5 November 08 - Financials Smanshials

It has to be funny when you're sitting across from a mortgage advisor at your lender/branch and she phones head office to clarify something and gets mired in repeating what she's asking and not getting the answer she's seeking. And at the end of ten mins of to and fro she gives you an answer that doesn't really inspire confidence. She pulls a few faces as if to say what you're thinking ie 'They don't know shit!'.

Later on she suggests that you call the head office yourself and you think 'you must be joking'.

If you exponentially project this level of incompetence you begin to understand why it's all gone so horribly wrong out there. I always want to ask these people 'What qualifies you to do the maths in this job? How much better than I am are you? I'd expect anyone dealing with financial services at consumer level to be able to show me the maths and make me understand them, not just punch a few formulas into their calculators or on screen and show me the result and voila'. I bloody well want to know what a difference of .25% over twenty more years of a loan makes to my pocket you morons.

But... we're at the mercy of the banks. Any other avenues of borrowing except your own family /cash are sure to be worse though it doesn't stop scores of people borrowing from money lenders.... Ok things not so bad for me, but find can't make choices until I understand all implications and those never seem to be exhausted, you can pay less here but then they get you there or viceversa and it's just going to get you to the point where you say 'ok , this one'. But borrowing 400k is not like buying a pair of shoes, is it now?

30 May - Before I get to work

I can't believe that with all the advancement in medicine and neuro studies that are made, one simply can't come up yet with some simple software for our brains. I personally would like one that substitutes all the recurring useless thoughts I have everyday with an altogether more productive kind of thought.

I could be learning a new russian phrase every morning for example instead of thinking 'I wish these stupid kids/teenagers didn't pull the same stupid stunt every morning of trying to get on the bus w/o swiping their oyster or swiping one with no credit and then getting called back/yelled at by the driver who won't drive on till this is sorted and this is wasting all of us going to work precious minutes'.
There, if I learnt a similar lenght russian sentence, i'd be reading War and Peace in no time. Because after that one comes 'These idiots who cluster around the bus door instead of taking up all AVAILABLE SPACe so the bus looks full to the driver who won't let us on but it's not and I can squeeze in there. Just F king move you f king idiots'. See for any of those I also get raised blood pressure whereas I'd rather raise pressure by having an unbearably clever idea for a gap in the market that would make me rich.

After that I usually think 'What is it that makes it take so long to get off a bus? There's no crippled person holding us up, no ancient pensioner with a trolley so why can't all these people /kids get off the bus faster, they're wasting yet more of my minutes'

For an equivalent sentence in russian I could find I can order a coach and horses in St Petersburg and go see the sights conversing with my coachman. After the bus pointlessly repeated thoughts, I have yet more of the kind on the tube, you know the one about idiots not standing on the right on escalator and the one about clogging in clusters by the doors and not getting on or off fast enough etc.
I don't want any of these thougths, they don't advance me, they don't do anything, they're the equivalent of pointless flies. But you think they could tweak our brains somehow like in the Matrix but no, we're still here, just merely functioning. Oh it could put you in a really bad mood to dwell on this! Especially as a variation on this theme is repeated when I leave work.

25 May - Property & Angst

I have to stop leafing through those annoying free property magazines relating to Ken and Chelsea area. It’s beginning to make me ill to constantly look at flats/houses I can’t afford. I look at square footage and I require around 100 sq metres, it’s my mantra. Plus the high ceilings and tall windows and light, light light. And it’s all around a million. I just don’t have it, and vastly more depressing will not have it, so what to do?

I don’t want a two up two down boxy little home. It’s just not me. Plus I’d just fill it with stuff! Maybe I should go opposite way, a high ceilinged, big windowed one room only in which I live a monastic sort of life (after I’ve ditched the sprawling closet). I don’t entertain at home as it is, so all I need is a huge bed!, walk in room and lie on bed. What could be better? Except that the one bedroom idea runs at around £400k so it’s just ludicrously stupid to spend that when I could live on the other side of the world for ten years with that money. Ah, what to do???

26 March - More losses

Ok, remember the ring, the cashmere top, the friend? This bad week can now have the following added:
pay £100 for MOT but get told car needs new gear box, approx. £500 so no, will have to sell it. Who needs a car in London?
Then lodger rings to say my bathroom is leaking into flat below and I must sort out plumber (he's coming .. no idea how much)
Then I buy new cooker for my flat as the existing one was/is knackered , oven doesn't work blah blah - £360
Then in submitting dormant company accounts for my block of flats, get told that we never submitted 2003 accounts and we owe up to £3k. As 2 of the flats were bought after 2004, those two owners obviously will refuse to pay a fine that predates them leaving just me and one other owner to foot this bill. I just don't want to even think about this.
Then I come to work bringing in a gift I was given at xmas of £100 in John Lewis vouchers because i can sell them to a colleague who said she's buy them. Arrive here and the card/vouchers are not in my handbag. God knows where i dropped them on the way to work. Hope they were found by needy Ladbroke Grove council estate person and not, more likely, by £6m house dwelling Hollywood director's wife. (keep seeing Paul Greengrass/Mr Bourne Identity in the street).
Sure, it's only money but I'll probably develop some strange cancer out of all this rage.

22 November - Whinge & Bear It

A word I overuse, in my head at least, is “nightmare”. It runs as a refrain when I try to get on a train, when I stand on a train (and being small I’m wedged under people’s armpits and even now that smoking is banned indoors, people’s clothes stink of… I don’t know, bars, fried food, no regular dry-leaning, I don’t know. I say it when I step off a train at a tube station and see the throng trying to make it up the escalators, both standing and walking, no way to get past them. ‘Nightmare’ I say, ‘nightmare’ I repeat.

Well it’s not of course, the correct term is just ‘very frustrating’, not even ‘extremely frustrating’, all it’s doing is making me late for work. Big deal. Yes, I have a job, yes I have to struggle with public transport.
I’ve decided it’s a false sense of activity to a) wait and struggle (I hate teenagers and kids more than anything) to get on a bus that takes me to a faster tube line rather than b) sit on the rickety and spluttering slower line where trains get cancelled all the time because doing a) gives me double dose of frustration and leads to more ‘nightmares’.

The reason why we get paid more as we get older and should get paid much, much more in fact, is not because we’ve accumulated more knowledge and experience that allows us to maximise profits for our firms, do our jobs better and be all around assets. No it’s simply a payment for the longer suffering we endure, years of it in fact, in order to get to said jobs. I don’t mean that I’d prefer working from home, that carries a different set of negatives, but I just want this stupid travesty of a leading western city to get its act together when it comes to transport. In New Delhi I expect to have a stressful journey, in London I do not.

26 May - Alive

Given the title of previous post left incomplete, you could have thought am dead as a result of trying everything. Actuall no, but the weather is not helping and even upbeat, energetic, optimists just ... slow down sometime. Bear with me.

5 May - Three Days Off

A long w/end… We give it a try, not going anywhere that is and one day is perfectly fine, we go exploring in Marylebone which is dangerously close to Oxford St and a wrong turning takes me to Primark so finally now I know what it all means, pile ‘em high etc. Once again the sight of the immense queue despite 14 tills stocked by giggling youngsters, sees me abandoning the 3 items I wanted to get. Spend 40 mins of my time to spend £12… not worth it, have more pressing things to do. Guess this can only be done by coming with six girlfriends and then leaving one to draw the short straw and purchase for all whilst the other five go sup cocktails nearby…

Anyway after fixing bikes, cleaning the car, organising a not so well attended picnic (rather think the weather frightened them off rather than own popularity waning), a visit to the playground with some friends’ kids, two movies, a long tour and reading stop over at Waterstones, brunch in Chiswick (only celeb in town or our ‘caff’ Natasha Kaplinsky… I don’t know who she is but Toph has a fondness for newsreaders, must be the little boy inside him from back in the days when an authoritative female voice on TV seemed the height of sexyness and points her out to me across the eggs Florentine), the papers, a poker tournament and half of AM Homes’ new novel digested, one exercise class (I do mine on the Saturday, but cry off the Monday one – unheard of, I ‘throw away’ a paid for class as am within 24 cancellation), a fruitless wait for a drink that doesn’t happen with a friend I should know better – she always lets me down, when will I learn etc - and yes, a long w/end in London is way too long. Felt a bit like being trapped in a Rohmer film (ah forgot in my desperation, I ill advisedly watched Le Rayon Vert, surely avoid French auteurs during le longue fin de semain). Plus we got a parking fine dished out undeservedly. We thought we were smart not going away, but 80% of our friends had left town and it just wasn’t that much fun, plus the weather turned. To be honest I could sleep for 76 hours bar food foraging and sex, but Toph spends enough free time during the week that the days of rest were superfluous to him and I went along with his rhythm. Another one at the end of the month… better be prepared to fly or drive.