Boulder to London

Lessons learned from years in markets and life Todd Harrison - MarketWatch

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Wow…I can’t believe it’s been a few weeks since I’ve put anything up.  I guess I’ve been out of town a bit, busy with work and getting ready for the holidays.  On the out of town and work bit, I spent the last two weeks in Cork, Ireland which appears to be a lovely place, however as usual, I got to see the hotel and the client’s office and little in between.  To make it worse, we’re approaching the shortest day of the year and in Cork, this means it is definitely dark when you leave in the morning and dark when you return.  The project is almost done other than a workshop the first week of January, so I’ll have to return in the summer months to really get to know the place.

On the getting ready for the holidays front, Melisse and I went out and found a tree yesterday to put up in our living room.  The first notable thing about the tree is that it was sold as a 7 foot tree, which really means 4.5 ft tree with 2.5 feet of bare trunk extension with no branches anywhere near.  The second thing about our tree is that it was very heavy and we decided to carry it home so we wouldn’t have to wait the 4 hours for it to be delivered.  We only live a few blocks from the place we got it, but it took both of us to haul the thing home, get it through the front door and into the stand.

We haven’t had a tree since the Christmas we spent in Fort Collins in 2006 when we got all the snow.  Last year we had a tiny apartment and were going to Barcelona for the week of Christmas anyway.  The year before, we were in our place in Boulder and spent Christmas in Costa Rica.  I’m feeling very good about being a bit more settled to the point where we could actually put up a tree and get a few decorations for it.  Melisse’s brother G.R. and his girlfriend Samantha are joining us for the next few weeks and we’re excited to have some family around.

I had a very busy week this week that was a nice mix of social activities and work.  Had Melisse not gotten  tickets a month ago, I would have been very tempted for an early evening in on the couch.  Instead, we enjoyed a fabulous evening at the Union Chapel and a heard an incredible concert by a passionate and talented musician!  Don’t pass up an opportunity to see these guys perform!

I finished ‘The Black Swan’ and have moved on to ‘Bailout Nation’.  I highly recommend The Black Swan as it is a thought provoking book on how little we actually know and how to live in a world of uncertainty.  Oh yeah…don’t forget about the role luck plays!

Bailout Nation has proven to be an easy read as well.  I just got through the section discussing the collapse of LTCM and the role Greenspan played in supporting asset prices during his tenure as Fed Chairman.  I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be Greenspan today.  Here is a guy that worked hard, achieved a pinnacle role in his line or work, was praised during most of his career and has only recently been blamed and critcised for the damage his actions have caused.  I guess that’s life and we all can only make the best decisions we can at any given time.  We all live with the risk that when reflected upon through the lens of hindsight that we weren’t as clever as we thought we were.

Yesterday I was quietly settling in for a nap on the couch, trying to mind my own business when Melisse exclaims, ‘Let’s go check out some pubs around Angel!’.  I mumbled back, ‘The football match is on in an hour and I need to take a nap first’.  She wasn’t impressed and persisted a bit with, ‘Come on, it’s beer’….well, she had a point… say I’m easy, but I was sold.  I mustered the energy required to put on my shoes and grab my coat (it was pouring out) and we headed down to the bus stop to catch the 73 down to Angel.

Apparently Melisse had spent the past hour or so checking out new pubs in the area  online in preparation for G.R. and Samantha’s visit next month.  She had a list of about 10 pubs she wanted to check out and she had me tagging along as her companion.  We started by walking south and east to a cozy little pub called the ‘The Charles Lamb‘.  The place was quiet and comfortable and had very friendly staff.  We were there in the early afternoon and most tables were full with couples chatting over a pint or a glass of wine.  I had an Oktoberfest beer and Melisse had a glass of red wine.  The round was a bit pricey at 10 quid, but overall not bad.  Since the place was a bit quiet and the rain had paused for a moment, we headed up the road to check out the next place on her list.

The next place was called ‘The Lexington‘ and was supposed to be an American styled music venue / bar.  It looked pretty cool, but was absolutely empty so we walked on by.  We found ourselves a way up the road at a place called ‘The Compass‘ which was a newly opened place on Chapel Street.  It too was very quiet in the early afternoon, which we figured was due to the fact that it might be more of an eatery than a place to hang out for drinks.  It was also still early, but the staff was very friendly so we decided to stay for a drink to warm up a bit.  The round was about 7 quid which was a good value for London.  Since we were the only people in there, we made our way up the road through Chapel Street market which we had never seen before and popped into a place called ‘Round Midnight’ which was once again an American themed music venue.  One of the fliers on the table was advertising play with the band night, where you could bring your instrument and play a few songs with the house band.  I’d never heard of such a thing, but it sounded interesting.  We ordered a round of drinks and found a table in the corner to sit back and check out the place.  For whatever reason, the place had a disproportionate number of women.  Most of the tables had 2 or 3 ladies talking to each other over drinks.  I’m not sure what made this place particularly female friendly, but they were doing something to draw the crowd.  It might just be that they were directly across the road from the shopping center and the women were in taking a break from an afternoon of retail therapy.  Whatever the case, we had a drink and moved on up the road.

Up the road a little ways, we found an absolutely fabulous place called ‘The Angelic‘.  The place was full of people all chatting, laughing and enjoying a good time.  We were lucky enough to land a place on a comfortable couch and ended up staying for a couple of rounds.  The architecture of the main bar area was beautiful with large windows, high ceilings and an old wood floor.  The real treat of the place though was the restrooms, which were found at the bottom of this cool metal spiral stair case in an area constructed of brick and accented with classical styled fountains.  A round of drinks was around 7 quid and the food looked great although we didn’t stay and order any.  We have however tried to book a table for New Year’s Eve and we’re waiting to hear back!

By this time, we were ready to get some food in our bellies.  It was still a bit early for dinner, but close enough that it wasn’t completely awkward ordering dinner.  We headed back up the road through Chapel Street Market to an Indian place called ‘Spices‘.  We were amongst the first tables of the evening, but the owner came out to speak with us and share some of his recommendations from the menu.  We ended up with some samosas to start with followed by a mildly spicy chicken and vegetable dish.  The food was fabulous and the service was great.  I highly recommend it.

This week started with a nice surprise when one of my old co-workers from GE emailed me to say that she was going to be in London with a few other folks we used to work with.  We decided to meet up on Wednesday evening for a few beers at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese and then dinner at Gaucho Grill.  It was a fabulous night catching up with folks that I hadn’t seen since I left GE in 2007 and it was fun to hear about everything that has (or hasn’t) changed since then!  I shared with them, that it wasn’t until just recently, maybe the last month or so, that I really felt that the decision to leave GE was absolutely the right one!  We reminisced about good times, and the Gaucho didn’t disappoint with the great steaks it served up.  We finished the night off with a couple of Jamison’s and parted ways.  Hopefully we’ll have the opportunity to catch up again soon.

On Thursday night, our team had a fun night out in Soho.  We used to be a fairly small team of 30 or so and are now a little over twice that size.  Consequently, many of the things we used to do are becoming a bit impractical with such a large group so we tried something different this week and arranged to have everyone  (+ partners/spouses/guests) attend the Jersey Boys musical.  I’m generally not a huge musical fan, but the night turned out to be a very good time.  The show was well done and they performed a bunch of the Four Seasons’ hits, which actually surprised me as there were a number of songs that I didn’t even realise were the Four Seasons.  If you want a fun and entertaining night out, Jersey Boys is one to consider.

To complete the hat trick, Friday night we met our friends Alistair and Helen at great wine bar called Terroirs.  It’s over near Covent Garden and has a massive wine list and great French food.  We started with a whole crab, followed up with steak tartare, anchovies, roasted hare and a couple of other things that were all quite tasty.  We had three bottles of wine from their vast collection which ranged from some very light reds to a more full bodied fruity red with our cheese plates.  The staff were great and the atmosphere had a nice gentle buzz that was not too loud, but definitely fun and social.  If you’re going to go, make a booking as you won’t be able to get a table otherwise.  Also, it’s a little tough to find and after circling the area for 10 minutes, our taxi driver dropped us off in a down pour to find it ourselves.

As if I hadn’t had enough fun over the past week, Korey and Ben invited me out to watch England play Australia in rugby yesterday afternoon.  It’s been a long time since I’ve spent a Saturday afternoon in a sports bar, so I jumped on the opportunity to head back to Covent Garden to a place called the Maple Leaf (apparently the only Canadian bar in London).  After a strong start by England, Australia recovered and put up a number of points to go ahead and eventually win the match.  I left the bar and headed home to meet Melisse for a curry which seemed to be the perfect dinner after an afternoon in the pub.

Finally, I also just started reading a new book called ‘The Black Swan’.  It’s all about how seemingly improbable things happen at an alarming rate leading to events and outcomes that were never expected yet lead to significant changes in our lives and how we view the world.  Think the 1987 stock market crash, 9-11 and recent tsunamis / earthquakes.   As living, thinking, reasoning individuals we have great difficulty accepting that something we’ve never experienced could happen (think Black Swans) until we’re proven wrong.  We are generally trapped in backward looking logic that is based on normal distributions and bell curves, even though the world we live in is full of outliers and unexpected events.  I’m only on chapter 4, but it’s a very easy read and I highly recommend it.

I’m the guy up the mast at the 1 minute mark!

Everyone has their favourite holiday and Halloween definitely has its share of fanatics.  I’ve personally never been a huge fan probably because I view hunting for and finding the perfect costume to be annoying so I usually end up being a) stressed and b) dressed up as something very uninteresting that is some combination of clothes from my closet, my rasta wig and some fake blood (picture  rasta businessman returns from the dead or rasta beach bum shark attack victim).  My friends Jeanie and Julie have solved this problem by simply maintaining a ‘costume closet’ which is added to and taken from throughout the year for every ‘fancy dress’ occasion (as they say over here).

As I think back to all of my Halloweens, one of the best times I’ve had was at beach party my friends Adam and Dennis put on.  They were renting adjacent sides of this duplex and had thrown some pretty famous parties in their time, but they decided that this year’s Halloween party would set a new standard.  They started by ordering a truckload of sand so that they could fill the two adjacent garages with about 6 inches of sand each….after all, what’s a beach party without the beach?  Since it was going to be cold out, they decided that it would be way too difficult to have people go between the two units via the front doors so they cut a hole in the wall between the two garages to allow easy access between what then became two beaches themed Heaven and Hell.  In Heaven they painted all of the walls and ceilings with a light blue paint, hung cotton clouds and used bright white lights.  On the Hell side they hung dark sheets, used red lights and cut out flames as decorations.  Each side had a bar serving theme appropriate drinks…Heaven served beer and wine, Hell was all shots.  The cops came a few times to tell us to turn down the music, but I think once they saw the setup, even they were impressed and granted a level of leniency.  Needless to say, we partied well into the morning and had a great time that will be tough to top.

I’m not surprised that this one turned out to be a hoax…these people seem determined to get their 15 minutes of fame!  FoCo is not making me proud in the international press this week…

Feared lost in balloon, boy found at home

Cops thought 6-year-old had taken off in family’s experimental craft