One of my favourite sayings is "If you don't wonder how you ever had time to work for a living you are not doing retirement properly!". I try to adhere to this saying.
After I retired, initially I kept my hand in technically by occasionally producing software to help retail foreign exchange traders using the MetaTrader 4 (MT4) charting platform. The MT4 programming language is MetaQuotes Language (MQL), which is a derivative of C. Writing MQL was an interesting experience for me as I have long held the view that C is not really suited to modern software development. It encourages, even rewards, bad practice and all too often results in write-only code.
I have experimented with Java, Excel VBA, C#, Python and Go (Golang). C# and Go are also derivatives of C, but despite that I quite like them both. Although I like C# and Python, I am not convinced of the advantages of Object Oriented Programming (OOP). I feel that it is, to some extent, a solution looking for a problem! After all this research I have settled on Go as my programming language of choice. My current project is building an extension to the Money Manager Ex accounting program in Go. I previously wrote a similar program in Python. Of course, with so many Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools available it might be possible to convert the Python program to Go automatically, but that wouldn't be as much fun!
I take full advantage of living in the beautiful Moselle valley. I like to spend time gently cycling along the banks of the Moselle and motorcycling (not always so gently) through the Eifel mountains, Ardenne forest, Hunsrück hills and farther afield. After all, it was motor cycling in the Moselle valley that led to me discovering, and eventually settling in, the village that I now call home.
To prove that some people never grow up here's a photograph of me with my BMW R1200GS Adventure at the top of the Großglockner Hochalpenstrasse in Austria. This was taken on my 75th. birthday.
Many, many thanks to my friend the late, great Ken Craven (the father of motorcycle touring) who introduced me to this pass in 1979. I plan to ride over this wonderful pass again on my 80th. birthday in 2027.
When I was younger it was a party trick of mine to ride down from the Edelweißspitze (the highest passable point of the pass) to the main pass without using my brakes - I think I might be a bit too old to try that these days!
Here's a much earlier example of me on my BMW K1100RS in northern Norway. I think this photgraph was taken in 1995.
For several years I spent some time teaching English, mainly to Germans, but also to immigrants. However, because being retired is a full time occupation, I evetually ran out of time and had to give that up!
I also try to find time to drink an occasional glass of the wonderful local wines, although I usually drink beer.
My biggest contribution to the local culture is amusing my German friends with my attempts to speak their language. German grammar is unbelievable: six words for definitive article "the" and in any given situation only one of them is correct! My German suffers from a limited vocabulary, poor grammar and appalling pronunciation. Apart from that it's great!