The two cockatiels -Red (female) and Tweetie (male)- have been mating more often since I installed the “nests” and now an egg to show for it! This was way sooner than I expected. I guess they were just waiting for a place to start breeding. I’m not sure if there’s actually a little tiel growing in there since it’s her first egg, but it would be nice.

They take turns sitting on it. So cute.

• Update:14/10/05@10:00 - There are now two eggs! :-O Apparently, this isn’t a practice run. There could well be another 6 eggs on the way; one every 48 hours.
• Update:15/10/05@20:00 - As of now, we have three eggs. They’re getting sloppy with their nesting schedule. They usually take turns every 12 hours, sitting on the eggs, but sometimes they’re both out eating, forgetting about them. I don’t know how long the eggs can stay “uncovered” once the incubation period has started, but it is their first clutch so I can’t be strict with them. If I see them both out, I take one of the parents and point him/her to the box. They remember what to do once they’re in there.

About 3 years ago, while I was still working for Siemens, I was asked to fill out a questionnaire handed out by the mobile division concerning their phones. Questions about usability and design.

I wrote that they needed to change their corporate identity and that their designs were ugly, boring, conservative and about as competitive as an 80 year old with Alzheimer’s at a techno party.

So, a year after that, the virtuoso design team that came up with such marvel as the S35, brought out the Xelibri phone line. A collection of useless overpriced designer phones with little or no practical application ,which were designed to be sold in boutiques, like jewelry. One of them didn’t even have buttons or a display (All you could do was speak in the mic and hope the phone understood the number you were making it dial).

The Xelibri phones flopped and Siemens was forced to realize that it couldn’t keep up in the fast moving mobile phone market.

Following a corporate trend, Siemens, like many other companies in Germany announced last year, that it would have to cut jobs in its manufacturing facilities and move some of its plants to countries like Hungary and Poland where wages are a fraction of those in Germany. It’s a scam that corporations run against their own employees, essentially to extort them into working longer hours for no extra pay in return for a guarantee of jobs.

Siemens’ Mobile unit successfully convinced its employees of this, and as they work 40 hours a week for less pay, Siemens was still losing more than 1 million euros a day on the unit.

On Tuesday, BenQ, a little known, Taiwanese maker of flat-panel screens and cellular phones agreed to take over Siemens’ cellular phone unit. To shed the business, Siemens will pay BenQ 250 million euros ($306 million), and buy 50 million euros ($61 million) worth of its shares.

BenQ does not give any guarantees for their new employees. The manufacturing plants in Germany will most likely be shut down and new ones will pop up in Taiwan.

And the managers and CEO’s lived happily ever after….

PS: On a personal note, I’d like to thank Kenneth, Desi and Kimberley for their kind hospitality during my stay in Sittard-Geleen last weekend. The Dutch vlaai was excellent.