Fingernails are pretty, fingernails are good.

Grohl at the arena

Last night I saw the Foo Fighters at the O2 arena and as venues go it was as good as you can expect from any huge stadium gig, easy access in and out, mildly overpriced drinks and food but still a decent view even from the nosebleed seats we found ourselves in.

The Foos were, of course, great. I say ‘of course’ because having seen them 3 times in the last nine years every time I have they’ve been different, sounded excellent and entertained the crowd immensely. If you could buy stock in bands (hmm… would that be a new business model… since record labels are going the way of the dodo?) an investment in the Foos 12 years ago would have been worth it.

In an attempt to be overly analytical I think their gig success (other than obvious musical talent) comes from; Continue reading

“Of course there they’d just call it food”

The first thing to mention about any visit to China, or any conversation with a Chinese person is that there is a national obsession with food (thats from my personal experience, maybe all the Chinese people I met just happened to be foodies but I have a feeling its a common Chinese trait) . The Chinese aren’t unique in this as a nation but the sheer diversity, omnipresence and oddness (compared to our comparatively parochial western European food) make their love of food stand out.

Below are some things about food in China I am no longer ignorant about. Continue reading

Chinaland!

Those that know me have already been bored with me wittering on about how I loved my vacation in China a couple of months ago. They smiled politely as I spoke of the people I met, stared blankly as I talked about the language, ignored me as I regaled them on the architecture and violently punched me in the throat as I droned on about the economy.

But why just enthrall them, why not entertain the literally ones of people that read this blog too? I’m going to be posting, over the next couple of weeks entries on places and things I’d recommend in Shanghai and HangZhou, my experiences learning Mandarin over there and Mandarin House school in particular and a last entry about the overall impression I got from the people and the culture.

My Eyes, my EYES!

This is yet another non investment banking related post I know (really, I will post some more. Just as soon as I get time away from my investment banking related job….)

I’m always interested in how we work and in particular our brains. Another example of our brains trying to do something clever with the information they receive is this optical illusion :- http://www.johnsadowski.com/big_spanish_castle.php Continue reading

MMwaaahaaHaaaaa. or something.

I was quite upset to find out which super vilain I am most like. I’d have much rather been Dr. Doom or Doomsday. Oh well….

Your results:
You are Riddler Continue reading

Equities basics

Here is a list of equities related banking terms and an attempt at me explaining them. Ordered starting with the simplest of the simplest.  Oh, most of these definition depend on the context the word in question is used in.

Equity – In general it means the value of an asset after all the costs associated with it are subtracted.

In the equities context it means a stock or any other security meaning an ownership interest. Continue reading

ANT – usefully boring

Ant the industry standard build tool is used by nearly every java developer at some point.

One writes Ant targets in xml that are then executed to compile classes, copy files, sign jars, run unit tests… you name it there is probably an ant target that does it.

For some reason XML markup, catchy as it is, never sticks in my mind but here are snippets of ANT targets I use a lot …. Continue reading

First post!

This blog is somewhere for me to store the things I would otherwise forget. This includes technical geeky things, technical investment banking things… and I expect even more things that I can’t think of right now.

‘mnemonic’ as its an aide to my memory, ‘flotsam’ as it might cover the things that my brain chooses to throw overboard. maybe.

Its possible this blog might prove useful to others but I promise nothing just yet.