Plagiarism - It's A Crime!

You wouldn't steal a handbag. Check.
You wouldn't steal a car. Check.
You wouldn't steal an idea. Or would you?

Of course, the above sentence is in fact, already stolen, because it is what you have to sit through if you have the time and leisure to sit down at home and watch a DVD.

Nobody knows why you have to endure it, because by the time you are being brainwashed you are just about to watch a movie (or TV show for that matter) that you have legally acquired anyway. The stuff that's illegally taped in a movie theatre in Bangkok usually does not come with this type of warning.

The topic du jour however, is plagiarism. Stealing ideas, using other people's material without quoting adequately. Selling somebody's thoughts as your own.

In this day and age, everybody seems to be putting his or her thoughts out to the world. Are you stealing somebody's idea if and when you are just writing about the same subject?

Clearly, the Times reporter can't call his counterpart from The Guardian and tell him not to write about the Euro 2008 Final because he had already done a piece.

However, let's say that I have written something very random about movie posters and how the quotes on those usually have nothing to do with how good (or bad) the movie really is (which I have) just to find somebody else shortly afterwards writing about the same thing. Should I be upset (knowing through Google Analytics that my piece has been read)? Should I feel plagiarised?

I would in general think that once an idea is out, it is up to everyone to pick it up, be inspired by it and do their own take on whatever they have come across. From my past in academia, this is how science works and ideas progress. Here of course, the cause pursued is considerably less worthy, but then again, we can't save the world all the time I suppose.

Maybe, the right approach (unless somebody is genuinely being copied) is to go with the Muppets who would say: "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."

On this note, I shall feel flattered.

Random Thought #2: Do You Learn?

Recently, I spoke to a friend of mine who told me about how he had taken on swimming lessons since he had never learned it properly. For once, he was excited about the fact that he was making progress but even more about him actually learning a new skill for the first time in a long time. Which made me think: When was the last time I learned a new skill? Do I still learn enough?

Learning something entirely new can be both gratifying and frustrating. For instance, my son, at his very young age of not even a quarter of a year, learns a ton of new things every day.

I am not sure whether he feels a great gratification in things like: "Yesterday I was unable to drool, today I can do it very well", but for parents it is certainly exciting. Maybe not drooling in particular, but skills like smiling at Dad go down extremely favourably in my book. It is thrilling to watch somebody starting from a clean sheet and just picking up so many things as they go along.

Then of course, you get to school where you are being told all sort of things, and since secondary school coincides with puberty, many of those things you will probably not find that useful. In particular those which aren't directly related to how you make girls fancy you. Nevertheless, this probably is the age at which you learn intellectually/academically the most, like science, languages, etc.

But then, once adulthood kicks in, it sometimes feels like many people think that they have learned enough and are happy with the skills acquired thus far.

My friend with the swimming lessons made me wonder which skills I had recently acquired and I had to think long and hard. Golf came to my mind, but that was a few years ago. Windsurfing, and albeit fun, was a bit of a one-off, surfing (without wind) even less sustained.

Computer programming, while professionally motivated, should certainly count, and driving on the left hand side of the road, although being more a modification of an old skill, does belong on the list.

So I thought, maybe I haven't fared that badly after all. My friend's enthusiasm reminded me that without a lot ado, a lot of things are being picked up along the way. While not as essential as learning to walk or learning to swim, it is still an exciting thought of being able to do things you weren't able to do before.

Being able to order your dinner in Tuscany in Italian, writing some lines of computer code that are genuinely sleek. All things that, if one can take a step back to think about it, are beautiful achievements in one way or another.

Which made me think about my son again and suddenly I realised that, while he is picking up things at break-neck speed, so am I. I wasn't able to change a diaper last year, or burp a baby, or even provide ok-ish support for a labouring woman.

Nor was I able to patiently rock a little 10-pound human being for hours to make him fall asleep until a few weeks ago.

You learn something new every day, after all.

House Prices, Bonuses, Whatever Next?

Everything is dropping. Not a month passes by without horror stories about house prices dropping. Now comes the worst shocker: Last year's City bonuses, so reports The Guardian, were lower than the year before for the first time since total bonus payouts were recorded (how does that work by the way?) in 2003.

They were lower by the mere sum of £300m year-on-year, and they were still 174% higher than 4 years earlier, but such mundane numbers should never get in the way of a punchy headline.

Of course, these two things, and a few others are not entirely unrelated.

Amidst all the doom and gloom, people start wondering whether they really like to commit all their disposable cash to buy a bigger townhouse in Chelsea or whether it's worth the wait to get it a little bit cheaper. Maybe after the next Chelsea FC manager is sacked and moves back to his home country, or maybe after prices have declined overall.

Rightly so, a genuine concern about bonuses seems to have gripped the City. 2007 was a bad year - although note that payouts were still almost 3 times what they were 2003 - and 2008 does not promise to be much better, probably quite the opposite in fact.

And this of course, could have wider implications.

I am starting to get concerned for instance that Damien Hirst might have problems flogging his Golden Calf, or at least maybe has to give a discount on its £12m price tag due to a miserable economic outlook.

That is of course, unless potential buyers realise that it is ACTUALLY a bull (covered and suspended in all sorts of liquids and precious metals). Hence it could be considered food, and if one thing is certain about food prices currently, they are far from dropping.

Drink here to avoid disappointment!

As if there are not enough rules and regulations in our lives already, it seems to be getting worse and worse.

Smokers are nowadays confined to outdoor spaces (which is probably just as well), KFC refuses to warm up baby bottles citing Health & Safety regulations (which is less convenient) and Circle Line parties have come to a grinding halt with Boris Johnson's recent coronation as London Mayor.

Even more shockingly, overground drinkers are being penned up in front of signs telling them where to drink for no apparent reason with the above example having been spotted in the City.

While the summer so far has not been inviting enough to wander the streets of the Square Mile with a casual bottle of Bollinger, maybe these extreme measures have become necessary because of an ever increasing number of bankers who are being informed of their redundancies and who become renegade consumers of alcoholic beverages with no intention of being tied down to pre-allocated drinking spots.

Next thing we know, they might stop serving drinks in the City altogether prior to 5pm in an effort to prevent traders from becoming rogue and risk managers from turning blind/hazy eyes on their dealings.

And this is when The Cloud will finally have turned into a very dark one indeed.

Upon Westminster Bridge

With my son recently born in very close proximity of Westminster Bridge (but unfortunately not overlooking it for reasons too convoluted to delve into), I had a vague recollection of something we had read (or more precisely had to read) at school almost two decades ago.

It somehow had stuck to my memory in particular for its beautifully simple first line and I had to think of it when I drove home from the hospital, crossing Westminster Bridge, turning onto the Embankment around midnight with the city being relatively quiet.

While I usually consider this to be the most picturesque stretch of London on any occasion, just having experienced the birth of my first child gave the drive a totally different emotional angle.

The poem I thought of was not difficult to track down, and while London anno 1802 was certainly different than it is today (presumably), it was nice to see that the perception of its beauty has hardly changed.

The circumstances I found myself in that night made me realise that sometimes words you have heard more than 20 years ago touch your soul and stick with you, sometimes without you even knowing it.

It took an event of indescribable power to make "Earth has nothing to show more fair" surface in my head as the first line which Wordsworth had composed upon that very bridge.

And I thought that words that were written more than 200 years ago can still touch somebody today is a sign of human genius.

I hope that my son will think likewise many decades from now.

Composed upon Westminster Bridge

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky,
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did the sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

(William Wordsworth, 3rd September 1802)

Parents, Babies, Hulks...

While Parent & Baby screenings are a great way for parents of small children to get to see new movie releases without having to wait for them to come out on DVD, the selection of movies is restricted, and a little bit dubious.

When recently on paternity leave, I looked around for "adult" things to do, apart from not sleeping and changing diapers and I realised that quite a few mainstream movie theatres have so-called "Parent & Baby Screenings" where you are allowed to bring babies up to the age of one year (for free no less) and which usually happen during the day and during the week.

Like just about anything that can be done for new parents to keep their sanity in times of sleep deprivation and seemingly inconsolable babies, it did sound like a good idea. You don't have to get a babysitter, you don't have to worry that your baby is screaming (since probably everybody else's will as well) and you fool yourself into believing that leaving the house is still as easy as it used to be.

Since babies under the age of a year don't really care about movies as such, the main target is of course the parents, which means movies of anything up to 12A certificate are shown - although apparently with the volume turned down a little bit (I guess the audience provides additional sound effects anyway).

Unfortunately, having to wait for builders we did not make it the showing of "Iron Man" during my paternity leave, and since "Newbies screenings" happen exclusively during the week (which pretty much rules out the working population to take their newborns), I couldn't realise my dream of attending one.

When my wife had another go at going out to watch a movie with like-minded new mothers, they found out to their big surprise, that pretty much the only movie showing in these conditions was "The Incredible Hulk".

So, imagine what must go through somebody's head who is running a movie theatre and who is thinking about which movie to book for the next week.

• You have a show at Tuesday lunchtime targeted at parents with newborns.
  
• You probably figure that despite emancipation and all, these new parents are likely to be mothers.
• You have "Sex and The City: The Movie" in your repertoire, which is a "chick flick" if there ever was one.
  
• You decide to show "The Incredible Hulk".

Makes sense.

Half-Time For Euro

After the first eight teams have been eliminated from EURO 2008 and the knock-out phase of the competition begins tomorrow, it seems appropriate to think about some of the lessons learnt in this tournament so far.

1. Greece winning Euro 2004 was a surprise, and a bit of a fluke. They were a well-organised team back then and defended brilliantly, but if you don't score goals, you cannot really expect to proceed. Ergo, they finish last with only zero points.
2. Only marginally better on one point, the French. And they were the (beaten) finalists of the last World Cup. Then again, they had Zidane back then which seems to have been a major factor. That was of course before he was sent off for head-butting Matterazzi.
3. Both Russia and Croatia, who helped avoiding England's participation in this tournament, have progressed into the knock-out stage. Maybe they were proper opposition after all, but that does not mean that Steve McLaren should have kept his job. Which he didn't.
   
4. Most goals were scored by the Dutch, which makes them sort of favourites. Because who scores most goals, usually wins.
5. Both co-hosts, Austria and Switzerland, are no longer part of the tournament. In fact many Austrians wondered why the Austrians were ever part of Euro 2008 anyway.
   
6. The rumour that you have to be born in Poland to score for the German team is not true. It certainly helps though, hence 75% of all goals for Germany were scored by Lukas Podolski.
7. Spain, Holland and Croatia have a 100% record in the tournament so far, winning all their matches. Although if Holland have to play Italy again and end up losing, they might regret not having performed worse against Romania and sending both Italy and France back home.
8. As shown in the Germany - Austria match (which was rather dull), there are always spare seats for coaches in the stands in case they are sent off. You even get to hug the head of state before you sit down.
   
9. Brilliant bit of trivia: The French coach proposed to his partner on the night they went out of the tournament (and on air). No wonder people thought he might have lost the plot a little bit.

One thing to note though is, that the general public in the UK cares little, if at all. Which is great if you want to watch a match in the pub, since you can get a seat. It's not so great if you actually want to watch a match in some kind of atmosphere.

Random Thought #1: Oblivious Tubing

Have you ever thought about why you know where you are when you get out of the Tube? (Or any means of transportation for that matter?)

Now, the smart ones will of course argue that every Tube stop has a number of rather large signs indicating where you are. There is some truth in there. If you get to the station in the picture for instance, you will realise that you are only steps away from overpriced raspberries at Whole Foods on High Street Kensington and you will act accordingly.

But how do you KNOW that you are REALLY at High Street Ken?

Sometimes it amuses me to think that means of transportation such as the Tube, Eurostar, airplanes - where you do not see the way you are travelling - actually entail a huge degree of trust. Of course, if you get off at Westminster and you see Big Ben, you know where you are even if you haven't walked down all of Whitehall to make 100% sure that you are in the right spot.

But if you get on an airplane to get to a city which maybe does not have many distinct features but is a rather unremarkable agglomeration of non-descript buildings, you might not be that certain. Imagine further that you have slept through parts of the travel or you haven't been able to follow the in-flight route tracker mile-by-mile, and you can see that your mind could play tricks on you easily.

Stepping off the aircraft, it sometimes feels that you could be literally anywhere, and if the airline wanted to play tricks on you, they would have just dropped you off somewhere it suited them rather than you.

When I embarked on my first intercontinental travel to the US a couple of decades ago, I landed in San Diego and was rather tired after a long trip, and of course without fresh clothes to change into. A few hours of bus travel later we ended up in the Southern Californian desert but it took me a while, a lot of checking maps and finally some credulousness to convince myself that I was really there. But then again, maybe I was just too gullible and the school trip was all part of a huge scam. I mean, we have all watched Capricorn One.

So, if you happen to go to Balham for the first time to visit friends and you step off the Tube, spare a thought and think how you really know that this cluster of streets full of terraced houses is Balham.

For all I know, it could be anywhere.

(Some of) London's Best Chippers

If there is ever such a thing as a genuine English dish, it has to be Fish & Chips. But there are better ones and less tasty ones. Time to take (fish) stock.

This survey by no means claims to be comprehensive, but rather based on first hand experience - which in many ways could be considered pure coincidence (since sometimes you just happen to get to places which turn out to be very good). But nevertheless, one knows what one likes, and in terms of Fish & Chips served, this would include the following:

• Rock & Sole Plaice: Conveniently located on Endell Street in Covent Garden, one should not be deterred by the slightly run down interior. The fact that it is always crowded speaks for itself.
• Tom's Kitchen: Admittedly, I never went there, but the Fish & Chips he served at last year's Taste of London in Regent's Park were so good in fact, I believe that it must be worth a visit.
  
• The Narrow: Gordon Ramsay's gastropub in Limehouse does nothing to jeopardise GR's brand reputation. It is simply very well made indeed.
  
• Masters Super Fish: Just around the corner from The Old Vic, this place is many cabbies' favourite. And since they have the knowledge, who would doubt their judgement.
  
• Fish! Essentially the take out window of an upmarket fish restaurant in Borough Market, this is a lunchtime favourite for the Friday excursion to the market. The portions are so substantial, the afternoon is usually spent dozing off and digesting the giant haddock.
  

The first Fish & Chip I ever had was in Brighton about 15 years ago, and it was so genuine, it was even served out of a newspaper.

Surprisingly, neither of the above serve the fish in a paper, despite the fact that there are so many disposable newspapers to wrap fish in.

Then again, it's impolite to read whilst eating anyway.

iPhone: Curse of the Early Adopter?

With Apple advertising the new iPhone 3G as "Twice as fast. Half the price", this can only mean bad news for all those who jumped on the bandwagon a little early, right? Not quite, it turns out.

Adopting technology early is a strategy that does not necessarily bear merits. Remember Beta videos and Sony minidiscs? Exactly. As a matter of fact the increasingly short lifecycles of technological equipment lead to two possible strategies when purchasing new goods.

1. You either postpone buying anything because you know that in a short while you can get a superior piece of machinery for less money or
   
2. You just grind your teeth and get on with it. Although in all likelihood, the goods you purchase will be outdated in next-to-no-time.

Following the second strategy at least has you have access to some recent technology whilst with the first one we would still all be computing (or what used to be computing) on a Commodore 64.

As a short background, I have not been a Mac user all my life, but have been converted about four years ago. It was not a decision of religious proportions but one of convenience, although in the meantime, it has gotten to the point where I could not see myself returning to PC mundanity. Ever.

So, when the iPhone hit the UK about 6 months ago, and thankfully my contract with Vodafone had just run out, I jumped on the opportunity to smarten up my phone equipment, albeit for a hefty price. Back then, it cost £269 to purchase, even though you had to commit to a 18 month contract. The upfront cost was dampered by the fact that my wife bought it for me (which led to the Vodafone representative arguing with me - when trying to lure me back - that this is pretty much like paying myself. This is when I stopped dealing with our friends from Newbury).

And while the phone is not perfect, the battery life is a bit meagre for instance, it is in fact a superior piece of engineering which from my point of view is head and shoulder above any other phone I had in the past. Having said that, I went - being patriotic - through a number of Siemens phones which tended to break easily and didn't like the few Sony phones I had afterwards. So I was ready to try a new brand anyway....

In general, as a reasonably passionate Mac user it didn't take much convincing to get me hooked on the iPhone and I have been happily using it since.

Now yesterday, Apple presented the new iPhone 3G which promises all the things that were criticised about version 1.0, 3G access, GPS etc etc. And all of that for half the price of the original one, which makes us early customers look a little silly.

I thought this would again be a case of just having to live with the fact that your car loses half its value driving it around the first corner, until I got a text from O2 tempting me into a free upgrade to the new model.

Last time I checked, O2 was not registered as a charity, so there must be economic reasoning behind this. First of all, they only upgrade those on a contract for £45 a month or more (which I am not) but the ones on the cheaper contracts can buy a new model for £99. So apparently, they must make enough out of the monthly fees to happily subsidise the handset. To tempt even more, they are introducing Pay-as-you-go so that the second (old) iPhone could still be used.

All in all, while I don't think there is concern to be had about O2's future earnings, this is a reasonably happy surprise to the early adopters.

Maybe, in an environment were technology becomes more and more disposable and exchangeable, somebody has actually realised that there is value in binding your customers to you by offering them something they appreciate, rather than leaving them feel ripped off.

This seems to have been Apple's strategy when they refunded the even earlier adopters (before they slashed the price in the US last year after a few months) and O2 has taken this on board.

Aside from tangible products, nowadays it is all about the brand and what consumers are associating with it. Not being penalised for showing brand loyalty is a nice add-on for the customer.

The Baby-Moon (AKA The Last Hurrah)

Hailed as the hottest trend in vacationing, the babymoon (for those not in the know) is one (or more) last getaways before a baby arrives. Which means you will remember it as the last holiday where you had proper lie-ins!

Nature has its funny ways of making things work: For instance, alcohol (in reasonable quantities) apparently does not cause any serious harm to babies in the first few weeks. Which is a great coincidence because it takes most couples a few weeks to find out that they are expecting, a time which is usually not spent refraining from the odd drink.

And with 40 weeks (give or take), homo sapiens have a fairly long gestational period which gives parents-to-be ample time to rethink their undeterred hedonism in the future. More importantly, once morning sickness is out, and swollen ankles are not yet in the way, there lies an opportunity to embark on a last getaway before it's "All change". Some marketing genius has labelled this getaway the Baby-Moon.

There is an entire industry (and an abundance of websites) around the Baby-Moon, getaways to romantic locations, such as the Caribbean (The One and Only Resort in Nassau, Bahamas -- as seen in Casino Royale, although Bond was not babymooning) and the Far East (like the Peninsula in Bangkok). You better start checking with the airline how long you are allowed to fly.

The fact that British Airways recently had an ad campaign around the fact that their staff is trained in delivery (babies not parcels) could be taken as an incentive to travel while it's still only two of you.

Finding myself in a similar situation, I was happy to find out that a fair few destinations on www.baby-moon.eu have already been ticked off the list of places to go (such as the cute Hotel Lungarno in Florence) and that my own Baby-Moon destination, the Four Seasons in Hampshire, picked for early next year, when air travel is off limit, offers pre-natal treatment as well.

But then again, since we we are just 16 weeks, there was time to slot a trip to Thailand in, which should provide opportunity for some pampering as well. Maybe they even have a "What's kicking" package, although at 16 weeks, "Not very much" would be the appropriate answer.

Alas, since a Baby-Moon by definition is the last trip before family expansion kicks in, this would make this trip a mere Baby-Half-Moon.

Originally published on HereIsTheCity Life on 18/11/2007, available here.

One man's trash

is another man's treasure. Which is what sprang to my mind when offloading my trash and bumping into poor old Genghis Khan who had been disposed of by his previous owner.

But of course, the local authorities have for some time now refused to take him on board of their garbage trucks, which could be for numerous reasons:

• He is recyclable but not wrapped in a Local-Borough-Authorised Pink Bag and will therefore not qualify as recycling or
• Despite his lean figure, he would be considered bulk refuse and therefore would need to get an appointment to be picked up individually.

One could argue that the second treatment is much more appropriate for a figure of his historic stature.

Even though it would land him exactly where the first option would lead him as well, onto the landfill of history.

Misleading Movie Poster Quotes

On any given Friday, a fair number of movies opens across the UK. Some are brilliant, some average, many poor. How is it possible that every movie poster has critics quotes hailing the respective oeuvre as a masterpiece?

Of course no movie studio would admit that a piece of film-making they commissioned is outright rubbish, nevertheless it is astonishing how the distributors are usually able to put quotes on the poster about how great this particular piece is.

A lot has been made about the poster for Guy Ritchie's self-indulgent turkey 'Revolver' and the out-of-context quote "Brilliant - Guy Ritchie back to his best" quote allegedly from the Sun movie critic (which it wasn't).

Thankfully, movie history has cast a very dark shadow over the above product, but there are more examples of misleading movie quotes along the same lines which makes you think how a selected number of movie critics can get it so wrong (or whether the quotes might have been "taken out of context"). The following are examples of movies not worth watching, despite the plaudits:

• "An outrageously hilarious comedy" (The Heartbreak Kid)
• "A great time at the movies for everyone!" (Evan Almighty)
• "It…just may kill you with laughs." (Death at a Funeral)
• "The best movie adaptation of a video game so far." (DOA: Dead or Alive)
  

In general, it seems that one can almost tell by who is quoted whether the quote is reliable or not. For instance Maxim's former Peter Hammond seemed to have a reputation of producing favourable quotes for even the worst tosh.

Five star reviews by something like the Sun (despite being exculpated for Revolver) usually mean that you are up for a mind-numbing spectacle which does not have much of a storyline but is likely to sell out to large crowds.

Probably not unlike the very paper you would have read this review in.

Think Before You Chip and Pin

In a world where you tip by waving your Oyster Card and feed the parking meter by phone, some first hand experience on how safe "Chip-and-Pin" is, and on how to deal with the aftermath of being ripped off and seeing your money disappear to Romania.

Last year during the run-up to Christmas, I stopped at the cashpoint at Cannon Street Station to get some money since the excessive consumption of egg-nog lattes had left me short of cash. Coincidentally checking my bank account online a few hours later, I saw the record of the withdrawal, but surprisingly noticed another withdrawal of a strange amount ending in 74p. Whilst I was still trying to figure out how I would possibly have taken out such an odd sum, I could not rule out that it had been a transaction done a few days ago that had just come through.

In an effort to be diligent and vigilant I contacted my bank (or rather their overseas call centre) in order to find out details about the withdrawal. While they had no more information at hand, I was promised that they would find out more within 24 hours and would contact me once that was the case. In the meantime I cautiously blocked the card.

Within the next day, the call centre called me back but - about half a dozen security questions later - only to tell me that more information had not come through yet. In the meantime, I had realised that not only my card but all my accounts were actually blocked. Which was particularly unfortunate since my -- 2007/credit-crunch/(but nonetheless) -- bonus had just come in which I couldn't access.

A few days, many phone calls later -- with the excuse of technical problems -- I was told that the transaction was a cash withdrawal made in a town that I didn't know. However, Google helped me locate it in the province of Romania. That explained the odd sum, but not how somebody stole my money somewhere in Central Europe.

Naively I believed (in particular given that the Romania and the Cannon Street withdrawals were about one hour apart) that this was quite obviously fraud. To my surprise the (overseas, call centre) clerk revealed to me that my bank would not be able to refund the money since clearly it had been me who had given the details to somebody else.

Well, let's rest here for a second: That's my bank - who I believe am a fairly good client of - calling me a fraud.

I was furious, and after threatening to close my accounts (which since blocking them about a week earlier had actually cost me more in interest than the sum withdrawn to begin with) he reiterated his statement referring to company policy.

Swearing to myself that this was the last time I would ever deal with a help line located further east than Canterbury, I decided to face the enemy and walk into the next branch, ready to cut my ties with this institution.

I would have, if it hadn't been for the fact that the employee in the branch (1) was friendly and apologetic beyond belief and (2) confirmed immediately that they would have fraud departments dealing with this and (3) stated that fraud like this happened pretty much all the time.

Apparently, depending on where you shop, sometimes dodgy employees sell on debit card details (he even knew the price - 20 GBP), get your PIN off security camera tapes, and then -- usually in Eastern Europe -- somebody gets to your money with a fake card, because the ATMs down there cannot read the Chip yet but only the magnetic stripe which is easier to forge.

While this episode had left me furious at times, it also left me with some valuable (and probably very obvious) lessons learnt:

• Always, always cover your hand typing in the PIN. There are so many security cameras on you all the time, there's likely to be one on you when you Chip-And-Pin.
• Being the victim of theft, no matter how "clean" and remote it might occur in these digital days, leaves you with the feeling of your privacy being invaded. And even if common sense prevails at the end and you get your stolen money refunded, this is not a good feeling to be left with.

Originally published on HereIsTheCity on 20Jan2008. The original article is available here.

3 Pen Cei, Aberaeron, Wales

Following the Easter weekend spent on the Welsh coastline, we started a mission to spread the word about the beautiful B & B we stayed in the harbour town of Aberaeron...

We went to 3 Pen Cei for a long Easter weekend away from London to enjoy the Welsh coast. Whilst it was early in the year, the weather was predictably unpredictable. However, the coziness of 3 Pen Cei made up for the fact that it was cold and stormy outside.

Upon arrival we were greeted by Lesley who owns the B&B and showed us our superb room. The guest house has been completely renovated in 2007 and a great effort has been made to maintain a maritime decor throughout and make the environment stylish and comfortable. And these efforts have paid off. Best of all, the website conveys exactly the right image of what guests get themselves into so there we no unpleasant surprises but rather a sense of relief that everything was as fabulous as it came across on-line.

The small B&B has 5 rooms, all named after local rivers. We stayed in the spacious Aeron room, which was equipped with amenities from Plasma TV and Wi-Fi to a huge bath-tub and high quality linens. The giant bed was extremely comfortable and the furniture matched the features of the listed building very stylishly.

The B&B is family-run and the keepers look after their guests, by providing a great (Welsh) breakfast (we tasted all the options over the few days of our stay and they were all great) and all the information the guests need to make the most of the their stay. All that in a friendly and genuine way.

The guest house is located on the harbour front of picturesque Aberearon, next to the Harbour Master Hotel, which has a great restaurant and bar (so good it's usually fully booked).

The little town and the adjacent coastline provide charming surroundings for a weekend away, and 3 Pen Cei provides the perfect base to make the stay ideal.

Originally published on TripAdvisor, it can be found here.