marrakesh

When I told friends in London I was heading to Marrakech for a while, many who had been there were horrified. Everyone assured me it was not place for a woman to go, and certainly not without her boyfriend. I would be harassed and heckled by vendors, Moroccan men and so on. Such issues never particularly bother me, and would certainly never stop me from going somewhere, so I just ignored everyone, as I usually do. In any case, things have turned out much the opposite. When I got my tickets I made one phone call to a childhood friend in Paris, who then made one phone call to M, the Important Cousin here in Morocco, and no one has touched me, spoken to me or looked at me since I arrived. Everywhere I walk, seas of people part and move away respectfully, which is fine with me! M, The Important Cousin is part of what is left of the city’s once vibrant Jewish community. Jews have been present here since Phoenician times, and their community flourished for centuries by working at middlemen between Christian merchants and the local Muslim population. According to the Alliance Israelite Universelle, there were just under 16,000 Jews in Marrakech at the start of the 20th century. Today my contacts tell me there are less than 3,000 in all of Morocco and less than 300 in Marrakech. Soon, M reckons there will be none left at all, as those who are left tend to be elderly. His only hope was that perhaps some aspects of their culture might have entered into the Moroccan national culture, and thus some memory of them will remain. Perhaps for this reason, all the members of the remaining Jewish community I have met here are obsessed by their history. Over dinners, I get told the family story from a variety of perspectives: the illiterate grandmother who was married at the start of the 19th century in the Mellah at the age of 9 and had the first of her 7 children at the age of 13. Although she was less than 5 feet tall, all her children and grandchildren were terrified of her, even when she was in her 80s. About one of the sons who fought in the war and then decided, still a teenager to immigrate to nascent state of Israel- the mother was not for this and went all the way to Israel to bring him back, but only after humiliating him by forcing him to drink a glass of milk in front of his mates. Then there was another son who was condemned to death by the previous King of Morocco, Hassan II, for his activities in the communist party, but the family arranged for him to be smuggled out to France. I struggle to keep up with the stories, there are so many and the family appears so large it is hard to remember who was who exactly in this great saga. Every lunch and dinner encounter turns into an epic oral history of war and heroes, oppression and survival. Incredible stuff.

on corner shops

I find the variety of produce sold in my local corner shop to be most perplexing. The place is run by turks, and there are the predictable Turkish items, chiefly excellent flat bread and Turkish cheese, both of which I adore. Alongside these items are various curry-related items, presumably catering to the large local Bengali population. Then there are the nasty bottles of non-refrigerated beer sold in bulk, lest we forget that this is still England. And finally, the there are strange bottles of pickled cabbage and pickles imported from Poland, and the illegally imported Ukrainian cigarettes behind the counter. All most odd indeed, but nice to have close to home. I keep running over to it as I think of things I desperately need while finishing up my PhD. In the middle of a chapter on the theory of travel, I suddenly decide that what I absolutely need before writing another line is…..a chocolate bar! Or that my dinner will not be complete unless I get up and go buy some of that pickled cabbage! Or that AT THIS EXACT MOMENT, I need to clean the kitchen, and for that I need to go get some…sponges!
Perhaps even more perplexing thus is the fact that over the past 12 years that I have been a student, my procrastinating tactics have hardly altered. Over this long period of academic pursuit, I have never lived in the same place longer than 12 months, yet in every grimy flat where I have lived, in all 6 countries where I have I rented places, I have managed to find the appropriate corner shop to visit 5 times per evening in exam or paper writing season. I am sure the owners of all of these corner shops have thought I was insane. About a year ago, I found myself back in a neighbourhood in Moscow where I had previously shared a flat with a mate. For nostalgia sake I went into the 24 hour corner shop I had plagued in my time there. The same long suffering woman was still working there. She looked at me and sighed: “have you graduated yet?” she demanded.
Hopefully in a few more weeks I will finally be able to respond YES!

moving forwards

Black hole of work
Sleep (a little)
Office by 6:30 (am)
15 minutes for lunch
Leave office (as late as possible)
Go home
Eat pasta
Collapse
Sleep

I wouldn’t really qualify this as a fulfilling existence.
I stop at a bagel place on Brick lane most mornings to pick up something for breakfast (we are given free breakfast at work, but I get bored of the same things over and over…)
The people know me, and we chat, there are not many people on brick lane at that hour- the night revellers have gone home, and normal people are not up yet. The bagel guys know I work in the city, they know the weird hours I work. The cleaner tells me I am lucky to have a job- his daughter is my age and has been unemployed for nearly a year. “they are prats down there, but you should put up with it until the recession is over” he tells me with paternal concern. Of course he is right.
But how much longer is the recession going to last?

budapest

There is possibly no place I would rather be on a warm july afternoon than outside a café on Liszt Ferenc ter having a glass of wine with friends.
It is truly amazing how the standard of living, at least when it comes to such minor daily pleasures, is significantly higher here than in the north western regions of the continent. It has been six years since I moved to this city, and five since I left, which in itself shocks me. It seems so recent. I can still vividly remember the mornings running down Andrassy ut, late for a historiography lecture. Every time I come back here it seems like time has stood still for me. I went back to my old department, and wandered around the campus. Little had change, which reassured me that not too much time had passed. In the evening we all met again, the great ceu gang. It had been two years since we were all reunited in one city, and it was good to catch up with everyone. On the surface not much had changed, although new boyfriends and girlfriends appeared, struggling to catch up on our cliquish and ancient gossip (do you remember 4 years ago when….). We were all there for Kati and Gabor’s wedding, it was warm and sunny, and the mood was festive. We drank, ate and smoked far too much, and I realise that while I will never and probably could never live again in this wonderful place, I do indeed miss it terribly. In the middle of the night I walked back from the castle district to my hotel in Pest. Climbing down the steps below the castle, I stopped for some moments and looked back, amazed at just how beautiful Buda is all lit up. I eventually found my way down to the embankment, there was a concert being spontaneously staged by some guys with guitars and an amp. People were playing football and table tennis alongside the Danube. Skateboarders and cyclists were still out, and meat was being grilled on open fires. It was a carnival atmosphere, and yet it was just an ordinary summer Saturday evening. The music echoed across the river, and I could still vaguely hear it as if got off the Chain bridge in Pest, and stumbled off to my hotel.

on spain

It is frustrating launching a major project involving Spaniards, particularly in the Summer. Their working hours are just completely at odds with the rest of the continent.
I am dealing with some of the country’s most important bankers, insurers and automotive executives. Yet, when it is not a national or regional holiday, which it often is, many of them have “summer office hours” that run from about 8-3, making it impossible to get anything done after that hour. Even the banks that stay open “late” seem to have highly flexible working regimes. For example, last week I called a contact in one of the Spain’s biggest bank at 2pm. I called on his mobile and could hear the clinking of plates in the background. He said he was having lunch in a restaurant. I asked when it would be convenient for me to call back, to which he replied that he THOUGHT he would be done eating by 4:30! My French colleague and I stared at each other in disbelief, and jealousy. On Thursday I tried to arrange a meeting with another banker for the following morning….but no, he had decided, at the last minute, to take a four day weekend to go to the beach, and asked us to rearrange the meeting until the following Tuesday!! He then preceded to describe his envisioned weekend: the beach, relaxing, having some drinks….i work daily with industry players in Germany, Italy (yes even ITALY) France and the UK, and all of us are stuck in the office for at least 10 hours or more a day. Yet arguably the best European bank at the moment is a Spanish one…so what the hell is the secret? I confess, I am jealous, horribly, horribly jealous.

dublin

I have always had mixed feelings about Dublin. Lots of people I know adore the city, but it has never really captured my attraction in that way. It has its moments: I enjoy strolling along the river or the canals, or walking on the cobblestone streets….but it has always struck me as too small, provincial and certainly too expensive for my tastes. Architecturally, it is too close to a small English city, with lots of brick buildings and a dark gloomy feel. The now-over boom of the pervious decade led to some nice blocks of flats being built, but in general, there are still a lot of British-style terraced houses. On top of that, the prices are high even compared to London. A pint cost me between 5 and 6 Euros in the various pubs I went to in the centre, which is rather steep, and the restaurants were similarly over priced, and generally offered far less choice than in London. Some people rave about the “new Irish cuisine,” but I confess it leaves me cold. Of course it is unfair to compare a city of 1.5 million to one of 10 million, but even compared to cities of its own size, I think Dublin stands out for its high prices versus level of quality. You can certainly eat better for less in Barcelona, Lisbon or Rome than in Dublin. Furthermore, while I like intrinsically the pubs in the renowned Temple bar area, they tend to be filled with the Worst of Britain: English people over for stag parties or Hen nights, apparently under the impression that because they are technically abroad, they have a special license to behave like savages. As I was showing foreign friends around the city, I felt like I had to at least take them by Temple bar, but instead of using the medieval street patterns and low ceiling buildings to conjure up images of Irelands famous writers scribbling away in dark corners over a pint of Guinness, I found myself attempting to explain why there were large groups of very drunk English girls with angel wings strapped to their backs, running around semi-naked and screaming in the streets. We eventually went elsewhere to sit down, enjoy a pint, and catch up. There have been efforts to ban stag and hen parties from the Temple bar area, but they have clearly been unsuccessful. If I were Irish, these parties would be just another reason for disliking the English, not that the Irish need to search too hard for such reasons.
But we were extremely lucky with the weather. Although my friends had flown over armed with jumpers and rain gear, it was sunny and close to 30 degrees every day. We spent several hours lying on the grass in St Stephen’s green chatting away. We wandered around the streets until 10 pm, and the sun showed no sign of disappearing. Even amongst the drunken English revellers and the overpriced offerings, it was hard not to enjoy ourselves.

strategy safaris

i am quite certain i was not made for a corporate career.
the only targets and goals i am truely motivated to achieve are those i set for myself. spread sheets do not motivate me. neither really does financial incentive, even though i thought it would.
i am writing this while sitting in something called a "strategy safari." this is a webcast that everyone in the company around the world is meant to log into at the same time so that top managers show us the future. such things bore me. after 15 minutes, my eyelids start getting heavy, and after 30 minutes i have to pinch my legs to keep from falling asleep. yet virtual attendance is required, and we are not meant to be doing anything else at this time. i am pretending to be ending questions to the moderators via the web. i dont know how much more of this i can take. not much, i feel sure. i hate wasted time, i hate empty bullshit. my boss walks around the floor telling us again and again to : "make some money." but i dont care, money motivates me as a means of survival, not as a way of existing. there has to be more to life than this, surely?

london- Strike!

I am back in Britain in time to watch it….behave like France! The Metro workers have declared a 48 hour strike, which began Tuesday afternoon and will apparently continue for the next 2 days unless a deal is reached between the unions and the TFL. I seriously thought this was a Franco-German problem, but I guess not. Our HR department sent us an email yesterday afternoon telling us to make sure to go home before the 7pm deadline. I walked past several tube stations around 6:30 and it looked liked a war was about to break out. The entire entrance was jammed by people trying to get in the station before it closed, people were pushing, shoving and shouting at each other in frustration. This morning was more surreal. The streets seemed to be filled with businessmen walking briskly to work, looking frequently at their watches to see how late their pedestrian route would make them. The queues at bus stops were epic, as people desperately looked down the road to see if a red vehicle was moving their direction. Yet despite the feeling that the streets were crowded with people, the office was dead when I walked in. at least half the staff were missing. Some later made it in, late, with tales of hour long waits for the bus and other horrors. The head of marketing for one bank told me she thought she would escape the mess by taking one of the overland national rail services....only to arrive at the station to find it closed due to a suicide!
Even in the rain, I was grateful for my bike!

zagreb

it is strange how many good croatian friends i have, given how much i dislike Croatia.
as a result, i do from time to time end up in this country. yet, everytime i am here i am aware that clearly my friends are not representative of the country. over a lengthy dinner Saturday night, the guy next to me estimated that in his entire life as a Croat, he had managed only to be in contact with two percent of the population, something he seemed quite grateful for. for it is a country with some scary elements, as i got to see close up this weekend. One of my good friends got married in Zagreb and of course i came over for the occassion. He had a very civilised ceremony, and had planned an after party in an elegant restaurant on the Central square, Trg jelacica. but soon after he made the reservation, he realsied that they very same night there was going to be a Thompson concert on the very same square. for those of you lucky enough not to have been exposed at length to the kitchy horror of Balkan Turbo folk, Thompson is a singer from a town called Cavoglave. he joined the army and fought in what the Croats are now calling the "Homeland war" and made lots of videos of his music, featuring him in his uniform and lots of guys waving guns over their heads, as they pledged to defend their village from the cetniks.
by the time we got to the square around 7:30, the square was already filling with Thompson fans. they were the kind of Croats i dont know: loud screaming people with ustasa tatoos and flags wrapped around their bodies. a couple of guys from the wedding party insisted on escorting me into the building where the after party was to be held, lest my accent exposed me to the mob as the evil person they would think i am, and lead to me being lynched. "you dont mess with these guys, they are crazy and violent," one of my escorts whispered in my ear as we walked pass a guy in a Thompson shirt brandishing a fake looking sword.
By 9pm, the square had tens of thousands of people. we went on the balcony overlooking the show to watch as a priest came on stage to describe what a hero Thompson was, and to detail for us all his great struggles on behalf of the homeland in the war. By the time Thompson came on stage, the crowd was a screaming mob of hysteria. the stage had been constructed as a fake castle, and periodically flames lept out of certain parts of it, as the now middle aged ex-war hero ran around in incredibly tight jeans. it was slightly absurd and I giggled. "yeah, it is funny for you, you dont have to live here," groaned the guy on the balcony next to me. The croat of his screaming countrymen was clearly as foreign to him as to me. yet what was most curious was the age of the audience: they were not old war vets. Many looked to young to have fought in the war. this was not an event appealing to nostalgia, it was something that was still drawing and attracting new blood.
what planet do i live on that allows me to frequently travel to a country, speak its language, make friends, and yet still be so astonished by a clearly sizable chunk of its population that is exotic enough to me that it resembles a freak show?

paris

I hate the French working culture.
There are many things I liked about living in this country. It would be a great place to retire….or be a student. But the work contracts are horridly restrictive and the corporate culture is absolutely lethal. Managers obsess over ultimately very petty issues which have little relevance to performance (the type of shoes worn by an employee, for example) and lots of time is wasted stupidly. Most of all there is an annoying disconnect between what the French claim their work culture is about and its reality. For example, officially French workers enjoy a 35 hour work week, which many French claim passionately they support and will defend. They claim to reject the “anglo-saxon” workaholic model which they blame for all sorts of social ills. Every time any politician (like Sarkozy) attempts to allow for something as gentle as an opt out possibility in the 35 hour work week, unions got crazy and people flood the streets. But this is a total misrepresentation. The French public sector might get away with 35 hours at their desks, and they do amount for a hefty 20% or so of the workforce, but I really believe they are the unsustainable exception. All the French I know in private sector jobs work long hours, often longer than their counterparts in London as lots of time is lost on the stupid and petty. No one here leaves the office before 9pm here, and they are all back again at 8 the next morning. Then on top of that are the two hour lunches. Again, while I lived in France, I was repeatedly assured of the social value and importance of having a “proper lunch” in order to “relax” and “change your ideas.” Again, maybe this is the case if your work for la poste, but I find French lunches a twisted form of torture. They last forever, and people talk about business the whole time! Every day I spent in the paris office, I was taken for a lengthy lunch, and forced to attempt concentration as some analyst babbled on about various figures while munching on his chips. I would have preferred to eat a sandwich at my desk and leave the office 2 hours earlier. But, no, that is not possible in a highly rigid society where everyone is expected to do the same thing at the exact same moment of the day. French people often ask me about the supposed dictatorship that has (re)installed itself in Russia. But freedom depends on how you define it. France undeniably has more political freedom than Russia. But what about civil liberties?? The freedom to eat cheese at four in the afternoon? The freedom to smoke in a restaurant? The freedom to eat lunch when and where you want to? The freedom to suggest a new strategy to your boss? By those measures Russia, and much of eastern Europe along with it, would certainly emerge as the more free society, France is imprisoned by a collective mental dictatorship. It is a great pity, the country could be so much more.

endings, beginnings

i finished my old job yesterday, my new job starts monday morning in paris.
i am scared. mainly of failing as the task i have been given is enormous. and i am sad to say goodbye to the few people i liked in my old job.
looking back, i cant believe i spent exactly one calendar year in that job. at times it certainly dragged, but the last five months flew by so quickly that it all seems hazy to me now. by the end the crisis was taking its toll, people were getting threats of redundancy and heads on high were rolling. i developed a peculiar but crippling stomach problem. a cramp would appear in the pit of my stomach. sometimes i struggled to sit up. it got hard to focus on my computer screen. the doctors sent me for blood testing and ultra sounds, but i didn't think much of that. mysteriously the pain would vanish every day within an hour of leaving the office, and it never hit me on holiday. i knew i had to escape. after i gave in my notice of resignation, the pain vanished and it hasn't been back since.

and now, back to where this blog all started: paris.

monday morning draws near......

random anecdotes

I bought a leather bracelet on Sunday. But when I got on the metro and decided to put it on, I realise the shop had left on the security tag. I tried to pull it off, but it was attached by a metal wire, with instructions to use scissors for removal. The guy next to me had been staring at the bracelet and asked if I needed help. He seemed friendly so I showed him the problem. He proceeded to remove the wiring…with his teeth! He just bit through the metal like a rat, handed the bracelet back to me and said “here you go, oh, and I am Ferenc by the way.” Ferenc? So you must be Hungarian!” I said, certain that Ferencs can only occur amongst one particular nationality. But I was wrong. This Ferenc was South African, and had never set foot in Hungary. His father had been of Hungarian origin, but had only stayed with his mother long enough to give him a pseudo Hungarian name. and at that point, Ferenc the metal biting Boer got off the train and went on his way.

Nearly every day I stop by a corner shop to by a Diet Coke. The place is run by an Indian guy, and every day he is reading a porn magazine. Every day I pretend not to notice the pictures of naked women with improbable proportions. Today the image was so incredible I confess it caught my shocked eye for a moment. The man saw. “my wife left me. 10 years ago.” He said. He handed me my change and went back, glum faced, to his porn.

At lunch a colleague starts a surreal story about the mother of one of his kids who was previously dating one of FBI’s most wanted men. He was killed. She later broke into my colleague’s flat and stole designer clothes from his present live-in girlfriend. He confiscated her passport and held it for ransom to get back the clothes. The baby is really cute.

Another colleague has started coming to work in a face mask to prevent swine flu. He is convinced that “the chavs” (of whom he lives in fear) are all going to get it and breathe on him on the metro.

a new day

So the big day finally came. I handed in my resignation. As of four weeks from today I will no longer work for the Russian media. I will have done exactly one year minus one week in this cubicle. I have definitely learned a lot and had lots of adventures: in London, but also in Poland, Switzerland, Georgia and elsewhere! But it is time to move on, and conveniently with a pay raise. Hopefully things will move forward. We shall see.

kindle 2

Ok I confess when ereaders first hit the market, I was deeply suspicious. I love books. I love holding them, I love having them in my house. It didn’t seem possible that a little hand held electronic device could come close to the power of printed matter.

But after three years of working in a bookshop, and being flooded with free samples, I had amassed a book collection of ridiculous proportions. Then it came time for me to move flats. I took load after load to a used book shop. I sold off hundreds of books. I gave away the ones the used bookshops didn’t want. But I still had 30 boxes of books left. Some are collectors items from previous centuries. Some are signed by famous authors. Some I just love….but then some are simply interesting books I have read, yet may never read again. Considering in particular the latter category, I decided to go digital. I did the same a few years back when I got an ipod. It was one of the best moves I ever made.

So now I have a kindle 2. it is an amazing little machine. It can store 1,600 books at a time, it is super light, and when I am really bored at work, I can discreetly prop it on my desk and read fiction! Or I can put on headphones and have it read to me! It makes long intercontinental flights so much more pleasant and luggage free. So I have been won over. I still love my books. I intend to keep many of them. But for those one-off reads, I am very happy with my kindle

back in london

As annoying as certain aspects of it are, there are some big advantages to facebook.

One of my colleagues at work actually runs a side business on facebook from his cubicle. Given the current state of things in the office, his facebook constructed business is probably bringing in more money these days than his day job.

It has helped me too: having studied in international schools, and in different countries, I have friends all over the place. But thanks to facebook, I at least know where they are based and have a means of getting in touch with them. In February, I located my old colleague Johanna in Sydney and we met up for a drink. So when I found out I would be going to Minneapolis, something in my brain clicked- didn’t Jared’s facebook profile indicate he was living there?

After a few wall-to-wall exchanges, I found myself on the other side of the planet, having a drink in a bar with Jared, in Minnesota’s great metropolis. We had studied together in Budapest some five years earlier. I struggled to believe that five years had passed since we finished out MAs. five years is a long time, but I remember everything about that year with hyper clarity. I didn’t actually know Jared too well that year. well, in Budapest we all knew each other to some degree, but he was always more a friend of a friend (zack) than a close friend of mine. I have a funny memory of him from one evening towards the end of the year. my friend yaelle was visiting from paris and we had gone to one of those out door Hungarian courtyard bars. Jared stumbled by, smiling from a nice evening out drinking and smoking with mates. He sat down and entertained us for a good 45 minutes before trundling off on his way.

And five years on we met again in a Minneapolis parking lot. He drove me around the small centre of the city before taking me to a bar to catch up on news. After three days of attempting to communicate with people with whom I have absolutely nothing in common, speaking with Jared was like a breath of reality, or at least, my reality. Strange how after five years, I still have so much in common, not only with him, but with all those I studied with in Hungary. I am not sure if it was the recruiting process, or the combination of intensity and shared experience that shaped us into intellectually similar beings. but i know my year in hungary was one of the most important in my life, and that many of my most valued friendships come from that time. and that where ever i go or end up, my deep love and respect for budapest will always be there.

food

There is a major food epidemic in the US. I have spent 7 days in this country in the past 10 years, (three days in 2006, and four days in 2009) and on both of these occasions I have found it pretty shocking, perhaps because it is just so different. It is not that just SOME people happen to be fat. Rather MANY people are huge, and (worse) it would be hard not to be, given the food available. I spend three days in Rochester, which is famous for its world class medical facilities. Yet the centre of the town has about 3 restaurants, as far as I could see. One of those was closed, another was a steak house whose only vegetarian dish was a greasy looking macaroni and cheese, and the final one was…..well, in the end I got mac and cheese there too…..on Sunday I order something which claims to be a “green salad side order.” It arrives with spinach leaves, sugar coated walnuts and tinned fruit bits in it, all smothered in a disgusting dressing. I couldn’t eat it. even a side dish of steamed potatoes proved inedible. the portions were large enough to feed three people my size, and cost less than half what the same dish would cost me in Europe. The wine generally seemed to come from cardboard boxes with little plastic nozzles, and was served with ICE CUBES! I had to show my ID every single time I asked for a drink, and no alcohol was for sale on Sundays.

On Monday I met up with Jared, an old classmate from Hungary who lives in Minneapolis, having moved there as his partner is on a post grad course at the university there. He has lived there less than two years and they will be moving to the West Coast next month. He is just completing a teacher training course, but claims if he doesn’t get a teaching job, he wants to work in food policy. Clearly I am not the only one who thinks there is a problem. He complained that buying fresh vegetables is seen as “elitist” or “snobby.” He is made to feel like a freak, or at least a not-one-of-us, every time he stocks up on greens in the supermarket. He is made to feel “self indulgent” or “foolish” for spending a large sum of his (lowish) income on his food and drink. Apparently that is seen as wasteful. More “prudent” people buy more cheaply- choosing quantity over quality. This results in lots of processed, refined stuff devoid of nutrients and stuffed with all sorts of weird things.

I have never been a food activist. I like to eat reasonably well, and I enjoy good food, but I have never thought too much about it. but looking at the average Midwesterner, I felt truly scared. I passed people who looked like walking time bombs. People who rode around in wheel chairs, not because they were handicapped, but because walking left them “out of breath.” I met a woman who was in fact confined to a wheel chair by necessity- her type two diabetes had led to the amputation of a leg!

On Sunday, my mother and I had wanted to have some wine. The restaurant didn’t serve it on Sunday. Neither did any shops. We decided to make it a mission to find alcohol, just to prove we can. We finally found a hotel (but not ours!) whose room service let us buy a bottle and take it with us back to our own hotel. On the 5 minute walk back, we noticed people staring at us and whispering nervously. Clearly the sight of two foreigners breaking the traditions unnerved them. But is drinking a glass of wine on a Sunday really worse than living on a diet of twinkies and starch? I suppose it is a matter of perspective, but I was clearly the odd one out in this case.

MOA

This was my second trip to the Mall of America in Minnesota. My first is covered in an earlier entry from July 2006. rereading it, I see that my first impression was one of shock that the complex truly seemed to be the highpoint of many peoples lives in the Minneapolis area. People were actually proud of their shopping mall and saw it as one of the chief highlights foreigners should be shown! At the time, such rampant displays of consumerism horrified me.
What scared me this trip around was the emptiness. Except for the entertainment complex in the middle of the mall, which was still filled with screaming kids, much of the mall seemed empty. The global financial crisis has hit here hard. All the shops have sales, not just symbolic ones, but 50-75% ones. even summer clothes are on sale, and the items have only just hit the shops. In banana republic I found myself the only customer. In Abercrombie and fitch I bought cashmere jumpers for 10 DOLLARS that I know cost 80-120 POUNDS in London, an over 90% savings. i was so shocked that I bought three, but I don’t know why I didn’t get more, at that price. The sales assistant at the till desperately tried to push some last minute add-ons: did I need socks to go with those jumpers? Perfume? Maybe a scarf?
The feeling of emptiness is not only in the mall. The town seems abandoned too, except for some groups of kids wandering about with hoodies concealing their heads. Several signs announce “closing down sale, everything must go!” Some buildings are just boarded up entirely. Pensioners tell me about their shrinking reserve pots and cutting back on meals. Things might be bad in Europe, but they are definitely worse here.

on the road, again

Another crazy flight schedule- three countries in one bank holiday weekend. To make things more stressful, the night before I left England, I had a third and final job interview for a position I had wanted. So instead of packing sensibly, I was pacing about in panic mode. They promised me an answer by the next day. But when I called the recruiter handling my case from Amsterdam…he had heard nothing. Hours passed. Nothing. Panic. Were they offering it to the other person first and waiting to get their response before rejecting me? I wandered nervously around schipol. Answers weren’t coming and I put it out of my mind.
Yet after a 10 hour flight across the atlantic, I turned on my mobile, while still on the plane, and found a text message informing me that I had got the job. I squawked and the flight attendants looked at me nervously. The salary is higher and I was most likely facing redundancy in my old job anyway. I had known it was time to move on. But getting a new offer of more money as quickly as I did surprised me. We are in the middle of an ongoing recession, and I just feel really lucky to have got anything at all, never mind an offer so generous. I just hope the offer turns out to be as good as it seems, although a year of working in the City has made me suspicious of everything…

preotests in london

So as I suppose everyone knows by now, we have had some excitement in London.

Angry (but generally good natured) mobs took to the streets in the square mile (many of them right outside my office). They proclaimed, among other things, that consumers suck and capitalism kills. Many were young anarchists from all over Europe. Some were recently unemployed middle age workers. Clearly all were frustrated by the state of things. The police warned City workers in advance to “dress down” for the day, and sure enough most did turn up to work in jeans, myself included. In the office there was lots of talk arguing the protestors were just “little school children who just need to grow up” or “just jealous.” But the two groups actually deserve each other. Obviously the protesters were there to provoke City workers. But looking up and seeing a guy in a suit, waving a fist full of 50 pound notes from his glass and steel box…well it is provocative as well. By lunchtime the whole area around bank tube station was so crowded that it was impossible to get in or out of the area. Effigies of bankers were hung, graffiti generously sprayed, while the four horsemen of the apocalypse rode around with megaphones. The weather was unusually pleasant and the police presence was overwealming.

The question is: how are we all going to get out of this mess? People are loosing their jobs at alarming rates all over the country, and the end is not yet really in sight, even as some recent indicators suggest “green shoots.” It doesn’t appear that anyone has the answers