christmas eve in canary wharf

I stopped in to work today for a quick meeting with Ashish, and to catch up on email. I recently synced my ipod (becoming more laborious as time goes by and I get more music) and was listening to billy no mates on the tube, bless those guys for still doing it right. I switched to J-church as I walked up out of the tube station into a nearly silent canary wharf. This took me right back to that day I spent walking around cambridge...

"I walked around in a self imposed headphones isolation but with the whole gang and felt really weirdly close to them."

 

I went straight through "one mississippi" that day, and on to "69 love songs". I'd been really relating to Jchurch that year, because it took me back home a bit when walking in the foreign streets. So on that day, the glowy feeling of the beer, twilight, colleges, the disconnected connection with my fellow students and music mixed in with the melancholy of knowing that it would all be over soon. White noise filtered in from the edges of vision and hearing, and I felt something really beautiful. 10 months later Lance died on a table having his blood cleaned. I found out 3 months after that.

Stepping up into the silent wharf, listening to one mississippi and feeling a bit alone, I suddenly felt really sad. Tears are no good at work, even on christmas eve, so I turned poor Lance off, wiped my eyes and walked through the front doors.

I'm really, really sorry, Lance.

my first Hanukah

I went up to oxford yesterday to visit with my friends Sasha and Orly.  Sasha was the 2nd MBA that I met way back in September of 2006.  He and Orly have two boys, Nir (4) and Dan (1).  Sasha works for a small investment bank that focuses mainly on Russia and eastern Europe.  He's also Belarusian and speaks Hebrew, Russian and English.  They invited me to come up to have dinner, get drunk on vodka and stay over the night.  Russian style vodka drinking consists mainly of downing ice cold vodka shots in a single gulp.  It's great fun, and went along very nicely with the lamb Sasha cooked.  The boys were already asleep by the time I got there, and Orly went to bed after dinner, but Sasha and I stayed up late drinking plain vodka, chili pepper vodka, Irish whiskey, and even some red wine.  More accurately, you could say that Sasha and I stayed up late drinking ALL THE plain vodka, ALL THE chili pepper vodka, ALL THE Irish whiskey, and even ALL THE red wine. 

Sasha was predictably a bit rough the next morning, but I was totally hung over!  He suggested drinking a beer, "hair of the the dog" style... and while this seemed to sort him out, it just made me more sick.  So, I slept it off at their house while they took the boys to the park.  I was only feeling something like 30% human again by dinner time, so they had me stay for dinner as well, and Sasha made Moroccan style couscous, which is really good stuff, though I obviously couldn't eat too much of it.  Then, they lit the Menorah candle because this is the first day of Hanukah.  This was also my first Hanukah, so it was very interesting to watch.  They dimmed the lights, lit one candle, and then used it to light another one, while singing a song in Hebrew.  Just as the the song finished up, Sasha said, "Ok Orly, now bring in the Christian babies' blood..." and we all cracked up laughing.  We finished up the process with some home made doughnuts, and presents for the boys: Dreidels of course.  I rode the train back down late today, and capped the night off with chicken soup and the unbelievably horrible "National Treasure 2". 

my wife rules

the mighty teisco del ray

 

My wife bought me a teisco del ray guitar for Christmas.  She's going back to Seattle for the holidays but for various reasons I am staying here.  So, she gave me the guitar before she left, hoping that it would keep me busy.  It probably will!  These things are really cool old Japanese "surf" guitars modeled after the more famous US surf guitars like mosrites, and have a special appeal for sarcastic guitar collectors like me.  What a wonderful wife, that's the 2nd guitar she's bought for me!  I'm a very lucky guy.

Oxcam Revisited

Now I am a member of the Oxford and Cambridge club.  For the price of an Oxford MBA, a new members' night spent chit chatting and wrangling for two signatures, and 90 quid/month, I am now a member.  Is this a good thing?  Would they let in anybody with an oxcam degree and a pulse?  I don't want to consider these points.  I stopped by the night before last and had a glass of port while I read a weird old book on the Celts of England sitting in a red leather chair by the fire in the library.  It was peaceful in there, and I daydreamed that a few old members were looking at me, saying, "well at least this yank is interested in weird old books, even if he is just an MBA... what the hell, let's give him a chance".  This club isn't posh like the RAC, and it isn't political like some others, and it certainly isn't hip, it's simply a place where old geeks like to geek on old books in silence with their drink by the fire.  Or at least that's the way that I like to think of it.  I've come to accept that Oxford people are going to always be intimidating to me, and that's fine, I'm happy being the little fish.  

Why do I like these old books?  They reflect back to me in waves with the aggregate glow of every eye that ever looked down into them.  I like this, it makes the fire seem very simple.

Various

I feel like blogging today, but have nothing super interesting to write about.  Since that's never stopped me before...

Cold

I have a cold.  I hate having a cold.  I hate if for two reasons: 1) it sucks.  2) Because I had pneumonia several years ago, and ever since, every little cold I get turns into a chest cold.  A chest cold that hopes and dreams of growing up into pneumonia.  My guess is this is how I will die someday: I'll be old, I'll get my usual winter cold/chest-cold/wannabe-pneumonia and the pneumonia will finally get it's wish, taking out yet another old guy.

Polish Maid

Nothing in London is cheap, except for house cleaners.  I have a house cleaner from a maid service, and for £7 per hour, she cleans, does washing, irons, sews, etc.  I have no idea if she's a legal immigrant or not, though she did bring a very shitty photocopy of of her passport once.  She's probably 19, and doesn't speak English too well.  She's polite, but a skittish.  I was home sick on Friday (normal cleaning day) taking all these calls from work, and I think she was kind of freaked out by me being in the house when she was there.  I think that maybe she's afraid that I'm going to try to get her to sleep with me or something, she has that sort of wary-eye look that says a girl thinks "this foreign pig is a molester and he'll try to get me if I turn my back to him, then I'll be stuck with half-pig half-polish baby on this Gold forsaken island in the sea... must remain vigilant!"  Maybe that's an exaggeration, but in any case I try to just leave her alone which I think makes her like 3% more comfortable. 

Christmas Plans

Reba is going to Seattle for Christmas and I am not.  There are several reasons for this:

1) she works in a research institution where everybody would flake out over the Christmas week anyway, so the administrators just say "what the f---" and let everybody go.  I don't work in this kind of a company, so I don't have the week off.

2) I used all my vacation up already this year, with trips to Spain, Greece, the Yorkshire Dales, Scotland, Seattle, Los Angeles, Bruges, etc.

3) I wanted to make a point to my wife that maybe it's not really necessary to travel to Seattle 4 times a year.

4) Holiday travel is a nightmare.

5) Reba wants to visit Seattle one last time before the baby comes, it might be a while before she can travel again.

6) I'm going to be a father in a few months, and this will be my last chance to have some extended Ean time for a while.

7) Reba and I have often taken separate vacations, after 11 years it's sort of a nice break, and we're always eager to see one another at the end.

Despite the nice long list above, I'm regretting the decision.  I want to see my family and friends, have baby brother lunch, go to dim sum with my mom, do the Nochebuena, have a mango chutney shochu eggnogg (or whatever it is they're serving) at Tiger Tail, hang out at the Javabean, see the nieces and nephews, etc.  I'm always afraid that there may be a shorter time frame for seeing my mom than previously assumed.  There's nothing specific behind this last bit, it's just a fear I have.  Also, I have found that if Reba is gone for 2 to 3 nights, I enjoy my personal time, spend time with friends, and have the pleasant experience of finding things just where I put them last.  However, I have also noticed that if she's gone for any longer than 4 nights, I inevitably find myself huddled in the eye of some sort of psychological/existential crisis which I am ill equipped to handle on my own.

On the positive side, I will have a lot of time to do the extended Ean fantastic: read weird books and magazines at cafes, buy comic books, find new hardcore bands at All Ages Records, shop for the perfect reverb pedal, admire guitars I don't need, take naps on our giant DFS (think English JC Penny) couch and watch movies that would lead my wife to suspect that I'm an idiot.  I will also be going back to Oxford for a quiet Christmas eve with my good pal Andy, who is just about to finish his thesis for his DPhil (that's Oxford for PhD).  This is a big deal, because the thesis is really a book of about 100,000 words and he has to get it done by the end of January or the whole thing is canceled.  I guess he's got a couple of chapters left.  Stressy!  Plus, Ginny and Kaysa are going to be around, so they'll probably adopt me for a bit out of sheer pity.

Baby

I'm going to be a father.  Leaving aside the recent dramatic and sudden death of my own father, my present absence from my family's home, financial crises and scarcity of jobs in the finance sector, it's still a complex and scary proposition.  Put those ingredients back in, and a guy could get really worked up about this.  I am, however, determined to NOT be a freaked out first time parent, and thus am committing to being cool about this whole thing.  It's a bit early to tell how it will all work out, but I can say that my wife is cute with a little belly, we've found a nice new neighborhood to live in and push a stroller around, and the names are set: Ernest Robert Hernandez (boy) and Isabel(le) Josephine Hernandez (girl).  Ernest comes from lots of things Reba and I hold dear: my family often names boys with an E (brothers Ethan and Eban, father Ernest, grandfather Ernesto, great uncle Evelio, great grandfather Efigenio, etc.), memorial to my dad and granddad, Shackleton, Hemingway, and reba's great uncle Ern.  Robert is Reba's dad's name, and this just seems fair given the boy's first name.  The genesis of the Isabel(le) name is a bit more vague, we both like it and it's Spanish enough to fit with Hernandez, and English enough to be genuine.  By genuine I mean that I feel a bit disingenuous giving my child a strongly Spanish first name when the kid would be less that 1/4 Spanish... a pale blonde haired blue eyed 6th generation American boy named Juan Hernandez is a bit ridiculous, and certainly not named with any sense of accuracy regarding his genealogy.  So, Isabel(le) works because it's not a purely Spanish name, but still sounds good with Hernandez.  This last bit can be difficult... Beth Hernandez?  Jane Hernandez?  Sally Hernandez?  To me, these names sound great with English last names, but with Hernandez it's just awkward.  So, finding the right English first name to go with the Spanish last name is tricky.  The (le) part is included here because I sort of like the look of the French spelling a bit better than the Spanish version, but Reba feels the opposite way and we haven't come to an agreement yet.  The name will sound the same anyway.  My secret agenda is to employ the Barclays bank principle through which simply writing something enough times makes it true.

 

that's not beer!

CV

At Shelby's urging, I have updated my resume from the current 2 page version to a new 1 page version with a separate list of key achievements.  The idea is that by having a more succinct resume it will look more professional and more effectively convey my fundamental fabulousness by not losing the reader's attention halfway through the 2nd page.  If a potential employer is really interested, they will request the key achievements list.  Economical writing is something you work on a lot in business school, and I managed to reduce 18 years of education, jobs,  personal achievements, training, methodologies and memberships to 1 A4 sheet of paper.  One nice thing about living in the UK is that you get an extra .67 of an inch per resume page over the standard US 8.5x11.

Moving

We are moving to St John's wood.  If you live London, that might be a bit funny, if not you're probably wondering what/where that is.  Right now, we live in the edgy, punky, wild night out part of the city called Camden Town.  This neighborhood is accessed by the Northern Line subway, and is popular with young waify edgy looking people, as well as throngs of tourists that come from all over the UK and Europe to shop for bongs, tie dyed wall hangings, 27 buckle high heeled S&M boots, etc.  If you were shooting a low budget version of the Matrix, you could buy all your wardrobe here.  We are abandoning this gem for St John's wood, which is only about a 20 minute's walk from our current house, but is really a world away. 

Why this is funny:

1) it's on the Jubilee Line subway, which means that it's a straight shot to Canary Wharf,where bankers (like me) work. 

2) The neighborhood is very popular with American expatriates, again because of the ease of commuting to the financial center where they all work. 

3) St John's is also full of young, fashionably dressed mothers pushing expensive "prams" while their banker husbands work in Canary Wharf. 

4) Finally, the neighborhood is quiet and cute. 

...which means that there are 4 reasons that our friends here are thinking "oh yeah, now that Ean and Reba are having a baby they're getting conservative and moving to St John's Wood...   hahahahha!"  I suppose this is like living in Capitol Hill and the moving to Kirkland as soon as you decide to have kids.  I can't deny it! 

A is the old apt, B is the new one

Ok, that's more than enough for today, next time: Practice Spaces, Charles Darwin, Books, Magazines, and Dim Sum.

Bruxelles

This past weekend, Reba and I went down to Brussels (Bruxelles in some languages) to visit Shelby, my pal from business school.  We hadn't been on a weekend trip for quite a while, so it felt good to top up on travel.  I always feel like I'm wasting my time over here to some extent by not traveling at every chance.  Europe is so close to our little island home, and though it's easy to just chill at the apartment and go out to dinner in the neighborhood on the weekends, I won't have this proximity forever. 

Brussels is in Belgium, which seems to be a sort of German-ish France.  Apparently there is a big cultural/geographical divide between the French speaking Belgians and the Flemish (a kind of Dutch, which makes it a kind of German) speaking Belgians, with all the tension, rivalry and distrust that naturally builds up between two groups of white people living a country the size of Massachusetts.  Actually that doesn't make any sense to me, but if you figure (a) one half of this country is Germanic, and there's plenty to pick on Germans about if you're looking for a fight and happen to have had grandparents in northern Europe during the last century, and (b) the other half of the country is French.  Let's face it, other than my French teacher back in Seattle and a few francophilic femmes from said French class, nobody likes the French.  I'm not saying that it's right, just that it's true.  So, maybe this big divide in a tennis court sized state isn't such a shock after all.  Whatever.  After a while you realize that when you live over here, it's a lot better use of your time to not worry about why these 14 white people in one tiny corner of Europe hate those 23 other white people in the next tiny corner, even though they're probably all 3rd cousins anyway.

Shelby lives in London and works for BT, but she's been assigned to some project in BT's Brussels office, so they're putting her up in a fabulous apartment while she's there.  It was really good to see her, she's been away for a while now and I likes my Shelby time.  She's moving back to London in a few weeks.  Good!  She organized a pretty cool tour for us: visit to a Christmas market, nice dinner out, seeing all the wacky Belgian Christmas pageantry (more on this later) and best of all: a trip to Delirium.  Delirium is a bar just off the main square in Brussels where they have 2004 different beers for sale, mostly Belgians.  While the actual space is a shithole, the beer makes up for it and I was in that most lofty of heavens, beer heaven.  I drank a lot of Belgian weird beer (more on this later), and was very happy about it.  Shelby and Reba were very good sports and sat with me and watched me go through the various delicious options.  Thanks girls!

Belgian Christmas Pageantry

Adding to the long list of Euro stuff I don't get, there are apparently 2 key non-Jesus Christmas figures in the Belgian Christmas tradition.  There is a Belgian Santa Claus who is roughly analogous to the Santa Claus we all know and love back in the states.  Belgian Santa does his thing on December 25th just like everywhere else, but he's also in a sort of medieval parade on December 6th where he rides around Brussels in a horse drawn cart followed by guys on striped stilts, but what the hell, it's cool, I like stilts.  What's not cool is dude #2.  This is "black peter" or something like that.  This dude is Santa's helper or slave or something, and his face is supposed to be all black from chimney soot.  So, of course this means that there has to be a white dude in blackface walking behind Santa in the parade.  Oh yeah, and instead of giving presents, this guys beats up bad little kids and takes them back to Spain.  I am not making this up.

We had a lovely, culturally enriching trip to the continent this weekend, and I even got to use my French.  Au-bon.

Belgian Weirdbeer

I like weird beer.  Ok, scratch that, I like beer.  Even an ice cold lager is all good with me, but in colder months, complicated weird beer makes me very happy.  Seattle is famous/notorious for this stuff, and I quaffed my share of the weird before I left.  LoFiBri and I used to do the occasional weridbeer outing, and thinking back on those trips makes me happy and thirsty.  The Belgians however, take this art-form to a whole new level.  There are thousands of little breweries in this little country, all with their particular take on what a tasty little weirdbeer is.  I guess the best way to put it is: the Belgians are as diverse and serious about making beer as the French are about making wine, so get out there and drink some.  A Belgian focused recommendation I gave to my Austin pal Gabe just yesterday follows:

"good solid belgian beers that I like are chimay and duvel, nothing too wild but reliable. NOT for consumption on hot summer days tho, way too thick. for something a bit more interesting try westmalle. for something super kickass and weird try the Abbaye des Rocs by Brasserie de l'Abbaye des Rocs. This shit is the bizomb dizzle. I also drank one called "satan red", which is just a good idea generally. I think you can get all of these (except maybe that last) at any good hipster grocery. definitely at any beer store."

Special to Carl: we're pouring one out for Tiki this week, though I suspect he would have preferred some dropped bbq instead.  Take care my brother, you're in our hearts and in our thoughts.

The House of Lords

It turns out that one of the alumni from my college (somewhere in the 50s) is a lord, and also a member of the house of lords, which is sort of like the US house of representatives in that it's the half of parliament (congress) that doesn't matter too much, but the lords is more prestigious with less power.  This particular lord decided to host a dinner at the houses of parliament for the Merton alumni association, and so on Friday night, Reba and I went and had dinner with a lot of mertonians and a few lords, ladies, sirs and at least one dame.

We showed up late and missed the tour, but made it in time to hang out on the lords' deck overlooking the river Thames.  Predictably, right next door is the house of commons' (like our senate) deck, and they were having some kind of an event as well.  Security was pretty tight, so we got scanned a lot, and had to wear badges, etc.  The dinner was a pretty typical Oxford event: lots of wine while you mingle with OSPs (over smart people) that you don't know, followed by a 3 course meal with lots more wine and more conversation with OSPs you don't know (they sat Reba and I apart from one another), followed by a couple of speeches.  And then more drinks.  Rinse, repeat, and you have British society.

Are you wondering what lords, ladies, sirs and dames are like?  I only know a few, but in general they seem to be nice old people who are super super old school British: dry humor, cufflinks, odd accents, and the whole deal.  They never seem mention their titles, but are usually announced before speeches or during thank you's, etc. with the title.  They also seem to have no problem wearing nametags that include the titles.  So, perhaps for this reason, they also seem to me to have a certain smugness to their demeanor... they know they are lords and higher class than you, you know they are lords and higher class than you, everybody else in the room knows that they are lords and higher class than you, and all parties know that you are NOT a lord, but the lords aren't going to say anything because that wouldn't be classy, would it?  They are pointedly nonchalant about the whole thing, which in a way makes it all that much more obvious.  As far as English oddities go, the whole title thing has got to be one of the strangest. 

The main speaker was pretty interesting, he'd spent time all over the world, wrote a bunch of famous stuff, had received all sorts of accolades for doing brave stuff, and was pushing his cause a bit, which is basically reviewing old prison sentences and trying to get innocent people free.  Also speaking was Jessica Rawson, the warden of Merton, and also a dame.  I think that's funny, because where I'm from, "dame" is what tough guys in campy old gangster movies called women back before they started calling them "chicks", but here it's some sort of honorific title.  What she did to deserve it, I don't know, but I'm sure it was academic.  Basically the warden is the head of the college, sort of the ruler of it, and I don't think she really reports to anyone.  This warden is pretty popular with the alums, but to be honest, a lot of the students didn't like her when I was there.  She and I always got along fine even though she never tried to learn my name and just called me "one of her MBAs", but the feedback I heard from the people who lived in college (I lived in my own apartment) generally ranged from fearful to just negative.  In any case, she announced that she's leaving after 15 years, and the fellows of the college are looking for a replacement.  I'm sure that's caused a bunch of chatter in the MCR.

Reba was tired after the speeches, so we split early, though we did chat with a few folks on the way out.  Kaysa wanted to meet up for drinks in Shoreditch, but I wanted to play Spore because my empire, the Wangcopter Empire, is doing pretty well and I wanted to invade some alien solar systems with the new mega-laser I bought.

What do you read?

I was reading an article on MSNBC about Sarah Palin today that pointed out how Katie Couric had a minor comeback off the back of her Sarah Palin interview in which the candidate couldn't name the newspapers she reads.  The implication was that she actually didn't read newspapers.  I thought about this a while and thought to myself: man, that's pretty lame.  I read a lot of newspapers and magazines, and I'm not even running for public office... how does she expect to learn about what's going on in the world?  So, since I'm getting back to blogging, I thought I'd list off my current crop of regular reading. 

The funny part is that I almost never read actual newspapers!  They're messy and get my hands inky and unless I've got a leisurely solitary breakfast lined up, I just don't take the time to buy a physical paper.

Regular Reading

In addition to various books, I read a lot of periodicals in a sometimes futile attempt to keep up with the pace of business, technology and politics.

Magazines

Here is where I get my more deeply considered opinions about the world. I subscribe to these in print form and read them at home or on the tube on the way to work. I give links to their web sites anyway.

• Foreign Affairs - Well argued academic style papers from high end bureaucrats and academics. Political orientations are all over the map, but still credible. These guys are great at polished analysis, but not as good at giving suggestions for the future. Still, I love love love this mag.
• The Economist - Founded in 1843, this is a great balance of news, politics, economics and business. Written anonymously for some odd reason.
• Harvard Business Review - Gold standard for general business subjects. Organizational design, leadership, IT, strategy, marketing etc.
• Sloan Management Review - MIT's attempt at having it's own Harvard Business Review. Lots of good stuff that the HBR doesn't get to, and a bit more of a techie focus.
• Guitarist - Because at the back of it all, I'm still a guitar geek and I love reading about all the latest models.

Journals

I like reading academic journals, I got a taste for it in business school and now I'm hooked. I've found that the difficult part about reading specific journals is that much of the time you're flipping through stuff that you don't care about. Plus, subscribing to individual journals only gets you data once in a while. This is where searchable aggregators are handy.

• The Association for Computing Machinery - Lots and lots of papers by academics around the world. Much of it concerns technology that I'm not interested in, but there's more than enough that's pertinent or interesting to me. Some of the journals I follow more closely include:
  • ACM Journal on Emerging Technologies in Computing Systems (JETC)
  • Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH)
  • ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization (TACO)
  • ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS)
  • ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS)
  • ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM)
  • ACM Transactions on the Web (TWEB)
• The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers - Similar to the ACM, just different articles. The most shockingly confusing and poorly designed web site in computing history, but that's fairly predictable give academic focused web sites in general. In here, the journals I like are:
  • IT Professional
  • Digital Information Management
  • Internet Computing
  • IEEE Software
  • IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management
• The National Bureau of Economic Research - If you want to read really detailed papers about finance or economics subjects ranging from the relationship between sub prime mortgage structures and the current financial crisis, to the effects of migration on 16th century European economies, this is your Disneyland. I love this stuff.
• Oxford Economic Papers - More economics, if a bit esoteric. I probably read this one because it comes out of my school more than anything else.
• Oxford Review of Economic Policy - Ditto.

Technology Blogs

I read a ton of stuff via Google reader, which is a very nice RSS aggregator. Some of this stuff is questionably accurate or researched, and at times is little more than opinion. At the same time, a lot of cutting edge thinking is going on in these forums, so I like to follow it. The web sites for some of these blogs are listed below.

• Ajaxian
• Bokardo
• Communities Dominate Brands
• Web 2.0 Blog
• Software Only
• Jonathan Zittrain
• Mobile Crunch
• Programmable Web
• Tech Crunch
• Tech Meme
• The Long Tail

Online Newspapers
This is where I get my day to day updates or take brain cool-down breaks at work.

MSNBC - Meat and potatoes, basic reporting. This is where I go for the quick "what's up" in the world or if I want 10 minutes of light reading.
The Financial Times - I go here for business and economics stuff, again if I'm looking for a quick update. This is the UK gold standard business newspaper. I particularly enjoy their economist's forum.
The Wall Street Journal - The US version of the FT. My father in law once commented that the best thing about the WSJ was the editorials, and I must admit somewhat guiltily that I don't use the journal for much else. I love to see how the well informed part of the right wing think, and these editorials are a good source for that.
Le Monde - The big French national newspaper. If I'm going to France anytime soon and trying to brush up on my French, I'll read this for a few days. I also read this to try and understand what it is that French people actually think. I've had limited success here.
El Pais - This is the Spanish version of Le Monde for my purposes, but probably also for a lot of other people as well. Spanish politics has never really interested me enough to follow it closely, but I do like being able to talk to my Spanish friends about it.
The Seattle Times - Not much global substance, but this paper keeps me up on the minor goings on back home.

So... what's new with Ean and Reba these days?

oh shit.

Slayer!

Just like the Jesus and Mary Chain, we saw Slayer this week.  Unlike the Jesus and Mary Chain, they ruled.  That is to say, they did not suck, which is exactly what the Jesus and Mary Chain did (suck).  Slayer are on of the big four thrash metal bands, and from my point of view is really the only one with any credibility at this point.  Based on Reba's initial feedback, Metallica may be able to redeem itself with their new record, but I'm reserving judgement, especially after that last terrible album they did. 

The show was just what one would hope: a knucklehead festival.  Where these people come from, I have no idea, but somehow Slayer brings out the dumbest, trashiest, most ADD riff raff wherever they go in the world.  How was I to know that the frizzy long combed out hair, dirty little moustache, and jeans jacket look adopted by suburban American white trash everywhere in the 1980s (but maybe a bit more in the south, Julie?) was alive and well at the London Hammersmith Apollo?  There were skinheads, crazed-eye brawlers, slutty dumb looking "goth" chicks, bikers, and my favorite: headbangers.  What's a headbanger?  As you might suspect, there is an over analytical wikipedia article that prattles on about the subject, but in the simplest sense, it is someone with long hair that is banging their head back and forth, to and fro, (or even in a figure 8 configuration, ala Tom Araya, bassist and lead singer for Slayer) with the effect of their long hair flipping all over the place.  You used to see lots of people doing this in the 80s, but it's a bit rare now.  Except at slayer concerts.  I remember watching a bunch of these guys from afar at the show, and then getting a waft of hair conditioner smell.  Turning around, I discovered that I had my very own headbanger!  I gave the little guy enough room to do his thing, and returned to watching the band.  In my view, this miscreant suffers all forms of indignity, job discrimination, female repulsion, rejection at posh restaurants, parental disapproval, etc., just so he can have his moment of glory at the Friday night metal show.  Who am I to rob him of this?  Hell, if I could grow any hair on my head, I might be inclined to grow it long myself!

Also out in force were the old people.  That is to say, people like me.  Reba and I found a relaxed corner of the club in which many people our age and older were stood slightly apart from one another, enjoying minor-level rock outs of their own.  Reba calls this the "nerdsection".  These people had naturally bald heads (i.e. non skinhead), polo shirts, glasses, paunches, and the rest.  The mayhem in the slam-pit at center stage was not anything I wanted to sample.

As for slayer, they too are old, fat, and even one of them, Kerry King, is bald.  For Mr. King this must have been a real crisis.  Against all odds, he became an internationally famous, grammy-winning rock star, and then lost his hair!  He has compensated by tattooing his head and growing a slender but absurdly long beard, which he headbangs in a fashion by shaking his head back and forth in a very aggressive "no" configuration.  Frankly, he looks for all the world like a World of Warcraft dwarf, stout, tattooed, bald, goofy beard, and wearing some crazy medieval S/M-ish clothing.  All he needs to do is trade in his axe (metal-speak for guitar) for a real one, and he'll be off to storm the gates of Mordor or whatever.

But the music!  At the end of the day, you can make all the fun in the world of Slayer's fans, their hair, and their anachronistic subculture, ad nauseam, but they still kick ass!  Their music is as fast, brutal, and emotive as ever.  They are tight and precise live, and have all the anger on stage that comes across so effectively in their studio albums.  Their songs are frankly scary, and a couple on numbers from 1986's "Reign in Blood" (voted "heaviest album of all time" by Kerrang! magazine) stand the hairs up on the back of my neck.  These boys did not disappoint.

 

dwarven warrior or rock star?

The Jesus and Mary Chain Suck (Live)

One of my favorite bands ever is The Jesus and Mary Chain.  Their style, lyrics, innovative primitiveness, and energy made we want to play music all over again after the first 15 years.  We went to see them last night at a club one tube stop from our neighborhood.  It was great to see a band that I've idolized for so long.  It was also great to see them with Reba, because she and I used to listen to "Automatic" a lot when we were first dating. 

However, they sucked live.  Even though a second year guitarist could probably play their unbelievably simple guitar parts, their lead guitarist William Reid was obviously too stoned to remember or execute his own parts that he wrote and has been playing for 20 years.  Maybe it would have been easier if he wasn't wearing sunglasses in a dark club, or if there wasn't such a powerful smoke machine onstage, or if he did something radical like actually practice the guitar parts he wrote.  Who knows, but he managed to miss guitar lines, play the wrong chords, and prematurely stop songs... all while trying to play material with a complexity level akin to Kum-bye-ya.  I suppose in a way it's ok since they are one of those sloppy arty noise lo fi pop type of acts, the kind that are fun to watch fall apart on stage. 

We left early anyway.

Voted

The whole world is hanging on the the US electorate's next move.  People here will act like the fact that they know about McCain, Palin, Obama, Biden, Powell's endorsement, "I can see Russia from my house" and all the rest is because they are so well educated in world politics, but it's BS.  The truth is, the next US president will have a tremendous effect on the rest of the globe, and everyone everywhere knows it.  They also all have an opinion.  Not always a well researched opinion, but then again sometimes it's better than what I hear from my fellow Americans.  This president is going to have a major hand in the next steps toward global financial stability, set the stage for Russian, Chinese and European world postures, and decide the outcome of two very long wars.  This president will have the tax base and industrial power of the world's largest single GDP at his fingertips.  This president will have the world's most powerful expeditionary force at his disposal.  This president will say something at the next state of the union address, and the whole world will shiver, bristle, or relax depending on what it is.  This isn't true of Sarkozy, Medvedev, Jintao, Brown, Merkel, Aso, Rudd, Abdulla Aziz, Ahmadinejad (or Khamenei), etc.  These leaders are all varying degrees of important with varying degrees of influence, but the real deal is: the transfer of American power evokes a level of global interest to which other countries (except perhaps Russia?) only engender a distant second.  This much is evident from the media, colleagues, friends, cab drivers, floor to ceiling tube advertisements (seriously) and a million other indicators I run into over here.  I don't know, but I bet that there's a lot more people in the world who wish they could cast a vote in the US election than would ever want to visit the US, let alone become citizens.

The part of the US that I come from has a host of other names up for election on a long list of very unimportant positions... Washington state governor, King county council members, judges, assesors, etc.  No one in the world outside the tiny and insignificant corner of forest I hail from gives 2 shits about these people, or whether or not Seattlites get mass transit, build highways at the expense of their eastern agricultural neighbors, let sick people suicide legally, improve firefighting, etc.  Frankly, I don't care too much about this stuff either.  So, American elections in the broad sense are just as unimportant as those taking place anywhere else in the world: if you don't live right there, it really doesn't effect you and you're more worried about whether it's going to rain today on the way down to the pub. 

But, there is one set of names on my ballot that really does have a ton of impact on everyone back home, all the ex-pats out here in the UK, the English themselves, the folks that fly in and out of London every day from all over the world, and everybody else: Obama/Biden and  McCain/Palin.  Ralph Nader doesn't mean shit because he'll never get elected, and neither do the SWP or the Greens.  They are just silly distractions which serve more to remind Americans of the inclusiveness of their political process than anything else.

So, it was my great pleasure to vote with my wife today, in several ways.

1) Knowing that I had agonized over and considered deeply issues of policy, character, judgement and stance. 

2) Knowing I was taking advantage of a right that many of my forebears struggled and even died to reserve.

3) Knowing I am so privileged as to have the power to cast my judgement on men who will affect the entire world.

This last is clearer to me than ever now that I'm surrounded by intelligent, concerned, informed people who wish they could have a say in this decision, not out of any leisurely obsession with the politics of some random foreign power, but simply because it will touch their lives in the 4 years to come.

 

 

serious work to be done

ok, so we're not SO serious :)

The Oxford And Cambridge Club

From the late 18th century to the early 20th century, Gentlemen's Clubs were a big deal in London.  Apparently they are on the rise again, but I think in general they are way down from where they were.  Imagine lots of ritzy dudes puffing pipes and reading the paper while sitting around in red leather chairs planning their next circumnavigation or whatever.  This is totally classic London stuff.  Of course Oxford, jointly with Cambridge, have one of these clubs, but it's not just men anymore.  You can only join if you went to Oxford or Cambridge, but if you did you're basically in as long as you can pay the hefty membership fee.  I haven't joined yet.  Juergen however, is a member and took me, Brandon, and some dudes from their work (Macquarie) for an evening. 

 

the club

The evening was a trip.  When we got there Juergen told us we had to keep our jackets on (jacket and tie required at all times) and our cell phones off.  Ok, whatever, it's England and it's Oxfordy so somebody is telling you what to wear again, no big surprise.  Then, we went in to have some pre dinner drinks at the bar.  The bar is a huge room about 5 times the size of my apartment which was totally empty except for the bartender and two old guys reading books (at separate tables) and nursing drinks.  We ordered beers and sat down, adding about infinity % more conversation to the room.

After we finished our drinks, we went into the dining room for our 7:00 dinner reservation.  This room is pretty fancy, with lots of giant gilt portraits of severe looking guys staring down, tables of varying size, nice place settings, long white candles burning, and whatever else to make a pretty classy environment.  Coming in was a bit strange though, because the only other people in this room four times the size of the bar were just three people in their 80s, each eating alone at a single table.  One lady looked up, squinted and stared at us as we walked past.  I actually wanted to stop and talk to her, but it seemed like the wrong thing to do.  WEIRDSVILLE.  We sat down and started going over the menus.  The food was very typical Brit, but the kind you find in nicer places.  The waiters wouldn't take our orders though... we had to write them down on a form.  MORE WEIRDSVILLE.  After the waiter took the form away, they came back and asked us what we were having, so they could change out to the right cutlery!  WECLOME TO DOWNTOWN WEIRDSVILLE, CORNER OF WEIRD AND S'VILLE.  We just complied, as any good Oxonian would do: strange dining rituals are hammered into you at Oxford.  The dinner itself and the wine were all good, if unadventurous.  By the end of dinner, the room was filling up a bit more, maybe there were 40 people in there with us.  Ok, not soooo totally weird.  Splitting from the dining room, Juergen gave us the tour.  The main lobby has a total "gone with the wind" staircase, this thing is wider than my living room.  At the top, there is the library.

cool!

can you see the "silence" sign?

Honestly, this is the coolest part of the whole club: this place is stuffed with something like 30,000 books, lots of which are very old.  I love love love old books.  There are floor to ceiling bookshelves crammed into every corner of this part of the club, and they even have those rolling ladders you see in movies with scenes in places like this.  The red leather chairs, newspapers, woodwork, etc. are all there, this place is totally London Clubby.  Of course, there was no one actually in the place other than us... not exactly WEIRDSVILLE, but still a bit odd.  We hung around in here for a while, going through the various rooms and flipping through old books, I think I could really enjoy some quiet afternoons doing that. 

Next, we went downstairs into the basement to play snooker.  More on this in a moment, but first a bit about the route to the basement.  Underneath the big stairs, there are little stairs, which seem to go down into a warren of little passages and rooms.  Along the way is a hallway of locked red doors, one of which has a red light next to it.  I have no idea what any of these are for, but would like to imagine something very sketchy.  They're probably storage closets though.  Off of one hallway, there was a small little room with another old guy watching TV by himself.  RETURN TO WEIRDSVILLE?  Having made it to the snooker room (which is also full of books), we settled down to figure out how to play.  If Brandon hadn't been so devoted to figuring it out from the rules on the wall, we would have all lost interest pretty quickly.  In short, this game is like pool, with a bigger table, smaller balls, longer sticks, different amounts of points for different balls, and a whole bunch of balls you have to hit first before hitting the points balls.  Also, those little balls totally don't behave like regular pool balls, so as you can imagine, the game took for freaking ever.  At one point, we all got quadruple Jamesons, which are basically the same as nice liberal Hattie's Hat single pours, and sipped away at those for hours.  By the time we finished our 2?, 3? hour game, it was midnight and the club was closing. 

Leaving, I was trying to figure out if I would shell out the membership fee to join... it would be pretty cool to be in a club, but it seemed pretty darn quiet, but then again I'd like that in some ways, and I would get a kick out of chilling with all those books.  Plus, it would be a cool place to take out of town guests, etc.  It would be tons better if more people I know from the MBA actually went there, but most of the MBAs I talk to aren't too impressed.  Plus there's the issue of having to wear a frigging tie and jacket to anther part of my life, as if work wasn't bad enough in that respect.

Hmmm.  I'm going to have to think about this.

The Cup Runs Over

I haven't written in the blog for quite some time now.  And the truth is, lots of interesting stuff has been happening.

girls girls girls

At first, I wanted to make a clean break with blogging about school for future mba students, thought I might be being a bit narcissistic in writing endlessly about myself, and also felt that a lot of what I am experiencing is the private business of my employer... so why keep blogging at all?  My mom wanted me to print up a book of the mba year blog stuff like you can with lulu.com, and I figured that with this, I could end the whole thing nicely with a final entry showing how I got a job in London, a new apartment, and everything worked out in the end after all.

Still, I'm experiencing a ton of stuff over here that makes me think "wow that was pretty cool" and to tell the truth, tends to fade right out of my mind!  Memories are sort of hazy for me like that... there's lots of people, places, experiences, funny stories etc. that I don't remember at all from the sicko band touring days, and now I feel like I'm letting these experiences slip away again.  Stuff I've done since the last post in October but can't remember too many details about includes:

• staying at the Hotel Wellington in Madrid for a weekend, dressing up in a suit every day and walking down to the bull fights to meet Angel
• catching the train from Euston Station (1 tube stop away) to the Gare du Nord in the 10th Arrondissement of Paris to visit Kent, and spend the weekend playing with weird guitar effects and throwing stuff off the balcony
• taking mom to the Yorkshire Dales (and eating Wensleydale Cheese!) and Santorini
• seeing original lineups of Dinosaur Jr. and My Bloody Valentine, and trying to figure out which was louder
• traveling to Knutsford and living in a rural hotel room one night a week every week all year (double Jameson with lots of ice to the room, please)
• and last night, seeing Dragonforce, the video game music obsessed English power metal band with Reba

 

operation ground and pound by Dragonforce

...and these are just the ones I remember.  These are even a bit hazy!  So obviously I need to get back down to it. 

 

We've been busy(ish) with the radio show, check out the latest episode here: Episode 24, I think we're going to have guest DJ Sallywebb in the next couple of weeks.

 

love,

 

e

all systems go!

Things are finally shaping up over here. We have a London flat, internet, a jam session set up with a new bass player, a working copy of protools, and JOBS.

London Flat

the new digs

We moved in to our new place last week. It's better than our last place: more old fashioned, more room, and still has a swell view. Achieving this in London is no small feat. I'm still learning the history, but the oral version I got from our landlord was that a canal used to run through here, and in 1810 a famous London architect name Nash decided to design a fancy housing development based on some European lakefront villa theme (I can't remember the name of the country he was using for his inspiration). The result was an series of white, two story Georgian houses (mansions, I think) lining the canal. Years later, when railroads became big, the canals fell into disuse, and some were filled in, including this one. This left a pretty cool set of big back yards for the houses, and the neighbors planed trees and gardens, and built low brick walls between yards. Then, later still, a German incendiary bomb blew up houses 18 and 20, and the wrecked sites were left undeveloped for a number of years. Finally, in the late 1950s, a small apartment complex was built on the site of the old houses, and was named "Nash House". About 60 years later, we moved in. :) The upshot is that we have a stunning view of all these old mansions through a screen of trees planted in our big communal garden, RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF LONDON. This level of private green space is apparently pretty much unheard of in London, and we were really lucky to get in on it. Of course, it's horribly expensive, especially when you think of the US dollar conversion.

front door

entry way

pretty pretty

ean's office

1950's bathroom...

no dishwasher :(

Internet

I've written about this before, but it's so nice to be able to do email, blogging, the radio show, research, look up train times, find shows and restaurants, check out new bands, etc. etc. with a reasonable connection. I moved from BT to Virgin Media Broadband cable, and paid extra for the 20mbps connection. To be honest, I've never even seen it close to 20mbps, and it's been down several times already, but it's MILES better than BT, and I don't have to have an onshore bank account to pay the bill, like I did with BT. So, I can close that account I opened JUST so I could pay BT for their shitty service. Ok ok, and the ability to play World of Warcraft whenever I want is pretty cool too. :)

Jam Session

I placed an ad for a bass player on a local classified ads site called gumtree.com. A guy name James contacted us, and invited us to see his current band play a show. So, Kent and I went to see them, and they were pretty cool but are also breaking up. Thus, their bass player is looking for a new gig. We're going to check into an hourly rental practice space this week, and give it a whirl. I've even sent him some new songs ideas I put down using protools, which I've finally got limping along again. We'll see how it goes, but with any luck, Tales From The Birdbath will ride again soon and get some local shows. So, don't be surprised if I send you an email asking you to come to some crappy Wednesday night show in East London soon!

Protools Is Working

I hate Protools. For the uninitiated, this is computer based mixing software that allows me to record songs in my own home, using a fairly simple device called an Mbox. I can program drums, get different guitar amp sounds, run all sorts of effects, and do multi-track recording, all on my laptop. So now if want to demo a song, I don't need to hire a studio and an engineer, or even show the drummer how the song goes. Sounds pretty good, eh? Well, that's where the good part ends and the crappy part starts. For all sorts of lame reasons, Protools is very finicky about the setup of the computer that it runs on, and is an endless pain in the ass, especially if you use the PC version instead of th Mac version, like I do. For example, before I finished school, I wrote a song for the Birdbath called "Fear and Loathing in the OX1" which was all about going to MBA school at Oxford. I was able to record it, programming the drums, playing guitar and bass and singing, and then have Gabe come in to do some guitar parts. It actually song pretty OK as well. Unfortunately, Protools need more "system resources" to run... this is a bit nebulous, but could be that I didn't have enough RAM, a fast enough CPU, or had too many other things running. Being rushed, I didn't try to upgrade my computer, and decided to use a program called msconfig to turn off services and start up programs that may have been using resources that Protools wanted. I basically had to turn everything (even networking!) off to finish the session. After I completed the session, I turned all the services, etc. back on so I could use my computer normally. BAD MOVE. The ensuing software collisions totally destroyed my laptop, and I spent a painful 24 hours moving all of my files from the laptop and onto my backup drive, and then rebuilding the whole thing from scratch. This sucked. I decided that before I would use Protools again, I would find a better way to do it, maybe by getting a computer purely for using Protools. Reba pointed out that we had an old desktop back home in storage, and since I had to go to Seattle shortly anyway, I figured I'd give it a go. BAD MOVE. After digging the computer out of our totally overpacked Seattle storage space and shipping it back home, I finally got around to trying to get it to work this week. Protools wouldn't even run a single song with that machine, it was so slow. So, I decided to upgrade it, and bought 3 gigabytes of RAM from my local Maplin store (these guys rule) to upgrade it. This was after lots of research on the internet about RAM types, the particulars of this machine, etc. I put the 3 gigabytes into the machine, and the damn thing ran even slower! I then noticed that the CPU was pegged at 92% when protools wasn't even doing anything. After finding a support line for Abit, the manufacturers of my computer's motherboard, I called to see what kind of an upgrade I could do for the board. Bzzt, no dice: my board is too old (2004) and already has the fastest chip it can handle. So, back to the Maplin store to return the RAM, and begin plan B: upgrade the RAM in my laptop. I bought another Gigabyte of RAM for the laptop, and now I have the maximum of 2 Gb. I got the system home, and HOLY CRAP it works! Protools is still picky, and I don't seem to be able to do very complicated session with it, but for just getting down song ideas, it's working at present. I'm glad I dug out that old computer, flew it around the world, spent hours upgrading it's software to 2008 standards, spend more hours and £££ upgrading it's RAM, all to find that a £60 memory upgrade to my laptop was all I needed. If anybody's still reading at this point, thanks.

Jobs

My in-laws are really going to be most interested in this one, so I saved it for last.

Reba got a job. She is going to work as a Research Technician in the Endocrinology lab at Imperial College. This is some wacky science stuff that has to do with bone growth, and as usual, I don't understand what the hell it is.

I got a job. Everyone else, including me, thought that this was starting to look grim. I answered hundreds of online ads, had my CV (resume) posted on 10 separate job boards, worked with at least 30 recruiters, interviewed on the phone and in person to about 10 firms, and in the end got two offers that I would seriously consider.

The first offer was from the consulting firm Accenture, and was the result of some digging that an SBS pal of mine at Accenture did to find UK Accenture recruiters' addresses, which I then spammed with my little letter of introduction and CV. I then interviewed for an "architect" job that was pretty clearly not a good fit for me. But, on what seemed like a general appreciation for my character, the phone interviewer forwarded my CV on to some folks in Accenture's project delivery wing. This was really much more my speed, and after waiting 2.5 months, I had another phone interview, this time with the project delivery department. That went well, and then I got an actual face to face interview at their downtown London office a month later (February 11th). That was weird, and I didn't feel like I did too well... they dropped a "case interview" on me with no warning. In MBA-land, case interviews are often a major component of the interview process, and a well handled case can certainly make or break you in the interviewer's eyes. There are entire books written about the process of succeeding at these, and I had briefly begun reading up on these before Christmas for a PWC 2nd round interview that was canceled at the last minute (not too cool, PWC). People seriously freak out about these, and spend huge amounts of time preparing for them. Of course, I ended up getting a surprise one dropped on me in the Accenture interview, but I gave it my best shot. I had what I thought were lots of good ideas for the case, but had read in my prior preparations that you're supposed to ask questions about the case, so I got a list of 20 juicy ones, and started asking them when the interviewer told me that in this case, he had no more information about the case than I did, so he couldn't answer any questions. After panicking a bit, I finished the case, and apparently did well enough that they offered me a job a few days later. It would have been in the Content Management team in their project delivery group, and I would have managed a team of 20-30 consultants delivering big Sharepoint (and other) implementations at large institutions. The work would have been pretty cool, to be honest. The reasons I'm not taking the offer are simply: when compared to the competing offer, Accenture offered less money and more travel. Of course, they also offered more training and more variety, but the first two items are apparently more important to me. The money one should be obvious: I spent a lot of money to get here, and London costs a lot to live in, so this is a real issue. I just can't allow myself to come home from the UK in however many years with LESS money than when I left. Regarding the travel issue, I don't mind traveling for work, and in fact I enjoy it, especially if there's somewhere interesting to travel to, like Europe! But, firms like Accenture require that you travel every week, meaning it's highly likely that you will live in a hotel and only see your family on the weekends. I guess I'm too much of a big softie, I just can't stand being away from Reba for that much time. :) So, while I was really flattered to receive an offer from a famous company like Accenture, I decided to turn them down.

The second offer was from Barclay's bank, who have their big office down in Canary Wharf. I found this lead pretty easily: a lot of people from Washington Mutual (my old company) went to Barclay's a few year back when Deanna Oppenheimer moved from Wamu to Barclay's. I had been talking to a guy I used to work for at Wamu since early last summer, and had done something like 8.5 hours of interviews (Barclay's are legendary for lots of interviews) since June, continuing right up to late last month. Finally, the offer came last Wednesday, and after considering it for 2 days, I ended up accepting when I happened to get a call back from the HR department while waiting for my RAM return to be processed at Maplin. So, now I just have to wait on some background checks and the final Visa documents to show up at our house before I can go to work. In terms of decision criteria, this offer was simply better than Accenture's in terms of pay and in terms of less travel.

In the end, the only job search strategy that paid off was networking. In the Accenture case, it was networking with an SBS pal who helped me find the right names to spam at Accenture. I don't think however, the path I used to get the Accenture offer is reliable or recommendable... this involved a lot of chance and goodwill from people I didn't even know. In the Barclay's case, it was networking with people who already knew and trusted me, as well as had recommendations from mutual contacts (thanks Pete). Obviously, this is how most people get jobs, and since I'm in a new country it's very lucky that I had those good contacts at Barclay's. While job boards and recruiters generated a few interviews and even a few close calls, they simply did not deliver on job offers, and ate up HUGE amounts of my time. MBA mill programs did absolutely jack, and I can't say I would recommend them to anyone.

That's all for now!

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back online

We moved from Oxford to Camden, and despite a week of lead time, BT still needed another week to send someone out to set up their shitty connection. Then, it didn't work. For the geeks: I was getting ping timeouts around 30%, and an average ping time of 80ms. There were plenty up to 800ms and 1000ms as well. The following picture should give you an idea...

bt = sucks

...and this shitty level of quality went right out the window after 5pm at night, when you simply couldn't get on at all! So, I did a little snooping around and found out the following:

* all UK broadband carriers (except one) share BT's infrastructure

* my neighbor uses Talk Talk, and it's even WORSE than my BT connection

* there was a cable box in my office from something called "London Cable"

* London Cable bought out a company called Camden Cable which had laid fiber in Camden in the 1980s.

* London Cable in turn was bought by Virgin Broadband, who thus actually have an infrastructure alternative to BT's.

So, I switched to Virgin, the only non-BT broadband carrier I could find (or probably that even exists) and now I have "up to" 20 megabits per second download and ~700 kilobits per second upload. The "up to" seems pretty theoretical, since I seem to get anywhere from 8 to 17. But who cares?! I've got lots of bandwidth and so far, only a .05% loss rate. Now, I will resume my normal internet focused activities: the blog will get updated, photos added, songs posted, etc. This will also help me find better local shows so I can play new music on the radio show, AND I will actually be able to broadcast from the flat instead of having to haul my gear over to Kaysa's.

More to come soon!

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Birdbath Radio lives!

We did our first episode of Birdbath Radio tonight. What a total kick in the pants! We played 10 songs, had 15 listeners from all over the world, got instant messages and emails, gave shoutouts to our pals, and acted like total dorks on the radio. The podcast is available here: itpc://www.eanh.net/birdbathradio.xml ...all you have to do is click the link and it should open itunes and subscribe you to the podcast (let me know if it doesn't). It's a bit big, so it will take a while to download if you have a crappy internet connection like mine (fix it Shelby!!!). We really hope that people keep listening in, because it sure is a lot of fun for us. The next episode will be broadcast from Camden Town London on Sunday February 2nd at 10 PM GMT (2 PM Seattle, 4 PM Austin, 5 PM NYC, 10 PM London, 9 AM Monday Melbourne, 6 AM Monday Taipei and Shanghai), but of course it will be available via podcast if you miss the live broadcast.

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Birdbath Radio

Reba and I are starting an internet radio station.

Yes, this is probably because we still don't have jobs and are bored, but never mind that now... :)

We're calling it Birdbath Radio, and it's going to be broadcast over the internet every Sunday Night from 10-11 PM GMT, starting this Sunday night.

This is 2 pm Seattle time, 4 PM Austin time, 10 PM London time, 9 AM Monday Melbourn time, and 6 AM Monday Taipei time (sorry Frank).

The links to listen to it are on my website www.eanh.net, but you can also get it directly from here:

windows media: http://eanh.net/birdbathradio.asx

real audio: http://eanh.net/birdbathradio.rm

itunes: http://ct5.fast-serv.com:9426/listen.pls

podcast: itpc://www.eanh.net/birdbathradio.xml

The format will be Reba and I playing whatever music we like, talking about whatever goofy subjects, and we'll have guests from time to time as well. I'm going to try to get Sasha to guest DJ a show in Russian, Mikhel a show in Estonian, Niall one in Italian, and Sally to do one in "English". They don't know this yet of course! You should be able to listen to the live broadcast via windows media player, read audio player, or itunes. You can also listen to it via podcast if you miss the live broadcast. The station is up and broadcasting now, running our ad for the upcoming show on repeat for now. We figure this will be a fun way to stay in touch with all our friends around the globe while goofing around with music, which as most of you know, is our favorite pastime.

See you Sunday night!

ps: Special request to techies: If you listen to the show, or even the spot that's playing now, please send me a mail if any of the links don't work or if it sounds bad or whatever. We're doing this on the super cheap (spent a total of 98 pence on the whole project up to now) so there's a good chance that I'll need to work out a few bugs.

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Home Again

Finally we are done with our big tour, and are back home safe in Oxford. Over the course of 6 weeks, we actually went all the way around the world! Athens to Rome to Oxford to all over France to Oxford to Florida to Seattle to Taiwan to Hong Kong to Shanghai to Oxford!

New Blog Entries

Here are the latest, as it turns out blogspot.com is blocked by the Chinese government, so I couldn't update for a while. Here is the Asia portion of our trip:

Taiwan Wedding

Taiwan Part 2

Hong Kong

Shanghai

New Photo Albums

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/eanhernandez

New Things to Remember When You Travel

All these lessons were learned the Hernandez way, aka the HARD way.

1. Never ever, ever ever ever, NEVER get on a plane to a foreign country without a pocketful of the destination country's currency. You have no idea if there will be ATMs, if they will be turned on, or if they will connect to your bank's network. :(

2. Pack light, and find out the weight restrictions on each airline you travel on. Otherwise, you will end up paying lots of money for each extra kilogram you bring. :(

3. Research visa requirements. Airlines won't tell you if you need a visa to enter China (for example) but the Chinese will be happy to charge you lots of money to get you a rush order visa. :(

4. Shuttle busses are BS. In almost every case, two people sharing a cab to the hotel is cheaper and way more direct than taking a shuttle bus. :(

Get the London and Job Show On the Road

And now, we have to get jobs and move to London. Our time of screwing off and sleeping in and not dealing with anything but lunch is over! It was fun, but now it's back to reality. What a year this has been. :)

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Shanghai

Stuff is different in China. HK is technically China, but really not at all. It's very different, much more western, and the Chinese government pretty much lets HK run under it's own system. We got our first taste of the less western China when we tried to get on a place at HK airport for Shanghai. It turns out that you have to have a visa to enter the country, and we didn't know this, so we had to go to the China travel agency in the HK terminal, and leave our passports for about 6 hours while they ran checks and printed a form to stick in our passports. This cost about 300 bucks, and we had to change our flights. So, we checked in our baggage, spent the afternoon walking around HK, and came back to the airport at night. The flight to Shanghai was pretty empty, and when we got off the plane, the security dudes were wearing those green and red army uniforms with the fuzzy Russian hats. We had to fill out a bunch more forms to enter, and had to sign something that said we didn't have fever, chills, rash or psychosis (really). Then, we caught a very long cab into town from a dude whose English consisted of "ok ok". As soon as he started the cab, a little video monitor in the headrest in front of me turned on and started running ads with cheesy techno music on repeat. WEIRD. The city itself is HUGE and very spread out, and seems to be perpetually shrouded in fog/smog. It was late at night, and deserted, so the scene was pretty spacey. When we got to the hotel, it was pretty empty too, but all done up in gold paint and gold colored marble... super fancy and gaudy. It was if the hotel was screaming, "THE PEOPLE HERE ARE RICH! MONEY MONEY MONEY!". We went up to our room, ordered up some beers, and went to sleep thinking "what an odd place this is".

The next day we got up late and called Ashton (another SBS MBA) to see if he wanted to hook up for lunch or whatever, but he was pretty groggy when I called, and he said he'd call back later. So, Reba and I hit the streets. What a difference between night and day in Shanghai! The streets were literally packed with people. Apparently it's about the size of New York, but it seems a lot more crowded. We walked around People's Park, went to the ancient art museum and then went to a restaurant in a mall down the street. It's sort of hard to describe how packed in and confusing and high energy everything is, there are restaurants and shops crammed into every little nook, and there are barkers on the street with microphones trying to get people to go in to their shops. To get to the restaurant, we had to go through a candy store that was literally swarming with people.

swarms!

Next we had a really tasty lunch consisting of hot pots and wacky iced tea drinks made from tea and taro milk. V Good.

the one on the left tasted like butter popcorn jellybellies

deep fried frog legs: tastes like chicken

After lunch we walked around a bit, but were just overwhelmed and went back to the hotel room. We got a call from Ashton later and met him for drinks. I now have to apologies for the fact that all of the remaining pictures up here are of food. Somehow Ashton managed to get out of being in any pictures, and we were just so blown away by the awesome food that we didn't really care about the site seeing stuff as much. Ling will understand!

Dinner With Ashton

Ashton went to SBS with me, and is living in Shanghai working for a retail bank now. He is really digging his time in China, and knows all the good spots in town. First, he took up to this Casbah style cocktail joint in the middle of people's park... this sort of gets at the heart of Shanghai for me. This is an old colonial building, built in a 1930's faux-middle eastern style for (ostensibly) Europeans to chill out and drinks swanky cocktails, but it's right in the middle of the communist's "People's Park", and instead of being all liberated for the people and being used as some ministry of culture or something, it's full of a cosmopolitan mix of wealthy people enjoying the night out! Contradictions and complications. Ashton took us to a restaurant called South Beauty, which is a high end joint in some old French colonial style mansion. Ashton is into hot and spicy, and damn was this stuff spicy! But it was GOOOOOOOD too! The best part was that the whole meal cost 800 Yuans, which is $90 USD, including a tasty Malbec and cocktails. Behold:

nice tame roast duck, not spicy

ground shrimp in mild chilies... a bit spicy

beef wrapped in thin noodles and cooked with enough chili to kill a horse! SPICY!

extreme closeup, yes that's all chili!

chinese desert, plus a little playdough doggie

After dinner, Reba went home and Ashton and I went out. We went down to an area called "The Bund" which is in part the old 1930's art deco building part of town, and also the swanky area for going out on the town. It's sort of amazing how MBAs can find the same sorts of clubs all around the world: swanky exclusive vibe, loud techno, all sorts of goofy cocktails, snobby looking chicks, and lots of dudes hitting on the chicks. I swear I've been in this club in London! :) Anyway, Ashton and I got some drinks and went out on the lanai, which had a weird nautical theme, probably because of it's view out over the Pudong river. Poooo Dong. I love that. The view was incredible, I didn't bring my camera, but here's a pretty close one:

developING world?

Apparently this area was all farms 15 years ago. Now it's covered in huge skyscrapers, one of which is not pictured here, because it's being built. I think that it's going to be another world record in height. The thing this picture doesn't really show is just how huge the city is, these kinds skyscrapers are repeated for miles around, marching off into the smog. Plus, it doesn't show the hundreds of of barges, container ships and ferries moving up and down the river 24/7. It was good to chill, catch up and talk about MBA stuff: economics, culture, business, and how hot the local chicks are. :) We got bored of this bar after a while and split for another similar bar downstairs, where we found a quiet-ish room to chat more and drink whiskey. One great thing about hanging with Americans: these people dig their whiskey. On the way out, we ran into a bunch of ex-pats who wanted us to come drinking with them, but we were too tired, and split anyway. Coming out of the building, I got into a totally weird developing world situation. Of course, I love this stuff. :)

3rd World Wackiness

There are beggars everywhere in Shanghai, and lots of them are really f-ed up looking, missing arms, burned faces, twisted feet, whatever. They also recruit their kids, some only 3 or 4 years old, to help in the begging. That really bums me out, and it seems to really piss Ashton off. I don't blame him. Anyway, on the way out to front door, some old Chinese woman with a three year old in one arm and a cup with some coins in it comes up to me and starts shaking the cup at me shouting "moneymoney, moneymoney"! Ashton just said "ignore her, dude", and I started for the cab. By the way, there are LOTS of cabs available everywhere all the time, this is very convenient, unlike in London. Next, as we move past the beggar, a (I think) Filipino prostitute comes up to us saying "you want massage in your room?" Shanghai can veer rather quickly from the 1st world to the 3rd world, and in this case, the volume of 3rd world creepiness pouring into our 1st world evening caught me off guard, and I was sort of speechless. I had my back to the cab, facing Ashton, with the beggar standing on his left shaking the cup going "moneymoney!" and the prostitute on his right going "I give you good massage!" and Ashton in the middle looking annoyed. It's times like these I wish I had a digital camera strapped to my head. We got in the cab quickly, and sped off to the my hotel.

More Food

Ashton recommended another restaurant called Tan Wai Lou at the Bund 18 building, which I think is in the same building that we had the clubby/prostitute/moneymoney experience in the night before. This place is so damn good, I seriously demand that all my foody friends go there. Really high end Cantonese style, with a bit of that modern Frenchy cooking school action. At the very least, Carl and Tim should send Stacie here!

After lunch, we went down to the river and walked around. Shanghai is not for the faint of heart, but it has a lot to offer. As with any foreign locale, it's best to go with a local, because there's just way too much to figure out on your own. So, thanks for that Ashton! Even if you don't know a local, I still recommend Shanghai, it kicks butt!

Shanghai Reebs

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