The eX-files

Recently I have been sorting out paperwork in my office. This can be quite a big task, as I like to do a very thorough job – looking at every piece of paper in each file to see if it should be kept. I keep all kinds of documents, and “paperwork” in this sense also includes the folders full of instructions manuals, and boxes of “memories”.

I try to be reasonable about what I hold onto, but a lot would fail the “if you haven’t used/needed it for X years” test. Of course some has to be kept by law (for tax), and some other material is plainly useful or sensible to retain.

But a lot of it is just “interesting” – like documents for the sale & purchase of our 3-ago house, statements for accounts closed in 2001, University notes, O-level papers, or someone else’s school tie.

We’re not short of space, so I could keep even more stuff in theory but I enjoy the actual process of sifting through the files. On each round of processing (every couple of years, maybe) each file is reduced a little more. What I retain becomes more and more the “core” documents even though some interesting context is lost each time.

The process of checking through each file also reminds me of what’s there, and brings back memories.

Sometimes I do think it would be interesting to keep EVERYTHING. Yesterday for example, I threw out notebooks from my time on sabbatical from Bear. This was the period when I was still employed, but was taking a 3-month break. As we now know, this time was the start of the credit crisis and there were some rocky times for the business.

I had to make some calls during that time and my notes were scrawled in these books. They were not much more than phone doodles to be fair although there was enough there (names, dates, specifics of deals and so on) for me to recall the events. Actually finding the notes (in this case, at the back of what looked like an empty notebook) was in reality more interesting than the notes themselves. No one else would have been able to make anything of them.

It’s also good in these filing exercises to check that certain “important” items are still in my possession. I was able to find my 23-day plan for example. This was a single page of A4 notepad on which my revision plan for degree finals was scrawled. 23 days was all there was left by the time I realised that I was really running out of time to get the work done. It turned out to be just enough, history tells us.

The files themselves are interesting in some cases. Most of the actual documents have been re-filed a few times over the years and original envelopes, say, have for the most part been dispensed with at some point. But many of folders are still Oxford University folders that I vividly remember buying at the student union shop.

I seem to have retained exam papers from all the important milestones. I have most of the O level, A level and degree papers as well as scholarship exams for Oakham and Oxford entrance papers. I even have the ones from the banking exams. In all these cases I can recall the events of those times fairly clearly. In some cases, I still remember some of the questions (although not the answers).

Looking through them made me recall very fondly my time at school and University. Clearly these items are not “necessary” in any way but I could never get rid of them now.
Some other documents from that time are even less important, yet more interesting. I have, for example, a TELEX exchange between me and Jack Sakkab from Oakham (he’d gone back to Jordan by then) in which we let each other know our A-level results. Hard for the iPhone generation to understand that !

I wonder if the TELEX network still operates ? Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised. There was a TELEX machine chattering away at Bear Stearns for years after it was really needed for anything.

Also from the TELEX era, I have a timestamped page from the TELEX room to prove that I made it onto the FX trading floor at Natwest earlier than anyone else after a late night out other dealers, leading to a bet that I couldn’t do it. “Tweedie” still hasn’t paid up. 18 years later I haven’t forgotten (although I have written the £50 off !).

Looking through does also make me think of a number of items that I wish I had kept but I will need to be satisfied with just the memories of those !

Boot Drive

During a long-overdue sort-out in my office, I turned up some items that seemed too good to throw away, too large to eBay, too obscure to keep and equally unlikely to find a home with immediate neighbours or friends.

For some reason, my thoughts turned to a car boot sale. I have literally never been to one, either as buyer or seller. I always felt I could understand why so many people apparently enjoy these events but I had never personally felt a great urge to give it a try.

However, with Harry as a willing accomplice, I decided to give it a whirl. Starting with literally two or three items, I soon found that we had a whole car full. Once you start looking, car boot fodder is everywhere.

A quick google revealed a venue at Bedford hospital. However, when I called the organizer I discovered they were not running till September. Next stop, the local newspaper (I rarely read it, but I found plenty of sites). We settled on one near Barton.

Up at 6 on Saturday morning, we ventured out and found ourselves in a queue at the gate for the opening at 7am.

Before making the trip, I had done a little research online and picked up some advice from those with more care boot experience (that is, everyone).

We were warned about the dangers of being swarmed by expert buyers, and the risk of theft and so on.

In the event, the site at Barton turned out to be quite a small affair. There were only 25 cars or so selling, and almost all the buyers consisted of other sellers ! Chatting with our neighbouring booters, it seemed that this particular event was very new on the circuit and not established with the regulars.

Still, this was possibly a good thing as it gave us an easy ride for our first outing. Despite the lack of customers, we actually had a very good day, taking over £120. I think we may have sold more than all of the other pitches combined !

I’ve heard it said many times that “it’s incredible what sells at a car boot” and now I believe it ! There was literally rubbish for sale on many of the stalls.

We had the benefit of having a lot of high quality items to shift. The regulars, one feels, will find it tough to continuously source desirable items for low enough cost.

As far as pricing goes, I think I benefitted from having extremely low expectations. We had padded our stall with lots of books (which usually we send straight to the charity shops) and also over 100 DVDs that the boys never watch. Books, in particular, I did not expect to sell at all given the ubiquity of second hand booksellers.

So, each time we actually sold a book for 50p, I was quite pleasantly surprised !

We really did not have any “tat” on offer but it was surprising what items created interest, and which did not merit a first look.

Pricing wise, I can see that there are norms that operate. DVDs, for example, have a market-clearing price that is probably quite well established. However, even for such commodities and especially for other items, the real skill (I suspect) is to “play the player”.

One tip I picked up before going was NOT to put price labels on. This allows you to engage the potential buyer who has to enquire about price. It also allows you to change pricing according to time of day and other conditions.

The fact seems to be that many items will not sell at any price until you find the right buyer.

The right buyer, however, can be fairly indifferent to price (within reason). We also came to see that certain types of buyer are particularly valuable. For example, children who have been given £5 to shut them up feel a great need to spend it all as soon as possible !

Harry was a natural. He was genuinely helpful in seeking out “stock” at home, setting up the stall and in dealing with the customers. This was pleasing since he can be quite shy.

I was comfortable leaving him on his own at the stall for a while. I came back after a survey of the site to find Harry pointing out a couple of sales he had made. He also joked that he was sorry he had sold my stereo (one of our best items) for £3 by mistake. I knew he was joking (a) because even at a car boot it was obviously worth a lot more and (b) it was still sitting there on the table.

Five minutes later, the buyers came back to collect it as agreed !

Oh well. I was as guilty as Harry for under-selling over the weekend. And a happy customer is a valuable asset. Maybe the buyer felt bad about her coup, and she bought another £15 of stuff as much fuller prices.

We seemed to sell a good amount of stuff, but still had ¾ of a car full at the end. We decided to try again the next morning. We had been tipped off about a much busier site near Leighton Buzzard.

Our experience on the first day taught us that anything is worth trying to sell, so we easily used up the spare space in the car with more books, more toys and some highly speculative items: I filled up a box with left over mobile phone chargers, obsolete computer mice and freebie headphones etc. On Day 2, nearly all of these sold !

Billington car boot was more like what I imagined – well over 200 cars. We still did not suffer too much from vulture-experts or thieves. The only mishap we experienced was taking in a counterfeit £2 coin. It was a poor copy (obviously fake) so I have to suspect it was knowingly used. Still, one more lesson learned, quite cheaply.

After a second successful day (over £250 taken over the weekend), Harry and I are sufficiently hooked to want to try again in a few weeks. Now, I see bootable items everywhere. Nail it down, or else I am likely to try to sell it !

Boil in the Bag Meal

Back in May, Karen & I made a token effort at vegetable gardening with the planting of seed potatos and carrot seeds in some grow-bags on the patio.

Today we hauled in our harvest and for tonight at least we shall be able to eat our own.

The crop was rather modest ! The carrots in particular suffered from chronic overcrowding:




However, they were at least recognisably potatos and carrots:

A Raft of Problems

Last stop on the cruise itinerary was Vigo in Spain. Vigo is in that bit of Spain on top of Portugal, and the border seems to be the Minho river.

Matt, Harry and I were booked on "Rafting in Vigo" as our last tour, and the Minho river was the destination. "in Vigo" was a bit of a stretch as our journey was over an hour and took us very nearly out of Spain entirely.

Before we got underway with the long bus trip, we had a long unexplained delay in our departure. After some time sitting on the dock, the tour supervisor advised that one of the rafts had broken. Six volunteers to take a different excursion were needed. A full refund was offered, which prompted one group to take this option.

This was the first glitch, and next there was the shambles when we arrived at the river. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the allocation of people to boats and we nearly did not find a boat at all.

Plenty of other people also struggled with the "organization" and by the time our boat was put in the water, we had to take some stray passengers who otherwise may not have launched at all.

This seemed to take the number of rafters from six (which I assumed) to eight (the number that our first boat guide was calling for ) to ten (this is what our second guide went for) then twelve that we set off with.

Our guides were insistent that the overcrowding was down to a significant overbooking by the cruiseline.

This heavy load did appear to cause us some difficulties, especially with many of the passengers being less than enthusiastic paddlers.

Still, the river was beautiful and the mixture of short whitewater sections and longer flat stretches seemed pretty ideal for this kind of excursion.

Some of the rafters complained it was not exciting enough - slightly at odds with their rather lame paddling efforts. Matt of course was among the "more whitewater" group.

As far as I could see, it was challenging enough considering almost all participants were first-timers and that we had undergone precisely zero minutes of tuition on rafting technique. Safety instructions were likewise almost non-existent.

The element of (mild) risk was obvious when (about 1 hour in), we approached a particularly vigorous section and our boat (quite possibly in part due to the overloading) flipped entirely on its side and we had little chance to stay aboard.

Harry & I were on the submerged side, on which no one survived a ducking. Matt was one of only two hangers-on. All the other 10 passengers and the guide were dunked in the river.

At this point, I lost my prescription sunglasses which I only recently replaced having lost the previous pair in the waves on Santa Monica beach last year at about this time. Harry miraculously managed to pick his out of the water before they disappeared.

My wallet of course was fully submerged, but by now I know that cards and banknotes can easily survive this kind of experience. Likewise I knew my phone would have no chance. Even momentary drowning seems to kill phones instantly.

I was not able to catch up with our raft. Another raft picked me up and I had to assume that Matt and Harry had likewise been rescued. Without my glasses I couldn't identify the occupants of other boats at the distances involved.

We were reunited 15minutes later when I was able to reboard the original raft in a calm section.

It was a long paddle to the end - nearly 3 hours of rafting (value for money anyway !) - but none of the subsequent rapids led to a repeat soaking.

The late start and slow passage (exacerbated by overloaded boats I feel) meant that by the time we unloaded, we were only 30minutes away from "all-aboard" time, with a 1 hour bus journey to come.

Our guide reasonably advised us to grab a drink / change / visit the facilities ASAP but unaccountably we waited over 30minutes after we had done all this and so by the time we arrived back in Vigo it was 90minutes past sailing time.

I speculated that Karen would probably have tried to contact me on my defunct phone but I did feel pretty confident that the boat would not leave without 120 rafters and I am sure Karen also was not too concerned despite our obvious delay.

We arrived back at the gangway to a loud and ironic cheer from hundreds of passengers watching and waiting on the dock-facing decks. The boat was sufficiently primed for departure that it was away from the dock in the it took us to ascend i the lift from deck 2 (gangway) to deck 11 (for a welcome cup of tea) !

Clueless in Cadiz

I have been very impressed with the standard of the tours on our Mediterranean cruise. On our cruising debut last year we did not participate in any of the organized tours and in fact we only left the boat once, for less than an hour.

I don’t think that getting off the boat is an essential ingredient for a successful cruise, but with two weeks at sea it made sense to make a few stops. Karen waded through the enormous brochure.

We visited Monaco/Monte Carlo, Pisa and Cagliari. The boys and I went to a water park at the Rome stop.

On all of those I was struck by the high level of organization and the precise timings. I thought the tour guides did an excellent job in all respects (exceeding my expectations significantly). You might say it’s not a difficult job, but in my opinion it’s not easy to do it really well.

Today’s trip to the Cadiz water park Aqualand fell far short. Since all the tour escort had to do was get us on the bus, give us our tickets and arrange to get us all back on time, you might say it was hard to go far wrong.

However, although he did meet the low bar of not losing anyone, it was a seriously unimpressive performance !

Even before we left port he managed to be off by 4 on the headcount and the supervisor had to sort it out. He didn’t really speak English and met all questions with no answer beyond a shrug of the shoulders.

Our trip was not billed as a guided tour but his total silence on the 40minute trip was a weak performance. Our escort to the Rome park took the opportunity to tell us something “for free” about our surroundings, and also explained very clearly where we were going, what would happen etc. This makes a good deal of difference to the feeling that everything is under control.

The contrast was total.

On arrival, our escort today made a good effort to lose people on the way to the gate. He did state the time and place for our rendezvous at the end of the day. However, when we came back later he was not there to greet us, and eventually he showed up late at a different location. After he made no apparent effort to consolidate those who had found him and those who had duly arrived at the meeting point, most of us made our own way to the bus.

It wasn’t that we felt there was a serious chance of us being left behind, but it was clearly badly organized and “clueless” was the unanimous verdict among those on the trip.

Now, the waterpark itself was a nice facility: in good condition and well laid out.

However, “clueless” applied very well to the business running the park.

For a start, I seriously question the wisdom of opening the park at 11am in high season. It’s already very warm at 9am (say).

The enormous queues for tickets and entrance tell me very clearly that they could and should have got people in much earlier. Thankfully we did escape the main queues with our “group” tickets but I would have been furious that it wasn’t possible to arrive early to get any kind of jump on the queues inside.

Once inside, it was a 45minute queue to get a key for a locker. Just 2 people serving the entire mass of people. I estimate the 45 minutes, as I gave up waiting. Instead, we went to find a seat and shade.

Now, there was a charge for the sunloungers. I’m not delighted about that but if the business decision is to have lowish entrance prices and charge for everything else, then they should at least collect the fees. We saw no one taking the money all day.

When I went back to rent a locker after waiting 30 minutes, the queues were as long as ever.

Crazy to have so few staff at that key bottleneck.

We abandoned the locker mission and just hoped for the best. We now discovered that queue management was not a strong suit. The over-riding impression of the slides was that no one was on them. This was not for lack of people queuing up to ride, but somehow they contrived to have a 3 minute gap between each actual rider. Even allowing for the fact they need to ensure absolute safety, the fact is that it was poor ride control that massively exacerbated the problem.

We managed to get one ride on a relatively fast-loading ride (6 lanes). But still the method of sequencing the queue must have added at least 50% to the gap between rides.

We decided it was time for a drink. Could we find a drink? We could not. There were no signs for bars or cafes, no bars or cafes in sight. Our seats were actually next to a pizzeria – shut. At 1pm with the park packed. The bar next to the locker queue was shut.

There were so many places where they could and should have had a drinks stall or a vending machine or a mobile drinks seller.

Eventually we found they did have one cafe open. Two people were attending to a queue that was already growing fast. Apparently one person fulfilling orders in the back.

The food was nice, in fact, but the queue got only worse from then and later it was inconceivable to try to buy another drink. This has to be a classic lose-lose.

Later they did open one of the closed bars – with one staff member doing everything.

Simply incredible. The good news was that the few staff on duty were friendly and relatively efficient, and the customers were fairly placid although obviously frustrated.

There were more people taking the inevitable photographs of visitors (does anyone ever buy them ?) than employed in the entire food & beverage business in the park.

One place where we can give full marks was for plenty of bins for depositing rubbish, but since the availability of food & drink was so strictly rationed, there wasn’t much call for rubbish bins !

Still, thankfully we had had a good dose of water rides in Rome so we had a splash around in the pools and amused ourselves marvelling at the spectacle of bad management. Perhaps the park was supposed to double as an exhibit of Spanish business efficiency. It reminded me very much of some experiences in Spain last year (see the fishing licence and banking fiasco blogs !)

Badminton Trials

The point of no return appears to have passed whereby I cannot beat the boys at anything (poker, hopefully, being a significant and possibly unique exception).

This is especially true of sports of all types, although video games of all genres are now also included. That’s rather concerning, although they do have tremendous opportunities to practice hand-eye co-ordination for video sports that I never had.

Their total superiority in video games was brought home on the cruise. The Independence of The Seas has an impressive arcade with many good quality games of all types. I was only able to beat Harry on one game of motorcycle racing (no idea why – he crushed me on the car racing games of various formats) and at Sinistar [on a very good multi-games console].

In the Sinistar, since I scored only 1/60th of my world record mark from the 1986-9 era, I wasn’t that impressed with my own efforts.

Back in real sports, it was not so long ago that I had to give considerable concessions to Matt and Harry at all racquet sports in order to make a game of it. Now, both can beat me and Matt is now capable of soft-playing to give me the appearance of having a chance (then powering over the line). Harry is not yet as strong, but soon will also leave me far behind.

Actually, Harry is probably just at the level where it’s a genuinely close game in some sports.

We played badminton just before we came away. We are both pretty bad in absolute terms, but I find badminton between somewhat-matched opponents is enjoyable at a poor standard in the way that tennis or squash is not.

The first set went close, with Harry eventually prevailing 15-13. In the second set, I got off to a flying start and held on to win 15-13 myself. Now in the 3rd set, I fell 12-2 behind before making a massive surge to actually have the first match point at 15-14 up following a prolonged “deuce” at 14-14.

Did I “let” Harry get so far ahead to begin with in the 3rd set ? Did Harry “let” me catch up?

Who knows but the battle at 14-14 and beyond was genuinely close. After I failed to close out several match points at 15-14 and 16-15, Harry eventually came through to steal the match 15-13, 13-15, 18-16 with just a minute or so to spare before we would have run out of court-time.

I will have to try hard to pull off any victories before it is too late.

A - Z

My A - Z of poker is available (in supposedly daily instalments) on poker actually and also on my gutshot.com blog.

I am planning to blog from Vegas itself of course.