Job alternatives

When I looked out the window ealier today, this was the view I was greeted with.

As I had spent all day yesterday down on the Solent sailing a clipper ship and pondering that perhaps an outdoors-y kind of job might be just the thing for me, the idea of getting to dangle in mid-air on a harness, building what may be liberally described as giant Legos immediately struck me as a fantastic idea.

In other news, today is of course Ben's birthday (happy birthday, bro). I'm very excited by the prospect of having Ben, Jaime and the girls around! Haven't had a younger sibling (let alone an entire clan) in the UK since Anne Marie left St Andrews for St John's. Not to downplay the benefits of having Ben K & family to hand in Northern Ireland every now and then for a quick and treacherous game of Risk, it's nice to think that I'll be able to invite the Itens round for a proper Sunday lunch every now and then without the need for anyone to board a plane.

In order to be a proper doting uncle, I'm contemplating Christmas in the UK. But to that end, I would want to be sure to get a chance to see all (or almost all) of the siblings in Cape Hatteras August. Sadly, this is an either / or (either Cape Hatteras or Christmas in the US). Vote now.

On the topic of the Northern Irish branch of the family, Susie and I will be travelling to Bangor in June to meet Barry, Anne and the Mournes. I'm hoping to be able to get over in August, too, to meet Sophie.

I voted three times

Right, having implied in my last post that I don’t get obsessed with politics....

Today local elections are being held across England and Wales. Almost 5.5 million people are eligible to vote in London. Unlike the rest of England and Wales, London has since 2000 been able to elect a mayor (not to be confused with the Lord Mayor of London, who is, I believe, elected by the City guilds and presides over the Square Mile, i.e., the City of London). The Mayor of London is a very powerful executive position with access to an £11 billion budget, making decisions on education, transport, social services, policing and environmental issues.

Many people choose whether to vote based on the weather. Because of this, what would otherwise be a non sequitur flows quite naturally in this BBC report this morning: "Polls opened at 0700 BST and close at 2200 BST. A mixture of sunshine and showers is forecast in most areas." If it's sunny, I anticipate my three votes will be diluted.

We Londoners get three votes: one for Mayor of London, one for the London Assembly, and one for our local borough assembly. For complicated reasons (which would give away who I voted for if I explained them), I voted for three different parties.

Now we wait.

And while we’re waiting, an interesting fact (which I can verify). As you will all know, in AD 1215, a group of barons famously forced King John (of Robin Hood fame) to yield a number of royal prerogatives, and to grant certain civil liberties. The writ of habeas corpus and the right to trial by a jury of one’s peers were among these. The charter (“Magna Carta”) was confirmed by a number of subsequent monarchs, and the version now on the books dates from AD 1297. This excerpt is from the moiety of Magna Carta which still has the force of law in England and Wales:

“The city of London shall have all the old liberties and customs (which it hath been used to have). Moreover we will and grant that all other cities, boroughs, towns, and the barons of the five ports, and all other ports, shall have all their liberties and free customs” (Magna Carta 1297, chapter 9).

This provides the legal basis for the other London mayor, the Lord Mayor of London, who is also Chief Magistrate of the City of London, Admiral of the Port of London, Chancellor of City University and President or Patron of many other civic and charitable organisations. The Lord Mayor is elected each year. The first recorded Lord Mayor was Henry Fitz-Ailwyn (1189).

Are we in for a rough ride?

Sub-prime mortgages, packaged into asset backed securities, are sold to investment banks -- especially in London. The US property downturn results in negative equity and thus inadequate security. Liquidity troubles arise in the financial centres of the US and the UK as banks refuse to lend to each other, each fearing one anothers' creditworthiness amid prospects of bankruptcies from exposure to the sub-prime. Northern Rock, which had relied on a business model entirely dependent on inter-bank borrowing, looks set to collapse. The Bank of England does very little to alleviate the crisis, taking a traditional British laissez-faire approach. There's a run on the bank -- the first in the UK since the nineteenth century. Bear Stearns collapses, and the Fed reacts instantaneously to reassure the market. The UK government -- the same government that implemented sweeping reforms to the tax system in 1997 -- announces plans to scrap some of the keystones of those reforms. They will tax all foreigners living in the UK on worldwide income, whether or not it is ever brought into the country. The UK government also announces plans to raise taxes on share disposals by up to 80%. These measures, largely targetted at the very rich, and particularly at private equity, are the government's feeble answer to popular unrest at the gaping divide between the rich and the poor in the world's most successful financial centre. Unfortunately, the timing could not be worse.
With the UK economy slowing down, government spending increasing and tax revenues faltering, bitch-slapping entrepreneurs seems like a daft move.

So yes, I think we're in for a rough ride.

And how long will it last? Of course the wider global economy has a large part to play, but if we have any hope at all of avoiding a descent into unemployment and grinding poverty, the government (whether this one, or one which replaces it) will have its work cut out for it. This government did a great job in many ways, but it appears to have spent more money than it gathered in revenues for the last 10 years, during a period of strong economic growth. Any government which intends to do anything other than cripple the entire nation will have to be a government which is willing to make some very unpopular choices. Massive spending cuts would be in order.

I have no idea why this turned into a discussion about politics. I really intended just to welcome Sophia to the world (thanks for being born on my birthday), welcome Ben, Jaime and the girls to the UK (all this gloom probably means a better exchange rate), and to thank Mandy for putting up all of those pictures.

Oh, and to connect Mandy's picture of bad-ass Patches to Brad's blog:

http://wabasawki.blogspot.com/2006/04/patches-feline-cat-barely-alive.html

(Not pictured here)

Pictured here:

• Anne Marie in front of Notre Dame
• Central London at its best
• Dad and I trying to recreate Ben's Starbucks zombie pose
• Dad on Waterloo Bridge
• Anne Marie discovers pie in Greenwich
• Midshipmen Kessler preparing for their Lieutenants' exams at Somerset House
• Blackfriars Bridge (note the railings under water in the foreground)

Not pictured here: Susie










I'm back, and I brought pictures. After two and a half months of extremes, I'm anticipating a welcome return to the pedestrian. In the last two and a half months I've embarked on a whirlwind of romance and ... er ... work. I know it doesn't sound a likely blog topic. Oh well, too bad.

The truth of the matter is that I have just completed a deal which kept me up all night three times in the last week, and had me in all day Saturday and all day (and night) on Sunday. Although this was at the extreme end of my experience since New Year's, work has dominated. I'm getting fat from sitting at my desk all day. And it's been socially disruptive.



And yet I've had spells of bliss. Dad and Anne Marie came to visit a week or so ago, and I did everything I could to spend some time with them, despite an unlucky host of obstacles: I had to fly to Columbus at the last minute for Grandma Donnelly's funeral, and so when I returned I was exhausted and my 4-day weekend with Dad and Anne was suddenly a jetlagged day and half; and then it was all I could do to leave work before midnight to see them. On Anne Marie's last night in London, my client told me to go see Anne (she loved your card, Anne, btw) and so I snuck out from 9pm - midnight, before returning to the office.


The trip to Columbus, though somber, was a wonderful chance to catch up with family.

And then there's been my budding romance. But I won't go into that here. And I'm not including a picture, because she'd kill me. But I have a very nice photo of us in Paris, if anyone would like to see it....



I took the last picture last night on my way home from work at 4 am. London (in fact, all of England) was wracked by storms yesterday. Filthy weather. The Thames was at flood - the highest I've ever seen it. If you click the last photo, you'll see how the staircase down to the river is completely submersed.

I was late for work because I was detained at gunpoint by the police

Although this is not my usual excuse for being late, it is probably one of the more interesting ones I’ve been able to use.

So, I was walking up Southwark Bridge Road, having stopped in at the butcher for a chat on the way in to work (it’s all very Sesame Street in the Borough, baby), and I heard the familiar sirens of a police motorcade escorting prisoners to the Old Bailey. As the motorcade drew up level with me (at the crossing of Union Street), it stopped, because there was construction in the middle of the road. Now, I’ve seen enough action films to know that this is the moment when any would-be assailant would choose to tackle a convoy, and so I was impressed when the armoured Land Rover nearest me pulled diagonally across the intersection and a police officer with an automatic shotgun emerged from the vehicle to keep a close eye on everyone as the motorcade was stalled there. Now, my route would have taken my straight past the armoured people carrier, so I decided to stay put and observe the scene. There were police on all sides of the convoy, diligently scanning the roads, houses, rooftops, for ... er, outraged Somalis? It was a little bit Black Hawk Down, except no one got shot. And there were no helicopters.

Novelties gastronomiques

The title of this blog is a deliberate mix of English and French, to reflect the nature of the subject -- last night's feast (see the menu, left).

I'm back from my travels, and I'm beginning to work my way through a backlog of sibling blogs; but while I'm doing this, I thought I'd tell you about my day yesterday, which was about as unique and as enjoyable as a day can get.

Laura, Julie's cousin (so, kind of my cousin-in-law), needed to be distracted, so we planned to meet up in the afternoon. I decided that the best form of distraction would be to try to cook something extraordinarily difficult involving fish - complicated because I wanted it to be a proper distraction, and fish because I hardly ever cook fish, and I need to learn how to do basic things, like make fresh 'fish fumet' (see - an example of a phrase which uses both English and French), which shows up in almost every single French recipe involving seafood. So I spent the hour before we met up poring over The Silver Spoon (thanks Ben and Jules! but too easy) and Larousse Gastronomique. The latter cookbook is full of recipes which look easy, but which aren't, because each recipe cross refers to a billion other recipes ('poach X using a fish fumet, white wine and the juice of half a lemon, and use the reserved liquid to prepare a simple Mornay sauce' ... 'for Mornay add X, Y and Z to a bechamel' ... 'for bechamel prepare a white roux' ... 'for fish fumet, just take 5 lbs of fish heads and bones' ... anyway, you get the picture).

So I selected a fish recipe called 'fillets of John Dory Palais-Royal' because I've never cooked John Dory, and it involved all of these sauces made from other sauces.

So Laura came over to Borough at 1 pm and we went shopping at the market near me. This market is enormous, and is easily the best all-round food market in London, and it's a 7 minute walk from my flat. You can get just about anything you could possibly want. As we wandered around the market, our plans morphed so that by four pm we were planning a very posh 4-course dinner with 3 different types of wine. Laura begged me not to buy the fish heads (she was worried about getting fish eyes in her Mornay sauce), but the fishmonger was only too happy to hand over a pile of fish carcasses to us for fresh stock. How could I refuse?

We made the fish stock and then went to the pub for good measure, where a sort of blues-y, dixie band was rehearsing for the evening.

We came back and started cooking properly at about 6:30, I think, and finished at about midnight.

Here is the meal in pictures:

Foie gras d'oie with confit de figues au Monbazillac

Fillets of John Dory Palais-Royal with petit pois with Marlborough Reserve Sauvignon Blanc, Brancott Winery, New Zealand








Red partridge with parsnips Vichy and brussel sprouts with Spy Mountain Pinot Noir, Marlborough, New Zealand












Tiramisu with Comte de Bosredon Chateau Belingard Monbazillac