Doing a Bono

Every so often my pals and I argue about Bono.

The question is should you dislike him or like him for his promotion of causes. Are Bono and the like vainly trying to prove their worth and greedily self promoting themselves? or are Bono's efforts a net positive?

In any case a pal of mine asked me to promote her charity a little after I made my yearly donation. Why not eh? But to avoid any risk of doing a Bono, I am gonna dredge up some embarrassing story as a confessional ying and yang thing.

Over the past few years I have been supporting POTA. Lieke runs the charity. It's a Christian charity and although I like to think of myself as a strictly kosher atheist - Lieke is deeply passionate about helping the less fortunate in Indonesia.

She has lots of stories. When you hear these stories they draw you in and you feel part of the story.

They're better if you hear them from Lieke in person, but one of them was about a Christmas party they gave to some poor kids. KFC donated all the food. Everything was going well. Lots of fried chicken (Indonesians love fried chicken!!) and good times had by all. Thing was Lieke noticed one boy (or was it a girl?) that wasn't eating his KFC. She was sort of dumbfounded as all the other kids were eating away.

Lieke went over to the boy and asked him why he wasn't eating. He told her that he wanted to save his KFC so he could bring it back to his siblings back home and share it with them.

~~

In New York we don't do KFC we do fried chicken from trendy brunch places and cool divey bars.

~~

Now for the yang.

Last night I got hammered. Made a lot of lewd jokes. Then went on to interrogate this girl (with whom I am semi obsessed) about her ex.

That is too fresh. Let me dredge up something else.

How about the time when we were coming under huge pressure from a hedge fund client of ours. These guys are huge. Their risk was out of whack. I was newly arrived in New York, and was getting phone calls from big wigs.

So anyway, it was getting late and I was trying to figure this out and I had to call up our tech support people. The guy who was supposed to be on duty went home early. I got onto him on his Blackberry and went through him, I was fuming.

A week later it turned out his kid was diagnosed with cancer.

Moon Cake

I was Chinatown this morning.

I ate three quarters of a moon cake - apparently you are only ever supposed to eat one quarter at any one time.

Stomach troubled ensued - lesson learned!

An Indonesian Prisoner

I proposed to an Indonesian girl before. It didn't work out.

However paying $50k to the Indonesian government to marry an Indonesian is a bit steep.

Breathing

I have finally realised how much breathing correctly can help you when you're working out.

Not sure what the mechanics are, but it seems to help a lot!

Probably the most Xenophobic Country in the World(?)

Is Japan the most xenophobic developed country in the world?

Judging by the number of refugees they allow in every year they probably are.

Mirror of Pride and Pain

I heard this great quote about how countries teach history:

"It's a mirror of pride and pain"

It's true, and not all that encouraging eh?