Feel Free to Comment on My Life

Where did this come from? Initially we liked Facebook because we could post pictures and connect with friends we had lost touch with (apart from the fact that it was probably ok to lose touch with them).

Then we all felt compelled to update our online status whereever we were and whatever we did (well, probably not to that extent, but it felt as if people were giving away a lot of information about their whereabouts and whatabouts).

And at some point, probably when Facebook updated themselves to a new version, they introduced that people could comment on your status.

So, when doing innocuous little updates such as

"[mdtb] is at the gym."

you suddenly find people leaving comments like

"What are you doing this for, Fatboy?"

That's when I realised you're not only putting up your life, you're actually putting it up for debate.

So you better have a good reason for it.

Random Thought #4: Look Up!

Dogs can't do it, but you can. And in a very "Dead Poet's Society" way, it does in fact open up a new perspective.

As I recently walked through St. Katherine's Dock, a location I pass through with quite some regularity, I found myself waiting in a queue at the ATM, killing time, leaning backwards and spotting some artefact on a wall I hadn't seen before since I had never looked up there.

It turned out (as indicated by a plaque) that the artefact, a block of clear perspex showing a picture of a crown (more on it here) was planned to be featured in the Stanley Kubrick movie 2001: A Space Odyssey but was then replaced by the very well-known monolith.

I was fairly surprised that such a thing had escaped my attention for all the times I had walked past but felt that it simply confirms common sense.

Most of the time we only pay attention to what is clear view, usually at eye level and below. This is why supermarkets put whatever they want to sell you right there and not at a height of 7 feet. You wouldn't simply notice things up there (and you wouldn't be able to reach them but that's secondary).

On occasions it is great fun to walk through London and force yourself to pay attention to everything higher than let's say 10 feet.

You will be surprised about the amount of Gargoyles and statues you will find, as much as you will be simply putting a new angle on buildings that you might have walked past hundreds of times.

It beats reading the METRO hands down.

And by the way, dogs can look up as well but I thought it would make for a good opener.

Hate the Movie, Love the Review

Sometimes movie reviews turn out to be more entertaining than the movie itself. Whilst their purpose is to let you know what's worth your time and what isn't, it is an added benefit if they happen to be worth your time themselves.

And so I came across Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode's weekly hour-long dissection of what is on at your local multiplex.

While this show has been for a while, I only got onto it earlier this year and now the weekly podcasts are a much welcome distraction when making the way to work.

Kermode (the critic) is a horror movie afficionado and seems to have developed a strong following for his rants about movies he dislikes, which includes any movie with "Pirates" or "Caribbean" in the title or movies directed by Guy Ritchie.

Both of them work extremely well together despite the fact that Mayo never goes and sees any movie that Kermode recommends and -- even worse -- seems to enjoy movies that Kermodes loathes (such as RocknRolla).

But admittedly, the movies seem to be just an excuse for the two to get together and go on endlessly about Jason Statham, Liam Neeson and how "The Exorcist" is the greatest movie of all times.

The Mamma Mia review that is available on YouTube has to be a firm personal favourite.

And it didn't make me see the movie as a consequence.

Keep Your Dignity with Google Mail!

You have to love this. GoogleMail (or gmail) now has a feature that is aimed at preventing you from "drinking and mailing".

This feature - called Mail Goggles - is remarkably simple. You set up a time window (default is Friday and Saturday night between 10pm and 4am) at which you are most likely tempted to send out e-mails you might regret later.

Before the e-mail is sent out, you have to answer five maths questions correctly.

You can even set the level of difficulty for those questions, in case you happen to have a PhD in maths and consider yourself brilliant even when intoxicated.

Where were those features when we needed them most - 15 years ago, and applicable to all means of communications like phones, SMS etc?

I guess all you need now is a friend that prevents you from showing up drunk at you ex-wife's doorstep to embarrass yourself.

Although I don't want Google for this purpose.

Learn to Love Thy Employer

Imagine you get on a carousel and suddenly you realise you are going to be stuck on the horse you picked for the rest of your (working) life. Welcome to the Finance Industry in 2008.

Sometimes there is a reason why the good old days are called the 'good old days'.

When I quit my first job in banking to move on (and a little bit up) after about two years, my father, who had been with his employer all his working life, started to seriously question my sanity. For somebody who had spent the biggest part of five decades with the same corporation, my swift move seemed foolish at best and high treason at worst.

Remarkably enough, the next job I gave up after a much shorter period, but by this time, resignation on his side had already kicked in and he chose to trust my judgement.

For a while, changing jobs regularly seemed a fairly low-risk strategy. You didn't really have to worry too much about whether long-term affiliation with your prospective employer was an issue for you. With a planning horizon of 18-24 months, being bound to an employer never looked like much of a burden. Loyalty in many cases lasted as long as - and rarely longer than - the contractually specified (and bonus-related) tie-in period.

The job market resembled a carousel where the workforce, sometimes in teams, moved from one shop to the next to apply their trade for ever increasing fees.

Needless to say, in the midst of an ever larger number of job losses being announced, this carousel has seriously, if not totally, lost its momentum, and a lot of staff have found themselves in situations where they are spending a much longer time with their current institution than they initially anticipated.

Whilst realistically, those who are secure in their jobs should consider themselves lucky, there might be a number of staffers who are not lamenting job losses (yet) but are rather disappointed about the lack of alternatives out there.

Maybe when getting on this carousel, those people should have selected the horse they were going to sit on with a little bit more diligence, just in case they were going to get stuck.

Because that is what they are likely to be now.

Originally published on HereIsTheCity Life on 01-June-2008, the original can be found here.

The Freedom to Be Opinionated

Recently, whilst following the American election coverage and reading up on what people think about certain vice-presidential candidates I found a comment by a (presumably) American stating:

"You're not an American so you don't have the right to vote. Hence your opinion on the candidates is irrelevant."

Which made me think: First of all, whoever made this comment doesn't like the opinion of the other person (although this is not such a profound insight admittedly). And he probably isn't that pleased about what most people abroad think of certain Alaskan hockey moms.

Rendering the opinion irrelevant I thought was a more dangerous thing. The point is taken that you don't have to be won over since you are not the target audience. But does that mean until you're 18, your opinion doesn't matter.

Does it start to matter overnight? Or only if you like his opinion?

I guess if you throw your hat in the ring to stand in for the most powerful executive job in the world, you have to deal with the fact that people opine about you. Not only your voters, but everyone.

And since you end up dealing with Non-Americans, you might find out that their opinions matter.

Occasionally.

Happy Unemployment!

It is coming up to 18 months that the markets have turned first on credit professionals and then on everyone. But friends who are casualties of the market do not seem very depressed about their lack of employment. What's wrong with this picture?

It is inevitable that, when banks start laying off 10-15% of their workforce, it will hit people you know. In my case, very recently, a few close friends have become victims of the market downturn and lost their jobs. Some of them even accepted voluntary redundancy that was offered, so conceivably they could have clung to their job and still be happily employed.

However, they are unemployed and as it turns out after doing some catching up (and being prepared for some hand-holding and back-padding) I found out to my surprise that neither of them is particularly unhappy.

On a side note, when I grew up in the Eighties, there was a huge rise of unemployment in the country I was living at the time, and it was generally perceived to be a big catastrophe to lose one's job. Chances of getting back into work were slim, and everybody feared the financial and social consequences of being out of work.

I turned out to be unemployed as well, albeit for 4 weeks only back then, which was before starting university. But even then our neighbours always asked my parents in a very concerned fashion about my future when all I could think of was to blow the little money I got from the state on a trip to Lanzarote with a friend.

So what has changed since then such that my friends do not seem to be concerned about turning into long-term residents of the local job centre? Is all the doom and gloom that is written about everyday maybe not that gloomy in reality after all?

After meeting a few on them individually, a few reasons for the total absence of depression transpired:

• In general their redundancy packages were appropriate, and while nowhere near enough to retire, usually sufficient to get them through some time and to enable them to sit out the current bull market.
• A few of them perceived their job loss as an opportunity to do something they always wanted to do, but had never had the courage to quit their jobs for. And the goals they dreamt of pursuing ranged from setting up their own trading operation to finishing another university degree.
• Still being optimistic that markets will come back eventually (probably having been through the dot-com crash 7 years ago has already taught them a lesson about how cyclical the markets are), the opportunity to spend more time with the families is seen as something of a god-sent.
• And finally, with one of them, I couldn't even catch up in person since she has chosen to travel the world for a little while and happened to be in Thailand last time I tried. As found out before, even a modest London severance package goes a few extra miles in other places of the world.

While I am grinding my teeth at work, only see my son for limited time during the week since I usually come home after his bed-time and have to make do with 5 weeks of holiday a year, I seriously wonder whether I could be caught on the wrong side of the equation.

The atmosphere in the market is so downbeat, with bonus expectations getting in a downward spiral as well, that maybe those who are out of the market currently are not missing out on a lot?

But probably a colleague who turned down redundancy to be moved into a different role has it right when she thinks that at least, when you are still in the market right now, you have a better chance of being in the game when (or if) markets pick up again.

Let's just hope that banks do not re-iterate previous mistakes when that happens, in that they don't bring in expensive people from outside but rather look after the staff that has managed them through the rough times.

Originally on Here is the City Life on 3rd August 2008. The original can be found here.