Filed under: Experiences, fun stuff, maria, us | Tags: charming, Experiences, fun stuff, jc, Love, maria, romance, surprise
Guys.. it doesn’t take much. My wife has been away for a week.. that seemed like a lifetime! Yes.. I guess I’m hooked! So I wanted to try and express how much I cherish her and make her really feel loved. Did it take a big budget? Nope, actually, all under 20€ and a whole lot of fun!
You start with 130 balloons and stay up all night blowing them up. Along the way you scare the daylights out of the neighbors, or should I say night lights as some of the balloons burst at 3am! Then you get some string and hang them in the entry hallway, elevator entrance and her bedroom. Followed by party plates to make the scene a festive one welcoming her home.
Love hearts on the lounge wall.. bunnies in the bedroom.. suggestion time..guys.. you know what bunny’s like to do 
and more love hearts above her head for when she wakes up in the night or morning.
At the entrance to the “love room”, a reminder of how it all started. The day she “dared to love her”. It was on a gift box/bag, that I most likely got as a sympathy gift after our official first date, in which I bombed disastrously!
P.S. If you really want to step it up a notch, you know how much women love for you to do things around the house! So I grabbed a cork board, some hooks, and made a “dohicky” for her to hang her earrings & necklaces. Right in front of the mirror where she gets dressed in the bathroom.
And don’t forget the lollies; women love candy. Now how simple was that?!?!?!
And then we played bunny rabbit until we fell over and slept
Filed under: Barcelona, Friends, fun stuff, jc, Life, maria | Tags: childrean, Experiences, fun stuff, jc, maria
Maria has flown the coop again.. San Diego, I think.. and I stayed behind to entertain friends. Where is she exactly? You’ll have to ask her, or chase her on twitter http://twitter.com/mariasipka.. welcome to my world.. she forgot to give me a copy of her agenda.. comes home sometime Sunday night.. I think…
One of my visiting friends got really sick on Saturday & I played nurse maid.. I know.. I know.. I’m such a Charminguy .. and I’m so empathetic that this morning I decided to wake up with chills, pains, aches.. yeah.. what are friends for.. he got better & left for St. Petersburg, leaving his bugs with me! Anyhow, so I’m trying to sleep this morning and get some rest, when all I can hear outside are children, and the noise is growing by the minute. I look outside my window and I see the crowd! For a minute, I pinch myself to make sure it’s not an audience for the pope and I’ve got the red slippers on
Anyway, I start to hear band music and then the party begins!
A parade! God you gotta love Barcelona! What’s next?!?! Babe.. you’re gonna be so sorry you missed this one.. it was a lollie parade!!! Trucks chucker block full of lollies!! Being tossed out to the kids, thrown up onto balconies, even the grandparents were having a mad scramble for the lollies.. no worries.. they have no teeth.. so no issues with cavities
So we had marching bands, horses, lollies & more lollies, screaming kids scrambling for lollies..
..and it went on all day and into the night! As I’m about to go to bed, I’m still sick.. a little worse as a matter of fact.. but just the sound of the drums beating outside, and the thought of all those happy kids eating their bags of lollies for the next week, brings such a warm smile to my face.
P.S. Those kids don’t know how lucky they were Maria was out of town! They wouldn’t have had a chance if she was in the neighborhood
So what do you think she’s gonna say? What do you think she’s gonna do to me? 
To my credit, in the 14 months since we’ve lived together, and at least 20 months since I first started doing laundry with her stuff included, this is only my 2nd “foe-pa” The first one was when one of her white shirts got “slightly” darker due to being mixed in with some “darks”. I swear to you I’m a GREAT house hubby!
It was so weird! Last week I was doing the whites and I put this sweater to the side as I knew it couldn’t go into the washing machine. Yesterday though, when I pulled the clothes out of the hamper, I was in such a rush that I didn’t realize Maria’s sweater was caught up in the middle of the rest of the cloths. You can imagine my face as I start to hang the laundry and her sweater is now sized to fit a rag doll?!?!?
Oh well, you gotta look at the positive aspect of it, she left it behind so hopefully it wasn’t one of her favorite’s. Anyhow if our daughter has mums tastes, then she’s already got her first baby outfit
Sorry babe!!
Filed under: wedding | Tags: charminguy, delhi, JC duarte, maria sipka, wedding
Geeze babe.. with all that commentary how’s a guy suppose to get a word in edgewise?!?!? Welcome to my life as the proud, and newly crowned, husband to Maria Sipka
You meet your soul mate in a desert oasis in Marrakesh. What’s next? You soon pack your bags and move to Barcelona, I guess. Followed obviously by getting married in New Delhi, whilst literally flying by the seat of your pants! What?!?!? You mean this doesn’t happen to everybody? Huh?!?! It’s so much fun being Mr. Sipka That’s the only way to get noticed some days in the shadows of “The Community Girl”, and I do state that very proudly! How do I handle it when people joke about who wears the pants in the family? Oh that’s ok.. I’d rather take them off then wear them anyway It’s all in a days fun, and fun it’s been since this gorgeous creature walked into my life, handed me some spiritual books and turned my life upside down! Then again, she did warn me that I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.
Oh yeah.. did you get that part about the vows? We’re standing there walking around a fire, like it’s not hot enough living with this intense ray of sunshine 
24X7 already, and we’ve got to repeat vows that we’re hearing for the very first time. So the Shaman tells me I’ve just agreed to financially support Maria for the rest of our lives, and she’s apparently just agreed to be my domestic goddess. I chuckle, and that’s when Maria screams out that she wants to change “vow responsibilities”. So hand me the apron and the ironing board sweetheart. By the way, did you note in the picture that she was leading me around the fire by a yellow leash? That’s not to mention the pink dog collar 
she put around my neck for some laughs back at the Snowy Mountains over Christmas. Actually, I look “pretty in pink”. Yeah, welcome to my reality! god I have so much fun with this woman!
It’s been a very short, not even two years, since I first laid eyes on her. We’ve since scared the day lights out of hundreds each time we’ve updated our facebook relationship status and one of us delays confirming 
. I guess that just shows you the power of community. ok, ok.. I get the picture.. but that’s it now.. we’re married.. so unless there’s a higher status then that.. no more scares.
As Maria started to mention.. a charminguy born in Lisbon, Portugal.. uprooted to Philadelphia at the tender age of 5.. back to Portugal at 26.. and now living in Barcelona. The spunky young lass was born in Bratislava, Slovakia.. uprooted at the age of 2.. stopped over and lived for a couple of years in a castle in Germany as her parents escaped communism, only to end-up terrorizing the young boys in Sydney Australia, then packed-up her bags to bust open the doors on the world at 29. Traveling the world, momentarily laying her head down to rest in Hamburg, Germany & Zurich, Switzerland, but mainly in seat 3A of British Airways, before announcing to me, on the back of a boat, on News Years Eve, one year ago, to catch a plane to Barcelona and find us an apartment. Oh yeah, and in Delhi last week, imagine my calm, cool and collected not surprised face when she announces to EO TV (LIVE) that we’re moving to India next year?!?!? Welcome to my world, it’s simply paradise!
So what is there to say, now that Maria has said it all? I guess my part in this story is to keep you laughing, to share with how both of us born on the same continent, traveled to opposite ends of the world, only to come back together on this side of the planet. Maria once had her palm read and she was told that she would marry “a man from the west”. Well, Portugal is the western most country in Europe, and even though I spent the first half of my life on the east coast of the US, technically, that’s west from Europe. And as a child, when she returned to Europe to visit family, she always did fly west. She may have flown in the opposite direction at first, but I guess the law of attraction pulled her back to me. Now I understand all of those fantasies, which I couldn’t figure out as a little boy, of why I was infatuated as a kid, about Australia, & Sydney in particular. Now all make sense.
So you’ve got the link to the wedding pictures, here’s the link to the honeymoon, and yes, we did the honeymoon before the wedding. Obviously (!?!?), seeing as we’ve always been fans of chucking tradition out the window! And I would encourage you to stay tuned, it’s still early days in this life of “bonnie & clyde”, “the Flying Wallendas”, and “bewitched” all under one roof!
Thanks for stopping by and please do share your own stories & thoughts with us as you read these captions.
December 31, 2006 at approximately 23h50.. Maria decided it was to be the Year of Living! And what a year it’s been! A few days later I was apartment hunting in Barcelona, a few weeks later a Starfish named Linqia washed up on shore, a few months later the traveling was back on our agenda and as the years winds down to a close, America’s Dream Coach interviews the Charminguy before he hits the road for a South and Central American tour kicking off in Bogota Columbia and moving upward to Los Angeles before moving onto Sydney for our Xmas break. This year there will be no last minute surprise, the theme for 2008 has already been chosen. It’s going to be the year of celebration! Maria & I will be married in a traditional Indian wedding on February 6th, the opening night of the EO University in Delhi.
Stay tuned for more.. The Love Story revisited
Don’t worry; the pictures will be uploaded by Maria when she get’s a chance. She’s in Vegas and I’m back in Barcelona.
Maria & I have had much less than desired time together as Linqia takes off and I’m piecing together my new passion career with Strategy in a Day & Charminguy.com. Last Sunday, after attending a week long workshop in San Francisco, Maria & I took the Sunday afternoon off. We were able to convince the navigation system in the Hertz rental to find us a beautiful coastal road to Santa Cruz. However, little did we know what havoc a pumpkin festival could reap on the local traffic in-between the highway and route 1. It must have taken us almost 2 hours to make a trip that only 24 hours later would take us 15 minutes.
Fortunately, Maria & I are “into” each others company, and considering we hadn’t had much “Quality Time” of late, I put my “Acts of Service” talents to practical use. Now mind you, I should pause here to point out that whilst her primary love language is “Acts of Service”, her secondary is “Quality Time”. As you guessed it, I turned a bad situation into a home run!
As we’re sitting there in traffic at the top of a hill, Maria looks right and sinks in her seat as she sees the “miles long” bumper to bumper traffic. Up until this point we’ve been having some beautiful dialog, and we started the afternoon in magical Tiburon. I’m one to constantly up the stakes, so first I recounted to Maria how “bench seats” in old cars were cool because I would be able to have her sit right by my side whilst I wrap my arm around her to cuddle. But wait, I’m a man of ingenuity, so I ask her if she could turn slightly in her seat, toward me, lean her back against her door, and stretch her legs onto my lap. Now mind you, Maria is always very accommodating when it comes to personal pleasure.
I then proceeded to give her the infamous JC foot massage. Look, if I’ve gotta sit in bumper to bumper traffic with the woman I love, haven’t seen much of recently, and will be saying goodbye again at the airport in less than 48 hours, I’m gonna make it a moment worth savoring! I had to laugh though when she decided to pull out the hand cream from her handbag for me to professionalize the feat (no.. not feet) .
What, like you thought the woman with “the list” wasn’t demanding?!?! When I was done, I still had greasy hands so I finished it off with a hand massage. You think that didn’t rock her boat? It paid off later; believe me
It’s a funny little tale of how we enjoyed part of a magical afternoon which then had us stop to actually buy a pumpkin, and some peas to eat along the way to Santa Cruz where we would then close the amusement park with a roller coaster ride. It was very sweet; our first roller coaster ride together!
Now whilst this might sound like another one of those JC “out there” moments; guys, what else are you going to do in a traffic jam? Put the time to good use and give your woman a little love. The next hour and a half flew by and we didn’t even stress with the traffic.
How creative can you be in a traffic jam?
Filed under: fun stuff
I’ve just returned from an amazing week in San Francisco where I attended an Inspiring Speaker Workshop. The most relevant takeaway for this post came from former Saturday Night live writer Jim Pelley, now with his own Laughter Works. Whilst teaching us about the significance of humor & story telling, very early on in his session he promised to tell us the secret of happiness. I waited very attentively during the rest of the session until he came to his point.
Expect less! Yes, that the secret! I’ll explain; After recounting a personal tail of a great loss and the profound impact it had on him, he made a very distinct point about the relevance we give to many trivial matters and how we could better cope with life by just adjusting our expectations. His personal tale included how he used to seem to always have his flights canceled when he arrived at the airport. Eventually, rather than rushing through traffic stressed out, he began to expect that his flight would be canceled or delayed. When he arrived and it was on-time, wow, what a pleasant surprise. When it was delayed or canceled, well, he was right, and put to god work a good reading book or other material to occupy himself with.
On my way to San Francisco I had booked on-line what I thought was a really cool window seat in cattle class. Turns out that the actual plane configuration is different from the online version and I got stuck in a cramp middle seat. Fortunately, once the plane took off, I was able to move to an isle seat. My irritation was only lessened by the beautiful “50 something” couple sitting next to me that shared so many loving moments, they were actually challenging Maria & I for creativity, but still, the remainder of the flight just wasn’t the same.
For my return flight to Barcelona this past Tuesday, I decided to take Jim’s advice and expect less. Even though I had adjusted my on-line reservation, and at the check-in counter confirmed I would have a window seat, I just expected they would get it wrong again. I wasn’t placed where I thought I would be, but seat 36L of flight AF083 was a once-in-a-lifetime pleasant surprise. The plane was full, and yet I had two empty seats next to my window seating. The universe had rewarded my serving nature and granted me 2 empty seats to stretch my legs into. The TV screen in the isle ceiling was at a perfect inclination, thus not forcing my neck whilst viewing the movies. I read a book in-between meals & movies as if sitting on my lounge in Barcelona. In stark contrast to my trip to SF just one week before, where I was expecting more, Jim Pelleys’ secret to happiness (expect less) paid off!
Sorry I don’t have any pictures, but Maria’s the one that always has the camera. She flew off to Vegas that day
How are your expectations getting in the way of your happiness?
Just back from a quick hop to the land of milk, cheese, chocolate & watches.. amongst other notoriety that I’m sure I’m overlooking.. please guys.. all you Swiss friends of mine & Maria.. chime in and remind me of what other great things you have that I’m not currently taking to heart..
Yesterday when I arrived I was greeted warmly at the airport by one of my hosts from the EO Zurich Chapter of the Entrepreneurs Organization (www.eonetwork.org). After a great bear hug from Urs, we were off to Franks’ house.. lunch before work.. I was going to facilitate a Strategy Session.. so Andrea, Daniel, Enrique, Reto, Frank S. & Frank F. joined us, with a special state side guest.. our current EO President (and already leaving a legacy of touching our hearts) Shelby Scarbrough.
Later that night Enrique showed me the most amazing restaurant I’ve dinned in. I know that I may sometime make a “horse’s ass” of myself, so he made me feel right at home by taking me to a restaurant which is housed in a former horse barn/stable. Good thing he didn’t make me eat hay
This morning, as I said goodbye to Frank at the train station.. and then walked to the platform.. I got another dose of why the Swiss are.. “the Swiss”. Worried that I’d be late for my flight and not knowing the station stops, I asked Frank how long of a train ride it would be to the airport.. this giant sweetheart of a man smiled at me and said 12 minutes & it will be here in 3. Now having spent most of my life around people that when you ask for directions it’s always “about 10 to 15 minutes”.. I just had a chuckle to myself.. and sure enough.. precisely 3 minutes later the train arrived at the platform.. I got on.. and didn’t even have to worry about how many stops.. or knowing the Swiss language.. to know that I was at the airport.. when exactly 12 minutes later there I arrived!
I always find it very funny how everything in Switzerland does indeed run like clockwork! Back in Barcelona for “about 5 hours now”.. yeap.. you got it.. everything is closed for August.. lunch will be in “more or less 15 minutes” and when I tried to follow-up on an issue in Portugal they told me to call back “sometime manhana”.. god.. I miss the Switzerland already!
Filed under: jc
Yeah.. I know it’s mid April.. but if there is one thing that Maria has influenced even more in me since we’ve gotten together, is to “realize what you visualize”.. obviously the rhyming part is mine
So whilst Maria has gone on her “walkabout” I still get up early in the morning and go for my walk to the beach! So what if it’s not as much fun without her beautiful company, but she sent me the sun to keep my face and heart warm whilst she’s off “inspiring meaningful dialog” on the other side of the Atlantic.. So I took my book with me and made an experience of it.. man.. would Maria be proud.. .. I’m almost finished it.. finally got around to reading “The Game”.. man it’s funny.. these guys are talking about a life I had when “I wasn’t so charming” and I didn’t even know it was “a game” at the time.. it does however really drive home the message that I am taking away, and have learned long ago.. “that when the game is over, it’s time for the relationship.. or FUN.. to begin (!) … and that’s what it appears they figure out toward the end.. yeah.. I pulled a Maria trick and read the last pages a few days ago when I was bored with a section in the middle .. god that girl is bright (LOL)..
So anyway.. back to my bone chilling & heart warming dip in the Mediterranean pool.. All I could think about as I started to take off my t-shirt was about how several weeks ago, on a much colder day.. we had been sitting on the same beach and saw some “idiot” run into the water.. probably trying to impress some girl (as this was in the afternoon and the beach was packed).. although with those shrunk’n little things in his trunks from the cold water.. it would have had an opposite effect (LOOOOL).. but this morning the sun was perfect.. the morning was warm.. and Maria has talked about nothing else each time we sit on the beach.. she’s always going on about how wonderful it will be to cap our morning walks off with a beautiful swim.. so in I went!
Babe.. if you’re reading this.. it was as picture perfect as you said it would be.. I swam in the direction of the sun as it raised in front of me.. following the reflection created by the sun, which I imagined being a road headed in your direction.. only before I went out too far and wouldn’t have the energy to come back.. I stopped.. waded a bit.. and just “enjoyed the silence”! BTW… the old couple at the corner of the beach were in their trunks.. and they now have some new friends.. why is it that most of us only seem to appreciate the finer & simpler things when we’re either getting closer to the grave.. or just coming out of our mothers womb? Well.. I for one am taking on your learning’s and enjoying all that life has to offer.. so this morning was a “community” of 5 of us on the beach
So after my swim.. I just laid in the warm sun and finished reading a few more pages.. before I returned home,, made a beautiful breakfast.. strawberries, kiwi & yogurt.. beautiful coffee.. and then got to work.. YES.. this is the “Year of Living”.. and now I have to get back to “making my living” with Strategy-in-a-Day & Charminguy.com.. so I hope you guys are all enjoying the reading, as well as Barcelona with us!!!! xxjc
