Personal Insights
Blog It Forward – Enno Wulff
A challenge right before Christmas… Okay. Challenge accepted, Nabheet Madan ! 😀 I loved reading your personal insights and get a short view on your wonderful family. I appreciate your interest in my work and person!
As I saw Blog It Forward and the tag BIF I thought, that the abbreviation also could be BIFO what might stand for Business In, Family Out. 😉
I must admit that it is quite hard to think about “who am I?”. Work is a huge part of our living time and it is kind of easy talking about logical and abstract things, technical details and plans. It is totally different to talk abput personal life, hopes and dreams. But I’ll try…
Life In Short
I was born in 1971 in a little town in northern Germany 30 km away from Hamburg. After school and military service I began an aprenticeship as an IT Business Engineer at SIEMENS NIXDORF. After the three years schooling I moved to Hanover in Lower-Saxony to begin my career as ABAP-programmer.
Today I have 25 years of SAP programming experience. I started with R/3 Release 2.1i… There were no Icons in this release…! 🙂 You can read more about this time in my blog post.
I met my wife at carnival in year 2000. We are married now for 17 years and have two wonderful children. We own a cute dog and a cat which visted us some years ago and decided to stay.
We moved back to the little town where I was born as my wife also was born there and all of our family members lived there. Sometimes we have a wonderful sky…
Sports and Hobbies
When I was young I started playing Badminton and did Archery. Three years ago I started rowing. I tried out rowing a boat because of my son who always wanted to row but was too young for it. When he was 11 years we visited the local rowing club on family day and went on the water. I only did it for my sons sake because I thought it will be boring. It wasn’t. If you are in the boat, after a few strokes it is like meditation and holidays.
Badminton is my all time favorite. I also played Tennis, but that was too slow, too tedious between the rallyes. Badminton is fast, diverting, exertive. I simply love it.
                          younger <———> older
Technical Things In Life
I am fascinated by all kinds of technical achievements of mankind: electricity, wielding, building, machines, computers and so on. The most likeable invention the last years for me are flat screens and handys/ tablets. I still cannot believe how this works.
Quotes
I love it when people can describe or point out complex things in a simple sentence. That’s why I learned to love twitter. Simple statements on the point.
Every rule has an exception. Except this one.
My personal credo is that humor and seriousness are no opposites. People often tend to forget humor and fun at work…
Books
If you’d asked me about my favorite books, I would list these two:
- “The Code Book. The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography” by Simon Singh
- “Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman” by Richard P. Feynman
Famous People
When I was preparing this blog, I scrolled through some photos and I must admit that I really had a great and fulfilling life so far. I met some really interesting people:
Christian Braukmüller Uwe Fetzer (virtual)
Brad Pitt 😀
Questions
Nabheet asked some questions…
What do you do apart from SAP in your free time?
I try to play Badminton once a week in a very friendly badminton club. I like reading and watching TV (series) or walk the dog.
If I have time at the weekend I love to do woodworking. I can build chairs and birds houses.
How do you balance your life between work and family/personal time?
That’s a good question… Because I mostly love my job, I often don’t find an end and therefor miss time with my family and hobbies.
What would you choose if given a choice between coffee or tea and why?
It depends. I must admit that I drink very mild half and half (half normal, half decaf) coffee at home and I love it. If I drink office coffee, I have problems with my stomach and sleep. But I prefer coffee because tea is kind of unsubstantial.
BIF-List
I would love to read some personal things from you:
To have some different questions:
- What programming skills or abilities would like to have in real life?
- What would you do if you had unlimited financial freedom?
- What is your most favorite book?
Thanks for reading!
~Enno
Thanks for writing and sharing!
We also have a cat who decided years ago to migrate from her neighbour to us. It is apparently not so rare 🙂 PS: The neighbour is a good friend!
Best wishes
Hey Markus! Yes, heard that also quite a lot of times, that cat do this... As long as the neighbour don't want to move in... 😉
Thanks for sharing, Enno. I am curious about the name of the "little town in northern Germany 30 km away from Hamburg"... would you mind sharing?
I also love your statement about pointing out complex things in a simple sentence... I like this too - might be the result of both of us were born in North Germany??? 😉
Hey Svea, the little town is Elmshorn... 😉
Nice! A friend of mine used to live there... 🙂
Thanks!
Hi Enno!
It's a small world (but I wouldn't want to have to paint it). I once worked for Nixdorf too! It was so long ago, I can't recall the name of the machine, but the operating system was NIROS. Alas, it was a short stint, but then again, it still enabled me to get to where I am now 🙂
When you had your pic taken with Brad Pitt, did he happen to mention if he was interested in finding a new lady to date? No particular reason ?.
Love your attitude towards fun and work - they are NOT mutually exclusive in my opinion either.
Cheers,
Sue
Hey Sue,
I came in just after the it wasn't NIXDORF anymore.
I met Brad Pitt at a party in Berlin two years ago.
Really annoying. Everyone wanted a photo with me... 😀
Clearly you are a very popular guy 🙂
"mention if he was interested in finding a new lady to date?" 😀 😀
But I see brad pit meeting bard pit wax figure there, I don't find Enno Wulff  😛
It really is fascinating to think how much has technology evolved in this past 20 years. Makes me wonder how much it will change in the next 5 years.
BTW I watched recently one series "Dr. Stone" where the main character is a genius trying to recreate all the technology from the ground up in the stone age starting from manufacturing the glass. Awesome story, I really loved the first season 🙂
I hate anime... but the idea is great! I often wondered how long it would take to rebuild modern world and what we would do different if we were put to stone age with all our knowledge of what is possible ...
Enno Wulff great post sir and Happy New Year! Never knew this side of yours. I really liked this principle of yours "I love it when people can describe or point out complex things in a simple sentence. ", i also try to follow KISS(Keep it simple and stupid stuff) but sometimes end up making things complex. BTW thanks for recommending the code book added to my 2020 bucket list:)
Thanks for sharing, Enno! Interesting post. The caption for the picture with Brad Pitt should clarify that Brad Pitt is on the right. 🙂
Hey Jelena, thanks for clarifying! 😉
Years ago there was a joke about our councellor Helmut Kohl, which was something like this:
Ha-ha-ha! There was the same joke about Nikita Khrushchev in the USSR. 🙂 Just found that it even made its way into Wikipedia. 🙂