I'm rushing to get the first SimStan update published before my next appointment on the Spree river. Running late mostly because I goofed off for most of the time that I was supposed to be fixing SimStan. (Hmm...goofing already on the first day?!)

There have been the usual technical hiccups, with several people not able to access the site at all, and some users in Europe experiencing very slow load times. I've done some patching, but let me know if you're having any trouble.

The first "real" SimStan event I did was yesterday, an event from Ben Casnocha:

Write in my journal Make some notes on my current thinking of living in Berlin, and also ask myself the question, "What's my craziest belief?"

Here is me doing exactly that, at my favorite neighborhood café, Johann Rose.

(The craziest belief turned out to be, well, really crazy. You already know I'm a bit crazy for doing this project, so I feed your imagination any more.)

This morning began bright and early (yaaaaaaaaawn!) at 8am with a task from Saskia:

Good Morning and Know Your City - Walk
Have a short walk in an area of Berlin you do not know yet but would like to see. Get a Brötchen for breakfast on your way back.

I decided to walk north from my Kreuzberg flat, as that's the area I've explored the least. Turns out there's a reason: it's mostly boring buildings. But it was interesting to observe the entirely different crew of people that you see on the streets at this hour. John Sander and I had the same discussion about the East Village in New York: how it seemed like a completely different neighborhood between, e.g. jogging at 7am vs coming home late at 2am.

Anyways, I did see some cool graffiti, and had a nice sit by the river.

Ken had me work on a book proposal, something that we've agreed to keep each other accountable to this summer. I had a very productive time, writing a few pages and coming up with some good analogies scribbled in my notebook. Alas, forgot to take a picture. :(

Crisi had to cancel on me for lunch, which raises as interesting SimStan question: how to handle last minute changes like this? I'm thinking of removing the "lock-in" of events. If the lunch hadn't been locked, then Crisi could have re-arranged the schedule for me, or converted the time into a nap. Which is what I ended up doing on my own.

Adam, ever the practical New Yorker, had me do some IT consulting for him and create an online survey for his property management business. You can take the exciting survey by following this link. (Thanks Adam...I'll get you back for this at our next workout!)

Then it was time to email everyone and ask for their address. This is really cool: a set-up preparation for a later event. Nice!

And that's it for today. I'm excited to see my schedule filling up. More thoughts and reflections later. Thanks guys for playing along!