Christmas Fair

Sonnet volunteers for the annual school event and is surrounded by a crowd of kids doing their arts craft. The day before a group of mothers spent hours preparing for today's affair - we have dinner with two of the organisers last night. Interesting for us, the evening is entirely English. Normally these things are a mixture of countries drawn from our ex-pat community. Following four years, the PTA and kiddie play-dates, we are now (mostly) accepted as locals by the community. While our American attitudes are of course different, Sonnet and I appreciate the British sense of humour (subtle), organisation (superior), and reserve (famous). I observe that England's welcome to newbies is longer then, say the United States - the British are generally wary of foreigners or perhaps transients - and invitations of friendship more cautious than the American style of open hospitality and puppy-dog enthusiasms (their perception of us with some truth). Any case, the evening was enjoyable with champagne cocktails and cheer.

This photograph of Harry, Eitan, Billy and Oscar (hidden) on the spinning tea cup amusement ride.

Anto

"Uncle" Anthony has been a part of our house since we worked together at my Internet company eZoka.com during Web 1.0. Anto is from Australia, has an Italian passport, and lives in the cool part of Islington with three other lads. He splits between the nightlife and adulthood, and recently joined a software company for the entertainment industry and is proudly employee Number One in the UK. When with us, the kids have a run around and burn off some energy. On this particular occasion, Anthony bravely joins us for the school's Christmas Fair complete with Santa's Grotto, mold wine, and a thousand reved up mums including Sonnet who volunteer their afternoon to the holiday affair.

Xmas List

Eitan pastes his Christmas List above the fireplace. He has written the selection himself- see if you can match his words with his wants:

1. camr not toy
2. thunbrds
3. gardnign cit
4. sord and sheeld
5. pantign cit
6. u wokign santclos
7. bunch uv rings for magnomen
8. u wotargun
9.a cumputar
10. set uf ces

a. set of keys for the house
b. a computer
c. a water gun
d. bunch of rings for Madeleine
e. a walking Santa Claus
f. painting kit
g. sword and shield
h. gardening kit
i. Thunderbirds
j. camera (not a toy)

Answers: 1j, 2i, 3h, 4g, 5f, 6e, 7d, 8c, 9b, 10a

Postcard story

Grandma Silver sends Madeleine this post-card, and challenges her to turn the photo into a story. Here she goes:

It.... is.... the.... Eiffel Tower, and the windows are made of glass with snow on the top. And the blue thing coming down is an arrow dragon. The arrow dragon goes side-to-side on the windows and snow. The black things are cannon. The arrow dragon burrows down under the snow to find beatles to eat. If he's unlucky, the beatles will pinch him. The little lines on the 'X' are a cut in the building from the snow dragon. The other lines are for the snow dragon's house. The little black mark is the path the mommy dragon takes to work. The blue dragon knows his mommy because of those lines. The gap means that they are in danger from a grizzly bear. The bottom black line means the snow and the snowflake are friends.

Hot

This year 2006 is proving to be the hottest in England since record keeping began 350 years ago.

The summer saw near-record breaking temperatures that, while not surpassing 2004, were sustained over unusually long periods of time. Further, it has been the warmest extended summer period on record, according to the Met Office - and temperatures look likely to remain unseasonably high for the rest of autumn and early winter. Gardeners have seen their summer flowering plants lasting longer, late migrating birds are feeding up on bumper numbers of insects, and Mediterranean moths and butterflies are heading to Britain. According to Met Office figures, between May and September the average temperature was 16.2C. That is 2C warmer than in any year between 1961 and 1990. July was also the warmest month ever, September hit record temperatures, and now the first half of autumn has seen temperatures about 3C above average.

Kyoto, Mr. Bush?

Early days

Here's Eitan at less then three months. From the start he has been a happy personality and pleasure, including his big smiles which instantly bond him to us and, more pragmatically, to Sonnet's boob.

Last night we have dinner at the River Cafe in Hammersmith and one of London's finest. The restaurant, adored by foodies of all shapes and sizes, was opened by Chefs Rose Grey and Ruth Rogers, and has trained up many culinary stars most famously Jaimie Oliver. We join friends Dave and Tabitha Claydon for a four course Italian meal - the food is as simple and unpretentious as Italian should be, with great kicks of lemon, parmesan, tomato or chili. Tabitha and Sonnet became friends around babies in North London, and our paths nearly crossed at Columbia where Tabatha was a TA for Jimmy Rogers popular class on value-investing. Jimmy and Tabitha travelled together on a pair of BMW motorcycle, visiting 180 countries in their trek to establish a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records, which they did. Rogers wrote a book, "The Investment Biker," which can be found on most MBA book shelves, though I don't have one. Today, Tabitha and Dave have three children, a house in St John's Wood, and a country home in Bath where Sonnet and I have visited with the children on a number of warm occasions.

The Moon And The Sky

Madeleine and Eitan display their own interpretations of the world surrounding them. These paintings created yesterday, Sunday, during a rainy day inside. Madeleine's painture above presents the moon-lit sky with stars and street lamps on our block. She cuts off the corner edges for some reason. Eitan shows the night-time sun in the upper left corner, a smiling earth and the Milky Way on the bottom right. The blotches of blue-black and red are stars, and the wiggly lines and pointy dots gravity. These treasure now hanging in my offices.

Sunday Chatter Boxes

Madeleine, talking to (grandma) Gracie in California this evening, asks to speak to "the cat," also known as "Sweetie Pie," which she does for several moments then promises to draw the cat some pictures.

On our Sunday afternoon drive in Richmond Park we pass a buck mounting a doe. Madeleine pipes up from the back seat: "Look! The deer are hugging!"

Eitan, drawing quietly at the dining room table, starts: "Aw, man- I peed in my pants!"

Madeleine: "Daddy will you have square eyes forever?"
Me: "What are square eyes?"
Madeleine: "Square eyes are when your brain goes mush, you can't think properly, and you have to wear glasses."

Me (to kids arguing about some toy): "Stop fighting - we share everything in this household."
Eitan: "Well, you don't share your computer!"
Me: "That's because you don't know how to use it."
He, storming off, slamming door: "I do know how to use it. I use it at the library where I play catching-parcels!"

And it continues....

Eitan to Madeleine: "You don't know how to play the computer."
Madeleine, indignant: "I do to!"
Eitan, matter-of-factly: "No, you don't Madeleine."
She: "Yes- when you are at school, I played with Aggie's six times."

Madeleine at the table playing with her waffles: "Look mum, I've made a boat with people on it."

Eitan's favorite story: 'There is a bear in the woods having a poo. He is standing next to a rabbit. The bear says to the rabbit "does poo stick to your fur?" The rabbit says no, so the bear wipes his bottom with the rabbit.' This gets the usual guffaw, and especially effective when told at a dinner party to our older guests like last night's Thanksgiving. Another funny I have taught him is to break a rubber band, wrap each end around a finger, and pretend sneeze separating hands quickly so rubber looks like snot.

Wet

We endure a rain-soaked, and cold morning of football at Palewell common. What starts out as a lovely clear morning turns sour - and we are stuck on the pitch with little more than an umbrella and good cheer (mostly). Madeleine scores four goals - two actually legitimate - as her side triumphs in the pee-wee division. She is the largest kid in the group and, I'm proud to say, the most nimble on her feet though she can bludgeon the ball on occasion. Eitan is slippery, and has mastered the "tackle" - he slides onto his knee, other leg fully extended, and strips the ball from an attacker. As the kids play at different hours, Madeleine and her friend Wylfie entertain themselves by climbing a tree.

On the walk home: "Madeleine, what is one plus one?"
She:"Eight?"
"No."
"Nine?"
"No"
Ten?
No
Eleven
No
Twelve
No
Thirteen?
No, you're guessing.
Dad! you always ask me the hard ones!

Rana and Kambiz, Darya and baby Alexander, and Rana's mom Ann join us for a belated Thanksgiving dinner (it's Saturday). Sonnet and Rana prepare an 18 lb. turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, mashed potatoes, peas and of course pumpkin pie. We drink champagne and talk about the war, babies and the good 'ol U.S. of A. (Ann is visiting from Indiana, and in London until January). The only thing missing is eight hours of (American) football. Afterwards, Eitan and Madeleine stay up late watching Ice Age 2, a reward for helping me rake up the leaves in the back-yard.

Gomez

I return to London yesterday on the red-eye. After a quick nap (Madeleine I find staring at me at some point), I visit my office and organise myself and make a few semi-coherent Skype calls. Sonnet and I meet for dinner (she looks fabulous) and then see Gomez at the Hammersmith theatre in London. Gomez is a British band formed in 1996, who signed their first album with Virgin Records in 1997. In 1998 they won the Mercury Prize for 'Best Album', and have continued to produce interesting alternative rock ever since. They remind me of Pearl Jam. Eric Price introduced me to the group, and while not to everyone's taste including Sonnet (we leave after one hour) I like the sound. It's groovy.

Bring it on, make it right
Bring it on into the light
Pick me up satellite
If its wrong, make it right

I drop the kids off at school , and Madeleine and I practice our West Coast slang. I tell her to ask Aggie if her lunch today is "righteous" , or "totally gnarly." She tells me matter-of-factly that she does not want to be a surfer when she grows up. I ask why? and she says "because there are Tiger Sharks, and they will eat you." This is a fair point. Eitan chimes in that "Tiger sharks are the most dangerous shark there is, but only found in Hawaii."

Park Ave.

I see Mary for breakfast this morning at The Brasserie, just across Park Avenue from Park Avenue Plaza where I worked at First Boston as a Finanacial Analyst - my first job out of college. The Brasserie used to be open 24 hours, and always a good option when pulling an all-nighter for a next-day-pitch for some high-demand-client at who-knows-where. Mary is vibrant as usual, and on her way down-town to the NASDAQ, meeting a friend who is ringing the closing bell and is the CEO of the national food bank network called Second Harvest (Mary drops this in as we separate). Otherwise, she and her family are well and educated or educating on the Upper West Side, and her career marches forward at The Boston Consulting Group.

Letty, our former nanny and beloved by the kids and Madeleine especially, stays the night with us (she now lives in Norfolk). To their delight, Letty picks the children up from school, spends the afternoon with them at the park and elsewhere, then takes them to a special dinner at Pizza Express (their choice!). Madeleine and Eitan set up a military style sleeping camp in their room, and insist that Letty is there for the sleep-over.

NYC

This photograph taken in the middle of Park Avenue and 47th, at 2300. New York has changed since I lived here last in 1997. It is clean- I mean, really clean. I have yet to see graffiti of any sort, trash or even the occasional chewing gum wrapper on the sidewalk. There is always a manic vibe, and this time no different as the Christmas lights go up on Madison Avenue and the shoppers arrive for Thanksgiving weekend. Katie and I have a late lunch and coffee at the Rockefeller Cafe next to the ice rink. We are seated by a window and can watch people smack the ground. I arrived yesterday, and will see a few more friends tomorrow before returning to London for our own Thanksgiving, which we will host this year as in the past.

MoMA

Katie and I meet today at the MoMA in Midtown to spend some time with Pablo, Eugene Delacroix, Van Gaugh, Jackson Pollack, Seurat, Monet (of course) and other friends. My favorite is Picasso's 'boy leading a horse' which I remember seeing vividly for the first time in 1991.

Katie tells me that her favorite is the Joseph Cornell box with the doll and twigs, which she likes because it reminds her of Edward Gorey's children's (sort of) book, the Gashleycrumb alphabet (especially "N is for Neville who died of ennui").


We also visit photographers Jonathan Monk, Barbara Probst, Jules Spinatsch. Probst has an interesting approach of training four cameras on her at different angles and wired to take a picture at precisely the same moment. The result is disorienting and forces the viewer to consider how the environment forces Probst's reflection.

Tonight Katie and I have dinner in the Village with long ago First Boston colleague and friend J. Kelly Flynn and his fiancee of three weeks Christine, Tim Larrison and his girlfriend Kitty (whose father has published a book on his experience of the Holocaust in Poland), Jim Ledbetter and his friend Anne, who I learn is the Senior Editor for the New York Times Book Review, and a bunch of Kelly's friends including Mike who generously provide us with wine from his collection covering many vintage years and locations. Well done.

LA Coleseum

This is the L.A. Coliseum where the Bears got trounced yesterday by USC 23-9. The first half looked promising for us and we went into the half-time break leading 9-6. It all went pear shaped however, when Cal was outdone by superior size and bad reffing. Adding to the injury were the loud-mouthed 'SC fans who didn't let up throughout. On the positive side, I stayed with Berkeley friends Christian Wright and Mike Schrag at The Roosevelt hotel in Hollywood (as a side bar, Burt Reynolds was there and I overheard two teenagers: "who is Burt Reynolds?" Have I become so ancient, I wonder?) while Matty and Daniel Price join us for the tail-gating and game. Christian and I nurse our spirits and hang-overs with an upward run into the Hollywood hills on Runyun Canyon trail, which eventually presents us with a spectacular panorama of Los Angeles to the Pacific Ocean. The temperature presses against 90 degrees and it is easy to understand why, despite it all, people love this place.

Sloan

Thursday I have dinner and spend the night with the Rob and Sloan Klein family in Mill Valley. Sloan founded Sextant Search three years ago, informing me casually that she was going to start a business as we swam across Lake Alpine in the Sierras. Today, Sextant is one of the leading executive placement and advisories to private equity and finance companies in the United States, and many of Sloan's clients are the most recognisable in their particular expertise. After founding her company with several partners, and reaching a point where the business is now stable and profitable, Sloan has stepped back to find professional balance and focus her spirit on her two children Sophie and Jaimes. She still keeps a client or two, but now her time is spent where it counts, and it shows during my visit.

CW 'SC

Here I am at the Cal-USC football game (thank you Christian Wright). Otherwise, the hype this weekend is about the #1 Ohio State v. #2 Michigan in Columbus, Ohio. The two teams are both undefeated, only the third time they have met unblemmished in their 103 rivalry and first time both ranked so highly. The winner will take the Big Ten title, and go on to the BCS championship bowl for a shot at the national title. If not for Cal's maddening defeat by Arizona last weekend, our game in L.A. would have enjoyed similar attention.

I meet with the fellow who is opening investor Fondinvest's US offices. Fondinvest manages money for CDC and the French postal service and so an important private equity player. At a cool bar, we converse in french receiving quite a few bemused glances. This makes me feel pretty good. Pardieu!

Traffico

At 0630 this morning I drive across the Bay Bridge to avoid rush-hour traffic (I don't) and am welcomed by an orange and pink sunrise pointed by the Campanile on the UC Berkeley campus with the North Berkeley seismic hills in the background.

I admit that it feels a bit like 1999 all over again, and I am happy to see companies like Squidoo, Bebo and Moblabber get funded. As one entrepreneur says to the Times: "We lose money on every transaction, but we'll make it up in volume."

AOL announces a new business mode: 100% free! America, unlike Britain, is a can-do country and California is the heart. Why Silicon Valley exists must date back to the earliest 49ers, when people crossed the country at their peril to find gold and re-create themselves. This continues onward today, and Californians are special in their spiritual outlook.

Where else can blowing millions of dollars of venture funding be viewed as part of the learning experience? Those who do overcome the J-curve want the rush again - retirement is not an option for those under the age of, well, never. Along with Industry Ventures and Walden Venture Capital, I will meet the founders of PayPal tomorrow.

These guys made their money when they sold to Ebay in 2002, and now they have launched new companies Friendster, LinkedIn, Slide, Facebook and others.

Maples

Another photograph from last weekend, this shot taken in Green Park at the Canadian Memorial.

Today I arrive in California to spend the night in my old bedroom in Berkeley. Tomorrow I will be with our fund Industry Ventures in San Francisco, then the Cal-USC football game on Saturday in Los Angeles. The Bears loss to Arizona last weekend dropped a sure top-5 ranking and a shot at the championship bowl series in January. Still, if we defeat the Trojans, now ranked third in the country, we will go to the Rose Bowl for the first time since 1959.

While driving from the airport this afternoon, I listen to Henry Waxman on NPR. Waxmen will soon chair the House Government Reform Committee and drew a funny reminder that the Republicans investigated Clinton for sending Christmas cards, and failed to look into Iraqi contracts, wire tapping, the war.... Ah, it's good to be in the Bay Area!

Breakfast at Tiffany's

This photo of Catherine taken on the morning of her wedding to Peter Shiao, July 22, 2006 at the Ritz Pasadena. Sonnet, the Maid of Honour, is in the background (probably calling me to make sure the kids are ok). This photograph taken by Scott Lightner.

Lions

I ask Madeleine, sitting next to me now, what she was thinking about when I took this photo. She: "I was thinking about a baby lion when the hunters killed the baby lion (Madeleine makes a growling face). The baby lion then stood up on her hind legs. Then the hunters killed her again. The hunters killed the lion because they didn't have anything to eat, and that was not a way to respect the baby lion. The owner of the baby lion and the woods was angry at the hunter. The next morning, brown smoke cleared up the air. A horse came by and saw the meat . He ate the meat. And then he ran away because the hunters came. He was shot because the horse bent down. the owner thought she was dead, so the owner put him in prison. Then a man from a station came, with a crocodile. And a phone. He said to the hunter: 'are you dragging him away to jail? You will not be a hunter if you go to jail.' "