Sweet smell of ... something

What a great surprise. Somehow I've passed all the Term 2 exams!

I expected to fail one and possibly three, given that a) I'm crap in exam halls, b) I'm not a finance guy, c) I'd deliberately chosen electives I'd find difficult (finance stuff), and d) I turned out to be the ONLY PERSON in the entire cohort doing FIVE of the bastards last term (three electives absolutely had to be on my list, which meant doing an extra one in Term 2 and one fewer in Term 3.)

And yet I've sailed through the rocky waters of the Examic Ocean. Not even 'weak' passes; only one score came a bit close to the wind, and on the assignments (the parts closest to reality) I've scored plenty, even in the finance stuff I'm no good at. Whooohooo!

Pleased that another quarter of this four-term MBA is done and dusted. But at the same time... a little disconcerted. Shouldn't it have been harder than this?

I expected the numbers stuff to be hard; I don't have a bad head for figures, I just know nothing about maths save an interest in concepts, so the algrebraic bond pricing derivative greek whatever has been hard work for me. And despite being a marketer of 15 years' experience, I haven't done well in ANY of the marketing courses this year.

As 'soft scientists', marketing professors don't really want anyone whose experience was gained in the real world taking their programmes; it offends their sense of how the world ought to be. And it's showed in my results: steady sixtysomethingpercents all the way through. (The stuff I wrote was perfectly valid marketing: it just wasn't THEIR marketing.) But even so, those scores weren't difficult to obtain.

I'd love to say I've been up until 2am every night studying, absorbing texts and case studies and burning away blood in the Learning Grid. But I just haven't. (Except for the 2am mornings in the Learning Grid. But I'm a 'night' person by nature.)

The only genuine problem for me was all the group work an MBA entails; when you've been working as long as I have, some academic's idea of what constitutes 'group working' tends to be both artificial and insultingly juvenile. On the POM course I felt like Kindergarten Cop. And a course packed with representatives of a single nationality didn't help the time management aspect - or indeed the 'diversity' such courses like to trumpet.

(British MBA courses draw most of their cohort from the subcontinent these days, but for me, 'Shout at each other excitedly at high volume until someone listens' isn't ideal academic practice. I came here expecting a degree course in the Western intellectual tradition, yet what I got was... Mumbai Central at rushhour.)

But that's besides the point. I didn't really swot or sweat blood from my forehead.

I just did what I always do. Opened a textbook the day before and... winged it. Which I've always been good at, too good at to stop. Winging it through life, on a feather-thin slice of cash and the ability to string a sentence together. I'm a fraud.

Or maybe I'm just fooling myself, and this is how everyone works.

Today was okay I suppose. If you like second-order derivatives, matrix algebra, and bond pricing equations comingatcha on 120 slides. Ugh.

I am scared to death of my Investments & Risk Management lecturer

I can't believe it's here so fast, but it is. My last module of the Warwick MBA is this week! And the lecturer is already scaring me shitless. What is this, Corporate Finance all over again? Another megabrained lecturer who I'm sure sneaks off at every break just to laugh at my incompetence with financial calculus?

Hell no. It's worse than that.

This one's got such a long CV I can barely believe she's one person. She taught at Princeton, Oxford, and probably the InterGalactic Alliance of Extremely Clever People before Warwick; I've just been down her list of papers and most of them may as well be written in Latin. Whereas the Corporate Finance lecturer had a brain only moderately larger than that of Einstein, this one could have lectured Einstein and probably found reasons not to give him a pass. ("Think you're getting out of that patent office anytime soon, Albert my boy? HUR HUR HUR HUR HUR HUR!!!")

Investment & Risk Management requires Corporate Finance as a grounding, which means it's going to be harder. Looking down the programme (I should possibly have started this more than 24 hours before the first lecture) there are long lists including things like Forwards and Futures, Derivative Swaps, Bond Portfolios (shaken not stirred) and enough greek letters to keep the Athens Post Office busy for months. Just how big IS their alphabet?

There's a whole day on 'Options'. I think my 'option' will be to sit with my head in my hands and sob quietly so she won't ask me questions. Help!

Milliband ready to take a punt

Things are moving. David Milliband is ready to save New Labour, he's confided to Cabinet colleagues. How kind of him.

Personally my money'd be on Ed Balls - wouldn't that be wonderful, Brown's loyal lieutenant stabbing his old boss in the back? But Milliband would be an interesting Labour leader: better matched to Cameron in age and experience, yet without the Eton education that gives so many Tories their air of confidence. (For all his faults, Brown has greater gravitas than DC.)

Brown, of course, will fight tenaciously for the job he believes is his birthright. But his psychopathic tendencies will never allow him to admit he's wrong or change course. I hope he doesn't, anyway: he's the Tories' greatest electoral asset if he hangs on for a year or two.

New Labour has perpetrated such crimes on the United Kingdom that it doesn't deserve any more chances. The torture it's going through should not end cleanly, nor quickly. The demise of this bunch of preening socialists should be a long, drawn-out bloodletting, filled with pain and suffering.

This is going to be a great summer....

I can't stand that Dalai Llama bloke

A friend just blogged excitedly about seeing the Dalai Llama getting off his train in Nottingham. I can't stand the Dalai Llama.

Why do Westerners from Bill Clinton to Steve Jobs go gooey-eyed over some Asian guy in robes? Have we really come nowhere since the 1960s? I mean, what does the Dalai Llama actually DO? Don't we have something called the age of reason?

Why is it that the countries who espouse representative democracy and equality for all fall panting at the feet of .... a guy put in power claiming divine authority, leading an ethnic group hostile to outsiders, with some of the worst life expectancy and health statistics in the world?

(Did any of these guys have their eyes OPEN when they went to Tibet? The place is a shithole! Zero infrastructure, zero public institutions, and when the Chinese do something that might actually give the economy a boost - like laying a 2000 mile railway through unforgiving rock, an incredible feat of engineering - they thank them with brickbats.)

Do you realise one of the Tibetan people's prime grievances about the Chinese is that the Han race keep moving in on their turf? Shock horror! Actually having to live next door to someone of a different race! I mean, isn't that a little bit... racist?

But of course, this is how political correctness works: only white people are racist, certainly not the poor little Asians. If a white person takes this attitude, it's selfish and evil and filled with hatred (true). If a member of an 'ethnic minority' does it, it's 'protecting their culture'. And if you've got a roving ambassador with, apparently, a hall pass to No 10 and the White House, you can get away with pretty much anything. As long as you're wearing the robes.

Hint for religious leaders: bright colours work on Western leaders. Something orange and floor-length, and you'll have 'em eating out of your hand. The Dalai Llama's got it sussed.

Sheeesh, give me strength.

I'm no fan of the Chinese government, but as with so many territorial disputes, the Tibet thing all depends on when you draw the line in history. I mean, you don't have to go back that many centuries to discover Outer Mongolia has a pretty strong claim over most of Asia and a fair chunk of Europe. And let's face it, when Tibet was annexed by the Chinese - the 1950s - a great deal of Europe had redrawn its borders just a few years before, and over in the Middle East a bunch of guys were divvying up Israel and Palestine. Is China's claim over Tibet 'legitimate'? Depends on where you stand. History is a myth agreed upon.

New Labour nosedive continues

Crewe & Nantwich goes blue! A safe Labour seat in the heartland of third-generation unemployment and broken dreams, yet the by-election has resulted in an incredible 17.6% swing to the Tories. And it's not even a bad news week.

It'd take just an 8% swing in a General Election to ensure a Conservative majority. The Conservatives are at a natural disadvantage in elections: with many seats in the countryside, a Tory government needs a higher share of the popular vote than you'd expect to win one. Yet it now looks like they can do so. If the people of Crewe can vote Tory, the whole country can.

Surely Ed Balls is going to challenge Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership on Monday? I mean, he's had to deny (twice) that he's interested in Brown's job, which means he's raring to get it as soon as possible. Oh my, this is going to be absolutely glorious.

Watching New Labour, realising there was nothing new about it after all, tear itself apart over the summer. And with any luck, evaporate for a generation in its self-deluding fog of squandered potential, skyrocketing taxes, and endless red tape.

Shine a light

Scorsese films a Stones concert! And it's as far away from a concert film as - well, a Scorsese film. Just a few intelligent interludes of 60s and 70s shots showing the band maturing: the rest of it's just the footage from a single concert in New York.

What sets this film apart is the detail. You can see the sweat on Keef's guitar, the veins in Mick's neck. Most of all you can tell how different the personalities of the Stones are - and why they've been together so long. They're just having a great time hanging out.

Jagger: the practiced showman, well-rehearsed and everything calculated. Ronnie Wood: grateful to be there, the uncool one. Charlie Watts: physically looking the youngest, yet seems by far the most tired of it all, huffing and puffing his way through the drum sections. And 'Keef': the court jester, just doing his own thing, miming Jagger behind his back, and Widow Twankeying the audience. (Every time he manages a good chord he chortles down at his guitar, thinking "Cor! Did I do that?!!")

It's still a movie rather than a film. Scorsese very obviously made sure there were no old or ugly people near the front rows (except Keef, of course.) But the overall impression is much closer to being at a concert than watching a movie. There's no actual standing in the aisles dancing (not the done thing at Warwick Arts Centre) but there's a definite vibe and shared understanding among the audience. We're stoned.

I strongly dislike making toast in the griller

The problem with toasting bread under the griller, rather than in a toaster, is that it takes so long the bread tends to harden rather than warm up. The resulting toast is somewhat suboptimal, not more than a 4/10 as opposed to the 8's and 9's you can get with a proper toaster that you know well.

The flat toaster isn't working, or rather it half-works - two of the four slots toast only one side of the bread and another slot doesn't work at all. Since I like three slices in the morning, I'm forced to judge timings and turn around two slices, which will never be as well toasted as the lucky slice in the fully-functional slot. Therefore my haul is usually: one slice of decent toast, and two slices of good-enough-for-breakfast-but-far-from-perfect semi-toasted flipped-over slices.

When you make toast in the oven's griller, the designers appear to have given no thought to late-process butter-asorption issues: butter on a grilled slice tends to float on the top rather than soak in. Thus the grilling-by-oven process contains a major operational error. Toyota would never have let this happen. Do they make toasters?

I'm not sure why the toaster isn't working. It's possible it's got something to do with the wall of flame that erupted from it when I used it on Monday and all the electricity to the kitchen went off - who knows? Some mysteries may never be solved.

I know this isn't an earth-shattering problem, but toast is a pretty major part of my life pre-9am, and bad toast means bad start to the day. Toast is important.

I am quite pleased I could now hold a conversation with a CFA

Copy from an ad for the CFA (Certified Financial Accountant) institute: "If a CFA charterholder sits before you, she or he can evaluate undervalued and overvalued securities, calculate the values of callable bonds and puttable bonds, calculate alpha, calculate financial ratios used by credit analysts, analyze derivatives, alternative investments, taxes, pensions, inventories, and inter-corporate investments."

It's interesting to note that with the right electives, the Warwick MBA teaches you how to do every one of those things.

Database driven life

One of the really impressive things about Warwick University is its databases. Or more to the point, the way its databases connect to the student intranet and let me, slumped in my study bedroom, collect pretty much everything I need to write my assignments and dissertation.

Take just now. An article referenced in one of the readings for a Strategy module caught my eye. It's not in the readings, although it's a seminal article on the globalisation of business from the 1980s. This is probably a test: the course director may have left that article in plain view, referenced in the folder's readings but not actually in the folder as a handout, in order to see which clever buggers would spot it and look it up.

So I look it up. A few clicks and searching into the library, the business section, and a subscription index. A search on author and title. And - within a second - it's there: the full-text article, not in ASCII but an actual scanned page of the Harvard Business Review from 1983, complete with foxy-edged pages and the imprint of someone's pen pressed too hard on a previous page a quarter of a century ago. Brilliant.

In the vastness of the Internet, I inhabit a more tightly-clustered node: an ordered space of indexed scholarship, given shape and form by subscriptions and module structure and the sheer buzz of a campus wired for desseminating knowledge. From my little room here, I'm wrapped in a warm, comforting coccoon of information plus the means to make sense of it.

I'm going to miss this place.

The name's Worth, Chris Worth...

Of all the ridiculous things a year as a student has allowed me to do, attending the University Sports Ball as a member of the Skydiving Club is probably the funniest one so far. (Just booked my tix today.)

Now the next problem: sorting out a dinner suit.

It's been several years since I last wore black tie; I've completely forgotten the whole culture around it. For example, a 'tuxedo' technically means white jacket, which is pretty hard to carry off outside the Caribbean anyway, and at a ball where the dinner involves tomatoes it's completely out of the question. Black jacket, definitely. But whose?

I mean, I have to overcome a natural disadvantage here: since it's the summer ball of the university's sporting clubs, there'll be a large number of physically imposing males in the tent (well, in addition to me, obviously) and it'll take a lot to look impressive in that crowd. I've scheduled in daily swims and sessions to get myself back in shape after a few weeks of lumpen deskbound-ness, but that's only half the problem. The other half is the suit.

There's no way - no way - I can go for the standard Moss Bros rental like everyone else. I need the kind of suit Daniel Craig gasped at in 'Casino Royale' when Eva whipped out a tailored one for him, after he'd protested he already had a dinner suit. That's what a truly great suit does: make you go 'whoa'. But how can I get one?

There's got to be a way. Discounters, vintage shops, and friends (of my height and build) are on the list to call next week; one of them will have something truly sensational in my size. It'll be the perfect way to make the evening go with a bang.

Some Facebook groups are so inspired, you've just got to join them.

Where money stood, we planted seeds of rebirth*

The Lakeside swans have had their kids! A couple of fluffy cygnets are now floating around the lake, flanked by Mum and Dad. It's always great to see the cycle of life in action.

*With apologies to David Bowie.

Neither ground nor air, but...

On the lunch menu at University House today: "Roasted Sea Fish". Why exactly would you need to remind students at one of Britain's top universities which medium fish inhabit?

A song of angles

Oh wow. Japanese framebuilder Ceepo have arrived in the UK, and the bikes look awesome. Wouldn't go for the solid disc wheel (they get problematic in wind) but a pair of tri-spoke aero carbon hoops front and back would perform brilliantly. I'd add a Dura-Ace gruppo with SRM power meter and keep power, cadence, and heartrate metrics wireless.

I think I'll transfer my dream-bike allegiances from Cervelo.

Last thoughts in Paris

End of a busy week. And which might - just might - be my last week as an actual down-to-earth, hands-dirty, sod-busting contract creative resource.

The trouble is...

... I like this stuff too much. 10pm in a messy graphics studio surrounded by Macs and boards, long hours thinking up concepts in a daze followed by odd hours of frantic typing. Ideas and sketches translated into pin-sharp graphics and images that scar consumers' souls. The ersatz solitude of business hotels, the emptiness of hotel bars, the crackle of being someone else for a few days and nobody knowing who. Padding softly around the plushly carpeted hallways of the Silver City. This sort of thing used to be my whole life, and despite the other reasons I have for joy right now, I realised this week that I miss it.

When I said goodbye yesterday to the old pal who brought me over to work on this pitch, I mentioned it could be my last week like this. I could tell from his eyes: he didn't believe me.

Switching gears: a little hotel in town

I was determined. I knew I wouldn't finish up until late Saturday out in Boulogne-Billancourt, but before leaving (I've already delayed my flight once) I HAD to see 'my' Paris, the Marais and the Latin Quarter and the streets between Bastille and Republique. So I booked my last night into a distinctly non-Radisson place: a funky little hotel on rue Oberkampf, six floors tall and three tiny rooms per floor, serviced by a lift the size of a shoebox. Every surface is painted red or yellow and the bathroom furniture follows the same theme. Crazy but it works.

I reach this little hotel sometime after midnight. And, somehow not fatigued after a week plus of 14-hour days, I go out. I have to.

I head south, veering to walk across Republique and Bastille, then veering southwest towards the Quartier. Cross the Seine, into the streets I first visited when I lived in this city long ago. And I see...

... a modest greek lunch counter. It was the first place I ate in, years back. (I moved to Paris on a New Year's Eve and ended up befriending the owners.) The shop is different - the whole street seems slightly more upmarket - but...

... the people are the same. And by an amazing fluke, the two guys there remember me. Egyptians have good memories.

I enjoy a pita bread or two. And then a beer or two out on the edge of the Quartier, before standing at my favourite spot on the Ile de la Cite and walking north along rue du Temple, my old home (it's got gayer) and rue Faubourg du Temple.

It's 4am. I've been walking for hours, drunk on being in this beautiful city again. But it's all been worth it.

Paris means... going to work on a Saturday in wet underwear

Still in Paris! The project's going well if involving a few too many late nights, and after skipping the flight yesterday I'm also missing an MBA rock climbing session back at Warwick which, er, I organised (thanks for taking over K.) It's odd just how disorganised the best-organised week can become.

Take this week. There are three things I never travel without: my pegless clothesline, my sheet sleeping bag, and a Silva compass. (When your sense of direction is as bad as mine you need to know which way you're facing.) I used to include my 12" survival knife in this list, but airlines tend to object to those these days, so I take a Leatherman instead. From North American bus stations to nights in the Egyptian desert, I've never been without some means of sleeping or the option of clean clothes.

However, you don't expect to need such things when you're booked into a decent hotel all week, and having a proper bed for a change meant I neglected my backpacking basics. So... at midnight I had nowhere to hang hastily-handwashed laundry and ended up wearing wet stuff this morning. Urgh.

However, I have one final task when this day's done (probably late again): I've booked a cheap sleep tonight in Paris itself, forcing me to visit Paris proper at least once before my flight leaves tomorrow. I WILL get to see the Ile de la Cite this trip.... the pointy bit at one end where you can look out over the Seine, lights of the city all around you. About one metre square, it's one of my favourite places in the world. But it's been one hell of an effort.

Raw like the pain of cash for sushi

Wow. It's been a while since I paid £45 for dinner for myself. (I am a student, after all.)

The trouble is, when you're working 12+ hr days in a suburb of Paris, there just aren't many places to eat late evening, especially the night before a public holiday. (I've had too much room service recently at the Radisson, corridor pictured: it's smart and funky, but endless club sandwiches aren't my thing.) Which is why I ended up in a Japanese place tonight. And it was very nice. But that's not the point here.

I walked past perhaps 20 restaurants on the way back to the hotel, including the hotel itself. But let's face it, being the only customer in a COMPLETELY EMPTY restaurant is depressing. The staff resent you, the food's served grudgingly, and everyone's watching you just wanting you to be out of there so they can go home.

It's not as if I didn't try. I looked in a restaurant called 'La Marmite'. (What's on the menu? Just toast?) Several pizzerias. Three brasseries. All of them forbiddingly vacant. Most others were shut completely.

Since I spend about seven hours a day thinking about food, this was a nightmare.

Finally I happened across a Japanese place, all beechwood and shoji, looking inviting at 9.30pm, with a whole two tables occupied. Went in - and yes, it was great. Sat at the bar all Tokyo like. Had grilled yellowfin and rice, then some yakitori, and a fair amount of Asahi. Bill: E55.50.

That's a lot when your client's only paying hotel and breakfast. On my reduced day rate (you take whatever's on offer when you're a student) it's not far off 10% of my daily fee. (However unlikely it may sound, I AM that good.) I was hungry. And hunger counts for a lot.

But I'm strangely content, since the counter and paper menu and the little red pepper pots reminded me of that country I loved so much. A bar below streets in Ginza, where you could hear drunken footsteps above your head. A teahouse in Kyoto, where the guests sat admiring koi carp late into the night. A basement in Roppongi, where the proprietor served up hour-young tuna in a way I've never forgotten.

Alone at the bar of a japanese restaurant in a suburb of Paris, three languages in the air, grilled yellowfin on the table. This is where I really belong. Surfing the foamy tubulars of utter cultural confusion.

Back in the City of Lights

Paris!

Despite having worked on the Champs Elysees for two years, this is the first place I've worked from which I can see the Eiffel Tower from my place of residence.

(Look hard. Centre of the pic.)

This isn't even 'Paris' to a true Parisien - too far outside the central arrondisements. But it's nonetheless good to be back in a) non-academic work and b) in the city of lights, and I can find glamour in the least elegant of travel experiences. No business class here - BHX-CDG last night was on a noisy little prop plane (I've JUMPED out of bigger planes than that) and after I hit Paris Nord I had a long, long Metro ride into the suburbs where my client's located. Can't complain though, because...

...I miss this stuff.