I figure this blog has been turning into a bit of a travelog as of late: me and my wife are on the road, and after spending a bit more than a week with family in India, we’re now in Bangkok. It is great to be back. Fresh out of high school, my first backpacking trip across South East Asia started here in 2001.
Monk taking photo at Wat Arun, Bangkok
A photo of the Taj Mahal in Agra can’t really capture the magic of the place. Despite the myriad visitors I found the place to be serene. I was lucky in that the light on the day of our visit was not too bright, bringing to the fore the magic glow of the marble used to build the tomb.
My wife and I are on a short stopover in India, where we are meeting her family. We spent two nights in Varanasi, a holy city on the banks of the river Ganges. Two boat trips revealed the changing face of the Ghats – the stairs leading to the water – and the activity surrounding them. The views were most beautiful just after sunrise and I thought I’d share a few of them without too much of the regular commentary.
I just got back from a short trip to Dresden. My parents treated us to the hotel, so we had to go with their choice of location in the fringes of the renovated old town. It proved to be a decent place and took us past the very interesting Pirnaischer Platz each day. Here, two buildings stood out, necessitating some further research.
We flew to Okinawa over the new year to escape the (admittedly mild) winter here in Tokyo for a few days. The weather held up to its reputation (we even swam in the ocean!), the beaches were beautiful and the food tasty. Now back in Tokyo, it’s time for me to put up a few pictures of the trip and look back at the first three months of my blogging here.
American military plane in landing approach Continue reading
We’re just back from a brief two-week trip through China and Korea. One of the highlights was our visit to the Korean Demilitarised Zone / Joint Security Area. The latter is the famous place where North and South Korea share a blue building that can be used for diplomatic talks. It’s the only place where you can stand on North Korean territory without actually visiting the country.
Taking the online offline: this post is about a book project a few friends and I pursued over the last couple of years. Countless brainstorming sessions, endless nights in Den Haag spent working on the manuscript and a trip through Central Asia promoting the book have evoked great passion from many people. This post is about commemorating this.
Part of the past occupations series. Just before we set off on our most memorable leg of the Middle East research trip, Beirut, my colleague and I toured the UAE and Qatar for four days. It had been my first time here. I would like to go back with some more time on my hands, but in all honesty, other places are probably higher on my priority list.
The KLM flight AMS-DUB is full of familiar oil people cramming into business class. I have a window seat and enjoy an excellent view of Burj al-Khalifa, the world’s tallest building emerging on the right as we approach the city’s airport. A major investment bank again organised an “all inclusive” tour and parked a sales guy from their Saudi office with us. The guy, of Palestinian descent, is probably glad to get out of Riyadh for a while. (In fact, he was just looking forward to get to Beirut.) Continue reading
Part of the “past occupations series”:
Just as Lebanon appears on the front pages of the international press again, I “revisited” it last week, writing up some anecdotes from a research trip there two years ago. This small country with its bloody history and fractious politics also has a few billion USD worth of international bonds outstanding. Getting some grip on the conflict in the country and the region was thus quite important job-wise, although very daunting given the complexity of the situation.
I once got asked by my CIO to accompany a senior equity portfolio manager on a research trip throughout the Gulf region. Her initial idea had been to see Saudi corporates – but that country’s attitude towards women made that all but impossible. We decided to go for the Gulf countries instead and throw Lebanon into the mix to make the trip worthwhile. I took a backseat regarding the organisation, so this trip was very corporate-focused with plenty of “buy our shares” schmoozing and handing out of glossy information packs: The future is bright and all that is bad is not actually so bad.
Beirut was the last stop of the trip and the undisputed highlight: In contrast to Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Qatar (which we had seen during the days before), it is a real city that did not just get built over the last couple of years. One can feel recent history everywhere, and it is still visible in the scars of the civil war and the ongoing urban regeneration. Our taxi took us to our hotel at breakneck speed, past the Camille Chamoun stadium that got completely destroyed in the civil war (actually the Israelis shelled it during one of their incursions into Beirut). A warm breeze coming through the open windows, and the sight of a somewhat more chaotic and lively street life instantly made me look forward to the days ahead. Continue reading
I was a political risk / fund strategy analyst in one of my previous incarnations. The job was within the asset management unit of an oil major, broadly charged with investing the company’s multi-billion pension assets. In that way, it is very similar to a fund manager you can find anywhere in the Londons, New Yorks, etc. The difference, though, was that big corporate culture – with its pros and cons – permeated the walls.
The job sounded perfect back then: It would marry my (then-)affection for politics and emerging markets with business, while maintaining an almost academic research bent. And travel it meant! The job description and the incumbent both told me that frequent research trips were a must. Just a bit more than a year into life in a corporate behemoth like that, that sounded very enticing.
A few interviews later, I had the job and got ready to move to The Hague. Meanwhile, the financial crisis had hit for real and saw financial markets drop calamitously and flows in asset management grind to a halt. Fantastic timing, I thought. Thankfully for us back then, life moved on and markets stabilised thanks to an unprecedented wave of central bank interventions. Riding the liquidity wave, 2009 and 2010 were actually pretty decent years for long-only funds.
Over the next weeks, I will post some memorable anecdotes from my trips around the world. I jotted them down in order not to forget them myself. But who knows, maybe others find them interesting, too.
