Zen...

...the only thing keeping me going is the photo of Alonso and me which I have taken to carrying around in my handbag! Every stranger I meet gets the full story. I'm sure I will get bored of it one day... haha

Work is super busy. After graduation, as I stepped into the warm embrace of the financial Centre of Europe, I deliberately steered away from investment banking where my friends commonly stay at work until 2am and then boast that they get to take a company-paid cab home. Instead I chose to be a fund manager - something equally important sounding at all important high school reunions yet with friendlier hours. But somewhere, I think I've been conned!

We're doing a big acquisition - taking over a company that is far bigger in size than we are. Don't even get me started on the politics involved of integrating 2 separate teams - one of which is significantly higher profile and better paid. You know what they say: Change is good. But not in my back yard!!

Lots of news over the past week but it's all just passing me by without giving me a chance to make sarcastic quips. Michael Jackson, Bernard Madoff, Air France... But the one I've chosen to highlight is the story of James Amburn, a fund manager much like myself. He was tortured and held hostage by a gang of pensioners for 4 days for losing their pension money.

"The men, dubbed the "Geritol Gang" by police after an arthritis drug, face up to 15 years in jail if found guilty of subjecting German-American James Amburn to the alleged four-day ordeal.
Two of his kidnappers are said to have hit him with a Zimmer frame outside his home in Speyer, western Germany, before he was bound up with duct tape, bundled into the boot of a car and driven 300 miles to the home of two of the abductors on the shores of Lake Chiemsee in Bavaria."

His excuse? "Due to market conditions, unfortunately [the money is] gone"

Damn it, that's my line!!