Archive for the “Living” category
Ross • 14th Feb 2010 • Living • holidays, life, skiing, vacation
I have just returned from Kitzbuhel in Austria, this year’s venue for our annual family ski trip. If I have not been in contact so much for the past week, this is why – apologies. In Kitz I recommend:
- Schloss Lebenberg, a hotel with first rate fitness facilities (including a roof-top pool and sauna overlooking the town and mountain)
- The Londoner for rowdy apres-ski, especially when the Short and Curlies are playing
- Making the link with Westendorf and checking out the neighbouring SkiWelt ski zone. The lifts and views are better than in Kitz, although it can be busier on the pistes, and you’ll need a different lift pass.
The photo above is the Wilder Kaiser mountain range, visible from the resort’s two main ski peaks. More photos here.
Ross • 5th Feb 2010 • Living • economy, house prices, investment, london, property
From the Wall Street Journal via Paul Kedrosky:
London real estate has actually bounced off the bottom in the last nine months. Prices are now down a mere 9% or so from their 2007 peaks, according to data tracked by mortgage giant Nationwide Building Society. The average home in London, including all those dreary outskirts that go on and on and on, is $436,000. That’s even higher than it was as recently as 2006, when the bubble was in its late stages.
As a homeowner in those ‘dreary outskirts’ I like the phenomenon if not the description.
(Incidentally, if a UK paper was reporting the US market, it would give the foreign-denominated price first, then the local equivalent in brackets. Is it standard US practise to show only dollar amounts? If so, that annoys me more than it should.)
Ross • 4th Feb 2010 • Living • climate change, global warming, media, radio, talk radio
Congressman Donald Schwerbitz, who represented South Dakota back in the 1960s and 70s… recognized that carbon emissions are caused primarily by breathing, and he proposed to cut those emissions in half by requiring every American to wear a device that plugs up one nostril. Congressman Schwerbitz… an irrepressible prankster… managed to get himself invited onto a talk radio program to explain how the nostril plugs would work. (The host was in on the joke.) Because talk radio audiences are dominated by libertarians and reactionaries, the response was not positive. Callers clamored for civil disobedience; one threatened that if he ever saw anyone wearing one of these devices, he’d “punch him in his other nose”. Others worried that our clean air might drift over to Cuba, where the communists could use it. A few, though, were enthusiastic. One woman wanted to know if the devices could be adapted to fit animals. Warthogs, she observed, have very big nostrils.
Although the Steven Landsburg piece from which I have stolen this extract isn’t supposed to be a comment on talk radio, I think this sums up the concerns of most talk radio callers well – at least from what I have heard when travelling in a taxi, or getting my hair cut.
Ross • 1st Feb 2010 • Living • america, automotive, cars, heuristics, opinions, transmissions, trust, usa
When I spot somebody who appears never to have left the USA…
Car enthusiasts (and genuine experts like race car drivers) still drive cars with manual transmissions. They offer more control; they’re more efficient. But the vast majority of cars sold today are automatics.
…I discount their opinions appropriately.
Ross • 19th Dec 2009 • Living • coffee, london, retail, shopping, stations
In London Victoria station one of the convenience stores, Whistlestop, appears to have opened an Upper Crust coffee stand inside itself. Both brands appear to be owned by the convenience retail company SSP, but it sure looks weird.
Ross • 7th Dec 2009 • Learning, Living, Thinking • bargaining, negotiation, taxi, travel
Via Tim Harford’s Twitter feed, I came across this interesting piece from Chris Blattman on national variation in bargaining strategies, a.k.a. how to negotiate your taxi fees. A good example of a thread where the comments add as much value as the post.
My top overseas taxi tip: When you arrive at an airport, go by foot from the Arrivals concourse to the Departures concourse. Collect a taxi there to save yourself roughly 50% of the price of a waiting taxi. (Plus you know they are a real taxi, you just saw their last Westerner fare arrive unmolested.)
Ross • 11th Nov 2009 • Living • banking, boats, finance, Friends, sailing, yacht
No doubt there are more pressing problems in the world, but the other night some friends and I were grappling with what a hedge-fund manager of mutual acquaintance should call his new yacht, currently on order from Princess.
I suggested various epithets, from the funny to the lame (Bailout, Liquidity, Too Big to Sail, Floating Charge) but the winner was a banking friend, with the inspired Quantative Ease.
Ross • 10th Nov 2009 • Living • dvd, entertainment, information, media, media consumption, news, radio, rss, television
- I wake up listening to Today on BBC Radio 4.
- Waiting for the train, I catch up on my RSS feeds through SpeeedReader [sic] on my phone, which syncs to my Google Reader account. I subscribe to about 40 feeds, business and pleasure, split into categories.
- On the train, I read whatever book I have on the go. These are normally borrowed from friends, gifts, or from Westminster Library, which I walk past twice daily.
- To keep up to speed during at work, I dip in and out of BBC News Online, Google Reader and Google Finance UK.
- At home I watch Freeview (live or recorded on my Media Center PC) or a DVD from the free DVD library I established at work.
- If I’m doing the dishes, I’ll listen to more Radio 4, unless it’s The Archers. I dislike The Archers because I cannot commit to anything approaching every episode and I struggle to remember (or care) which character is having which crisis.
- I don’t drive during the week. At weekends, I drive listening to Radio 4 (Friday night and Saturday) or a music station (local commercial or Radio 1) on Sundays. The same radio attention split applies to weekend running.
- If I am working or studying at home, I’ll normally have earphones plugged in to a feed from Last.fm, a service I adore.
- For some reason, doing DIY makes me want to listen to the type of cabbie talk-radio you find on LBC and BBC London.
- At night, I go to sleep with Kai Rysdall on American Public Media’s Marketplace podcast (thankfully, my wife approves).
My media consumption keeps me fully up to speed of everything that interests and entertains me. The quality of much of this media is exceptional. Today, Marketplace, Marginal Revolution and Last.fm stand out especially.
Why do I mention all of this? Well, because I find it amazing that, aside from the TV Licence, I pay nothing for any of this media.
Ross • 9th Nov 2009 • Learning, Living • finance, investing, money
I sold out of Tesco in October at 407, having bought them at 321 exactly a year previously and enjoyed two dividends in addition to the 26% rise in share value. It was my first investment. Of course, commissions took their toll from my profit: although I try to keep these as low as possible, I’m playing with hundreds rather than thousands, so it’s hard not to lose a few points to the brokers. However, perhaps that’s a good thing as it discourages frequent trading, a sure fire way of making brokers rich at your expense. The asymmetric brokerage costs that I now have arranged (£1.50 flat to buy, £10 flat to sell) are a good incentive to stay in the game too. Despite this, not staying in the game is my first investment mistake. Tesco passed 420 today, making 321 seem even more of a steal.
Ross • 9th Nov 2009 • Living • commuting, getting things done, reading, Thinking, work
Ben Casnocha blogs about the need for building thinking time into the daily routine. He suggests ensuring that you schedule in time for reading, driving and similarl activities where thinking can happen unprompted. I agree and it is for this reason that I lengthened my morning commute. I now take a less quick but less packed train to work. I have just the right amount of time to sit, read and think about the day ahead, and I still arrive on time. I lose only some fairly unproductive time between 08:20 and 08:50, when previously I would do a sift on the overnight emails to warm me up for the day.
