Not only did I have a company outing this weekend, but we also moved to a new house. While going through boxes of old papers in my study I found two newspaper pictures from May 2000 in which I appeared next to Arnold Schwarzenegger. At that time he was still the Terminator instead of the Governator, and I was still just a mid-level manager at Daimler.

The story behind the pictures (The top one appeared in the Beijing Youth Daily, the one at the end of the article in the China Daily) is that DaimlerChrysler was a sponsor of the Special Olympics. Arnold Schwarzenegger was their ambassador and there was a torch run on the Great Wall for media and sponsors.

For some reason none of the Daimler vice-presidents wanted to participate in the run with Arnold (maybe they were afraid they couldn’t handle the uphill run with him?). Because I was a runner someone then asked if I wanted to represent Daimler there. Of course I said yes, and of course I made sure to run up front next to Arnold. So I made it onto CNN for the first time that day and onto these pictures that appeared in several Chinese media. I can’t believe it’s 10 years ago already, time flies…