Continue reading »]]> So I’ve seen two great examples of extremely thoughtful gifts in the past month, and thought that now would be a good time to give some credit to these extremely generous and caring people: Pamela Seaton (my girlfriend’s sister) and Mark Bishop (my brother).

[EDITOR'S NOTE: It should be assumed by the reader as a given that of course the most thoughtful, generous, caring, and all around best person in the world is, of course, the author's girlfriend.]

I think these two make fantastic goodwill ambassadors and here’s why:

This Christmas I had the pleasure of experiencing Christmas in lovely (freezing) Scotland with Lynn’s family. While hanging out with her sister Natalie one night, she looked at us excitedly and asked, “Have I shown you my shoes.” Now, normally, when someone is excited about their shoes, I find it hard to empathize, being male and all, but Natalie had some very special shoes: she reached under the coffee table and produced a pair of pink ballet shoes. I was impressed. I had never known anyone to spontaneously take up ballet after the age of 35.

And then she said, “They were a gift from Pamela.” Aw. Sisterly love. So cute.

But then Natalie explained that she had always been fascinated by ballerinas, had wanted to be one when she was a little girl, and that Pamela had actually gotten her another Christmas gift and this was just an extra gift that Pamela gave her. And suddenly I was so moved that they instantly transformed into the most beautiful pink ballerina shoes I had ever seen.

What a thoughtful gift! Remembering your sister’s childhood dream and giving her a prop to play ballerina in the cold January nights in Scotland in the warmth, comfort, and privacy of your own home. I suddenly pictured seeing Natalie through the window of her house, dancing around the small living room in pink ballerina shoes. And it wasn’t silly or Hallmark-movie-of-the-week cheesy at all. It was really touching.

But Pamela’s generosity didn’t stop there. For Christmas she bought Lynn gift certificates to a voice coach who lives down the road from her in Surrey. Now, to understand this, you must know that Lynn has an incredibly pretty, high, clear voice… and an incredible reluctance to actually deploy said vocal talents. Natural shyness. A lack of encouragement as a child. A typical British fear of embarressment. Whatever the reason, this fantastic talent has been underutilized since childhood. What was fantastic was that Pamela not only thought of such a lovely gift, but that she went through the effort of finding a vocal coach, in the area, convinced the woman to take her payment (which she apparently hadn’t done before), and then convinced her to actually MAKE an official-looking gift certificate and mail it to Pamela so that she could bring it with her and deliver it in person on New Year’s.

I should also mention that Guy (Pamela’s boyfriend and fantastic photographer) also gave me a great portrait of Lynn and I in a very nice wooden frame. Worthy of an honorable mention.

And finally, I have to point out the fantastic thoughtfulness of my brother Mark. Because I was in Scotland for Christmas, I didn’t get to see mark until our ski trip in January. We had to drive four hours from New York to the Adirondacks, and Mark’s first gift was five compilation CDs he had made especially for the occasion. They were great! There was an 80′s mix with not-your-usual-trademark-80s-songs, but songs that really made you go, “OH! I haven’t heard this song in forever and it’s sooooo good!” There was a classic rock compilation, a soul compilation, a CD by a very talented Mo’Fro, and more. We listened to them all weekend they were so good.

But that wasn’t everything. Mark hand-delivered to me two Christmas gifts: A Chuck Norris Facts calendar, with a different Chuck Norris Fact for each day. Freaking GREAT gift. I absolutely loved it. I’m looking at it right now. Today’s is: “Chuck Norris’ hand is the only hand that can beat a royal flush”. I remember looking at Chuck Norris facts years ago when it first came out, before it was actually endorsed by Chuck.

And finally, Mark gave me a box set of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” which we watched and I fell in love with for two reasons: 1) It’s hilarious. It’s like a live action version of Family Guy sometimes, and 2) It’s set in Philly, where I lived, and the whole show makes me nostalgic.

So Mark has really taken care of my entertainment needs for a while still, and I’d like to say thanks.

My friend Matt Prusak also deserves honorable mention for getting me the entire 3 seasons of Deadwood, a show that I absolutely LOVED, and which Matt was thoughtful enough to remember that I loved. Thanks Matt!

Now if only I could muster up something even coming CLOSE to that level of thoughtfulness.

At least I shy away from the coward’s Christmas resort: gift cards.

Well, most of the time I shy away.

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It’s strange, going back to a place you’ve been before, but years later. The most extreme example I have of this is going back to Hong Kong after seventeen years. Coming back to live in the UK, after a nearly eight year hiatus, generates many of the same weird déjà vu and “I feel like an old man” emotions.

The last time I lived in the UK was between October 2000 and February of 2001. Things were very different in my life then. I had moved to London as part of the “international expansion” of my start-up company, Xlibris. I was living in, what I didn’t realize, was a huge two-bedroom flat in Chiswick, a pretty suburb to the west of London (Zone 2 on the tube).

This time around things are very different: I’m living in a beautiful, new, two-bedroom apartment… in Godalming. Now, I have to admit, I was a bit hesitant about living in a place with “God” in its name, being an atheist and all, I thought it was a bit hypocritical. Godalming is about 38.2 miles southwest of London, it’s so typically quaint and English it’s almost a cliché. There are about twelve cute little stone churches, rolling hills, canals with longboats, a cute High Street which is largely pedestrianized and satisfies all middle-class shopping tastes.

Godalming is a rather rich town. In that way it reminds me of Princeton: lots of made-up older ladies in expensive looking clothes, lots of older men walking around in sport coats and button downs, even on the weekend, a preponderance of luxury cars in all the car-parks, manicured lawns. If there’s a downside to Godalming, other than the fact that its not London, it’s that it’s an old-person town. You have to be old to live here, because it’s too expensive for anyone young to afford. As a result, the nightlife leaves a lot to be desired and it’s a bit difficult to meet people.

Of course, the upside to Godalming is that Lynn lives here, in a gorgeous two-bedroom apartment, just a two-minute walk from the High street and right across the street from the Sainsbury’s and Waitrose (both food shopping). The apartment is new, the building is only a few years old and there’s only been one occupant before Lynn. The kitchen has a nice black granite top with a lot of space, it’s attached to a large living room which houses Lynn’s beautiful but oversized designer furniture. The rooms are nice-sized, there’s adequate closet space, the bathroom has a walk-in shower. Frankly, after my crap-ass apartment in New York, it’s heaven. And then there’s the cooking!

But let’s get back to the weird feeling of being somewhere again after having spent a long time away. Probably the nearest feeling I can compare it to is coming back to Princeton after going away to college for four years. Yes, Princeton was a little different, but what was more different was me. I couldn’t enjoy the same things the same way, I wasn’t the same person. It’s true what they say, “you can never go home.”

I’m a very different person now from when I was here before, but I still love the UK. I love the whole experience. It helps in a way that I’m living in very different circumstances, because it gives me an entirely new experience which I can enjoy and not be constantly comparing to “what it was like last time”. But what I’ve discovered, is that I really really like living in the UK. It’s fun. It’s different, but still familiar enough to not feel like a complete alien. The people are ridiculously nice (especially compared to New Yorkers). Although people give the Brits a hard time for their cuisine, I’ve found that the general rule that European eating is better than American eating is still true.

I’m very happy to have this opportunity to be back in the UK, living in a wonderful home environment and working in one of my favorite cities in the world (even though I have to commute an hour and a half each way to get there). It makes me feel old to think about how long it’s been since the “last time”, but the feeling of being given a second chance, of getting to enjoy one of the great cities of the world a second time, is very fulfilling.

This is why I love being a global nomad. I think life’s more interesting when you change the scenery on a regular basis.

Continue reading »]]> Politics is interesting to talk about, but usually not very inspiring. Or, more accurately, looking back at some of my earlier political posts, it looks like politics inspires cynicism, incredulity, anger, and pit-of-your-stomach, world-is-going-to-hell depression.

I’ve always believed that you have to be an egotistical asshole to be a politician, and I still think that’s by and large true, but one thing about last night’s historic election of Barack Obama to the Presidency was that it was the first time in a very long time that a political event had inspired a positive feeling.

From the beginning it was clear that there was a fantastic opportunity after eight years of Bush, terror alerts, the politics of fear and hatred, war and invasion, that there was a chance that the American public would be ready, in sufficiently large numbers, to change the tone of their political discourse. Probably the only silver lining I can think of to the horrific eight years of Bush’s administration is the fact that it so sickened people that they were ready for a new message, and I would like to thank Barack Obama for consistently sticking to his principles, staying “on message”, and trusting that people would respond.

Hope. It sounds so corny. It’s so cliche. It’s vague and unquantifiable. It sounds like something you say to dodge a tough question instead of answering it. But the truth is that hope has been in extremely short supply in America in the first decade of the new millenium. We started off with the hangover of the dotcom bust, then 9/11, then Iraq and it’s poisonous progeny Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, then the financial meltdown… the hits just kept on coming. Most Americans this year faced higher prices for food and gas and a shrinking economy and with it uncertainty about their job security.

What I am most happy about with the result of this election is not that we may have banished some demons about race relations in America, but that we have chosen, as a country, and convincingly, that we want our leaders to show us a vision we can feel good about, a vision that inspires us to take the hard steps to make reality, and that brings us together in a common cause that is greater than our individual differences.

I have high expectations for Barack Obama, and it may be unfair to pin so much on any one person, but that’s the exceptional leadership quality that he has, and although I wouldn’t be surprised if we are a bit disappointed when the rubber meets the road and reality constrains some of the loftier campaign promises, I will still consider it a net gain that we have turned the corner on hatred and division and fear and have embraced a new way of treating each other.

My best wishes for the future of America and its people.

Continue reading »]]> What the hell is goign on? Didn’t every trader on Wall Street read the news. There’s a bailout! Everything’s alright. We can all sleep safe tonight. Why the hell are you depressing the value of my 401k 30 FREAKING PERCENT! Now that’s just not very nice.

I don’t understand? Why do you hate America? Do you want the terrorists to win?

So… suppressing the hysteria that is creeping into my thoughts, from an objective point of view, I have to admit: this is a really interesting time in history. It’s not quite at the level of something like, oh, say, the Great Depression, but then again, it’s not that far either… and that’s both scary and kind of cool. Like that time I was in a car crash.

It’s the closest to a financial calamity as I’ve ever seen in my life. Granted, I wasn’t obsessively checking my 401k at the time, but even the gas crisis of the 70′s doesn’t appear to have wreaked the same kind of devastation that the current mortgage and credit crisis has caused.

It’s amazing, to think that the entire system is so fragile that something like this can actually happen. The economy as a whole is huge, with many sectors, many industries, all sorts of markets, all conspiring to create value for shareholders… and yet problems in one part of the system can have such immense knock-on effects so as to freeze credit for the entire economy and cause massive nosedive in stock valuations.

Amazing.

I hope we’ve seen the worst of the losses, and my overpaid money managers can spend the next 12 months just building back the money I’ve lost in their funds over the past ten months. But the worst case scenario is pretty frightening, a deep and protracted global economic crisis with high unemployment across the board.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed that the worst is over, and then go and find and shoot whoever it was that came up with the idea of “collatertalized debt” instruments that:

1. Created such a murky picture of who had what amount of bad debt
2. Which led to banks not trusting each other and stopping intrabank lending
3. Which weakened the investment banks (who were too highly leveraged)
4. And drove up the costs of capital
5. Which made normal loans impossible for credit-worthy businesses (and individuals)
6. Which took away all chances for companies to make money
7. Which then led to my 401k losing 30% in 10 months.

As Samuel Johnson said, “Nothing focuses the thinking like a hanging.”

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I’m no economist, but I play one in my mundane white-collar fantasies. My economist alter-ego is full of facts and figures, knows the names of economic principles and when they were articulated, can spout off long streams of financial vocabulary on command, and, of course, knows everything. In my dreams, I’m the Bill Gates of economics, I smite all other weaker economists and gorgeous women, suitably impressed, throw themselves at me en masse.

I read the economist. I’ve taken Economics 101 in MBA-school. I own a copy of “Economics for Dummies” (eh) and “The Origin of Wealth” (fantastic). I haven’t become so accountant-like that I can actually entertain myself with a copy of the Financial Times or Wall Street Journal, but still, I have this erudite alter-ego, let’s call him EconoBrian, who likes to pretend he understands the machinations of the world around him as seen through the best of academic filters: economics.

I am a firm believer in science, which makes sense I guess, since I work for a scientific publisher. In school, I really believed that biology and chemistry were giving me the keys to understanding (and therefore in a way, feeling in control of) all life on earth. Reading Hawking’s book made me equally confident that I could grasp, in my tiny brain, the complete structure of the universe. But it wasn’t until I started learning about economics that I truly felt that I understood what drives the world.

My B-school econ professor described economics as: “the study of how people make decisions under conditions of scarcity.” I thought that was elegant enough to commit to memory.

For me, economics explains almost everything that humans do. Sure, there are still some world events that are simply driven by irrational human emotion, but there’s always an economic reality lurking in the background that eventually comes in and asserts itself.

The topic that got me started writing on this blog again is the sorry state of the US economy. Recently, the entire system imploded under the weight of a bunch of bad debt that toppled the investment banking house of cards and is now taking down the entire country to the tune of $700 billion.

It’s a staggering number. It’s hard to really make it present and tangible. It’s so big that its mere utterance was enough to boost the stock market (until the negotiations fell apart thanks to the President’s own party not backing his plan).

I’ve read quite a bit about the bailout, its potential impact on the economy, the various schools of thought about its prudence. I’ve skipped the details of how the politicians want to modify it because honestly, it makes little difference. Just the idea of the Government committing so much treasure to solve this problem should be enough to keep anyone up at night.

From what I’ve read, the theory is pragmatic: put all the bad debt into one place, managed by a party who can afford the losses (e.g. the Government), and the financial system will get back to doing what it does, lending money to spur economic growth.

The talking head economist who gave us the best soundbite was the one who said: “You have to remember, the entire situation’s root cause is the bad mortgage debt.”

The implication here is that if we remove that from the equation, things will get back to normal. Since my 401k has lost 22% so far this year, I certainly hope that’s true. I don’t like someone else’s bad mortgage affecting my future retirement age.

But $700 billion.

What kind of a burden does that create for us?

Well, first of all, it forces us, as a nation, to go further into debt. Bush wants to raise the debt ceiling to 10 trillion. Mind boggling. I, as a citizen of the United States, will need to nearly double the amount I owe the world from $180,000 to around $300,000. The average American household income is $60,000. That’s five years worth of gross salary, just to pay of the debt we have accumulated because we spend more than we earn as a country.

It’s shameful. But no one seems to think so.

We all go about our consumerist lives, as if we can keep buying flat-screen TVs and PlayStation 3′s and iPhones on credit. I have a friend who owes thousands of dollars on credit cards, paying hundreds of dollars a month just in interest charges, and still taking vacations to foreign countries.

The $700 billion bailout scares me. It doesn’t scare me as much as the alternative (a prolonged, deep recession), and I hope it gets passed soon so that we can start on the road ahead. The lesson I hope is learned from all of this is that the financial markets need more regulation (sorry guys, but you fucked it up, and we’d have to be idiots to let you run amok again), and that the country needs to save more and spend less.