Gronk

From time to time Gronk communicates via post card. Sorry to hear about Jeb!

Norman J. Quinn, Correspondent

Norman has been sending me letters, cards, tapes, bottles of Scotch, and now emails since 1972 when he went off to Saipan in the Peace Corps. Here is an early card from 1973. I think he took the picture on a remote Micronesian island. This is not the woman he married.

Back to Bombay

Well, things are heating up in Bombay. Markets are up, the legacy issues at BSE are being dealt with and they are ready to talk. FTSE may be "late" but we have the brand and reputation to draw in the BSE and put out some decent indices for the Indian market. Our key aide in doing so will be Ganesh!

Donald clearly has some issues with his Blackberry. It kept him occupied trying to get GPRS to connect during our visit.

Ha! Now he can suffer the inequities of FTSE IT!

It was nice, however, having Valentine's Day mocktails and dinner with him at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel next to the Gate of India.......

Donald in fine form

Donald didn't get his picture taken with the girls in Hong Kong in January, so he needed to ham it up at his local restaurant on Saturday night. The Brazilian lady is the wife of the English bloke who turned a "local" pub into a "restaurant"! It shook up the local pub goers, but the place is doing well off the back of commuters who want to have a nice place to dine on the weekend. Food was good. But I was feeling the effects of lunch and knowing I had to be in a taxi at 7 am. Besides, it was the countryside..... Still, we had a full moon.

Must go back again in more temperate weather and show Donald how to use his BBQ.

London Lunch with the Hopes

After a week in Canary Wharf it was good to get back into the West End and see some friends. As is my custom on Saturday mornings in London, I walked around Piccadilly buying socks, tea, books, CDs and other mind fodder. I ran into Martin Taylor who was on the Gilt desk at Grieveson, Grant and Company when I joined in 1982. He is now marketing futures trading with HSBC and wanted to know if FTSE would be able to work with him on developing his business. No problem!

When we finished our coffee at Starbucks I ran through the rest of my route, getting tea at Whittards, a Derek and Clive CD at Tower Records, some T shirts for Anton and Thor across the street from Eros and a book on the Raj at Hatchards. Then into a taxi and off to the Hope's for lunch. We had a bottle of champagne while we caught up on business, then we marched off to Kensington Place for a lunch of some lovely scallops, sausages and a red from the local wine shop. A thoroughly enjoyable London Saturday sequence followed by a mad dash out to Cambridge to have dinner with my boss and meet his wife.

Sunday had me in a car at 7 am on my way to Heathrow, to catch the BA flight to Bombay.

The Red Hat Thingee

My mother got involved with the Red Hatters a few years ago. She ran her own chapter for awhile, but got tired of being the leader as she started to wind down her commitments. Still, she loves dressing up in the purple dress and putting on the red had that is the signature of this group of mothers, grandmothers, great grandmothers and any other woman over 50 who needs the gaggle once a month.

A week in Canary Wharf

I visit the FTSE head office in Canary Wharf in February for the first time. The executive p.a. put me in the worst hotel I have stayed in in a long time. The pool was the size of a Jacuzzi and there was no Internet access in the rooms. I called it the Best of Britian for its chintz and sleaze. The hotel art was even rude and low grade.

This shot is of a neo classic statue in front of our office building. The statues around Canary Wharf look like Etruscan mummies, with body parts strewn in front of building entrances.

It's eerie around there at night. All the financial professionals have left and it is quiet and void of much other intercourse other than the Thames.

Tokyo Museum of Modern Art

We took a short excursion before lunch to look at the permanent exhibition and a special on Riki Watanabe's designs.

Anton and Thor threw snow balls at each other along the way. We walked over to Ohtemachi to catch the Hanzomon line straight home. Naomi made ramen for lunch and then headed off to watch tennis.

Yesterday's snow storm had coated Tokyo in a think blanket of white, but most is gone today. I had fun using the bbq with the snow still falling. It took plenty of extra starter to get the fire going. Then we had a great feast of crab, giant shrimps and lamb chops. The oysters were eaten off the shell raw of course.

I have a couple more weeks in Tokyo before hitting the road again. It'll be off to London and Bombay, then back to Tokyo before going to Singapore for the launch of our Islamic index covering Japan and the Four Tigers.

Lunch with Jason James, PhD Candidate

Lunch with Jason James at Buono Buono in Ginza with various HSBC alumni. A host of subjects were discussed, from Dirty Dick's red neck ways to HSBC's investment banking strategy, and then on to more salubrious topics, including wine.

Next venue to be determined by the Group Secretary, Miki Izumida.

Photo Lesson

Dean showed me how to do this shot in Boca in HK. You take your digital camera in hand and hold a white cocktail napkin in front of the automatic flash to soften the flash and reflect light back onto the subjects. Works great if you unfold the napkin, otherwise it blocks too much light.

Saturnalia in Bali

The Hoffsters spent a week in Bali returning to Japan on Christmas Day. We always seem to be moving or traveling on Christmas Day!

Due to the terrorist fears the island was free of too many tourists. Lodging was cheap, transportation plentiful and a real feeling of quiet and solitude.

We had some nice experiences: rafting a river, snorkling at Menjangan and tasty seafood at the Sheraton.

Thanksgiving with my brother

Peter and I cooked Thanksgiving dinner for his family and his wife's relatives in the So Cal area. There were more than 35 people there and we enjoyed the bottle of Cazadores that Norris provided.

How to count

One hen.
Two ducks.
Three squawking geese.
Four limerick oysters.
Five corpulent porpoises.
Six pairs of Don Alverso's tweezers.
Seven thousand Macedonians in full battle array.
Eight brass monkeys from the ancient, sacred crypts of Egypt.
Nine apathetic, sympathetic, diabetic old men with a marked propensity for procrastination and sloth.
Ten lyrical, spherical, diabolical denizens of the deep who hall, stall around the corner of the quay of the quivy of the quaff all at the same time.

Carrie Visits

Carrie was working on an environmental impact study on Guam and decided to stop in Tokyo on her way back to Hawaii. She went to Kamakura for a day, climbed a bit of the way up Mt Fuji from Kawaguchi Lake and bought a new digital camera while she was here. Now she's on her way back to Honolulu. Maybe Naomi and the boys will see her in Oahu next summer.....

Offspring

Anton got moving this week when he realised that he might not seen the Offspring concert afterall The tickets had sold out immediataly and things looked pretty bleak. So he sent an email to someone at Offspring begging for some tickets. Surprise, the guy decided Anton's plea was legitimate and sent back an email saying that there would be five guest tickets for Anton and his friends that evening. So Anton, David, Sam C, Patrick and Raphael went out to Odaiba and picked up their tickets. The photo to be attached soon tells the rest of the story.

Anton got home late because he had to go back to school to pick up his backpack (and Naomi had to drive over to pick him up.)

Here's the email he sent:

Anton runs his last NIS CC meet

It was the last CC meet at Tama. Anton and Thor have both been running this year and Naomi and I decided to go see the boys run. It was overcast and raining occasionally. Thor ran first, then Anton ran with the other NIS 9th Grade boys. After the races we went to the Tama Lodge to buy American junk food and have lunch in the US Military restaurant. The line was really long with all the kids buying candy, potato chips, Gatorade and popcorn. But the price was right and the restaurant served a good Philly steak sandwich.

NIS Food Fair & Anton's "15 on the 15th"

Saturday the 15th was the annual Nishimachi International School Food Fair. All in all a great success again. Naomi sold her goods in the gym, Anton and Thor hung out with their friends, and Paul helped empty the booths of food and drink.

It was also Anton's 15th birthday, so we went to dinner with the Jones at La Jolla in Hiroo for a Mexican Feast.

Toko Shinoda Show or Norman Gets His Jollies

Norman Tolman was up to his usual tricks at the Tolman Gallery produced exhibition of Toko Shinoda's works at Shinsei Bank's head office. Mayumi Jones joined Naomi and I for the opening party and dinner later. At the exhibition we had fun talking with Pam Mori and her son. In the end we got a shot with Shinoda herself.

I counted our Shinoda prints: one quite old one call Magnetize, two large ones from the mid 1980s - Illusion and Rhapsody - and one in the guest toilet gallery in our house in Izu with a nice green brush stroke.

Beijing in 2005

I headed off to Beijing last week to attend a FTSE Xinhua day away - a time to review business and plan for the future.

I stayed at the New Otani, aka Chung Fu Kung, rather than the St. Regis. Mark and Donald were in the St. Regis and the meetings with Xinhua Finance people was there. As the international business recurring income is now over US$1mn p.a., the contrast with domestic is pretty good.

After company visits and launching the China Life benchmark index, I had a day to sightsee. I visited the ancient Beijing observatory to take some photos. I had tried to go there in 1985 or so when I visited Beijing with my mother and Naomi. Then I headed off to the Dashanji area to see the art galleries and event spaces around the Factory 798 area. My friend Anne Py joined me for the day's journey and we saw some interesting art. We had a little Italian lunch in the midst of the galleries and then headed back into town.

From Beijing I headed down to Hong Kong and had a couple of very busy days there before coming back to Tokyo to attend Anton's high school application information meeting at NIS.

Izuvian Golf

Roger Marshall and I decided that the best way to handle the three day weekend was to go golfing. We packed up Friday night, had a meal that Naomi prepared for us, and drove to Akazawa. The harvest moon was coming up and it was an easy drive on a Friday night. Once we got in the house we set up the new deck chairs and tried them out.

Saturday we had some breakfast and drove down to Roger's place on Iritahama. The sky was clear and the water was so inviting that we went for a swim before lunch. Then headed over to Shimoda Country Club for nine holes. Back at Roger's that evening we bbq'd a rack of lamb and share our dinner with Roger's tenant, a college professor who lives on the beach and commutes to his tenured teaching position in Kanagawa. An ex-SEAL, he filled the evening with stories of his past.

Sunday, after another swim, was 18 holes at Inatori Country Club . We played the Mori and Yama courses. It was a long day, with many missed shots, lost balls and practice, practice, practice. Roger was trying out his new Lynx clubs and getting into the mood of playing golf. I made him practice a shot for getting out of the rough and on to the green. Later we took a few minutes to check out the three wind power generators on a ridge above the golf course. It was a great spot with views south to Shimoda, north to Akazawa and Futo, the ocean and Oshima.

For dinner we bbq'd some shrimps and scallops for an appetizer, and mained it with steaks. John Owens and Right Wing Inoue came by later to share some cigars and nashi on the deck.

Roger has headed back early, and I'm just enjoying the sunny day. Late afternoon I'll pack up and head off to Tokyo.