Rumble: Moved Again...

I packed my bags and moved again. My home in Rome, version 3. Moved in with Robert who has this lovely house in Fiumicino on the coast, about 15 km from work. (And, yeah mum, I even did my laundry! Did not get to the ironing yet..)

It feels a bit like history repeats itself. You might remember Robert from this short story. We used to work together since the Islamabad times. When we moved the team to Dubai, we both shared an apartment with Alex and Ghis for a while...

We are connected by many stories stories. One of them is how Robert and I met:
We're both radio amateurs. Robert was part of the organising committee for the 'Olympics for radio amateurs', the World Radio Team Championship in Slovenia back in 2000. Over 50 teams gathered from all over the world to compete for 24 hours, using their technical experience and radio operator skills. Mark and I formed the Belgian team and we won one of the championship's categories. We were so tired after the competition we actually overslept and missed part of the award ceremony. "And the winner of the Phone section of the championship is .... Team Belgium.. [applause]. Team Belgium? [applause]... Eh, anyone seen Team Belgium?". Team Belgium was still in bed. :-) Anyways, we got there an hour late, and they redid part of the awards ceremony for us. haha.

Back to my story with Robert: at the end of the award festivities, there were fireworks on the shore of a lake. Robert was sitting next to me, and we were talking about work, travelling... He was interested in joining our team. And I was interested in hiring him. It only took a few months before Robert started working with us in Pakistan and Afghanistan. So the rumour goes that "Robert proposed to Peter, on a summer night, while looking at fire works..". How romantic, hahaha.

Picture WRTC 2000 courtesy John Devoldere.