Just Any Old Saturday Morning

Saturday morning. In the background there is packing in anticipation of our 1 September completion date. Our small home littered with big brown boxes stuffed with books and God knows what as Sonnet organises. Madeleine assists and proves herself a thorough, anal and useful packer - go figure. Eitan kicks his football inside tap, tap, tap. Also going on Sonnet's trip to Santa Fe, New Mex, which begins in an hour as she to be picked up then for the airport. So she busies herself with clothes, hair dryer and other travel indispensables. I listen to the Kooks - "See The Sun" right now - which adds some noise while Eitan reviews Barcelona v. Manchester United whose June UEFA Championship replayed on the tele. Madeleine stumbles down the stairs blinkered, holding Doggie and asks for breakfast after getting a squeeze from us. When I suggest a museum today she jerks awake: "No way, dad!" Madeleine pulls up to the table, back hunched and looking out the window while awaiting her food which arrives on a plate: buns with butter and home made plum jam. Yum. Adding to the mix, Aggie arrives in 20 minutes to watch the Shakespeares as I go to yoga. All this and not 9AM.

I ask Madeleine if she would like to comment for this blog and posterity. She: "I am eating breakfast. And I want a dog."

Teeth

So what are we to make of this posting, taken in Wolverhampton on our way from dinner? Sonnet notes aghast: "that is the British attitude towards dental care." The English, we know for sure, have rotten teeth since the NHS does not provide body-to-mouth coverage (only body -to-body). If your mouth rots - so what? I have been in meetings where the fella's Hermes tie £120 and his academic credentials impeccable yet his teeth, like, falling out. And the same for women - one gal who once worked for me had breath so bad I had to tell her rather than suffer the consequences. Now that was one uncomfortable conversation. So I think British teeth are not bad, but irregular - at least by American standards. American middle class children are normally tormented with cosmetic dentistry, including yours truly, to make them look like Stepford wives or a Top Gun - remember Tom Cruise's gams? Any dental individuality regarded as strange in the US'A. An American grade-school friend whose parents resisted this fashion was bullied in at our school for her "bad" teeth, although she does not have a filling in her head at the age of 42 (at least as far as I know). Politicians spend thousands perfecting their pearly whites and like a good pair of Italian shoes, one's boulders suggest the character of the man. Like your watch - not a Patek Phillipe? You're a loser. I stopped wearing a watch becoming tired of dickheads judging me from it. One's teeth are more personal than a watch and should be cherished - yet brushed - no matter how they angle. Eitan will probably have braces but really - so what? He (and Madeleine) are just perfect the way they are.

"Americans may have no identity, but they do have wonderful teeth. "
--Jean Baudrillard

Wolverhampton

So let me see: this week visits five European cities and today .. Wolverhampton which is where the West Midlands pension reserve plan located. To be honest, I am dragging by this morning following a long week and it takes a strong cup of coffee not to be irritated by anything that moves including the good guys across the table who may commit millions of dollars to my client fund. But I warm up following an unusually early start of 8AM and once in stride, I feel the love. Many of the guys I visit are fellows I have known for five years or more in a professional and social context. A nice thing about my job that I select the people I want to be with, or introduce to my investment opportunities. The assholes - and there are plenty - get weeded out. Good bye to them. Today it is Jas, who I recently saw at the French AGM. Jas a Sikh and a bad ass. He is proud of his heritage and while he does not have long hair nor beard, I believe his association gives him confidence and substance. Sikhs, whose historic home the Punjab region, form a small minority in the UK (336,179 people at the time of the 2001 Census) yet play a disproportionate role in the the country's psyche. They were elite soldiers in World War II and anybody who has read Ondaatje's "The English Patient" will recall the Sihks dis-assembling bombs .. they were the body guards of Ghandi. Snapping back to the now: our meeting fine and who knows if we will get the pension's millions but we give our best and have a fair hearing from the decision makers. This really all one can ask for.

Sihk's core philosphy: "There is one supreme eternal reality; the truth; immanent in all things; creator of all things; immanent in creation. Without fear and without hatred; not subject to time; beyond birth and death; self-revealing. Known by the Guru’s grace."

Grand Place

Eitan: "Is that the Chrysler Building?"

Because no European road trip can be without a majestic cathedral, here is the the gothic town hall which I snap with my phone camera. The edifice constructed between 1402 and 1455 whose top, at 97 meters, stands St. Michael or the patron of Brussels. David, who I am with this week as he raises capital for his Correlation Ventures, and I have dinner underneath and marvel at the Grand Place, which is surrounded by the pictured pyramid, guild houses, and the Bread House where people used to get .. bread. The square attracts tourists and young people, who sit in its middle and french kiss or smoke cigarettes. They suffer no care in the world nor should they - this is their time. It is a perfect evening with temps around 72-degrees and ideal for being outside and drinking beer and David and I make a pretty good job of it. He's an interesting fellow from Houston whose politics are Republican-flexible and a fiscal conservative. This gives us ample room to throw arguements at each other regarding the country's leadership, health care, the Iraq War, Bush and his incompetency, the state of the Union and so on and so forth. It is spirited and never crosses The Line - despite alcohol, which presents a combustible combination oh boy. In the end, David a moderate and while I would like to consider myself same, I lean left. No doubt. But however I lean, dear reader, I am 100% right.

Eitan: "When I grow up I am going to be a footballer, a swimmer and a paleontoligst."

Madeleine: "Go away. I am playing with my legos."

Terrorist

This the iconic photo of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi who was convicted in 2001 by Scottish judges of 270 counts of murder for his part in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie Scotland in December, 1988. Today, the Scottish Government set him free, returning him to Libya on compassionate grounds for his chronic cancer, which gives him less than three months to live. I listen to the decision on Radio 4 driving to Wolverhampton. Says Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Justice Kenny MacAskill : "Mr Al-Megrahi did not show his victims any comfort or compassion. They were not allowed to return to the bosom of their families to see out their lives, let alone their dying days. No compassion was shown by him to them. But, that alone is not a reason for us to deny compassion to him and his family in his final days." Apparently MacAksill made up his mind yesterday. Al-Megrahi receives a hero's welcome in Tripoli and greeted by Khadafi and cheering - cheering! - in the street. This outrageous. American college students died in the crash. Families destroyed. The murdered cannot re-unite with their families. Why should Al-Megrahi receive such grace? It just makes no sense.

Or does it? The timing of Al-Megrahi occurs the day before Ramadan to begin AND the 40th anniversary of Khadafi, who assumed power on 1 September, 1969. No coincidence here I must assume. Likely there was a horse trade and let us hope that government, some government has saved lives somehow. My guess that Khadafi gave up information on his personal terrorist network in return for Al-Megrahi. Or maybe it is an oil trade - they've got it and we need it+our companies can expoit it. Watching Libyans honk their horns, wave their flags and fire their guns only makes me feel .. hate.

W'Loo

Update: My mobile-phone photo the the top of the 226 stair knoll (I counted) on the site of the battle, and the famous La Butte du Lion. Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington said of it "They have spoiled my Battlefield." But it offers a panoramic view and puts one in the mind of past actions.

I am in Waterloo this morning and ask a receptionist for advise on things to see before the airport. She advises the battlefield and I thank her for her good idea, which is kind of like being told to see the Golden Gate Bridge when in San Francisco. Or Big Ben in London. So there we go to the or about eight miles Southeast of Brussels .

Waterloo marks to the defeat of Napoleon to the Seventh Coalition, including an Anglo-Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington and a Prussian Army under Gebhard von Blucher. It was a decisive ass kicking and ended Napoleon's rule as the French emperor, and the end of his Hundred Days post exile. I was reading about this only last week in Patrick O'Brien's 19th book of his Master and Commander series (Captain Jack ecstatic that Napoleon returns giving him his raison d'etre, even if only for a short while).

Upon Napoleon's return to power in 1815, many states that had opposed him formed the Seventh Coalition and began to mobilise armies. Two large forces under Wellington and von Blücher assembled close to the northeastern border of France. Napoleon chose to attack in the hope of destroying them before they could join in a coordinated invasion of France with other members of the Coalition. And so: Waterloo. According to Wellington, the battle was "the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life."

Napoleon delayed giving battle until noon to allow the ground to dry. Wellington's army, positioned across the Brussels road on the Mont St Jean escarpment, withstood repeated attacks by the French, until, in the evening, the Prussians arrived in force and broke through Napoleon's right flank. At that moment, Wellington's Anglo-allied army counter-attacked and drove the French army in disorder from the field. Pursuing Coalition forces entered France and restored Louis XVIII to the French throne. Napoleon abdicated, surrendered to the British, and was exiled to Saint Helena, where he died in 1821.

"All I want to know is where I am going to die so I will never go there."

--Warren Buffet

Greetings From Wherever

Well, here I am, looking at the Brussels skyline and watching the Love Boat. In French. This is the one where Captain Stubing's neice turns 18 and wants to lose her viriginity to Doc. Doc, ever the Gentleman, avoids temptation and tells her "the first time a grave moment" (serious=grave en francais but I think somehow the more correct - and ridiculous - tone the show chases). She tells Doc she is scared and he replies "when you are not scared, you know you are truly in love." She, eyes tearing and looking up to her commander: "You are a true instructor" then they together with the Captain, Julie, Isaac and Gopher who sing her "happy birthday." Wonderful stuff. Viewing Love Boat for the first time in like 20 years, the "props" stand out: there is the mustachiod guy leaning onto a wall talking to a broad while holding something on the rocks. The hairy-chested dude in tight trunks chats up Barbie nestled on the pool ridge. And the bottoms - the beautiful bottoms everywhere - whose wiggle serves the perfect seguay between scenes. Genius. And there is the Captain, pictured - what is up with his shorts and black bow-tie? It's not quite captainly, I might suggest. Still, black Isaac serves up the cockatails with a sprig of jive, Gopher adds the comic relief and Julie .. well, Julie's longing for the shore and her true love makes every voyage a veritable romance. In short, the perfect Saturday night team, who I often joined in the late 1970s pre-car and pre-dating. With Fantasy Island following, the perfect double-header. They just don't make TV like this anymore.

So I am in Brussels and this morning Bad Homborg and before that Amsterdam. Yes, I am on the hot trail of investor dollars. I share the ride with fund manager David who is going for the Big Bucks to invest in his quant driven strategy. David has spent considerable resources and time assembling the largest venture data set I or anybody has seen before - according to Dow Jones, 98% of all venture financings encapsulated. Using multiple regressions, he "scores" investments and increases odds on betting the winners. So far, my friends intrigued and the next step their commitments. Our week BTW off to a traumatic start as we miss our outward flight thanks to Heathrow where I cannot find the pre-paid parking bay. Don't ask. Analysing our late-night options, we drive to Luton Airport for our morning connection, requiring a 4AM wake-up call for a 6AM flight and 9AM arrival in another city in another country. We make it with five minutes to spare, our meeting never the wiser.

"You know how they got the name Merrill Stubing? I said "why did you pick a name like Merrill Stubing?" He said, "I'm a baseball fan, and there was a great ballplayer named Merrill Stubing that nobody's ever heard of from many, many years ago.""
--Gavin Macleod (aka Captain Merrill Stubing)

9.58

Usain Bolt - wow. We sit around the television, kids up well past their Sunday bedtime, to watch the show. Following his Olympics, Bolt now the 100-meters World Champion also besting the World Record by .9 seconds. Tyson Grey runs the second fastest race in history in 9.71 yet loses by two meters for silver. 20 years ago, Maurice Greene ran 9.79 and 20 years before that Jim Hines went 9.95 which took 15 years to break. Bolt is a wonderful hero for Jamaica and every young kid in sports. He clowns, he goofs. He has fun. This very different from the mind-games and intimidations racers usually pursue at this level. Not surprisingly, Bolt draws the crowds and tonight's Berline Olympic stadium filled despite tomorrow's work day. I have come off athletics following Marion Jones who duped me into believing her magic which later turned out to be doped. My interest returns now that we have a bona fide hero whose WR may be one for the ages, or at least until he gets serious about breaking it next. Bolt is 22.

Photo from Guardian.

"When I was young, I didn’t really think about anything other than sports"
--Usain Bolt

"I just saw something I thought I would never be able to see. I am in awe, like everybody else out here."
--Maurice Greene, from the track

Bournemouth-On-Chanel

Sonnet takes the kids to Bournemouth for a British seaside week end and I do some running recovery following months of pounding. We haven't had a holiday in August, this very dead month, as our focus on buying a house. Needless to say, the Shakespeares bored silly as we ever were in our grade school summers. How our parents survived three months back then beyond me. Well done, Moe and Grace. Any ways, Bournemouth located in Dorsett or about 2-3 hours drive Southwest from London. Think Santa Cruz without the Boardwalk. Or Capatola. It is kind of awful, in my opinion, retaining a 1950s flava when the Brits used to vacation in their own country. There is a cheesy peer (pictured), many Chanel-facing hotels with thick carpets and non-cabled television. Yes, four terrestrial stations to choose from - did we once suffer this? Each hotel with a bar where large crowds booze it up and of course the morning buffet with its full English breakfast. For champions. Ah, England in all her glory. Still, on a sunny day the beaches with warm white sand and the Isle of White visible at a distance, and beyond that France. This is cool. The kids could care less about the quality of their surroundings - their ambition water time, TV and sausages which they receive with love and abundance.

And check this out: In a 2007 survey by First Direct Bank, Bournemouth the happiest place in Britain with 82% of people questioned saying they were happy with their life. So who am I to be so snotty?

Photo from the Bournemouth tourist association.

Update: Sonnet home with kids, who are happy with their week-end having won two stuffed "buddies." Eitan confirms that he has the Full English+Coco Sugar Pops, which he sprinkles with sugar "though mom didn't know." I'll bet.

Golden Guy

Roger at Spring Woods High School, Houston, probably 1984 (isn't facebook grand)? I met Roger the next year at Brown - I think he was like the second or third face I saw since he was my Residential Counselor in Poland House in the Keeny Quad. His lovely crown already falling away, poor kid, but it certainly did not prevent him from being a popular fellow on Brown's campus. Roger always a serious guy and concentrating in Computer Sciences and Engineering consistent with his nature - because just engineering not enough. He and I slugged it out in the library the first several years of college as I attempted my own silly double: Neural physiology and pre-med. Unlike Roger, I came to my senses and gave up the 13th floor of the Sciences Library (known as "Sci Li") where the serious academic dudes hung out, studying or not. That was not the life for me. After college, we have come together then apart and together: we shared a flat near Central Park on the Upper West Side when he back from the Peace Corp and working for Morgan Stanley while I at First Boston; he then cut tail for San Francisco and when I returned to Berkeley several years later we were the Bay Bridge apart. He was the Best Man at my wedding during that beautiful time. Now Roger is in Seattle and I am here. We connect by phone or Internets but unfortunately WA not an easy visit. One day I promise him we will live by the beach somewhere with Eric and whoever wants to join us, scratching our backs with a long stick and being the good life.

Roger, at "the triangle" in San Francisco and one of the few times I have seen him drunk, running amok trailing a stolen hose: "I'm a rat! I'm a rat!"

Random Walk

After seeing Dana et al last Saturday in Primrose Hill, we stop by our old stomping grounds for a drink at the Warrington Hotel, which is a hotel in name only. Built in 1859 and refurbished in 1999, it was once a hotel in the late 1800's and rumoured to be a brothel, which must have worried the Church of England, who were its owners at the time. Pardieu. Gordon Ramsey bought the place several years ago and now has a restaurant on the second floor above the bar area (it used to be a Thai restaurant). The downstairs way cool and adorned with original features like marble pillars, ornately carved and turned in dark wood. Art Nouveau friezes - naked women! - embellish the horseshoe shaped bar, with its stained glass, tulip-shaped lamps and an illuminated alcove. The large marble fireplace remains untouched from another era. A thick oak divider, once separating the main room from side areas when the sexes parted for their tipple, remains in place, if ignored. Superb.

A half block from the Warrington our flat on Lauderdale Mansions (pictured), a tree lined block that makes me think of London from the '40s. Red brownstones, working women with fake hose and German planes flying overhead and the V2 rocket but everybody getting on with it - stiff upper lip, and all that. It's my little fantasy so why not? This Eitan and Madeleine's first home, and it seems like yesterday I was bringing each home thinking: "what next?" The building overlooks the second largest private garden in London and our bedroom faced a grassy field and treeline, blocking out other buildings - and yet ten minutes to Oxford Street on the No. 9 "route-master," an iconic double-decker red bus replaced some five years in Livington's attempt to modernise this great city. Sir Alec Guinness lived in the mansion and Alan Turing around the corner. Two NHS doctors upstairs partied like it was 1999 and neighbor Martin, a taxi driver tough in black leather jacket, bangs on the door to see if I am interested in "putting out the racket." I quietly passed. Those were mixed times from tech boom to bust then recreation but happily life moves forward and from that epoque I have Sonnet and family, some true friends and two healthy Shakespeares. What more could one ask for ever in life?

Lauderdale Road Synagogue

The synagogue, pictured, in Maida Vale where we lived before moving to Richmond, blends into the neighborhood with similar red brickstone. This particular synagogue a place of worship for the Spanish and Portguguese Jews' Congregation of London, which traces its origins to a famous petition presented to Oliver Cromwell in 1656 by Rabbi Menasseh Ben Israel, from Holland, and six of the 'secret Jews' (Marranos) living in London. Cromwell enabled Jews to live and worship openly in England for the firs time since the expulsion in 1290. The first synagogue established in a rented house in Creechurch Lane in the City and leased land in Mile End, Stepney, for a burial ground. The Congregation grew steadily and eventually built a large new synagogue in 1701 - the beautiful Bevis Marks Synagogue also in the City, which remains in regular use today. Increasing migration of members of the Congregation from the East End to the west and north-west of London led to the establishment of a branch congregation, at first in Wigmore Street, Cavendish Square in 1853, from 1861 in a purpose-built synagogue in Lauderdale Road or pictured.

Spanish and Portguese Jews are otherwise a distinctive sub-group of Sephardim who have their main ethnic origins within the crypto-Jewish communities of the Iberian peninsula and who shaped communities mainly in Western Europe and the Americas from the late 16th century on.

Me: "Are you going to get a hair cut?"
Eitan: "Why would I do that?"
Me: "Well, how about if we at least wash it this month?"
Eitan: "Madeleine actually saw a lady bird in my hair yesterday."
Me:

Longfellow

Pictured, my 6th grade room sent to me by classmate Julia via Facebook. I am in yellow and red. Incredible to think of us all together for this brief moment in time. Like being on an airplane - a population never to be re-assembled. Our teacher was the wonderful Mrs. Riles who I went to visit some fifteen years ago but alas she was gone. Probably long gone. Check out the number of black kids. In sixth grade, these were my best friends and it did not matter black, yellow, pink or white. We were all the same little dudes, playing stink-ball or daring each other to hyper-ventilate via strangulation. Yes, we did this. By Junior High for some unexplained reason we went to our separate corners of the school ground and rarely mixed. We also got clickee stratifying by socio-economic background but who and how could judge? Why so suddenly this self-awareness? It remains a mystery.

A main reason my parents, post Peace Corps, chose Berkeley was the public school system - the Berkeley Unified School District crossed neighborhoods and bussed us kids to class creating an inter-racial environment. There was also a vague connection to UC Berkeley and in the later years those competent students could take classes at Cal. Katie, I do believe, did so when she maxed out on all her advanced placement coursework (yours, truly, had no idea what an AP class was). Berkeley was a grand experiment and attracted the East Bay's upper income liberals who wanted more for their children then the class and race generic privates. Ok, rich and white. There, I said it. Most of my peers ended up on the East Coast at private institutions, many in the Ivy League or Amherst and Wesleyan and the like. I was once told by an Admissions Officer that the elite schools liked Berkeley kids, who "are unusual and add diversity" which I think coding for what? Being a hippie? Ethnically diverse?

So today I have many dear friendships from my youth forged from Switzerland, sports or school. Of the later, most gelled in seventh grade and many are from the North Berkeley hills or Claremont area (code: upper income). Many are not. Yet however I cut the deck, my circle now nothing like the Longfellow school photo where my best pals were James "Jabber" Wilson, Eric Robinson, Tanya, Mitchelle, Laural Carter and George Banks (voted "cutest couple"), Awad and Laurence ("class clown"). All black and all gone. I feel this loss, a very big loss indeed.

Burnt

Sonnet forgets the kids sun lotion and Madeleine returns from soccer camp with a red face. I admonish the children to wear sun block - it is not our job to ensure the little rats lathered up - and we have like three tubes at the door including an aerosol spray. Madeleine has fair skin and freckles so she needs to be extra cautious while Eitan has olive skin that seems to get more Mediterranean every summer day, lucky boy. This on my mind since Cancer Research UK reports that sunbeds, which mimic the sun's UV, damage skin cell DNA and can cause skin cancer. Sunbeds are estimated kill 100 bathers from melanoma every year in the UK with many thousands of cases. In fact, Ministers are preparing to clamp down on the cosmetic tanning industry indicating sunbeds belong in the same category of carcinogenic risk as tobacco smoke. Bummer, dude.

When I was a youngster, Coppertone set the benchmark - remember that cute lttle girl getting her white ass exposed by the mischievous puppy? Paedophiles were loving that era. Be scared. Be scared. Coppertone offered sunblock grades from one to three to seven .. now there's protection. Kinda like using using a condom from the the 1970s. Back then, we all got sun burnt on purpose and then it faded or peeled into the perfect, beautiful summer tan just right with a white La Coste and Sperry canvas topsiders. When I was in college I even used cooking oil, you know - for cooking - then fried it up in our back-yard. Every college kid on the East Coast had to return bronzed especially if you were lucky enough to be from California. The mythology and all that. While strangely I spent every summer in Providence, RI, I did go home for a couple of weeks or so before the fall semester and boy did I lap up the sunshine and pssst sometimes a tanning bed. It would have gone against the image to do anything otherwise.

I show Eitan and Madeleine ghastly images of skin caner sourced from Google. I tell them it is a horrible way to die. Photo from the WWW.

Sigh

Sarah jumping into something she knows nothing about, again. This time it is the Obama health care plan and she blogs: "death panel"for the sick or elderly or whomever. Sadly, many dip-shits seem to believe her, just as these same citizens believe that Obama does not have a birth-certificate, a rumour that the Conservatives just kick around and around though it discredits their Republican party. It is not like anything new - remember those unpatriotic pricks Swift Boat Veterans For Truth? What worries me is the President - if a substantial minority of citizens - mostly BTW in the South - feel their elected leader not American, what does this say for his security? Dr George Tiller murdered last month by a nut job pumped full of Bill O'Reilly, who surely has blood on his hands ("Dr Killer" he called Tiller; words count Mr. O'Reilly). But, really, I get away from the main point of this blog. Sarah Palin is hot! Here she is, courtesy of Runner's World, look'n like a babe! Check out the lovely curves, shiny flesh, her fecundity. Of course we want to hear her, talk about her, blog her, and twitter her. Billy Crystal no dummy - we are absorbed with Sarah Palin and who cares what the else? We get what we deserve, after all.

"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”
--Sarah Palin, posted on her blog

Marbreds

The bottle above is the amount of carcinogenic liquid one-pack-a-day smokers put into their lungs in a year’s time. I am sorry but this is fucking gross. Data collected using a smoke-simulator mimicking a typical smokers puffing patterns (source: Joel Spitzer, 2001). If a diluted form of this tar swabbed onto the skin of mice, 60% of the mice develop cancer of the skin inside one year. The good news is that smoking steadily declines in Britain; the bad news that the 20-24 age-group most active puffers at 32% their population (vs. overall 27%) (source: Cancer Research UK)

There are socio-economic differences too, not surprisingly - Manual workers start to smoke at an earlier age, with 48% of men and 40% of women in routine and manual occupations regularly smoking by 16 compared with 33% of men and 28% of women in managerial and professional occupations. Unlike yesteryear, smokers cannot pretend uneducated and every packet in the UK carries: "SMOKING KILLS" in caps. So why do we do it?

Well, if I recall from my yuf, smoking the only drug that serves as a relaxant or a stimulant depending on one's mood. It goes great with reading or late night studying when concentration required. Marbreds are cool and express one's uniqueness or contempt. It also the perfect mini-break and takes awkwardness from a conversation given its fixed timing. Now, that all gone and I do feel sorry for the poor slobs who huddle outside their building when it's raining or worse taking hits from their dirty, deathly habit. But at least they can choose to do so - this no place for Big Brother.

"The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide."
-- Kurt Vonnegut

High Speed

Europe has close to 3,000 miles of high-speed rail, or track that can take trains >150 mph. The UK has .. 68, or the distance the Eurostar (pictured) travels from St Pancras to the English Channel. It took us forever to get there too. And way more expensive then the French side- WTF? And the U.S, with its big cities, vast open spaces and leading technology? Amtrak says high speed but it is really "high speed." The Acela Express service from Boston to Washington D.C. via NY, Philadelphia and Baltimore offers an average speed of 68 mph. And if you think that sucks, non "high-speed" New York City to Chicago choo choo's at 34 mph. For Pet's sake, this is slower than a Model T which made its debut 100 years ago.

Contrast America to France's TGV which hits service speeds of 173 mph and hast tested 357 mph or the world's fastest. Japan has its famous Shinkansen network carrying "bullet" trains up to 275mph and moving >151 million people to-and-fro every year, according to expert Chris Hood in London. Even Turkey is building high-speed rail lines aiming to double track speed to 184 mph within five years. So why not America? Or worse, the Brits who invented the steam engine in 1698 when it was patented by Thomas Savory.. and then later England's steam engines made the 18th century's Industrial Revolution possible.

Our countries no doubt scheming to put in new lines if only because the World embarrassing us (China: 3,370 miles). To make it so, there must be political will and public capital - infrastructure projects notorious losers for early private investors, as the Eurotunnel aptly demonstrated. England still recovering from under-investment from Thatcher and today's recession/ debt while the U.S. competes with planes and SUVs. Still, given trains provide a cheap, clean source of transportation and the continuing concentration of our populations, there is hope.

Eurostar photo from Eurostar.

Premiere

Today the Premiere League starts all over again following an eleven-week break. Seems like just yesterday that I was leading Eitan from the Red Lion bar in The Village following Barcelona's 2-nil drubbing of Manchester United in the Champions League final. The dear boy was in tears. Inconsolable, really.

So this evening Newcastle takes on West Brom - both teams relegated last year to the Champions League. Despite this, the West Brom stadium without seat spared in their old-style stadium. Oh, it actually is old. The Premiere Leagues 20 teams each play 38 games from now until May, culminating in a winner based on one-loss or, if tie, goals. And here is more: the PL formed in 1992 following the break-away of the Football League First Division from The Football League, which was founded in 1888. This done for a lucrative television rights deal. Musta been nasty.

The Premier League has become the world's most watched sporting league, according to The Observer. Not surprisingly, then, it is also the world's most money league, with club annual revenues of £1.93 billion in 2007–08 (source: BBC). 43 teams have competed in the PL with relegations and promotions yet only four have one the thing: Chelsea, Blackborn Rovers, Arsenal and our lads Manchester United who own last year's trophy.

New season, Eitan apoplectic.

Primrose Hill

Dana and Nathan have a lovely home with five floors of living space. Primrose Hill has always been a cool spot of London next to Regent's Park and Primrose Hill, which I used to run from Maida Vale. There is limited traffic due to a rail on one side and the parks allowing a bustling high street to develop with excellent restaurants and pubs, a book shop and Italian icery. An upscale grocery store perfect for picnics or whatever while people-watching most flavorful. There are plenty of celebs, too: David Miliband (Secretary of State), Gwen Stefani, Jude Law, Sadie Frost, Jon Snow (news broadcaster), Sophie Ellis Baxtor, Rachel Weisz, Ewan McGregor and Agyness Deyn (Super Model) just to name a few. This inside 27 blocks. Dana tells me that Kate Moss moved to next door St John's Wood last year, oh well.

The hill itself 256 feet and we debate if London's highest, but I believe that goes to in Westerham Heights in Bromley at 804 feet (Primrose Hill doesn't crack the Top 20). It does, however, offer one of the best views of Central London and before us, stretching beyond the London Zoo, is the BT Tower, Barbican Centre, Centre Point, Tower 42 and every other highrise the city owns. Cool.

And one final trivia: in H.G. Well's "The War of the Worlds", Primrose Hill was the site of the final Martian encampment.

Raisins And Raisin Bran

Saturday morning. We drive to Primrose Hill to see Dana, Nathan, Dakota and Calvin. Anthony arrives and we have a lovely London day. Eitan none to happy about having to wear a proper shirt instead of his sloppy T-shirt; he cheers up when he sees Anthony suffering the same pattern.

Before we drive, I find Eitan putting raisins into water. I raise an eyebrow and he replies: "Testing raisins" matter of factly. Since I make tea he asks for the boiling kettle to compare raisin size to heat: temperate, warm and boiling, which kinda gets my interest. Science it is, after all. Later he notes: "they (the raisins) did not swell. They became very, very mushy." And water temperature? "It kind of turned into a different test. The hot ones became the mushiest, the cold the second and warm one the last." Mushiness determined by his touch. As to why the test - "because I was curious" which is right up there with Edmund Hillary's "because it's there." Bravo, I say.

And since we are on the topic of raisins, Raisin Bran is manufactured by several companies under a variety of brand names like 'Total Raisin Bran' and 'Raisin Nut Bran' (General Mills) 'Post Raisin Bran' by Kraft. Since I am sure you, Dear Reader, are as interested as I, Skinner's Raisin Bran was the first on the market in '26 by U.S. Mills, best known for the similar Uncle Sam Cereal. The name "Raisin Bran" was at one time trademarked, but it became genercised from widespread use of the term, so it is no longer trademark protected (according to HighBeam Research, Inc).

The mother of all raisin brans is 'Kellog's Raisin Bran' (called Sultana Bran in Britain confusing me all these years), introduced in '42. Who can forget the "Two scoops of raisins in Kellogg's Raisin Bran" and the mascot, an animated sun named "Sunny"? That campaign with us from 1966 into the 1990s. From Madison Avenue to the main street's high street to your upper kitchen cubbard next to the refridgerator. This how it is supposed to be done.