Someone asked me the other day why would I want to live in London and as I sit here in the lounge in Heathrow Airport I start to wonder that myself.

“Why would I want to live in London?”

It is 5,000 miles from my family. It is a LOT colder here right now in the winter. It is 2x as expensive as the US (actually with the exchange rate is more like 2.5x). The people are more unfriendly in the UK than the US. Sushi (my favorite food) is almost unaffordable.

Although on the flip side…

The Indian food here is much better than the US. I have some great friends here in the UK, while my friends in San Diego have all moved away mostly. The Guinness tastes better here than in the US. My MBA has more value here than the US (or at least that is what I feel sometimes). The nightlife and culture is better here than San Diego.

Wow…I can see a whole new entry for the future. London vs. San Diego…

It is cold…not just cold, but REALLY cold.  I think the temperature here has been hovering around 8 degrees celsius.  And rumor on the street is that it will go below zero.  Now mind you, we are talking celsius here not Fahrenheit.  But still that is damn cold.

I luckily have my long warm, wool coat.  Too bad I accidently left behind my gloves in San Diego.  Oh well…what does not kill me, makes me stronger.

Well I am flying back to London next week, for a little fun. Well actually I am flying back to get some of my stuff from the UK. I was marveling on how much STUFF has ended up in the UK. I think over 2 years I have been bringing and leaving at least 20kg of stuff per a trip, which over the years has added up to a LOT of stuff.

What is this stuff? Well mostly clothes, but also books. School books and lots of them, and school folders…yeah I am a bit of a nerd. I also have the UK Xbox 360 Charger and SCART cables (I do have my priorities) and I have paintball stuff (although I never played in the UK). So basically, in a nutshell, I have tons of STUFF that I have to get back. Wish me luck in the mass migration home.

Personally, between you and me, this is going to take more than one trip.

So my flatmate and I talked the other week and I have to get some of my stuff.  Over the past two years of going to London Business School I have managed to transport a TON of stuff to the flat.  And he kind of wants part of the room I have been using back.  I have taken over the entire closets and sprawled out into the room by buying a wardrobe shelve thing.

And to make it more of a no brainer the cost of the ticket is only $480 round trip.  Sure I will miss out on Thanksgiving, but that is ok.  I get a chance to return to the UK for a week and that should be fun.  I hope I don’t get sick this week…I seem to always be sick lately.

Saturday, The Divine Miss N and I went to the Borough Market…it was my first time and she has been going there for ages. We walked the market about three to four times, taking in the smells, sights, and sounds. It was all a bit overwhelming, as the hustle and bustle of the late morning crowd started to give way to the tourists who came to the market. There were cheeses, chocolates, meat, fruits, wine, you name it…all on display…all very expensive. It was a like a VERY BIG farmers market.

I procured for my weekend meal: 2 different types of cheeses (One Dutch Farmhouse Cheese and One Italian Wine Soaked Cheese), 2 different types of Basque Pig Sausages, 2 different types of olives, and some bread. You kind of get the idea of the theme of two, but I was trying to put together a nice cheese and meat dinner for Saturday and lunch for Sunday for myself. I will post up photos of the Borough Market when I have a moment.

I suspect this entry may get me a bit of heat from my friends in the UK who read this, but I have spent the entire weekend watching about the UK floods. I started to notice an interesting parallel between them and the New Orleans floods of August 2005.

Two years ago, I had gone through an unending barrage of criticism from friends and colleagues (from all over the World) about how inept our government was in handling the crisis. Well specifically President Bush, but I contended that any relief effort of that magnitude was relatively difficult and required precision coordination. Ironically, a lot of the things they complained about held true with the recent UK floods.

The news has talked about UK flood victims are finding it very difficult to find bottle water and bowsers (containers) full of drinkable water. Tens of thousands of people are displaced from their homes throughout the UK and food was for a period of time in short supply. There were reports of looting, hoarding, black marketing…all of the things that come from a natural disaster. While I strongly believe what happened in the UK is a tragedy, it seems like the UK is suffering the same problems that New Orleans faced. In fact if you read the postings throughout the ‘Net you’ll notice a heated war of words coming out where Americans have started to point out to the British the parallels. The response from the Brits? An eerie silence, as if they know. Ironically, they can’t blame Tony Blair per se, because he is no longer in office, so they have nobody to blame for the slow government response.

It will be interesting to see what more comes out of this, because as I said before and I will state it again. Handling national disasters is no small feat. Regardless, of what anyone things, you CANNOT do it better…and I think the UK is realizing this after criticizing the US for their New Orleans response.

I as of 1637 GMT today, I have officially received notice that I have graduated with my MBA from London Business School.  *golf clap*  It was a bit touch and go there for a while, because I wasn’t sure what the Management Report outcome was.  Rumor has it that people have failed before, although  I am not sure how many from my class failed their Management Reports.

Can you imagine?  After 2 years, £40k (appx. $80k), and many hours…to fail the Management Report.  After all of the hard work is almost impossible to fathom, but people do.  Now granted you get to resubmit your Management Report one more time prior to the final decision, but still.

But anyway!  I am so excited that I have graduated and now can’t wait to get back to San Diego next month.

Today I went with my friend Miss N on a photographic safari all around Trafalgar Square area today. I had brought my digital SLR and a digital compact as well, while Miss N was shooting with her Nokia N95. We started off by taking pictures of random things, I would call it just point and shoot. As the day wore on I lent Miss N my digital compact while I shot with the SLR. About an hour into our photographic safari, Miss N said “wouldn’t it be fun if we took pictures of other people taking pictures?” And that was the start of my new project, which I have tentatively titled “Life Imitating Art.” I will be posting it up sometime in the next week or so, and you’ll be able to see it in the Flickr Stream on the right or possibly see it by going straight to my Flickr account.

The next two projects are tentatively titled, “Crazy Shoes” which will showcase people and their crazy footwear here in the UK, and “Professionals on Parade” which will showcase people working in the City wearing the most outlandish, and over the top outfits that border on indecency. I am very excited about both projects and so should you…no really, you should.

While most of my colleagues were enjoying their day off today, celebrating July 4th at their homes.  I was in the office in London…catching up on a little bit of work.  Funnily enough, I thought I would be the only American in our office working but all of the Americans here were working.  I guess there are intangible benefits, they probably take off the British Bank Holidays when they come up.

So for me, there were no fireworks, no bbq, and no parades here in London.  I did however contemplate a small coup in the kitchen, and decided against dumping some tea into the sink in honor of the Boston Tea Party.  I didn’t think my UK counterparts would appreciate my humor or the loss of their precious tea.  That is one of the many things I learned while living here in the UK, don’t mess with Brit’s tea.  Full stop.

I was talking to someone the other day about the joys of Telework.  We were talking about how employees benefit from flexible work arrangements, but I contended the firm benefits as well.  While to most that seems absurd, because in the end the employee has the flexibility, which is why it is called a “flexible” work arrangement or “flexible” schedule.  However, I there are subtle benefits for the employer as well.

Take for example my current situation.  It is true I enjoy the benefits of not traveling to school every other week for two months to finish my MBA.  That in turn provides me with the ability to focus on school, just get done with it, and then focus back on work when completed.  It also benefits my pocket book, because instead of flying back and forth four times I only had to fly over once.  Not to mention, I didn’t have to pay double rent in the US and the UK.  So I am not arguing there are many, many benefits to the employee for Telework arrangements. 

However, the firm gets a few benefits as well.  The lack of travel I do now means my health stays relatively high due to the wear and tear of bi-weekly commutes.  It also means my stress levels are relatively lower than they were say six months ago.  So from a holistic, healthy employee perspective that makes sense for the firm.  But where most Managers don’t realize the benefit is in the hours.

Let’s dissect my daily workday (for those of you who could care less you can just skip this last paragraph).  I get into the office at 0900 GMT everyday.  Now at 1700 GMT, the San Diego office is just getting into their office.  This is the point where I start to converse with the San Diego Office.  I typically stay here until about 2000 GMT, which is about lunch time for the San Diego Office.  I then race home to my flat and quickly make dinner and get back online available until about 0100GMT, which is the quitting time for the San Diego Office.  So on average the firm gets at least 10 hours a day from me, and oftentimes 12 – 13 if I was to focus solely on work.  I end up using all of that “extra” time between to do that administrative stuff you just can’t tie to any particular project.