Why BOXCLEVER?

2007-09-02T16:45:00.000+02:00

When I came to France I had a reasonably good CV but found it frustratingly difficult to get a job in my field. There were two reasons for this. The first is that the French are, with little exception, incredibly patriotic. A doughnut without its hole would fare better than an expert in astrophysics if it had been baked in France by a Frenchman. The second is that I came to this country speaking very little french. Little wonder then that the job, or even a job was hard to obtain.

So, in my naivety I decided to create my own company in a land where the word 'entrepreneur' really doesn't exist. I wrote down about 50 single words on sheets of postits, of which BOX and CLEVER were two, put all the postits in a hat [well, really it was a saucepan, but you get the idea] and pulled out CLEVER and GLASS. I didn't like the sound of CleverGlass nor GlassClever so discarded this second word. At the third go I pulled out BOX. There you have it. BoxClever rolled off the tongue better than CleverBox.

UPDATE FOR FRIENDS AND FAMILY

2007-09-02T12:15:00.001+02:00

Taking the decision to move abroad was a simple one at the time. Early thirties, no kids, transferable job etc. Ten years on and things are obviously different. For starters I now have a six year old girl, Audrey, and a two year old son named Liam. Here they are :

In essence, Audrey and Liam are the reasons behind the creation of this blog. An opportunity, if you will, for those I left behind to catch up with the changes in my life since moving to France.

Back in 1997 I was pretty good at updating friends and family with the changes and developments in my new life. But, for whatever the reasons, the weekly calls become monthly and then quarterly and now they occur whenever I get the time.

So this blog will become my way of communicating with them using a medium they each have available to them when they have the time to use it.