Weekend Recap

Last Friday I went to a club in Bricklane with my flatmate Rhitik. For those of you who do not know Bricklane, it is a very...different part of London, or at least what people think of London i.e. the West End, Picadilly and such. I had been before during the morning markets; this is the sort of place you go to when you want to buy back your stolen bicycle or get pirated/foreign advance copies of DVD's for a couple dollars. Friday night is a completely different place. All the tents and market stands disappear revealing block after block of curry and balti houses. There is a part of Bricklane that literally for about 400 or 500 metres, every other door leads to a curry house. I would say there are more Indian restaurants on this block than in the state of Minnesota (although I suppose that isn't too hard). After the curry houses come the clubs and coffee houses. Rhitik and I went to a place called Blue Mesa where his cousin was djing/mixing fusion. It was quite interesting: a mix of Western music underlaid with Indian beats/rythms/drums. Did I mention this place was BYOB? Did I mention it is also a curry house, along with the woman selling somosas and other tasty appetizers? Did I mention Rhitik's cousin works for Cobra distributers, so along with the beer and wine we brough, there were an additional 5 or 6 bottles of South African wine for consumption? Did I mention Rhitik paid for my feast of a meal? I had 3 large plates of food + lassi + tall boys of London Pride + free wine infront of me while watching and amazingly beautiful --but taken-- belly dancer. If heaven exists, I was probably there. Then a guy played this instrument called the Tabla. Imagine a 30 minute rapid fire drum solo...sorta like that but on really fancy bongos. I think what I like most is that even though lots of people were smoking sheesh, I didn't walk out of the place reeking of cigarette smoke!! Infact there is hardly an odor that sticks to you in, at least, that sheesh bar. Nice way to spend the night after a long week of work. After putzing around on 4 night buses, we made our way home around 02h30 the next morning.

Saturday I worked out some bank problems. I still don't have access to my accounts via cashpoints. It has been over 3 weeks! That afternoon I went to the London Transport museum only to find it closed due to renovation. Bah, can't win! Walked over to the River Thames and looked at all the little markets and exhibits that are always there on the weekend. Made my way home by way of a kebab shop and had a deliciously large Chicken Doner and watched movies the rest of the night with Scott and Ang. I managed a jog in there at some point, and all I remember is the kebab not agreeing with me too well.

Sunday was the standard routine: be lazy til 14h00 then went to Hyde Park for some Ultimate. London has had a rediculous cold snap recently so not many showed up. 30 or 40 points later we were sitting at the Pub. Today is back to the daily grind, but this weekend is Amsterdam! Only for two days though. Though that should be more than enough time to do what I need to do.

I hope some of you are still reading this (I know a few of you are) as it is turning into a pain to update. Just don't feel like it after 8.5 hours of work, plus one commuting, and another home. Ya know? Ta.

Happy Australia Day!

Today is the day the Britain colonised Australia. To celebrate, Aussies get pissed! Off to the Walkabout =)

Camden Town

Sometimes this area really gets to me, a lot. Just about anytime after dark, on any day of the week at least 3 or 4 people will run up to you as you exit Camden Town station and yell/whisper "skunk, hey need skunk? !" (This is how drugs and such are offered in London, I guess). It then continues to occur 2 or 3 times per block as you walk the remaining blocks to your pub, venue or other destination. Sometimes I just wanna take a swing at these guys, but I check myself, thinking its not such a bright move. Other than that Camden is pretty sweet. Great pubs, markets, venues, little shops and restaurants. Just too many damn dealers!

Finally some sun!

A gorgeous day here in London. Sunny and feels about 15º outside. One quick note...why are there always 3-5 people working in the internet shop I usually frequent? It takes maybe one person. Probably less than that even: .75 people. I will assume money laundering scheme. Or Sheme as the Brits say.

A quick dinner and pub crawl are in store for tonight. Then hopefully a long day of Ultimate tomorrow. The days are starting to last quite a bit longer: i.e. the sun sets almost an hour and a half later than the normal wintertime of 15h15m.

I use standard time. Have a good weekend all!

50th Post!

It's like an anniversary, or not. I am just finishing up my first day of work. With your wonderous powers of deduction you will have realised by now that I have a job! Awesome! One month of unemployment holiday was getting old so I took a job. I work in the finance dept. of a large travel firm called Travel 2 . It is owned by the same large firm that owns a ton of other real estate and travel agent companies throughout the world- Cendant. My job is basically to pay bills. Go A/P!!! Travel 2 is basically a travel agent's travel agent. They do long haul, tailor-made vacation packages for destinations all over the world. The US division is called Travel 4. Employee discount?

My interview for the job was pretty crazy. It was at 13h30 Tuesday afternoon so I get there at 13h20. After 25 minutes of waiting no one had come down to get me. I got a call from my recruiter asking where I was. Apparently the receptionist didn't realise that while I was waiting in the lobby, they were all waiting for me in a conference room. Off to a great start! I had three interviewers: a woman from Germany, a man from Portugal and a woman from South Africa (my boss). Whoa! International intimidation. My good looks and sharp dress put me over the top and I found out later that night I would start Thursday.

Two day work week, and half the days are casual Friday. Booyah!

Almost one month

Not too much to say since my last post on London life so I will keep this one shorter. On the 12th my best friend Ben from Boston (as how I usually refer to him) flew into London in the wee hours of the morning to spend a month backpacking around Europe. He and his girlfriend stayed in my flat for the weekend while I showed them around London and pretty much made their 4 days in one of the most expensive cities in the world as cheap as possible. I think we did quite well considering we (3 people) made our own Indian food for 7 quid one night and didn’t spend more than 13 quid on beer for the weekend. They are now in Edinburgh and are making a big figure 8 around western Europe.

This gets me thinking about my own travels that I have yet to plan. There are times where I spend an hour or two reading guide books and looking at maps discovering new places I want to go see. Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Latvia, St Petersburg, the Austrian Tyrol, Croatia and Slovenia are all countries I’d like to get to. So there is at least one New Years resolution.

I’ve been extremely lazy on the job search, but I at least have an interview at a travel company on Tuesday. Sounds promising so I’m hoping to be at work by the 18th, making it just shy of one month of being unemployed and the second January in a row of being unemployed.

The other day I saw a blind guy using the tube. Think about it. I can barely use the tube with full sight, this guy was doing it with no sight and a walking/blind guy cane. As he stepped on the train he started walking right at me. I think he wanted to stand where I was so I got out of the way and attempted to help him get into place before the train started moving. When I did that he kinda freaked out, and when others would offer him their seats he made funny/frightening noises. Nonetheless I was impressed with his ability to navigate a large-scale rail network with no vision.

I’ve only been offered drugs once so far.

I finally met my 4th flatmate, Rhitik and he seems normal. He’s on the late night student’s schedule and not the 9-5 professional schedule so I hardly see him.

I randomly bumped into a friend from secondary school outside St. Paul’s cathedral the other day which is incredibly and amazingly random. It’s fate I guess. Even though I knew that she would be here for spring semester, I had no idea when or where, so seeing her then was extremely lucky!

One last thing: I found the Sunday Ultimate games! I play every weekend in Hyde Park (first time this weekend) and the people I play with want to get me on a team for the winter league championships, which is in a few weeks. So, I have met a number of new people and that is always a hard thing for me to do, and for anyone to do in London.

I will leave it at that and wish you all a good week (it is Monday afternoon as I type this).

On Oil Company Operations

When the quarter ended for most oil companies at the end of September and the 10-Q statements were filed with the SEC, staggering net incomes were recorded. The most notable of these is Exxon-Mobil's nearly $10 billion at the bottom line for three months ending September 30. The total profits for the 5 largest privatised oil companies exceed $30 billion. Such a seemingly disgusting level of profits was not to go unnoticed by politicians from both sides of the aisle. Claims of price gouging consumers during the aftermath of hurricane Katrina when oil prices were over $70/barrel and gas over $3/gallon (some places in the South over $5) have been thrown around and executives from Exxon recently appeared in Congress to defend the company's enormous profits. Lawmakers are now discussing passing a windfall profits tax on oil companies that have made realtively large, in terms of dollar amout, profits this last quarter. What I am about to write may seem as though I am coming to the defence of the oil industry. Let me be clear, I am not doing that. From what I have seen and heard over the last month, I think politicians are doing a terrible job of sorting through this mess of oil profits, price gouging, supply capability and what to do about it.

This is not just one simple issue that we can look at and determine that oil companies deserve to be taxed simply because these companies made a profit. There are three key issues that need to be critically analysed, but separately addressed. There are probably many more than just these, but they are what I deem the most important. Now, I routinely get emails from Amy Klobuchar, Mike Hatch and other Minnesota DFLers as well as see campaign advertisements for politicians across the country. From my observations over the last couple months, the politicians logic is as follows: ExxonMobil makes almost $10 billion in net income during a quarter in which two major hurricanes struck, thus all oil companies must be price gouging. It certainly is easy to proclaim this while standing on ones speaker's/soap box, appearing to be the defender of gas guzzlers the all mighty consumers.

Let's go back in time a ways to begin. In the early and mid 1980's there was a recession in the U.S.; extremely high interest rates choked off any possible economic growth and stagflation ensued. With growth at a stand-still, there was little demand for fossil fuels from OPEC and other oil exporters. The price per barrel plummeted - bad news for producers, great news for consumers and a stalled economy (we have cheap oil to fuel our growth! cheap and plentiful oil boosts population thus increasing economic growth!). In an effort to prevent bankruptcy, many international and privatised companies merged together to maintain operations, create value through synergies, etc. Look at the names of non-state oil companies: ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, YPF-Repsol, TotalElfFina, RoyalDutchShell, BPAmoco. All of these at one time used to be individual companies. World economic circumstances and financial business goals drove the companies together. Over the next 20 years oil prices would increase (with much volatility) as the world economy began to grow again. In the mid to late 90's it was the U.S. and then emerging markets began to grow at incredible rates after that. Growth and the availability of cheap fossil fuels are linked: growth depends on cheap sources of energy, and as growth continues, this cheap energy source becomes more and more scarce as demand becomes more than production capacity. So we arrive in the oughts (the 00's) after one gulf war and in the middle of another. China and India are the two most talked about industrialising powers, especially when pondering how to satisfy the energy demands of over 2 billion (almost) new energy users. Also of note is the fact that energy is becoming more and more expensive to discover and extract and that while demand increases, refining capacity does not. These circumstances leave the world in a peculiar state.

So we have now condensed many small and medium sized oil producing companies while the price/bbl was historically low and end up with a smaller number of very large companies. What is the next step from here? It is 2005. For the whole of the new millenium the world economy has boomed, for the most part. Emerging markets such as China, India, Brazil (and greater South America), Eastern Europe, Turkey, Southeast Asia and so forth have put huge pressure on producers to meet these new energy requirements- be it coal, gas or oil (norther and western Europe have been rapidly expanding into renewable/alternative energy). For all of 2005, world production capacity was full. In fact, demand was more than possible production, which is one of the two big reasons that oil, gas and other fuel prices have been increasing since 2003. Now along comes one big mean hurricane during the 3rd quarter and wipes out a significant amount of both production and refining capacity. C'mon politicians...what do you think was supposed to happen?

These very large oil companies now have vast reserves after buying small companies and merging together with competitors. The M&A's occurred whilst the p/bbl was relatively low and now these enourmous companies exist at times when its oil reserves and production capacities are huge, though glabal demand is bigger. There is really only one mechanism to bring the two sides to equilibrium and that is price - something not set by the oil companies (though they can influence it at certain times). Something I find a bit funny and coincidental is that right at the time that these profits were being reported, I was reading in Matt Simons' book the chapter were he said that in the future we will see oil companies making huge profits (!!!). This is because they must have something to compensate for declining production and reserves from oil fields. Infact, ExxonMobil field production had declined somewhere around 4% this year compared to last. Well, can't say someone hasn't tried to get the message out.

A few notes about the financials: Exxon made 10 billion in net income. This came from 100 billion in revenues, more than some national economies. 10% net margin is good, not fantastic and not poor compared to all other industries of the world. For every one dollar of revenue, 10 cents are profit. To compare, financial services companies have about 15-20% net margin, and grocery stores probably have .5-2% margin. So why this talk of price gouging when they had normal profits? And what happens to all of this profit? It goes into the grubby hands of business executives doesn't it! Not quite, net income is after performance bonuses (an entirely separate issue on whether they truly deserve these or not). 20-25% is being paid back to shareholders as dividends (and to the gov't as dividends tax) and the rest is being plowed back into the company to finance new projects. What they do with these billions of dollars is probably where I and the executives differ.

This all leads me to a new question: Why is it "wrong" for the oil companies to make profits? A long time ago they started bearing a massive amount of risk by investing huge sums of money into equipment and logistics to extract and ship oil, the oil which gives us Americans a wonderful quality of life. Profit is the reward for bearing that risk just as loss was the punishment in the 80's. Exxon paid/accrued 6 billion dollars in taxes this quarter so why triple tax the company on post tax profits? Also, because we live in this so called free market economy, we should not be necessarily forced to buy only oil. Free markets have mechanisms that allow us to choose alternatives if something becomes too expensive (thus demand for oil will drop, and lower prices will follow). I know for a fact that this "choice" occured in Minneapolis when mass transit ridership increased sharply due to high fuel prices. Personally, I drove my car less, and rode my bicycle and motorcycle much more. Unfortunately this is on such a small scale that its impact was mostly unnoticeable. Most consumers bore the brunt of the price hike whilst dipping into nostalgia of 2000 with 90 cent/gallon gas, awaiting the better days of lower fuel prices.

I guess this was just my longwinded way (it took me almost 3 months to complete this) of showing that politicians' logic is flawed. I don't want to give off the impression that I am coming to the defence of oil execs. I certainly do not hold them to be people of high moral and ethical conduct and am sure there are many sleazy and corrupt business leaders among them. However, one cannot point at the profits recorded and yell "price gougers!" My understanding of economics and current oil industry operations (and I admit, they are probably naive and incorrect) tell me that one has to prove such a charge a different way. To do this would require someone to come forward as an anonymous leaker with documents providing evidence that excutives knowingly increased the price of oil for the sake of higher profits, and not to cause shortages of supply or any other type of logistics related problem. But really, having those oil execs testify before Congress without swearing them in under oath was one of the worst ideas ever (I blame the repubs for that one).

If anything, this should be the biggest red flag ever waved infront of the leaders of our country, screaming at them to look at how frail we are as a country and economy. The issue of oil in/dependence is a far greater threat to our national security than Iraq and probably terrorism ever was or will be. It is just so much easier to point you finger and blame " the bad guys" than to even begin to tackle a problem (or admit we have one) head on. We've become a nation drunk on oil and until we experience some sort of painful collective loss - probably our way of life - we will continue on our binge drinking path.

First 2006 post

I can't remember what I have posted so far......so let's start here.

Hi All,

It’s been a while hasn’t it? I suppose there is quite a lot to tell since before the new year to now. So I guess I’ll begin at an arbitrary spot. I had to extend my hostel reservation a few more days because I couldn’t move into my flat til the 31st and had only booked til the 27th or something. I was set to leave for Edinburgh on the 29th so I really didn’t even move in til after I got back from up north. Point is, I really didn’t like living in the hostel. Too transient. No one except yours truly was there on a long term basis. Or I guess if they were, they were just holed up in their room being anti-social, much like I became at the end of my stay. I stopped making an effort. I just ate, wrote cover letters/cv’s and ventured out to the city a bit.

I left the Thursday evening before new year’s eve on a late train. It only took about 4.5 hours, pretty fast considering Edinburgh is at least 300 miles from central London. That’s including 4 or 5 stops along the way. Trains are the way to go: we need a better rail network in the US (read: I hate driving). Dan and Adam met me at the station and we walked to Dan’s flat to get rid of my stuff. We spent the rest of the night talking with Will (Dan’s Scottish flatmate) and watching shitty tele programs. Next Dan had to work and Adam and I slept til about noonish. I love holiday. Once aroused we wandered about the city centre and decided to go for a hike. Smack in the middle of Edinburgh is this giant hill/mound thing with ridges and old stairs called Arthur’s Seat. Adam and I hiked all the way to the top. Unfortunately the view wasn’t that nice as it was cloudy out but it was pretty sweet nonetheless. Getting down was a bitch. A combination of sliding on feet and bums, taking baby steps and being cautious pansies got us nowhere, and we probably looked like total newbs. So we bucked up and acted like real hikers and kicked the mountain’s ass. We met Dan after he was done with work and he proceeded to cook us some “haggis, nips and tatties.” It was delicious (and by delicious I mean Scottish and bland). I would definitely eat it again though. Then we went to watch these Catalonian “castler” people who stack up 8 or 9 stories with just people. It looked sweet in the brochure but was a total let down so I wont get into details. We went to some bars pubs and clubs, drank and danced with a bunch of Canadian girls and then I got kicked out of the club (fuck yeah!). An Asian guy started yelling at me cause I put my head down at 3am. I got up and left. It was club Frankenstein, the lot of ‘em can fuck off. Well, at least I accomplished one of my life’s goals.

The next day (new year’s eve) was spent drinking beer, with Dan staring it off around 10 to noon. We also had, fish, chips and crisps with that beer, which made for a day of overeating and drinking. We finally got out of the flat for good around 8 and went looking for dinner, more beer, and street party tickets. We found all three, went to princes street (right underneath the castle) and awaited the countdown. By the time that happened, there were 250,000 people (record attendance I guess) jumping dancing and singing in the street to the Proclaimers - you know, “I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more……balalala/balalaa balalalalalala-la-la-la-la-la-la-la” and so on. Sweet deal. Then we ended up at some flat that was right next to Dan’s with a view of the castle from the window (you actually have to go outside to see the castle from Dan’s flat. Then we went on the roof and looked in awe at the castle. Whilst at this random person’s flat, I ate most of the chicken primavera, bread, chicken parmesan and chicken tikka, plus drank more beer. They didn’t seem to mind. At whatever time it was (3am?) we went to Dan’s flat where Will and his mates were partying. They gave me scotch. And one guy yelled about London for a long time. I just sat listening, disagreeing and drinking my scotch. I stole some girls cookies and ate like three point five of them (there were four total). Man they were good. I think we finally got to bed around 630, woke up 5.5 hours later and went for the one o clock run down the royal mile. What a fuckin way to wake up! Stupidly I brought my jacket with me so had to carry that and run down the royal mile. What a number it did to my insides…. I didn’t leave til late that night so we decided to go look at some old castle 4 miles away. We walked. It was empty and dark in suburban Edinburgh and we stood on a dark field all alone thinking we would be attacked or murdered. Then we walked back to the city, had Indian food ( I had a spat about rice with the waiter: Him: would you like rice with any of that? Me: it doesn’t come with the food? Him: no. Me: Are you serious? Fuck. Can we just get a plate of rice then? (and so on)) Seriously. You can get 20 pounds of basmati for about 8 quid. I’m bringing my own next time.

I seriously got on my overnight bus back to London with about 4 seconds to spare (many thanks to Adam Lukoskie) and had the shittiest bus ride of my life. Not only was there one obligatory screaming baby, there were two. I cranked up the tunes and zoned out, but didn’t sleep. I sat in a bus station in Birmingham for 2 hours (im sure that means nothing to most of you, so think like, gary Indiana, just less shitty. Its not a terrible city, just a decrepit manufacturing town that has no business because of glabalisation, I think. I might be completely wrong). Finally got to London (20 minutes early!!!) and went to move into my flat after about 3 hours’ sleep. Put my bags down and took a nap.

So now I am mostly moved in. I have had to do some basic carpenter work on my wardrobe as it pretty much fell apart when I opened it. Also there was a ton of shit left over from the Bangladeshi dude living in the room before me. Spices, sardines pots and pans and silverware. It sits, taking up space, in the middle of my floor.

My flatmates are decent people. 3 Australians and an Indian guy I haven’t met cause he’s in Mexico. Funny chaps they are. I don’t say much. One cooked dinner for us all the other night. I think it’ll work out just fine. Everything in my life is pretty constant now, except work. I finally got a bank account, oyster card, kitchen space, sheets for me bed!, I went running for the first time since early November. I’ve got into good reading habits. My day consists of waking up at 8, napping til 10. eating breakfast, reading watching some tele then finally wandering out of the house around 1 to use the internet or just plain walk/search.


Well I’m out. Cheers to you if you read this entire thing. You obviously have no life and are unemployed, like me. At least my gainful employment options are promising…. Hopefully next post is something more interesting than what I did and that I will have a job.

Also, I called several of you new years eve. Good to hear your voices!