
One of my private goals was not fulfilled in 2008: We still looking for an house or freehold apartment in the city area of Dresden. Ok we did not work with a high pressure on that „project“, but it looks also pretty complicated for 2009 to find a real estate which meets all our requirements. Maybe the price will go down a little bit in 2009 because of the world crisis. We will see.
Forecast 2009:
As I already mentioned the most important event will be „Sara(h)“ birth sometime in February. So the Olivos will be 4 in future. I will also try to get another two months off for parental leave. I had this time already for my son Luciano on 2008 and i will never miss that time. How all this will work with the heavy workload coming from AMD/TFC split I don’t know right now.
I will also return to Venezuela for some time in 2009 to the family of my wife Dayana. I like the culture in latin america and the different type of people. Maybe I can spend my parental leave in Venezuela. So that time will be a real chilling time for me.
Finaly the most important thing at all: healthiness for my family, the family of my wife, for my friends and collegues and all other people out there.