invisiblecompany

Long flight, with a 4 hour transit in the middle. I’ve been up for I don’t know how many hours, eaten all sorts of unhealthy food, and slept on and off.

i shouldn’t complain. I can hang out at the lounge, I have comfortable seats on the plane. And there is on demand movies and tv programs. Planes are where i watch the latest films, sometimes even catching up on old ones.

This trip I watched Eagle Eye, Ghost town and Juno. i find that i tend to gravitate towards smash bang adventures or light comedies on planes — anything else is too heavy. Eagle Eye was so implausible and kinda silly, but i loved the mindless loudness. Ghost Town was funny in places, but i wouldn’t have wanted to pay for it. Juno was really good, as all the reviews said when it came out.

Nowadays I’m so used to shops being open all year round, even on Christmas Day — shoppers paradise means retail trumps everything. I almost can’t remember how London is, nothing is open, no tube, no bus, no shops (apart from small corner shops may be). So i was intrigued to find via mefi phootographs by IanVisits, who took the trouble of photographing London early on Christmas Day. The resultant flickr set, abandoned london is very eerie. To see places like Trafalgar Square, Oxford Street totally empty, it’s like something out of a science fiction movie.

Car tagged me on fb for one of those write-25-random-things-about-yourself memes. Coincidence cos I just updated my version of 25 things. I’m supposed to tag the person who tagged me, plus 24 other people. I won’t do that cos I have 26 friends on fb and aside from the question of who to leave out I don’t want to meme-spam. That, and I’m not sure i can tag people on an imported note.

1. i’m close to my family but i don’t see them very often
2. we’re a small family, and certainly not the touchy feely type of family
3. i’ve lived on 3 continents and travelled to 6, gotta get that pesky Antarctica checked off my list soon
4. i’m moving to chicago…i’m excited and utterly petrified
5. the cynic in me believes that the concepts of true love, happy ever after and soulmates are scams to give us hope…and yet i’ve been building my collection of romance books
6. i’m officially in a relationship, but to all intents and purposes i’m single
7. i live alone in a 2-bedroom apartment that i own outright
8. it’s full of stuff; although, everything is well organised
9. i don’t need 95% of that stuff, cos i spend most of my awake and home time at my desk with my mbp
10. i have a website, 4 or 5 domain names, 3 flickr accounts, 2 twitter accounts, 1 each of youtube and vimeo accounts, 2 tumblogs, 5 yahoo accounts, 4 gmail addresses, 3 myspace accounts and 2 facebook accounts, all of which i keep active to varying degrees
11. i own 149 swatches, 20+ pairs of sneakers and a whole stack of hard rock café polo shirts
12. i can be described as a late early adopter
13. i wish fewer people would switch to macs cos i don’t feel special anymore
14. i’d like to learn photography and definitely need to use my EOS more — having the point-and-shoot permanently in my backpack has been bad for my photo skillz
15. the last song added to my itunes is “Human” by the Killers — I’ll do a post on it shortly
16. i sang in a choir in college and i played the piano as a kid but actually…i can barely hold a tune
17. i find it hard to understand temperatures in fahrenheit, it takes me a second or two to convert, so forgive the delayed response
18. prefer km, but miles is okay
19. my aim is to run 10km in under 50mins (last 10km on new year’s day came in at 1.05)
20. eventually work up to half marathon
21. i have 8 full length stories in various stages of wip
22. i know i could have been a) way more senior and b) way way way better paid long time ago, but i’m too lazy to be aggressive and ambitious at work
23. all i want is to retire and stay home
24. i don’t like people
25. and yes, i have a big complex about telling people my real name

New Year’s Day is the most popular time to set resolutions. And losing weight / exercising is probably the most popular resolution, like, ever.

I’ve never been one to make resolutions, and originally I didn’t want to post this cos a) i might get complacent and b) i really didn’t want any jinx effect. But it being new year resolution day I think I can afford to give myself some encouragement.

Anyway I discovered the daily plate way back in 2006, but only used it to track food very occasionally (ie when I remembered). When I started running, I used TDP to track food, exercise and weight. It’s a good tool, easy to use, easy to get into a habit of updating. it doesn’t have all the food I eat so I estimate; it overestimates the impact of exercise so I report 5-10mins less, it’s no big deal.

So, yeah, I lost like 15 pounds since October. Pretty neat.

Like last year I thought I’d do a little retrospective on my pictures of 2008.

Total 1,512 pictures, of which 428 (28.3%) are food related. So basically, I took some pictures of travelling but my major obsession has been food. This was helped by the purchase in June of the Nikon S550, which permanently sits in my backpack nowadays. I haven’t used the EOS for ages and ages (well, since Hokkaido) and I’m feeling a little guilty I’m neglecting my main camera.

For my top 10 favourites this year I’ve selected more static shots. These may not be the best quality in terms of photographic skills, but there’s something about the colour, or motion, or feel that I like.

With 5 trips to Chicago this year I definitely made it over 100,000 miles. 113,140miles = 182,081km. Distances are between airports and calculated at webflyer. I’ve reached diamond level at the Marco Polo Club, so next year will be a good year in terms of privileges. Wonder if I’ll get as many miles under my belt in 2009 as 2008.

I added a new personal page. In case you don’t make it a habit of checking the about page, the personal pages are sporadic updates of 25 things in my life. Since I’ve kinda neglected to update them much this year, i figured that posting about a new page here will remind me to not let a whole year go by without updating. Here’s the list in, um, list format.

1. flickr 5,401 photos, 7,483 views
2. to do list buy stuff, organise move, try not to panic before moving
3. in my backpack e-ticket, moving notebook, environmentally friendly shopping bag, iPod, camera
4. gadget earbuds for ipod, crazy taxi game for PSP
5. new on iTunes kanye, ne-yo, britney and jd’s band
6. stress level i’m the human rms, i’m flying on sunday, i haven’t started moving … what stress lol
7. running i can do 6, 8, 10k easy now. 8.8km/hr — need to work on speed
8. city chicago
9. last vacation hokkaido, seems so long ago
10. love of my life what to do, i’m leaving again
11. food turkey leftovers
12. drink hot coke with lemon and ginger
13. transport walking
14. books sci-fi, fantasy disguised as regular romances
15. film whatever was on the plane
16. kit i can get into my old 501s again, woot
17. net citizen omg i’m on facebook
18. color black
19. covet time to organise my life
20. obsession the move
21. freesquare met a fb friend who likes katherine kerr *and* ivy
22. like getting into the running routine
23. hate the uncertainty of our future
24. daydreaming we both end up with jobs in london
25. smell cold weather

I took the afternoon off, it wasn’t that busy and I had lots of errands to run. It was at the back of my mind, but it hit me today that I was flying on Sunday, and not too much time left before I have to move proper. Had lunch with mm, then went to:

• the bookstore to exchange a book — Sis gave me LP Chicago for Christmas which, well, i don’t need
• the computer place to get a memory stick for the PSP
• the snack place to get pistachios
• the bank to get USD
• the electronics store to unsuccessfully look for a travel hairdryer
• the supermarket for chocolate for the office

Was going to get a taxi, but found myself walking nearer and nearer home, so at the end i walked, albeit carrying several large plastic bags and a very heavy backpack.

mum came over to help me iron my mountain of clothes piled on top of the armchair. I think it’s been weeks and dozens of loads of laundry since the last time anything got ironed. Hee. Mum claims she likes ironing, which i actually believe, cos she irons a lot when we were young. She definitely takes much more care (and longer) than when i do it.

Looking around online brought me to this wonderful photo of a presswallah in India, who basically irons clothes for people. It’s a noble occupation, and so fascinating to me culturally. There’s also a youtube video of another presswallah.

First I went crazy at amazon and bought three earbuds. Then I met up with my parents for lunch, and went crazy with more gadget shopping. Here’s what I ended up buying today.

from left to right: sennheiser mx75 sport $27.68, sennheiser cx300-b $19.99, skullcandy ink’d silver $9.63. Also bought a ton of replacement earphone sponges and buds.

Bought the my taxi game for the PSP. This is quite an old game that I’ve played on the PS2, and mm’s brother let me play on his PSP at christmas, so I had to get it.

Another gadget was a spare card reader, 55-in-1, it’s the same one I have now. It doesn’t need a power supply, just plugs in straightaway.

Mum and I went to look at apartments cos I suddenly decided I can afford to buy a small investment property. Saw something quite promising, will explore further.

Early dinner at the casual restaurant at the wet market. Then had to go back across town to get the wooden car beads that I forgot to get. Those were heavy, man. And no, I don’t have a car. But I will in Chicago, so I wanted to get these now.

This was earlier this month, via sfgate. That’s Venus on the left, Jupiter on the right, and the crescent moon at the bottom making for a smiley face sky.

We didn’t go to midnight mass last year, probably because of tiredness or something. This year I’m on my own on Christmas Eve — went with family to the yacht club mulled wine and carols event that finished by 7pm — and the thought of going to midnight mass was strong.

The main cathedral is only 15-20mins walk, it’s on one of my running routes. So I headed out at 11.20pm, and when I got there it was crowded already. No seats left inside, and only a few left at the seating areas they’d set out outside, with big screen tv view.

Before the service the choir sang carols. At one point a soloist sang O Holy Night, my absolute favourite. She was good. Not as good as these ladies but very touching.

I opted to stand during the mass, and it was a nice service conducted by our Cardinal. There were announcers, telling people when to stand and when to sit — there’s usually a lot of people who a) don’t go to church often or b) aren’t Catholic but wanted to experience midnight mass. Before the communion, they announced twice that communion was for baptised Catholics only. The communion inside had holy wine, but not for us outside.

Yes, I don’t go to church often, but I love the belonging feeling everytime I go.

I never watched it’s a wonderful life but I understand it to be Christmas related, and not to make wishes you didn’t mean.

This flash animation was originally at itsawonderfulinternet but the website seems to have gone. I found it elsewhere and videograbbed it.

It’s one for the Christmas season.

via mefi again, a tool to analyse the MBTI personality of your blog. This is what I got:

I’m INTJ, occasionally ISTJ. 100% introvert. We all know this. And this here tool is saying I’m ESFP, which is the exact opposite??? I don’t get it.

Well, actually I do.

What I write here can be described as light, light-hearted, and even…trivial. I don’t post about anything controversial or deep. There’s tons of pictures of food, music I found, anything mac related, or quirky stuff I come across. Occasionally there’d be a rant. Mostly, I keep to basically harmless stuff, not only because I am aware that this is permanent public record but because this is a place where I want to record some interesting stuff that I like. It is my little escapist heaven. No wonder the tool thinks the writer of this blog is entertaining and friendly. evil laugh

The silly tumbleweed is one of our favourite smileys. And now some enterprising people have created the instant tumbleweed (via mefi). [click the button]

Every Christmas and other holiday, danish butter cookies in their distinctive round blue tin comes out. I defy anyone to say they don’t like these beauties.

So I was reading how Molly from orangette made them. Anyone who regularly reads food blogs will appreciate that orangette isn’t just a food blog with recipes, it’s a full-on foodie experience. Anyway, I was intrigued with the recipe, which was from the December 2008 edition of Gourmet and apparently is one passed down through several generations.

I used scaled down proportions, because I didn’t need so many. It’s easy for me to get the authentic Danish Lurpak butter; I generally use Anchor but Lurpak is only slightly more expensive, and probably worth it to follow the recipe. The American convention of using cups instead of weight fazed me a little, but I’ve converted it.

8oz butter
1/3 cup sugar, or around 3oz
2 cups plain flour, or around 12oz
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 small egg, for eggwash
sugar for sprinkling — the recipe calls for sanding sugar, I just used demerara

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Then the recipe says beat the flour and baking soda in using the electric whisk, which…is an invitation for having flour flying everywhere. I folded the dry ingredients in using the more trusty spoon spatula method, only when mostly combined then I whisked the mixture till it was like crumbs.

Work the dough between 2 sheets of clingfilm, then roll out to a rectangle. I found that folding the clingfilms so they form the rectangular shape made rolling much easier, and the dough kept to the shape. Chill in the fridge for at least 30mins.

Remove the top sheet of the clingfilm and cut into 1” squares. This was the shape I liked most, and the easiest to work with. Brush with the beaten egg and sprinkle the demerara sugar.

Bake at 160C for 15mins. I found it needed an extra 5 mins to get really pale golden brown, I guess it’s my oven. Anyway, watch them till they get pale golden. Cool for 5mins then transfer to a wire rack to cool. Makes around 50 cookies.

 

Okay, mine don’t look as pretty as the blue-tinned danish cookies. In fact they look kinda like sad shortbread, and very difficult to photograph (as warned by orangette). But man, they taste decadent.

mm’s parents invited me for dinner tonight, they’ve been including me in family gatherings lately, even though technically they don’t know they’re my in-laws. Interesting conundrum.

I didn’t want to go empty handed, and it being so close to Christmas. So I made chocolate chip cookies. I’m useless at picking out gifts for people and if I have time, I prefer to make food items. As the LA Times said in its article 50 ways to make your holiday gifts homemade,

Not only are homemade gifts less expensive, they also capture the spirit of holiday giving in a way that purchased gifts simply can’t.

These were real easy, I can’t remember where I got the recipe, but I’ve always had it on the old html version of my website. Cream 8oz butter with 4oz sugar, add 2 large (or 3 small) eggs, fold in 10oz SR flour and 12oz chocolate chips. Spoon onto a lined baking tray and bake for 15-20mins until golden. Makes 24 large cookies.

I wrapped them up in clingfilm and put them in pretty Christmas-y gift bags. Freshly made, I could still smell them when I gave them out at the restaurant, and my apartment now has that warm homely baking smell that will last till the morning.

One of my stand-by ingredients for fruit salad is dragon fruit. It provides texture, bulk and is low in calories. The only thing is that it’s pretty tasteless — an advantage in some ways because it can be paired with stronger tasting fruits.

Except the blood red variety. This has a more distinctive flavour and it colours everything purple and red. It’s so much fun.

I know this by several names — persimmon, sharon fruit and kaki. When ripe it’s soft, stringy and very very sweet. So soft that I like using it as sauce for fruit salad or yogurt. There is another type that has tougher skin and the fruit itself less soft. It gives a funny textured after taste which I don’t quite like. I’m not sure how to distinguish between the two though.

Plentiful during autumn and sold in large packs. My favourites are the Japanese varieties and the ones I used to get in Switzerland, from Italy I think.

The San Francisco Chronicle has an article about updating music libraries. Basically comparing 80s or 90s musicians with the current crop. I can’t say I agree with the choices.

If you like…

No Doubt “Tragic Kingdom” (1995)
The Orange County band’s hyper, unrepentantly fun breakthrough set sold 16 million copies worldwide on the back of rocket-powered pop singles “Spiderwebs” and “Just a Girl.”

… then try

The Ting Tings “We Started Nothing” (2008)
Singer Katie White doesn’t sound remotely like Gwen Stefani, but this heavily accented drum ‘n’ guitar duo does an incredible job channeling her group’s relentless, ska-propelled energy on its primary-colored debut, which includes the iTunes jingle “Shut Up and Let Me Go.”

Other comparisons include Rolling Stones—>Kings of Leon, Mariah Carey—>Leona Lewis (okay, I can see that) and Beastie Boys—>Girl Talk. But the comparison I most disagree with is,

If you like…

Paul Simon “Graceland” (1995)
Venturing into apartheid-torn South Africa and working with local musicians, Simon returned with dazzling, tuneful evidence for the case of taking world music seriously. It won a Grammy for album of the year.

… then try

Vampire Weekend “Vampire Weekend” (2008)
These well-groomed Columbia University alums launched their Afrobeat revival from the less dangerous environs of their dorm rooms, appropriating Simon’s fluid rhythms and featherweight melodies with a whiff of collegiate humor (“Who gives a f- about an Oxford comma?”).

The first tape (yes, I’m old) I got was from my aunt with Carpenters on one side and Simon & Garfunkel on the other. I can’t stand any of them too much now, Paul Simon in tiny tiny doses is okay, but I’ve yet to listen to a full song of his lately. Vampire Weekend is totally different, just because there’s a little hooting on “Oxford Comma” doesn’t mean they’re similar to Paul Simon. They’re way less self-conscious, way less earnest and (this is a compliment) less polished — there’s still a “newness” edge to them.

OMG, why has it taken me so long to find it. I so have to start doing this!! via bb, over at quantified self, Alexandra Carmichael explains how she keeps a record of 40 different things in her life every day, and what she’s learned about herself from studying the data.

I track these things about my health and personal patterns every day:

- sleep (bed time, wake time, sleep quality, naps)
- morning weight
- daily caloric intake (each meal, total calculated at end of day)
- mealtimes

• mood (average of 3 positive and 3 negative factors on 0-5 scale)
  
• day of menstrual cycle
  
• sex (quantity, quality)
  

• exercise (duration, type)
  
  

• supplements I take (time, dosage)
  

• treatments for vulvodynia (a chronic pain condition)
  
• pain of administering the vulvodynia treatment I take (0-5)
  
• vulvodynia-related pain (0-5)
  

• headache,nausea (0-5)
  
  

• time spent working, time with kids
  

• number of nursings and night wakings (I’m a mom)
  
• weather
  
• unusual events (text)
  
  

The mood factors I measure every day are:
1. Happiness
2. Irritability
3. Calmness
4. Sadness
5. Feeling beautiful / self-love
6. Feeling fat / ate too much

She used google spreadsheets initially, and this came out of a project of setting up cure together, a platform for open source health research.

I don’t think it’s difficult to set up a spreadsheet for this, and in a way I’m kinda sorta tracking some stuff in different places. I can see myself tracking things like:

• time I wake up, leave for work, arrive at work, arrive back home
• meal times and what i ate
• calorie intake and expenditure (something that daily plate does well)
• exercise — daily plate again, plus I now record my runs on both nike plus and twitter
• weight
• blog posts made
• google reader posts read
• books read
• words written
• IM convos
• emails read and answered (home and work)
• number of facebook requests received

Alexandra analysed her data by looking at correlation between moods and certain activities like exercise. I can’t quite see myself tracking moods, cos it’ll be “meh” almost all the time. My motivation for tracking will be for the sake of getting data and putting them into pretty graphs.

And no, I won’t be tracking
- sex (quantity, quality)

Things have been hugely stressful lately, for both mm and I. Work work work. We’re both tired, irritable and want nothing more than being able to leave the office behind and catch up on sleep.

Or may be, we need to take our aggression out on … something, somebody.

I remember reading about this on giz — remote impact - shadow boxing over a distance. The idea is to punch the living daylights out of your opponent in the form of a shadow projected on a giant vertical mattress. Heh, not just punching — you can hit, kick and even use body blows.

It’s like Street Fighter, only for real.

The name isn’t punchy [groan] enough and the narration in the video lacks violent passion, but hey, I’m sold.

I half-heartedly tried running a few times throughout the years, but could never get into it. I got breathless to quickly, my knees hurt, I felt I was going too slowly. The lesson of 2 10km races with no training weren’t heeded properly.

I started being serious about running 2 months ago when I got the ipod. Then I got the nike+ and being able to keep statistics was the biggest motivation. I should have realised that all it took was a geeky angle.

I was very slow initially. Added the inconvenience of street running — traffic, stupid pedestrians who block the whole pavement, dogs and their walkers — meant an inordinate amount stopping and starting. The first record on my nike+ showed a speed of 8min/km, a result of jogging for a block or two, walking, and walking during the final 20mins. Mostly I’ve been keeping in the 7-ish min/km tempo. Occasionally I’d break 7mins.

The knees haven’t stopped hurting, but in only 2 months I’ve done pretty okay. I’ve made an effort to run at least 4-5 times a week; other times I walked or if I’m at a hotel I use the elliptical. One day a week is rest day.

The latest big breakthrough is this weekend when I decided instead of running around the block, to run over to Bowen Road and use the “dedicated” running route. Boy it made such a huge difference! There were a lot of people, but it was never crowded. The initial parts were shared with traffic, but it then quickly became pedestrian only. Conditions were ideal, yesterday I ran until the 3km marker on the route, and including the distance from home it ended up being almost 12km.

Today I selected by distance. 5 mins walking warm-up before starting the workout. Hardly any traffic stops and running all the way, no walking. Turned the voice notification on and stopped the timer at 10km exactly. Then another 10 mins cool down walking home.

1.08 is still slow, I’d like to get to under 30mins per 5km. But as a target reached I feel I deserve a little self-congratulation. There’s lots of room for improvement, plenty of time for building up speed and strength.

JJ Cale is set to release his first solo record in almost five years. Legendary.

Watch and listen to Cale and Eric Clapton so effortlessly play After Midnight.

Yesterday’s post was about upgrading, but sometimes there’s no need for branded products. Sometimes generic or own brand stuff are equally good. In this case the opposite of upgrading isn’t downgrading, it’s not wasting unnecessary money.

• inside clothing — by inside clothing I mean both clothes I wear inside other clothes and clothes i wear only indoors. Socks I buy in bulk, plain t-shirts are the $10 for 4 packs, underwear always from M&S. There’s no good reason to buy, say, Polo socks. I love the no label stuff from gap, muji, uniqlo — fantastic value and good quality
• toiletries — there was a time when I absolutely loved the 99p Apple shampoo and conditioner from Tesco’s, and also the Boot’s own brand stuff. still have a small supply
• pantry food — sugar, flour, canned tomatoes, dried herbs, all these i get the store’s own brand. mm and i wanted honey this week and looking at the huge variety available, we picked the store branded one. after all, it’s just to make honey and lemon drink, tasted perfectly fine
• water — may be in a restaurant at a business meal I’d go for Perrier or what not, but generally I get the cheapest bottled water when i’m out and about
• panadol — paracetemol is the same chemical whatever the brand. This goes the same for other OTC medicine too

It’s an interesting question, is the ultimate brand, no brand at all? Think Ikea and muji. There is no shoddiness about their products, yet they don’t feel the need to slap a brand on any of their products, they are distinctive enough. It’s like the mercedes without model label, those who need to know, will already know.

Jason Kottke was talking about upgrading your life by buying and using better quality items of every day stuff.

I rarely buy anything anymore but the things I do buy are usually better versions of things I already have. As things break or wear out, we’ve been replacing them with items that are nicer to use/wear/whatever and will last a whole lot longer than the cheaper stuff.

It’s the usual argument. Get cheap and cheerful stuff that don’t last, or more expensive higher quality stuff that may last longer. I find that when I was younger and just starting out in “life” I could only afford the smaller, cheaper things. Now I’m at a point where I don’t need to buy new stuff, so I’ve been upgrading my life, so to speak. Here are some of my upgrades:

• aeron chair — I’ve had the aeron chair for over 2 years and considering the amount of time I spend sitting in it, it’s money well, well, well spent
• dual monitors — especially at work when I need to work constantly with multiple spreadsheets
• camera lens — it’s universally acknowledged that the kit lens that come with the camera body are no better than plastic toys but it took me a while before I finally got new lens
• earphones — to be upgraded. i’m still using the apple earphones that come with the nano, although i bought a nike sports earphone for running. The plan is to get one of those Shure noise cancelling earphones — the reason I hadn’t gotten them yet is because they’re much more expensive than the US here
• pillow — those tempur pillows really make a difference. I spend hours sleeping, so all the more reason for quality pillows
• mattress — the Simmons I have are over 10 years old, it’s a good mattress. But time to get a new one, can’t decide whether to get it now or in Chicago though
• knives — i have a set of le Creuset knives from London. When I bought them they were one of the high quality ones although now they’ve been taken over by carbon fibre Japanese knives. I sharpen them and keep them in good care, I think there’s a few years left in them. I pretty much only use 3 knives — a chef’s knife, a smaller chef’s knife and a small serrated one
• pots and pans — i have 3 le creuset pans I use: an everyday pan with sprout, a large stockpot for soup and the grill-it. Additionally I have a daily use aluminium pan that is fantastic. I’ll probably gradually upgrade to lightweight Berndes
• salt — kosher, salt, fleur de sel…good cooks know the secret of good salt. I use good with everything salt i get from lakeland, it’s sea salt plus a bunch of herbs, pepper and lavendar, i swear by it

Some people over at the ask mefi thread said macs, which is like, duh!

via mefi, pride and prejudice told facebook newsfeed style. It’s funny as hell, I grinned like an idiot reading it. Funny bits further down:

Lydia Bennet and Kitty Bennet joined the group 1,000,000 Strong Against the Officers Leaving Meryton!

Mrs. Bennet joined the group Widows of Men Killed in Duels.

via kottke, mcsweeney’s break down 50 years of popular songs intoone simple sentence.

The Beatles “I Want to Hold Your Hand” — I want to do it with you

Led Zeppelin “Whole Lotta Love” — I want to do it with you

James Blunt “You’re Beautiful” — I want to do it with you

Frank Sinatra “Strangers in the Night” — I’m drunk and I want to do it with you

Patsy Cline “Crazy” — I want to do it with you so much I’m going fucking nuts

Kate Bush “Wuthering Heights” — I’m an 18th-century fictional character and I want to do it with another 18th-century fictional character

I’m, um, sensing a theme here. Writers of pop-rock music seem to have one thing on their mind.

I stand here today and say shame to both the current as well as the former Directors who allowed this former CEO to wreak havoc on this great company. Shame on them for allowing this former CEO to consciously and openly disparage Mother Merrill, throw our founding principles down a flight of stairs and tear out the soul of the firm.

Shame on these Directors for allowing this former CEO to rid the firm of thousands of years of experience. Shame of them for allowing this former CEO to surround himself with many people who did not have the perspective of other market cycles and the experience of time. Shame for allowing this CEO to surround himself with many people who did not share the same values that made us great and appreciate our winning culture. Shame on them for allowing this CEO to cut costs and businesses so severely and bluntly for the sake of short term earnings that he cut out future growth. Shame on them for allowing him to over leverage the firm and fill the balance sheet with toxic waste to create short term earnings.

Win Smith’s speech at the shareholders’ meeting that gave the go ahead for MER to merge with BoA, via here is the city.

Ouch, ouch, ouch. And a side of bitter much. He doesn’t name names but it’s obvious enough. To give him credit, it’s not sentiment that is new…he’s just put in words what many feel. And to take it away from it being a total personal attack, substitute Merrill with any Wall Street firm and it’s still true.

And that is the real shame.