Happy Easter!

It was Easter Weekend this weekend. This meant lots of Easter Eggs, but more importantly, it meant a 4 day weekend! In light of the circumstances, we felt like we had no choice but to hop on a plane somewhere and fly off into the night (quite literally)! As such, Nik, myself, the SSG and Chyi booked flights to Basel in Switzerland for the weekend.

But first things first - as our flight wasn't scheduled to leave until Friday night, this meant that we still had time for Easter lunch. Nik, Sui, Beth, the SSG and myself made a booking at Cantina Del Ponte, which is an Italian restaurant down by nearby Tower Bridge. What was absolutely incredible about the lunch was the fact that a 2 course meal was only 10 pounds! I personally found it amazing that a meal with an Oxtail Ravioli starter and a main course of Pan Fried Sea Bream could possibly cost a mere tenner in Central London! The restaurant was even kind enough to give us a candle to celebrate Sui's birthday!



Once lunch was done, it was time to make our way to the airport to catch our flight to Basel. London City Airport near Canary Wharf was fantastic - for one thing, it was only a 15 minute cab ride from our apartment. Plus, there were absolutely no queues at the check in counter. See how happy Chyi was!



Basel Airport was cool! It is apparently the only airport in the world where there are 2 exits leading to 2 different countries, namely Switzerland and France. Check it out!



We caught a really fast taxi (the cabbie was driving at about 120km/h on a small road!) to our hotel in central Basel, which we later discovered was smack in the middle of the Basle red-light district. Heh, check out the picture of the hotel and the corresponding shop round the corner:




Saturday morning was spent exploring the market square, where I had the best sausage that I have ever eaten. I suppose it helped that the stall we bought it from had a few awards hanging on the wall. Even one of the locals told us that the sausages from the stall were excellent!




After a brief walk, Jeff, who is now based in Basel, came to meet us. We crossed the Rhine over to the other side of Basel and then decided to head for a Swiss lunch. Unfortunately (and hilariously), while Jeff could tell us where the best Asian restaurants were, he was slightly ill-informed about the best places to get Swiss food!





We went to a small Swiss eatery where I ordered a portion of rosti, not realising that they would be serving me a Swiss mountain sized portion of the stuff. Don't get me wrong, I love rosti, but I do think that there is such a thing as too much potatoes at one sitting! At least we managed to order some food - it looked slightly uncertain at the beginning as we struggled to order through using over-the-top hand signals and broken German!

We had dinner at Movenpick, which held special memories for those of us who had lived in Singapore before. While I was incredibly tempted to order more rosti, I exercised discipline and ordered some fish stew instead. Nik and the SSG went for the Steak Tartare, while Chyi had a sausage and some rosti (again...).




The next day saw us head across the border to a quaint city called Colmar, which was located in the French region of Alsace. Check us out at the French side of the Basel train station and on the train:




Colmar itself was a charming medieval town, which was made even prettier by the light snowfall that went on throughout the day. Not only is the Alsace region famous for its wine, it apparently was also the region where Foie Gras originated from. Sounded like a perfect formula for us - good food and drink set against a pretty backdrop.








Colmar was essentially the last stop on our quick weekend getaway, as we immediately hopped onto a taxi to the airport once we got back to Basel. On this note, I leave you with pictures that I thought really captured the spirit of the weekend!





One last thing - the last picture above is of these amazing macaroons that we discovered in Basel. We got them from a Swiss chocolatier called Sprungli. Click here to find out more! Trust me - its worth getting some next time you are in Switzerland...

The Bear - An Endangered Species Needing Protection...

Couldn't resist posting this pic which I stumbled across (courtesy of the FT.com).

Bye Bye Bear

Following my post just 3 days ago on Friday, Bear Stearns has been sold for the princely sum of $2 per share! Yes, that is not a mistake - one of the US' largest investment banks and broker-dealers has been sold for $2 per share, which is someway off its $84 valuation last Wednesday. I'm pretty sure that alot of analysts in the City are wondering how a blue chip company can shave off so much value in the space of 4-5 days!

Want another more incredible fact? The price of $2 represents just 1.25% of its "pre-subprime" high of $159 in April last year! Take a look at this chart that I got a screen capture of (courtesy of Reuters):



I just feel sorry for Joe Lewis, the UK billionaire investor who amassed close to a 10% holding in Bear after its 2 hedge funds collapsed last year. I remember that some pockets of the City at the time believed that the firm was ripe for a takeover, especially since the Banking sector was going through a consolidation round. I remembered thinking to myself that it may have been worth buying some shares. The speculators were at least correct on 1 point - i.e. that Bear was taken over. What no one expected was the incredible cut-throat price of the deal!

Rumour has it that Joe Lewis divested his holdings on Friday while there was still some value left! I hope that this is true for his sake - otherwise he would have seen about a billion dollars wiped off the face value of his assets! Considering that his net worth is about $2.5 billion, such an amount would indeed represent a very hard sucker punch...

To commemorate this sad farewell to one of Wall Street's venerable institutions, I attach this Youtube clip:

Sushi, Poker and Bikes

The weekend was a more placid one than normal. We seem to have a regular weekend poker session nowadays, which is either a good or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it.

Having been sick for the past week and having passed it on to Nik, we pretty much spent most of Saturday and Sunday flat out on our backs recuperating. I tried to get some work done on Saturday, but my throbbing head simply made concentration impossible. So in such trying circumstances, what option does one have except to put on some episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and crash out! By the way, the female Terminator on the show (Summer Glau is her name - sounds like a porn star name, if you ask me) is hot! Here is a pretty cool poster of her from the show:



Saturday evening saw us meet the newly engaged Aaron and Maya (congrats guys!) as well as Dror for dinner at Kulu Kulu Sushi. We literally ate and ate until we couldn't eat any more. The general consensus was that the Ebi Tempura Hand Roll (with Salmon Sashimi, Salmon Roe and Avocado) was the pick of the night - with several of us having had more than a couple! My only regret was that I forgot to take a photo of the "leaning tower of Pisa" that we had constructed out of empty sushi plates. Nevertheless, here is one of the happily eaten out sushi-patrons:

Aaron and Maya are the couple on the right


We then adjourned to (what has become) our weekly poker session - this time at Aaron's and Maya's place at Hammersmith. Yung's car refused to start, so Dror and I had to go pick him and Terry up from the City. Yung - Looks like it is time to drag the car over to Brixton, so that someone will (hopefully) steal it, and you can claim insurance?

Once the game started, I found myself having to buy-in in the 2nd round, after deciding to go "all-in" against Dror. This brought back (not so fond) memories of the last time I played with Aaron and Dror, where I also went bust in the 2nd round of the night, and then failed to win a single round. Luckily for me, I recovered quite well this time, and ended up in positive territory over the night.

The girls doing the domesticated thing and kindly getting some drinks for us...


...While the guys reinforce the chauvinistic stereotype by waiting to be served!


This pic is of me scowling at my cards before the flop...


This next pic is of me, at the same round, perking up after realising that I was onto a winning hand. I really need to work on my poker face...




Most of Sunday was spent at the bike store, where I cajoled and bargained my way to a new Bianchi Via Nirone 7, which was on a 50% discount because it was a 2005 model. Plus I managed to get a deal on the helmet (in matching Bianchi colours!), lights, shoes and lock (so important in London!) as well. I don't know much about road bikes, but this one was a far better ride than the Trek 1200 that I had test ridden previously. The guys at the bike store seemed to approve that I had gotten the Bianchi instead of the Trek or the Scott, so that resonates well with me too.

Many thanks to everyone who chipped in for the bike as my birthday pressie. This picture is for all of you!



Now the tricky part is not getting run over while I try (rather clumsily at the moment) clipping my cleats into the bike pedals at traffic lights. London roads are not forgiving. Hmmm....

A Little Bit of the Axis of Evil

On Thursday night, Maie brought Nik and I to Alounak, an Iranian restaurant (or Persian restaurant, since the name "Iran" is now automatically equated with the Axis of Evil) that serves excellent meat and bread!

The food was brilliant - I actually wolfed down my 3 (large) kebabs of chicken and lamb in about 10 minutes. The girls had gotten their priorities all wrong and were busy chatting instead of eating. I, on the other hand, just got on with the job at hand and actually finished my food before Nik had even started on hers. Unfortunately, I ate a little too quickly and found myself getting heartburn...

Onto a different kind of Axis of Evil that is the sub-prime crisis, Bear Stearns reported today that it had to seek emergency funding from the Federal Bank of New York. This led to almost half its market value being wiped out in a single day. At one point today, it actually crashed to 12.04, which is more than half its 52 week high of 26.54.

Things were so bad at Bear that it could not even wait till March 27th to borrow directly from a new lending facility recently introduced by the Fed. It had to borrow through another bank that had access to the lending facilities that are already available.

How the proud have fallen. We were in the age of large Wall Street firms making easy money because debt was cheap to obtain and the markets were bullish about taking on all sorts of risks.

To me, the sad thing is that everybody knew that the cycle had to turn sometime - Everybody knew that subprime debt, which is the underpinning asset behind a large number mortgage backed securities, was reaching an unsustainable point. Companies were even being set up to actively provide false reports to allow people with poor credit ratings access to debt.

Nevertheless, the opportunity to make a quick buck couldn't be passed up. After all, if all the other banks were doing it, the exceptional bank that chose to back away from mortgage backed securities would end up looking like a fool - as long as the markets remained favourable, that is.

Now a lot of people on Wall Street and the in the City are feeling just like I did at Alounak - Suffering from heartburn from eating too much too quickly...

Another bit of the Axis of Evil for me - Bronchitis, which I have been suffering from for the last 5 days! And now Nik appears to be falling ill as well.

On this note, I leave you with Maz Jobrani, a comedian from the latest constituent of the Axis of Evil - Iran (or Persia, if you prefer).

Lebron James Torches the New York Knicks

Meant to post this last week but was too busy to do so.

How does anyone stop a 6-8, 114kg machine, who can pretty much do everything offensively? And the amazing thing is that this guy is only 23 years old! In the video, even the opposing team's fans started chanting his name after he scored 50 points! Incredible...

Reunions in Bad Weather

The weather is horrible in London at the moment, with more bad weather still to come. See this report from the BBC.

Nevertheless, this didn't stop a bunch of us from going for a long run around Regent's Park and Primrose Hill on Saturday morning. On hindsight, running in the cold and the rain for 2 hours probably wasn't the best idea as I have been sick since Sunday night and didn't go into work today.

I suppose that all the unhealthy food I ate after the run didn't help either. After we all washed up from the run (except Chyi, who chose to market the latest Jelly Pong Pong scent called "Au Naturale" *grin*), we went to Oriental City up in Colindale where we bought back Nasi Lemak (with Ayam Rendang), Chicken Rice, Chye Tow Kuay, etc. Heh, if you think we were being greedy, Chyi polished off 2 portions of Asam Laksa all on her own!

But the highlight of the trip up to Oriental City was bumping into Siang Yew and Lindsay (who was pregnant with her first kid), our classmates from college who we haven't seen for ages! After making arrangements to meet up with Siang for dinner at the Easton (Lindsay couldn't come as she was 1 month away from popping!), we returned to Great Portland Street where we gambled the afternoon away.

I am happy to report that I had a wicked run of luck going the entire afternoon, and ended up winning most of my hands. I even managed to get a Straight Flush - Yung insisted that I take a picture of it, as none of the guys had ever seen one arising during live play.



At about 8.30pm, Easton's Saturday Steak Night beckoned and we all adjourned to Farringdon, where we linked up with Chyi, Johann, Siang Yew and Sham. Jini and Yung came along as well, as they coincidentally were uni hallmates with Siang at Nottingham. Patric tagged along for the Easton Goose Fat Chips - Who can blame him? They are that good...







Nothing gets between Yung and his T-bone!


And now it is Monday night - I have had a thoroughly unproductive day sleeping and hacking up phlegm. Luckiliy for me, my flatmate Sui didn't go into work today, so she made me porridge with minced pork and dried scallops. Thanks babe - the tasty and healthy food made the day much more bearable.

As I now watch Nik and Sui play Rayman 2 on the Wii (they are playing some weird game where they have to stick the remote controllers on their heads to simulate concentrating at chess??!!), I contemplate whether I should go into work tomorrow. I really hate having unproductive days, but I also am conscious of the fact that I am more likely to recover faster if I just stick in bed tomorrow.

I suspect that I will only decide whether to go into work at 7am tomorrow morning...

Pics from Snazz Sichuan

Pics of Yung, Jini, Nik and myself from Snazz Sichuan...

Work and Play

First weekend back in London was great!

Went for a nice long run from Islington in North London back to Canada Water in the East. Then went to meet Jini, Yung and Patric at Snazz Sichuan, a Szechuan joint at Euston where every dish we ordered was covered with red chilli oil!

It was a real dilemma - being torn between eating more of the yummy food, or having my tongue go completely numb from the szechuan peppercorns. Nevertheless, the food was great and we all had a swell time teasing Jini because she came "very slightly" overdressed to the restaurant (YSL bag and all!). Heh, according to her, she got all dressed up because Yung never brings her anywhere nice enough to wear her pretty dresses! Listening to their banter makes coming back to London completely worthwhile!

On Sunday, the SSG came to pick Nik and I up in Hansum and we went to the Chinese Supermarket at Greenwich, where we bought enough to feed a small army! We then came back and had Yu Sheng, as Nik had yet to "lo hei" this year.




On the work front, things have been pretty interesting - because of staff shortages, I have been dumped in the deep end where I am feeling slightly out of my league. All my friends are pretty shocked that I am actually averaging a 12 hour day (I'm normally a big slacker, you see)! And this is despite me making a conscious effort to leave work at a semi-decent time! But at least I am learning, so that's great!

My favourite moment from work thus far - Getting complemented for my written commentary on an Asian Commercial Property Fund who presented to us, and then having other colleauges (who heard about it through the grapevine) ask me whether I could email it on for them to read!

My favourite moment from the weekend - Waking up from a nap at about 6pm on Sunday evening to find that it was still sunny outside! It's amazing what a bit of sun can do to brighten up one's mood...