Hi my dear friends, followers, coleagues, clients, competitors and whoelse and whereever you were.
Tomorrow I will have to leave very early with our driver for São Paulo, where I will attend an important Zero Carbon event, before the oficial opening of the exciting 2nd Horasis Global Meeting South America, also in São Paulo tomorrow night.
I will be able to participate in this event together with hundreds of excelent, distinguished friends and colleagues from allover the world, incl. my active participation as panel speaker. But I will participate in this event only until thursday afternoon, because I need to fly to Navegantes in the South Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, to where I have been invited by my friend Stephan Camp, the MD of Schottel do Brasil, a very important German supplier of state-of-the-art propulsion systems and highest quality maintenance services for the Brazilian marine and naval industries, to the oficial opening of the new factory of Schottel do Brasil in Itajaí.
Fortunately my wife will join me at Itajaí during thursday night for accompanying me to the Schottel event and we will arrive back home again from Itajaí next week saturday night only.
Two weeks later I will participate in an important mining industry event in Minas Gerais during sunday & monday, before I will continue from there for the rest of the week to Salvador in the Northeastern “African-Brazilian” (historically and culturally spoken) state of Bahia, where my RINGSPANN do Brasil colleague Celso, our Sales & Engineering Manager, and I will attend the big Brazilian EXPOSIBRAM 2025 mining industry exhibition and two important side events.
I tell you all this because it leads me to the subject of this blog post.
Since many years, but especially since my “retirement” mid last year, many friends, colleagues and contacts ask me repeatedly how – I assume amongst other reasons because of my admittedly quite advanced age – I can be continuously so extremely active and productive as I obviously am.
First of all I am convinced, that the fact, that my whole life long I have always dedicated all my private & professional activities to subjects, which have interested me, together with people who I like and who have motivated and supported me, made me target driven like a Tomahawk missile.
But another important reason is that I always am able to develop an enormous passion for what I am doing and this strengthens and motivates very positively all my team mates, supporters and even bystanders.
As a general recipe for success I would like to mention my “core activities approach”, which since decades makes me focus completely on activities, which only I can do by myself, while I regard everything, that I can delegate or outsource to fully reliable supporters resp. service providers of my trust, as secondary for me.
During this week I had a very nice conversation with a befriended young Brazilian lady, Dra. Ana Carolina, who is a doctor.
I do not recall how we finally came to this subject, but I told her, that as a young boy at the age of 5 years my parents submitted me to a – from our today`s view – controvercial and largely unproven treatment called “Fresh Cell Therapy”, which had gained notoriety in the mid-20th century in Europe and especially in Germany and Switzerland.
Me at the sweet (?) age of 5 during summer 1962 in Grünstadt, Germany
What is it?
It involves injecting cells, tissues, or organ extracts from animals (usually fetal sheep or calves) into humans. The idea is that these animal cells, still alive and “fresh,” can somehow “rejuvenate” or “repair” damaged tissues and organs in the human body, improving health and vitality.
How does it supposedly work (the theory behind it)?
The (unproven) theory behind fresh cell therapy is based on the belief that:
Organic compatibility: Cells from specific animal organs (e.g., sheep liver cells for a diseased human liver) would have an affinity or capacity to regenerate the corresponding organ in the human recipient. Rejuvenation: Cell extracts contain growth factors, enzymes, hormones, and other bioactive substances that could stimulate cell regeneration, strengthen the immune system, and combat aging.
The treatment of Pope Pius XII in 1954 sparked a temporary rise in popularity for fresh cell therapy. Many prominent figures were subsequently treated with this method, including Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie and Emperor Hirohito.
Until the 1980s, the therapy was relatively widespread in Europe; in Germany, celebrities such as Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, publisher Axel Springer, national football coach Helmut Schön, Fritz Walter, and actor Willy Millowitsch were also treated.
Since 2021, this therapy has been banned in Germany.
I would never go so far to attribute seriously my later-on “nuclear energy plant characteristic” to this therapy, but Ana Carolina and I have been laughing a lot about this very long completely forgotten story of my childhood in Germany.
Now to the admittedly provocative title of this blog post.
When friends question me, whether I would not like to really retire one day in the future, I always ask them, how would such “real retirement”, as they describe it, look like?
And I ask them, “can you imagine Mick Jagger as a “real retiree”, as you use to call it?
Mess it up live – The Rolling Stones
Sorry, but no chance. I strongly believe – and not only since today – that I make part of the same tribe as Mick Jagger, who has been my absolute idol since the 60s, when he founded the Rolling Stones and started to conquer the stages and charts.
Got my message? Retirement postponed for after my live`s end!
Hope you enjoyed my post and I am looking forward to your comments and/or questions.
See you (soon?) again back here in my blog
