The Autumn Moon

I caught the autumn moon rising over the Imperial Hotel car park looking out our office window on the back side of the Yamato Seimei Building. It was August 14th on the lunar calendar. I was off to Hong Kong the next day.

This is what China trade looks like in Hong Kong

Big container ships going in and out of the port.

The Beijing Weekend Flea Market

The Beijing flea market has an unbelieveable variety of jade and stones for bracelets and necklaces or whatever.

Our Boys

I'm the photographer and here are pictures of our boys Anton and Thor with their mother Naomi. My photo can be seen elsewhere on this blog. Ha!

Higan

Japan celebrates the autumn equinox and on the day the fields and roadsides are full of "higanbana", the Higan flower. This one, in front of Mr Sone's house in Izu, is different from the others because it is completely white. Normally they are fire engine red. Is this an albino higanbana? Why?

More anarchic than left

Here is my political compass. I urge you to check yourself out at the website www.politicalcompass.com and see where you are.

House painting

It's time! The Izu house was starting to turn green and definitely needs to be painted. We have hired a team to clean the red cedar and they will then paint the house and window frames. It's been 19 years since we put it up and even though it's well below its cost, we have derived a great deal of utility from it. And fun, fellowship, delight and relaxation. So it shall continue!

No invitation necessary! If you want to visit, tell us you're coming to Japan and we'll get you down here on the weekend for golf, tennis, bbq and a hot bath.

What if....

Bursa Malaysia is trying to get younger investors to trade on the exchange. They hired a PR agency to help them build up a database of youths. The hook was a night at a club in Kuala Lumpur. The strip of bars, clubs and restaurants was right out the back door of my hotel, so a 11 pm I was there with Azalina, Michelle, et al digging the vibes and getting youngsters to sign up.

FTSE and SET sign the Cooperation Agreement

After a year and half FTSE and SET finally signed the cooperation agreement. We'll be finishing up the data preparation and hope to launch all new indices for the market in January 2008. The whole thing started as part of our FTSE ASEAN index project and the Thais came asking for us to help them too. So off of that project and the FTSE Country Classification project we now have signed up Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. I'm still working on Vietnam.

Another drive by shot of the Beijing edifice of CCCP power

They say Mao never brushed his teeth, never bathed and loved swimming in rivers. A dissident who threw paint on Mao's picture here in 1989 was put in a mental institution and eventually went crazy from the torture.