Archive for the “Living” category
Ross • 19th Aug 2010 • Living • clothes, dress, fashion, Friends, london, styles
Winston, a long-standing friend and one-time flatmate, is a uniquely stylish dresser. He wears bow ties with shorts; bright checked trousers with modified buttons; and women’s knitwear to better fit his slim frame. His blog, Le Vrai Winston, and his writing for other fashion sites, has led to a shortlisting in Esquire‘s Best Dressed Man awards, and to mentions in BA’s Highlife Magazine. I find it reassuring to think that in some cases, people do get recognised for their enthusiasm and passion. I am also glad that there remain a small supply of wonderfully colourful people like Winston who spurn every attempt of society to make them conform.
Ross • 5th Aug 2010 • Living • africa, book, culture, diplomacy, novel
I have just finished John Le Carré’s Mission Song. It is an thriller, set in the shadier realms of British international relations. The details of the book are well-researched, the plot gripping. However, my enjoyment was marred by the mental stretch necessary to imagine that the protagonist could be so monumentally naive. Typically, the novel ends in a le Carréan anticlimax. If you’ve read The Constant Gardener (or seen the film) you’ll have some idea where the plot is going. Ultimately, nowhere much. The novel is an interesting context piece, but it won’t change your life or outlook.
Ross • 4th Aug 2010 • Living • carmarthen, eating, food, restaurant, wales
Because this place deserves all the publicity and custom it can manage, here’s my user review from Wales in Style:
I live in London and regularly eat at Michelin-starred places in the City, West End and throughout the South East. The food at Y Polyn is easily on a par with these restaurants, but the startling thing is that it manages to deliver this with a wonderful informality and easiness that is quite extraordinary. No fanciness here, just excellent food, in very pleasant surroundings, cooked by people who care about what their guests eat, not what they are wearing.
If you are within 50 miles, eat there. Book ahead.
Ross • 21st Jul 2010 • Living, Thinking • britain, economics, finance, government, inflation, investments, macroeconomy, personal finance, savings, uk
The Economist‘s Buttonwood notes that NS&I have just withdrawn their index-linked savings certificates. Like Buttonwood, my wife and I hold these products. Buttonwood thinks that “the government is preparing the ground for a round of debt-eroding inflation.” It’s hard to disagree – NS&I product offers can be treated as revealed preferences, and they now look as if they prefer paying (much) larger nominal rates than (much) smaller real rates. I can think of no other reason why this should be the case, other than inflation expectations. This is likely to be good for the dollar, good for gold and good for UK exporters. But my 2011 ski season may need to be scaled back – perhaps I should have bought slightly more of the certificates.
Ross • 7th Jun 2010 • Living, Thinking • drinking, dublin, guinness, ireland, travel
Quick thoughts from 24 hours in Dublin:
- I finally understand the point of Ryanair. If you are going to Dublin overnight, with a small carry-on case, the cheap, 50 minute flight from Gatwick is superb. Despite having discovered that you can catch the train to Dublin from London for £30, I’d still be tempted to fly again.
- The city centre is flat, low-rise and lacks the impact and grandeur of Edinburgh, or, frankly, Birmingham. If you swapped out the € signs for £s and got rid of the ubiquitous Ye Olde Worlde Celtic Font (used for everything) you could be in Portsmouth, Liverpool or just about anywhere in the UK. In Dublin, the city is less about the built environment and more about the people, who from the beggars to barmen, seem universally good humoured, friendly and delightful.
- The Temple Bar, the short drinking and partying street, is great fun. Few people from Ireland drink there: expect Brits, Americans and a surprising number of French, all drinking stout to excess in good humour and good song.
- The Guinness Brewery Tour is poor, but worth the €14 for the sample pint in the panoramic Gravity bar. A pint alone normally costs ~€5.50 in the fun parts of town, one effect of heavy Pigouvian taxes. The Jameson’s distillery tour is a much better tourist experience: better explanations, real human guides. Incidentally, John Jameson was a Scot.
- Partly because of the price of the drinks, food in Dublin seems (and sometimes is) very cheap. A full Irish breakfast can be had for €5, even in a high-end café. Oysters are €10 per dozen. However, while Richard Corrigan’s restaurant at Bentley’s Townhouse does a three-course Sunday lunch for €25, the price is the only selling point. I have rarely eaten worse in restaurant of such supposed quality: they served mango sorbet in the same bowl as walnut ice-cream, made an onion soup that tasted like melted garlic butter and even managed to find a way of taking the flavour out of roast beef.
- There is a fascinating exhibit of peat-bog preserved ancient human bodies in the National Museum, but it’s certainly not for the squeamish, and it could put you off biltong for life.
While I lack the experience to pronounce on this, I’m not sure cities are what the Irish are best at.
Ross • 23rd May 2010 • Living, Uncategorized • motorbikes, motorsport, norfolk, racing, snetterton
This is the start/finish straight at Snetterton race circuit, Norfolk. On Saturday I spent over two hours on the track, split over a good seven hours. The weather was fantastic, and the experience absolutely awesome. I am very grateful to Ian who entrusted his race bike to me.
Incidentally, this photo was taken by my Nexus One on default settings. I’m impressed – those bikes were probably going close to 100mph, and there’s no motion blur.
Ross • 26th Apr 2010 • Living • meetings, productivity, work
A colleague points me in the direction of research that large brainstorms can be fruitless. Highlights from the original research (in her summary):
“There is considerable evidence that group brainstorming is less productive than individual brainstorming”. Explanations for this “productivity deficit” include “social matching… a tendency to conform to peers” and “social loafing… because responsibility is diffused”. The researchers focus on a third , viz “collaborative fixation” — “Exchanging ideas in a group reduced the number of domains of ideas that were explored by participants. Additionally, ideas given by brainstormers conformed to ideas suggested by other participants.”
As she mentions, the experiments were conducted using computer terminals (presumably to enable the researchers to control the environment) and so it’s not clear how face-to-face interreaction would have affected the result.
So what should you do if you find yourself in a timesuck meeting like this? Doodle.
Ross • 23rd Mar 2010 • Living • athletics, half marathon, race, running, sports, stafford
I ran the Stafford Half Marathon for the second year in a row on Sunday. I was pleased to find out today that my chip time was in fact 1h53m15s, more than a six minute improvement on last year’s 1h59m50s. Considering, I’d only run once between November and this race, I was pretty pleased with this performance, even if I was beaten by a man dressed as dalek.
Stafford Council put on a good show. The locals turn out in large number, are friendly and supportive. The town is pleasant, with a lovely park area near the river. There are some wonderful properties on the countryside section of the route. Re-entering town you go through a housing estate where a man dressed in a bear suit offers ‘Strongbow station’ to passing runners. Not many runners take up the offer, but I was tempted.
I am fully aware that I look like a constipated speedwalking pigeon in the above photo. For your further amusement, there are more photos of my looking terrible in different ways here.
Running is not really my sport. Although I am getting better at the mental side of things (being in a race is good for interesting things to look at) I don’t think I will ever have the physique to be competitive at distance, whatever training I undertook. I run not because I love running, but because I love being outside, exercising on sunny days, and seeing what I can do. I don’t think I will ever run a marathon, but doing more than one Half each year is a possibility. I am thinking of the New Forest Half in September.
Ross • 19th Mar 2010 • Living, Thinking • beliefs, ideology, markets, morality, outlook, rand, Thinking
Is it worthwhile to try and summarise your beliefs as concisely as you can summarise a career? It is certainly difficult. Here is my latest attempt, for my About Me page:
Philosophically I am highly individualist, objective and rational. I apply rationality to my primary aim, the pursuit of happiness, although I have an unusually low discount rate. In others, I value honesty and candour. I despise collectivism, due to the contraints it puts on human thought and its tendency towards generating tribal conflict. I doubt the sincerity of those who act against their apparent incentives, which I treat as an indication of undisclosed incentives rather than virtue. For these reasons, I value the entry of market-based systems in most areas of life and society.
This does not capture everything, but it does catch what Rand might have called my ‘predicates’.
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.
