Just do a switcheroo

Having thought about it, I think Joe Biden and Sarah Palin should just swap places. That'd give Americans a clear choice based on the factors people actually vote for - a) are they young, b) are they cute, and c) do they look like me. It'd be old crusty America versus young exciting America. C'mon guys, let's add some spice to this campaign!

Palin for VP - but can she go around the world in 80 days?

Sarah who? The most unusual choice of VP since Dan Quayle seems to be leaving Americans abuzz and agog.

A small-town mayor and ex-beauty queen who married an Eskimo and whose kids are named Track, Trig, Bristol, Willow, and Piper? You couldn't make this stuff up.

This could be disastrous, or it could be insane genius. In Joe Biden, Obama went safe by choosing an old white guy, so McCain's gone all adventurous with a woman. What's happening here? Is the real McCain - decent guy, maverick, loner - coming back and making his own decisions again?

Or it could all be really, really simple. Have you ever seen John McCain's wife? There was a time... so perhaps it was a predictable choice after all. McCain just likes being surrounded by good-looking women. Well, considering Michelle Obama's a babe too, this is going to be the hottest American election in decades. Actually, I'm not convinced this campaign is real, or just made-for-TV.

Awesome tunnel camp

Warwick Skydive's 2008 Tunnel Camp took place this week, and it was incredible. Despite all those jumps from real aeroplanes, this was the point where I actually learned to fly. (That's me, in the fetching light-blue-with-yellow-piping number.)

It was my first time in a vertical wind tunnel, and - whoa. I'd expected something resembling a garage; when we got close, I realised we seemed to be homing in on what looks like a nuclear missile storage facility. The ex-MOD tunnel is a privatised military site, a cylinder fifteen metres wide and forty high, with an inner 'core' five metres wide that goes most of the way up, topped with a vast aeronautical engine running at 750rpm, all day, every day. That's where you fly. It's the biggest indoor skydiving facility in the world, and next to it, little tourist attractions like the one at Milton Keynes look like Fisher Price toys.

The construction quality is amazing. I'd estimate the steel cylinder is eight centimetres thick, and the tunnel itself is brick and concrete lined. Of course it's noisy in the chamber, but outside conversation is still possible, and in the outer ring, where you relax between flights, it's barely more than traffic noise; there's not even vibration. Doors are oval and made of thick steel, like a submarine's. The site makes excellent use of technology - cams and screens everywhere, plus electronic timetabling - and you can download the vids onto a handy USB. It's terrific.

I had 23 minutes spread over the day, and went from nervously floating at ground level to hovering confidently two metres up, spinning reasonable 360s, and moving forwards and backwards, balancing on the 120mph updraft and turning my body into a wing. Brilliant. I can't wait to get back there.

If I'm spamming you, I'm really not

Some dastardly spammer is spoofing my email address and sending about a billion spams an hour that look as if they're coming from me. They're not, and Google is working on this right now (I use Gmail for my POPs.) While you're deleting their spam, spare a thought for me, who's had to delete 1000 'Out of Office autoreplies' since getting back to campus...

Sucks like a Dyson on steroids

This sucks. Too many goodbyes, too much work, surrounded by packing boxes that only remind me this life is about to end. I'm fighting the dark pool of sadness welling up inside me, but it hurts.

Somehow, this year's been about more than an MBA; it's been about constructing a different life, something humanscale and close-knit instead of the broadness and infinity of cities like London. And although it's contained some very dark moments, I think it's been the best year of my life. I've trekked across scorching deserts and jumped out of aeroplanes just to feel something, but sometimes all you need is a little room on a greenfield campus and the warmth of a great institution around you to feel part of something amazing.

And now it's almost over.

This sucks.

Obama fading?

Hmmmmm. A crowd of only 4000 people when Obama appeared with Biden? Two things could be going on here.

The first: Obama may be showing signs of timidity. By choosing an establishing Washingtonian for his VP, has he done that most dangerous of things - sacrificed courage for pragmatism? If so, he's doomed. Obama is nothing except the hope for change; if he loses that respect, there's really nothing left.

The second is that perhaps most people have already decided on Obama (or McCain) and don't see any point taking part in the festivities. Obama fatigue has set in. The next ten weeks will be frustrating for both candidates, but better for McCain. My call has always been that Obama would lead the race, but McCain would win. Either outcome, of course, is far better for the world than the disastrous Bush/Cheney years.

But it's always dangerous reducing American elections to simple better/worse overviews when the country is so vast and varied... from the East Coast's blue liberal intellectualism to the uneducated hopelessness of the red interior, where millions live in near-third-world poverty. And of course, the differences between the USA's left and right are far smaller than in Britain, even after years of centrism from both main parties. Most Americans know that the differences in actual policies after the next election will be tiny.

From the outside looking in, it's obvious Obama will be far better for the world as a whole - presenting America the way it sees itself, as a beacon of hope rather than the frightened bully so obvious for seven years. But that doesn't mean a whole lot to a non-college-educated working pauper in the deep south, who's seen dignified blue-collar jobs depart and his city, home, and credit crumble. For that guy, voting Republican - so he can keep his guns and hold on to his self-righteous anger - makes a lot of sense. It takes a lot to hold onto your ideology when your family's hungry.

Or maybe there's a third force at work here: the death of ideology. Does anyone really have any anymore? In the UK, Cameron certainly doesn't; Brown does, but nobody wants it; in the USA there doesn't seem to be any: all politics is just bread and circuses. I'll still hope Obama gets in, just for the warmth and humanity he might bring to the world stage. But I think the moment where it seemed likely has passed.

Exotic creatures found at country house

It's taken a long time to get here, but finally the story of the Cliveden Snails is uncovered!

It's a perfect story for silly season: a species of snail, common in southern Europe but unknown here, has been found in the balustrade of a famous British country house, the slimy denizens presumably hitching a lift when the balustrade was imported in the 19th century.

What I like about this story is the way the reporter plays the prose very, very close to the edge - "Over the years, the snails would have had the chance to witness a number of seminal moments in UK politics." Given the pond life that inhabits Whitehall and Westminster these days, it's hardly worth writing about...

In praise of useless sports

I'm struck by just how many events at the Olympics are in fundamentally ridiculous sports.

Now running, jumping, and cycling are all nominally useful activities - they keep you fit and get you places. But the number of 'silly' sports is getting, well, silly.

I mean, I've tried to be interested in the diving, I really have - and as a swimmer myself I should be more interested than most. But a huge event dedicated to .... jumping off a platform above a big pool of water and ... being able to hit it? Doesn't gravity play the main part in that? Now, a competition where you had to MISS the water - that'd take real skill, and would be something I'd tune into.

I can appreciate that it takes huge concentration and skill to do six triple backflips, three complete twists, and barbecue a hamburger while singing 'Evita' in the few seconds between jumping and splashing, but being penalised for 'making a splash' (you're entering WATER, dumbkopf) just seems silly.

And as an aside, the number of my adult female friends who are perving on 14-yr old Tom Daley is really bad. This is the same demographic that was slavering to see 17-yr old Harry Potter naked on the London stage a while back. Why is this supposed to be amusing, when if it happened in reverse there'd be an outcry? (Phwooooar, look at that 14yr old girl gymnast, guys! Whwoooar! See what I mean?)

And the contact sports like Tae Kwon Do. Britain's Sarah Stephenson had a protest this morning for... hitting her opponent. I mean, shouldn't the fighting sports at least involve, y'know, people actually hurting each other? Getting a red card when you manage it? Where's the sport in that?

Synchronised swimming is an easy target, but I had to mention this: apparently Hiromi Kobayashi of Japan had to be rescued by lifeguards yesterday after suffering breathing difficulties during her routine.(Does this mean all her teammates had to feign they were drowning as well? What's the etiquette in such situations?)

And try as I might, I cannot remember which sports are included in the pentathlon, heptathlon, and decathlon (which probably includes all of them) but there's bound to be plenty of useless ones. The pentathlon is prefaced by 'modern' because the Greek original included wrestling and a naked 100m dash - why on earth did they replace those things? It'd make it far more memorable.

Canoeing is borderline useful/useless - if you're ever stuck in the Canadian rockies I suppose a canoe might, occasionally, be useful, although it's not the sort of equipment you carry 'just in case' is it? However, Spain's David Cal, on winning silver in the 500m canoeing, promptly threw up on the platform, tipping it over the edge into the realms of the ridiculous. Perhaps this could be considered for 2012: competitive projectile vomiting.

I've wondered why most of the stadiums are half-empty. Perhaps it's got nothing to do with overzealous Chinese authorities; it's just that spectators have realised "Wow, you know what - this sport is really, really silly! Anyone know a good place for Dim Sum?"

And don't get me started on the WINTER Olympics. What is this 'luge' thing? Why not just call it 'sledging'? And add a twist of snowman-building at the end? Sport should be entertaining.

Perhaps this could be a motif for 2012 after the coming years of recession and poverty: a 'back to basics' Olympics, scratchy shirts and chalk marks on dirt floors (they won't be finished anyway) for a few sports that are actually useful activities, like running, swimming, and throwing things. Let's face it, we're not going to top that opening ceremony; maybe we should make a conscious stand against it.

French birds 'moving northwards'

Anyone who's lived in London over the last decade will confirm this news story about the increase in foreign birds:

"French birds are moving northwards in response to climate change, but not fast enough, scientists have found."

It's certainly true that French birds tend to slow down a bit when moving northwards; often they get stuck around London, with Bute St being their favourite roost. No arguing with this paragraph.

"Their data came from a large survey in which volunteers counted more than 105 species of bird."

105 species? Yeah, that sounds about right too. London is full of foreign birds: not only French, but Scandinavian, Polish, Czech, and Russian. They're everywhere!

"In the Royal Society journal Proceedings B, researchers say that the birds are lagging some 182km behind the increases in temperature."

Hmmm, well it's cold up north, and these birds generally prefer to nest in the warmer areas of Kensington and Chelsea. Maybe they just like the atmosphere there enough to stick around all winter, although most of them seem pretty keen to fly off to warmer climes if the offer's there.

"This lag may be of particular concern to rare birds or species that have very specific food requirements."

Right again: foreign birds aren't particularly rare in London, but you do sometimes see ones that stand out from the flock, and whose food requirements are indeed extremely strict, often limited to the Ivy or an occasional Fat Duck. I've got a pal whose Polish girlfriend says how difficult it is to get decent sausage in Fulham.

" "The flora and fauna around us are shifting over time due to climate change," said Vincent Devictor, who led the research project from the National Museum of Natural History (MNHN) in Paris."

Well, he'd know - with a name like 'Vincent the Victor' he's the preferred nesting mate of many of London's foreign birds: the name practically confirms ownership of an SLK at least. And while the increase in foreign birds in London seems permanent, few would refuse a quick trip to Paris and a look round the museums.

"The result is desynchronisation. If birds and the insects on which they depend do not react in the same way, we are headed for an upheaval in the interaction between species," he told the AFP news agency.

True again. I feel pretty 'desynchronised' with most of London's foreign birds, and the way they react to me is indeed different to ten years ago. I've found that quite an upheaval, indeed, with a big effect in my interactions with these species.

"Ben Sheldon from Oxford University, who also studies nature's response to rising temperatures, commented: "At any one site, the community of birds you find there has changed over time."

Well, an Oxford man would know. When the heat's on, the birds congregate at specific sites, but the community definitely changes over time - take Chinawhite, for example. Once it was inhabited by rare and beautiful birds; now it's all common Eastern European species with fake plumage.

"A recent study of great tits in England found they were coping well with rising temperatures, changing their egg-laying times in order to adapt to the earlier emergence of prey."

Some guys get all the best jobs. The temperatures in London this summer haven't really been high enough for those tits to emerge in their full glory, though, however early the guys go out to view them.

"The French team suggests more research on the issue is vital if better conservation options are to be developed."

A sentiment with which I heartily concur. Let's hear it for foreign birds!

Burning oil for burning rubber

The pain has stopped. After seven hours of media research for my MBA dissertation, I always knew starting a client assigment at 8pm wasn't going to be much fun. Dreaming up ideas for seven double-page spreads for a carmaker, after a day painstakingly building 480-point data matrices of media sentiment for FTSE350 companies; it's all murderously time-consuming, and car ads are harder to write than you'd think - all cars are good now, so good that only Clarkson can tell the difference between them, and there really isn't much difference between the main brands. Which is why car companies' ad budgets are among the highest. Any copywriter who can make any particular box on wheels sound special is worth hiring.

But luckily, I think I've cracked this one now: not a set of sketched concepts to send in tomorrow, but an actual story, the same idea threaded through a sheaf of pages despite each page highlighting a different feature. This is really, really hard to do, but when the pain suddenly stopped at 10.40pm I knew everything was going to be ok.

The strangest of feelings

Bit of a flat week. I'm on campus for the whole week, for the first time in months; no trips to London, Paris, or dropzones on the cards until next week. I thought I'd enjoy just being here, my last few days of being a student, but instead I feel suffocated.

Maybe it's because it all feels over without being finished: the interesting parts are done but I can't leave it all behind just yet. Everyone's leaving, all my year's people are flushing out past the lake and beyond the fields. I've added a thousand people to my address book this year, but now we're last year's cohort the sense of excitement and cameraderie has faded. I'm glad I could participate while the year was running hot, but the importance of those connections is fading fast.

Got to get out. Instead of working away on my dissertation here in my Lakeside room, I'm relocating. The library, the Learning Grid, somewhere. Got to get out, to feel my University around me.

Turning Phelps from champion to star

I shouldn't really be worried about Michael Phelps: the brilliance of his 8 golds at the Olympics means he'll be worth tens of millions by year end. But can a swimmer, without the canvas of a national league sport, thrive over time?

By all accounts Phelps is one of the good guys. Like Tiger Woods, there's something fundamentally okay about him: you can smell he's drug free, and as a swimmer I know just how technically skilled you have to be to be competitive in the water.

Phelps has the potential to become an inspiring icon, like Woods. But I'm concerned that after the talk shows the brand equity will start to die, and something richly deserved just won't happen. There are plenty of terrific athletes who really struggle in later life. I just hope Phelps gets the right media strategy and the right financial advice, so that even if he's a one-season wonder he'll be fixed for the future.

Little doggie, bark all day

Here's a thing: I posted a thread about a news story on one of Britain's oddest, but most loveable, networking sites - Ecademy - and got repeatedly squealed at by a rather odd little troll-type individual, reminiscent of one of those yappy little dogs that do nothing except squeak 24 hours a day. I thought this sort of behaviour went out with Usenet. Actually the guy's done me a favour: reminded me that there are regions of the Internet where the trolls still thrive.
You know the type: they've got an opinion, and it's vitally important to them that you should really, really care about it.

As is often the case, it turns out the guy's a 'Macolyte', one of those so slavishly devoted to the Apple cause it's eliminated their ability to engage in rational debate or take part in civil exchanges. Bullied at school, I suppose; trying to work up a tough-kiddie persona online to make up for inadequacies elsewhere. (The briefest of Googles revealed he posts with the same shrillness pretty much everywhere, with an expectedly high proportion of "this comment has been deleted"s.)

I'm not attacking this individual in particular; he just happens to illustrate a type. I've worked with guys like this, and regrettably even employed one once. The interesting question is: Why they do this? Surely they don't get results: behaving this way tends to drive down respectability towards zero. And if they stepped outside their little circles of pique for a moment they'd realise how silly they look. The Mac guy here is probably of normal intelligence with strong technical skills, yet he's hurting his employability and prospects by being so... daft. They're sad little people, and I wish there was an easy way to help them.

Animated discussions

Getting animation this close to photorealistic humanity is a brilliant achievement. But will animation ever replace human actors?

My money: no. There's the economic argument, of course: as tools develop, it gets easier to do this, and in a decade synthetic mannequins may well be reading the news or introducing programmes, much as RSS feeds announce things by text today. But doing things the easy way is rarely a recipe for quality, for the same reason a MIDI symphony sounds phoney.

MIDI caused great excitement when it came out (I'm showing my age here); everyone thought digital recordings of real instruments, rather than synthetic beeps, would trounce paying live performers - a series of codes read by a computer simply got outputted as music. It didn't work that way, because the music sounded flat; no heart or soul in it, a grab-bag of sound effects rather than an integrated swoooosh of sound. Tiny edge effects create the sense of a performed work, but that's where the music lives.

Translated onto video, those edge effects are the little tics and flicks that make 'Emily' look real - random eye movements, head-tosses, that sort of thing. But even these were modelled from real actors. The virtual actor is entirely dependent on real people.

Furthermore, so much of acting has nothing to do with appearing on screen. Box office takings rely on celebrity; unless it's animation to begin with, a successful film needs 'the money', a star name, someone who gives great red carpet and gets papped on the streets of Hollywood. Most cinemagoers don't go for the film; they go to see a star. And the appeal of virtual stars, from Max Headroom to AnaNova, is just a novelty factor.

My old fighting technique is unstoppable

Apparently there's a dispute between the monks of the Shaolin Temple, birthplace of Kung Fu, and the upstart temple Tagou down the road. The Shaolin guys don't want to take part in competitions, and the Tagou guys say it's because they're not good enough. I wouldn't want to be the Sunday Times reporter charged with investigating that story. "Here's your next assignment: go to the Shaolin Temple and ask them why they're turning into a bunch of wusses."

Once a copywriter, always a copywriter

Back at my hotel again, copywriting, in this strange netherworld between the greensward of a campus University and the madding crowds of London: a second day where the timesheeted hours ran uncomfortably into double figures. Scoffing some room service, quaffing a demi-bouteille (okay, bouteille) of reasonable Sancerre, in a great city a long way from home. It's just what I do.

(Aside: what, exactly, is wrong with Radisson Hotels? I've stayed here eight nights in the last three months and every time there's been something wrong. Not enough to complain about, and my client gets a discount on the Eur350 rack rate, but still...)

I don't write much actual copy these days; I've had Director of some sort or another on my business card since I hit 27, and I dream up perhaps five campaigns a year. But somehow, it's the job where I feel most at home. Kicking back, surrounded by people at Macs and in suits, creating stuff.

(Take just now. I ordered a main course and dessert: why, then, is there no spoon, just a knife and fork? And why are there last night's room service trays lined up down the corridor, at nearly 10pm? Or this morning, where nobody came round with the coffee can yet I got ticked off for going over there and taking it myself? These things matter.)

It's a strange profession, copywriting. Nobody ever knows your name - you don't sign your work in this business - yet you earn more on any measure than 99% of novelists and have a far higher audience to boot. And that's with a lifestyle that resembles that of a poet: sitting around scribbling ideas and sketches onto A3 pads and laughing a lot, trying to find that emotional hook that'll mess with a few million more minds this month.

(Look, I appreciate I'm not in Geneva, but - the hotel TV channels not even being tuned? And of the multiple times I've stayed here the air conditioning has never lowered the temperature to anything comfortably below 28deg? What's wrong with these people? Such little things with such great import to anyone new in town looking for a home without hassle for 48 hours? It's just stupid.)

This year Starbucks lost me as a customer FOR LIFE; I'll never go back, based on a single year's experience of just HOW crap they were getting. Their coffee grew terrible, their sandwiches hideously expensive, and their idea of being my 'third place' got resignated to my 'third way'. And I spent just a couple of pounds, every couple of days, at Starbucks. Why on earth would a major hotel operator risk business worth Eur350 a day for such a few, tiny things?

That's why I do it, really. Making a big deal out of a few, tiny things, like rack-and-pinion steering or multi-weather ABS on a small family car you see in improbably sun-drenched photos in the magazines. I've always enjoyed messing with people's minds.

(And this blog, if there are any Radisson managers reading, should really fucking mess with THEIR minds. Get your procedures sorted out. I know we're in France, but this is SICK!)

Back in the Radisson

Hit the hotel, after an eighteen hour day. Urgh. Was just about to order the creme brulee trio and had to stop myself. I mean, they do a cracking dessert at the Radisson, but the company here doesn't pick up EVERYTHING on the hotel tab, and spending E13 on a sweet treat is just obscene. The E12 chocolate fondant looks pretty good too... STOP!

Terminal boredom

Aaaaaaaaargh! Get to the airport at the crack of dawn, only to be told my flight's two hours delayed (according to the boards, which means in reality three hours plus.) A meeting in Paris I'd have had problem making this afternoon is now in serious doubt. I hate this.

"I think the people in Utsonomiya are very cold-hearted"

The concept of 'silly season' - when UK newspapers fill their pages with human interest stories known as 'dead donkey' or 'skateboarding parrot' stories, due the the absence of hard news in August - continues with this story from Japan. And this is despite this August being rather full of news: the housing market crash, Gordon Brown's downslide, the Olympics, the war in Georgia... but journalists are journalists, and there are so few of them today willing to tackle the 'hard' news that stuff like this - probably laid out straight off the Reuters wire - remains a big part of the average British newspaper.

Catching that London disease

You know that strange affliction that affects every employed person inside the M25? The one that causes every note and coin in your pocket, no matter how many of them you have, to decompose to dust before the end of the day? Well, I've got it. Heading for 'home'** last night I dropped by the late-night M&S, knowing the local supermarket would be shut by the time I reached NW6, and bought an 800g paella*** and a one-person-sized bottle of wine. This after refilling my Oyster, stopping for a coffee fix, and buying a ticket down south earlier. Total cost of the afternoon: £71.80. When you live in London, cash has a half-life of about ninety minutes.

** Sofa-surfing at a friend's.
*** I was hungry, OK?

Sorting out life, intense as uncut wasabi

Mission almost accomplished. This week I've part-sorted my next role, confirmed some other work that'd take about a day a week for some extra pocket money, and talked about a potential project in Paris that'd pay off a chunk of MBA debt. And I saw my new home.

In keeping with my year-long principle of 'letting go', not deliberately controlling my environment - in order to open myself up to more possibilities - I'm not going back to my own little chunk of the London property market next month. I'm going to take a step back, and share a vast house in south London with three friends. A sprawling space to kick back in, a few stops by train from central London, and a big room at the top of the house to crash. Brilliant.

Training back to Victoria after checking it out last night, the lights of the city ranged below me, I felt that same cocktail of sad-and-happy I've had before. This year at Warwick University really has been a great year: painful at times, but it's taught me much cut, with plenty of laughs. The rolling green campus, its iconic Modernist buildings of University House and the Business School that make my heart soar with architectural joy ... it's been a far greater year than I ever expected.

And I got it by kicking back. Not being in control. The last ten months my timetable's been set for me; that was the point. Handing the reins to someone else for a while had the converse effect of self-actualising me even further.

The quote that drove me to do an MBA - from 'Batman Begins', "You know how to fight six men. We can teach you to engage six hundred." - still holds. I could take on an army now. More interestingly, I could build one of my own.

I think I'll bunk off project work this afternoon and see 'The Dark Knight' in Leicester Square. It'd just fit somehow.

A great day to be Chinese

Here it comes...

It's 8 seconds past 8:08 am on the 8th of August '08!!!

Good luck for a great Olympics, China!!!

...means a lot of unemployed fishermen

Know that old chestnut about giving a man a fish and he'll eat today, but teach a man to fish and he'll eat forever? I've just thought of a third episode. Cook a fish near a man.... and he'll want to learn how to fish!

Barred from the US

The USA's new ESTA border system came into force today... and unusually for the web-savvy US government, the website is almost impossible to find. Google doesn't show it, there are no links on the information site. They really, really don't want anyone to visit the USA any more.

It's in keeping with the new world order led by Bush and former PM Blair: you're bad unless proven good, we suspect everyone, submit to endless checks so we can maintain control over you. Register on the web before you travel, just another little administrative hoop to jump through. All with the objective of making sure we never forget who exerts power over us.

There's just one problem: the system disallows passports with over ten years between issue and expiry. In other words, if (like me) you renewed a 10-year passport a few months before the old one expired, you are no longer able to travel to the USA.

Doubtless it'll be fixed, and I'm not planning any US travel, but this is just another illustration of how rigid and leeway-less the USA has become. (At least they're equal-opportunity discriminators; my pal down the corridor, a white girl from Wisconsin, got searched last time she visited home...)

Growing young disgracefully

"But I was so much older, then - I'm younger than that now." - Bob Dylan

Sometime in the last year, I discovered the secret of not getting old.

The secret is... don't get old!

It's no harder or simpler than that. Your body and mind are self-renewing tools. Down the decades they may need some patching up, but plot medical advances on a curve and life expectancy seems to be increasing about ten years every decade; already, the old have stopped dying. (The USA and Japan's fastest growing demographic: octogenerians.) The dream of immortality is within our grasp. But technology is immaterial: what matters to staying young is attitude. And at some point since January, I got myself a new one.

It wasn't forging a new identity; it was getting rid of an old one. Working for a living since my teens meant I'd always felt 'older', but when I hit campus I started reverting. I'd spent much of the previous ten years in jeans and T shirt dreaming up headlines; hardly an adult occupation, after all. I started thinking: maybe I'm young after all. And I think the process is now complete.

I just caught sight of myself in a window and the figure strolling in step with me was a young man. Tall, fresh, strong, relaxed, even with a perceptible stomach and squishy limbs after four months away from the gym. Somehow, against all the odds, I'm at peace.

It had nothing to do with body and everything to do with mind. I just stopped worrying about stuff and JUST DID IT. (I mean, joining a University skydiving club at 37?)

A couple of years back I made an effort to pursue a 'normal' life, worrying: where is the wife? The children? The car and the lawnmower? I was aging, weakening, not in body but in mind. Then this year came the apocalyptic realisation: that I really, really, don't want that.

I wasn't falling behind; I was ahead of the game. I like being alone, having my own space, doing my own thing. And for the next ten years - where I'll concentrate on making money - a 'normal' life would be an annoying distraction.

(Of course, since having that realisation I've had women buzzing around me as if I'm made of chocolate, but that's by the by. I'm much too young for a serious girlfriend.)

When I restart my physical fitness routine post grad, it'll be different. Aerobic and meditative exercises centred on other things, the heartbeat and breathing, going for poise and agility rather than strength and speed. I still plan an Ironman next year, but it'll be a side result of my training rather than a goal. With the right attitude, even an Ironman triathlon is easy. Fitness for events is one thing; fitness for life is another.

Before, I worried about losing what I had. Now as I reach the end of an expensive year, I have nothing at all... and it doesn't worry me in the slightest. No money? I'll make more. No home? I'll buy another one. No friends? I'll go out and make some more. Everything is easy now.

I used to worry about all that stuff... back when I was old.

Dreaming on a deserted campus

Blast.As the wind howls and the tumbleweeds drift around the hollowed-out shell of Warwick University, I thought I'd gathered enough material to write the definitive book on doing a top MBA course from the viewpoint of a slightly non-mainstream student, but it turns out Broughton at Harvard got there first.

HBS's Dean calls his book a 'betrayal'; actually it's anything but. It's a fond recollection of Harvard's two-year MBA, one of the best courses in the world. (Warwick languishes much further down the top 30, but both are in the absolute bleeding-edge chosen few, and the differences in course content and skills imparted at this level are minor.) What Broughton is guilty of is decrying the consensual groupthink common on MBA courses: that we're some kind of elite class born to rule. And that's what his complainants at HBS are really suffering from: the cardinal sin of taking themselves too seriously.

Of course, if you look at the people who really seem to run the world, you'd have to admit all the evidence is on Harvard's side. Countless global institutions, many democracies, and some of the richest businesses have HBS people heading them. The Illuminati indeed hold Harvard MBAs. Their mistakes lie in equating prestige with usefulness.

None of the institutions thick with Harvard MBAs (or indeed MBAs in general) is doing noticeably more good in the world than anywhere else. The World Bank is a valueless anachronism, and may be actively harmful to non-US nations; one Harvard MBA (George W Bush) has been responsible for the greatest downslide in US soft power in history; the G8 looks ever more like a private club desperate to retain outdated privileges; and a trillion-dollar hiccup in world finance was engineered by people who never looked up from their spreadsheets long enough to ask themselves, "Whoa! Just how, exactly, are two million unemployed people smoking dope in the Southern states going to sustain our pension fund's double-digit returns?"

It's a disease mercifully rare at practically-focussed, lore-less schools like Warwick, but I definitely saw it at Oxford, and I bet Yale suffers from it too. A top MBA is a brilliant thing to add to your CV: it gives you easy facility with numbers, a deep understanding of strategy, and creates understanding of how organisations work. But ultimately, the most valuable thing you get from doing all this stuff in such a little bubble - which won't be taught on any module - is to keep your sense of humour.

Let's face it, a lot of problems in the world don't need vast spreadsheets or complex strategies: they're simple if you just do the right thing. Ask the stupid questions, realise the answer to a lot of them is simple.

The entire African aid budget is insignificant compared to the good that could be done if .... European and American farmers just competed with Africans on the open market. (That's why I don't give to charity: it just perpetuates a wrong-headed view of the world. Africans don't need any help; they just need a level playing field.) The solution to Africa lies in basic economics, not a bunch of MBAs poring over financial models.

Similarly, the problems with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have always been obvious: an implicit (and now explicit) government guarantee reduced their costs of borrowing, so why exactly were they offering mortgage finance at market rates and trousering the difference? The reason involves an effective lobbying machine - and the results were reportedly $122bn of taxpayers' cash going into shareholders' pockets. Public subsidy of private profit, where the shareholders take the profits while the taxpayer soaks up risk. Ridiculous situation. And the solution was simple too, just hamstrung by organisationally behavioural phenomena centred on K Street.

Iraq's no different. Here we are, with Harvard MBAs fighting a soft problem (the Middle East's frustration over the West not taking it seriously enough) with hard firepower, souring relations with the region for centuries to come. (9/11, 3/11, and 7/7 were symptoms, not the disease.) Imagine what could have happened if the USA had invested the £300bn war costs in a network of technical schools and universities across the Islamic world: redirecting radicalism's energy into useful skills, building friendship and creating new consumer markets, neutering the Islamist (political) urge without detracting from the Islamic (way of life) one. A simple choice in tune with America's basic beliefs about itself, yet a far-reaching, non-military solution was never even given a thought.

MBAs are intelligent people. The 7000 or so people who graduate from the top 1% of business schools each year have natural talent, ingrained drive, and inculcated skills far beyond those of 99.9% of humanity. But what none of us should ever forget is that, often, the world - and what's needed to solve its problems - just isn't all that complex.

I am really fond of Samurai Sushi

This week's lunches have been enlivened by the discovery of Samurai Sushi near Holborn Tube. At first it looks like a regular takeout sushi joint: inside, you quickly learn it's today-fresh and hugely varied, with variants like sashimi beef and spicy allelles complementing the japanese staples. And they don't stint on the condiments, offering tubs of decent soy, wasabi, ginger and pickles to go along with your handpicked box. Great!

I've been to one of Tokyo's top sushi joints near the Roppongi Crossing, and I couldn't eat sushi in the Western hemisphere for a year afterwards; after Mr Tanaka's amazingly bundles everything else just seemed like cardboard. This little place is getting on for that quality: concentrating on freshness above all else, I doubt the turnaround of each shelf is more than an hour. A great little business with friendly staff and plenty of choice, and I wish them every success.