Mike Burns.

As Mike sits in my living room doing work while I write this post, I think of the first time I met him.  He sported a white baseball shirt with yellow sleeves, Royal blue shorts with a white stripe down the sides that said he stole the outfit from the set of “The Royal Tennenbaums”, and had in his hand his Les Paul electric guitar that he was uniquely qualified to make sound like he was born to play.  So I use this Fridays edition of “3 reasons you should know” to highlight one of my closest friends, who lives in Germany.  So here they are:

1.  He will question in order to find the truth.
You don’t want to walk into a conversation with Mr.  Burns without knowing what you believe, and even if you know what you believe, it would be idiotic of you to make outlandish statements that you read in a forward email in order to make your point.  Mike has a thirst for the truth, and seems to focus his life on eventually finding it.  He will seek an answer and research every possible option before coming to his conclusion.

2.  He is one of the most talented people I’ve met.
Whether it has been playing the guitar (he’s one of the best guitarists I know), or making a video, building a web site design or engineering his own sound equipment from chewing gum and an earring the same way MacGyver builds a bomb, Burns can do it.  I’ve only met a handful of people just as talented, and I’m thinking even fewer than that more so.

3.  He acts like a child.
I mean this in a very literal way, both good and bad.  He will do anything, anytime, and anywhere.  He is into experiences, and this thirst brought him from Maine to Massachusetts and presently to Munich where he has an amazing job that allows him to travel as far as Ireland, Italy, and the Ukraine.  This has been one of the things that has impressed me the most about Mike.  We are called to be childlike in our approach to God, and though he’s far from perfect, I have this sneaking suspicion that this approach to life allows him to hold God as an important part of his life, despite all the questions that haven’t been answered in his mind.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Mike Burns.

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My friend Mike Burns had something to say, and he wondered if martyholman.com was the place he could share his thoughts on the subject.  Since Burns is too busy making things happen to blog, I figured this would be a great forum for his concerns.  So, meet Mike Burns:

“Am I the only one that gets screwed by airline companies?
It seems every time I book a flight, I pay on average 30% more than anyone else
I ever talk to.  Everyone tells me about really cheap flights, but they never
seem to fly to or from cities I need.  So I try to book a normalish flight, and
end up paying through the nose, only to find out that had I waited two weeks or
something, I could have saved 30-50%.  Case in point:

My sister planned to get married in November of 2009, and told me in December of
2008, so I thought I’d get a really good deal by booking right away.  So I paid
€560.  Not bad considering the last flight I booked to the US for €750.  My
friend recently visited from Boston and flew to Frankfurt, essentially the same
flight path I take, and paid US$400.  So I looked into these new prices, and
found that after 6 months, my flight was now down to €360.  So I instantly
tried to cancel and re-book.  But then I found out about the €150 cancellation
fee, which means in the end, I only save €50 on what looks like a €200 savings.
On top of that, it takes up to 6 weeks to get the money back, and in the
meantime, I need to re-book the flight.  So I have to wait till the end of the
month to re-book when I get a new credit limit (Germany’s credit card system is
strange, to say the least.  You get a credit each month, but at the end of each
month, whatever you paid with the credit card is taken from your bank account
automatically.)

I hate the airlines.  If a ship didn’t take 2 weeks to get across the pond, I’d
totally be doing that.”

Edited with love by Marty Holman

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