Alberto BonalSend a message to

Alberto Bonal

Alberto Bonal

A good friend: We had a special retro for Christmas in 2017 where we had to come up to feedback using the analogy of "A Christmas Carol" and use the 3 ghosts to provide 3 feedbacks in 10 mins. I was in trouble! never read the book so I didn't have a clue what were the Christmas ghosts. So, I went to Jim and whispered to him "hey! can you tell me a quick summary of this book?". His all his patience, he went through every single detail, literally everything! Ebenezer, the employee, the children, the ghosts, the house, the money, the crippled child...well so much detail that we both run out of time to write our 3 feedbacks. When it was our turn to show our 3 feedbacks, I had to confess that we didn't have time because I didn't have a clue of the ghosts and Jim was explaining them to me. Probably we didn't contribute to the retro that day, but every time I heard about "A Christmas Carol" since then I draw a smile in my face remembering this anecdote. And that, in essence was Jim, he would put everything aside to help you no matter what. A good father: I would always remember Jim the first day back from Christmas. He would tell everyone every detail about his daughter Emma on Christmas day, all the gifts she got and how she enjoyed them. Showing pics and videos of Emma with her new bike, her new toys...In more recent years he would show us the TikTok creations of Emma (which I thought they were brilliant by the way). But the one probably everyone would remember is the grey mug Emma gave him for Christmas with her pencil drawing. He never used another mug since that day. You could see the proud father he was explaining the drawing of his daughter of a movie (I think it was "How to train your dragon" but not sure). Emma's drawing skills weren't her best at that age :) but he would proudly go through the drawing in the mug pointing to every character explaining them to you as if it was piece of art from Picasso. I remember enjoying lot more seeing how proud father he was than the story of the movie itself. A good husband: I can tell you with exact details Wednesday’s Jim's routine. He would come into the office and tell you "Good morning! Today I need to leave at 11.45AM because I'm having lunch with my wife". It was almost mathematical, the same words every Wednesday. I must confess that I never knew if he meant it like "You are going to work along from 11.45" or "Please remind me to leave at 11.45" (or maybe both). Regardless, you could tell it was such an important event for him. So, at 11.40 I used to tell them things like "Run Cinderella or your chariot will turn into a pumpkin!". First time I did that he was laughing for a good part of the day. Even on a call we had few weeks ago he mentioned one of the worse things on his battle was how much he missed Aileen's cinnamon rolls on Sunday. He was constantly talking about his wife and daughter, and I was pleased when we bump into each other in Ikea few years ago and I could finally put faces to the thousand stories he told me about them. You will not be forgotten my friend

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