Lio Bolin

Check out the work of Mr Liu Bolin:

There's a lot more here. The last picture is something to behold.

(Hat tip to Marginal Revolution.)

Katlama comments

Following on from earlier:

"Firstly, I would like to congratulate Riz on what sounds like and epic and triumphant adventure. Alas if only Sir Thomas Cook was still around you could have received the credit which you so richly deserve. You are truly a man of stature. I am in agreement with your assessment, if only fried for maybe 60 seconds longer the resulting Katlama would have been more complete and able to compete with the mid-range Katlamas abundantly available in the culinary epicentre of the UK, Birmingham also know as Katlama Capital.
So now as I sit at my humdrum workstation at my mediocre job my mind can't help but wonder if there could be other Katlama's in London so that I can compare Tayabs offering and set a benchmark for the London Katlama's. Something that has not yet been achieved! If I have come this far in my quest It would be rude not to wouldn't it?
Tonight I will sample the first of my home grilled Katlama's, feedback to come! I personally prefer the red sour sauce than the white minty concoction. I am yet to dine in at Tayabs, so let me put this out there for anybody interested in a monthly Katlama Klub for like minded people. Comments Welcome!"

A Katlama Klub sounds cool, though a few more sources of katlama may need to be located first. A while back I also thought about a chain of Katlama outlets in the London regions, toying with the name Katlama King and Katlama Kafe. You could serve pre-cut katlama up like a pie, with different sauces (I'm loving the red sauce - some times I like to cut it with a little bit of the minty stuff on top). There is another brown tamarind sauce which has onion chunks in it, which is also delicious. Based on its general low price I imagine the cost per katlama is darn low, suggesting big profits could be made (if you didn't eat all the stock first, of course). If I had the resource, I'd be straight in with this idea. One day.

Sainsbury's basics range - Shortbread, tea and apples

I tried the Basics range teabags last week, buying 80 teabags for a mere 28p. I thought they'd taste gross but they're actually okay, even if they only contain the scrapings off the tea factory floor. The Basics range apples, which are 80p for a pack of about 8-10 small apples, are also really nice. I actually prefer these over the more expensive brands because they are smaller.

Continuing the experiment, today I bought a packet of Basics shortbread, which cost a mere 12p. It's surprisingly nice. If you are worried that the biscuits are filled with artificial junk, here is the list of ingredients: Wheat Flour, Butter (From Cows' Milk), Vegetable Margarine (Rapeseed Oil, Palm Oil, Salt), Sugar, Sea Salt, Natural Flavouring. Nice and simple.

I wonder what else is out there in the Basics universe. I've already seen shower gel price at just 10p!

Adventures in Katlama Land

At around midday today, I popped out of my accountancy college at Waterloo to grab lunch only to be hit with a gale force wind and torrential, instant-soaking rain. With weather conditions so grey and grim, it was not shaping up to be a good day for trekking into East London in search for the 'precious' katlama, as discovered by Harry.

However, by 4 o'clock, the skies had cleared and I quickly made my way to Aldgate East in search of Tayyabs. After a bit of hunting and asking around I found the restaurant tucked away in a back street. Once there, I partook in a couple of vegetable samosas, some delicious kebabs, a coke, and a katlama, all for a mere £6.00. It's unbeatable value. And the katlama? It was good, but it wasn't quite up to scratch (the benchmark is high!). Don't get me wrong, I finished it off, thank you very much indeed, but the thin fried pastry that encases the mince meat wasn't quite crispy enough. Nevertheless, I will definitely be back, and next time I'll make sure my bags isn't so stuffed to the brim that I can't smuggle a few katlamas home. It's important to note that even the Birmingham spec katlamas don't always deliver the goods when cooked up and served in restaurants, but when they are grilled at home you almost always get a nice crispy outer layer...delicious. Harry, it would be good to know how some of your katlama's turned out when heated up at home (?).

If you do go to Tayyabs, pay no mind to the menu for the katlama is notable by its absence. Indeed, when I enquired the waiter looked at me with a quizzical 'Watcha talking about, Willis?' look, but he soon realised they were holding what I wanted. Also, when it came, folks on the adjacent table immediately quizzed me about this rarely-seen-in-the-south delicacy ... the katlama force is strong.

Today, I am a contented man.

Harry's Great Katlama Quest - to the Victor the Spoils!

Harry's comment from the 'Katlama Update....' post:

KATLAMA's Found in London! (Not actually sure of what the plural of Katlama is however!). The fine culinary pastry has been found! Whilst on a Katlama reconnaissance mission last night in Whitechapel, I visited an establishment called Tayyabs on Fieldgate Street in Whitechapel. Much to my amazement my eyes widened as they met with the unique UFO shaped masterpiece of Asian Cooking! In euphonic delight I purchased eight without hesitation and was pleasantly surprised with the accuracy in design with that of the original Birmingham Katlama's, however they could be improved with a little extra spice in the filling.
Nevertheless.. my next movement is to have Greggs stock Katlama's! I am in the process of writing to the Head of Production at Greggs Ltd and will keep you updated with progress.

Harry

Fair weather reader's will not understand the importance of this, so let me spell it out. It is nothing short of a MIRACLE. To have discovered a katlama that nearly matches Birmingham spec, within the boundaries of the M25, is a very proud moment. I'm off to London for an accountancy course tomorrow and if I'm brave enough to challenge the elements, I may trek up to the famous Tayyabs to sample the disc shaped delight that is the katlama.

Thank you Harry. You've made my day, and maybe my weekend.

Movies

Watched a few movies of late:

- The Fantastic Mr Fox - Pretty fantastic. ****

- The Fourth Kind - Very shaky story and not enough alien. *

- Men Who Stare At Goats - Quirky and enjoyable fare ***

Cooking quote - White Heat, Marco Pierre White

'I've worked for over ten years for recognition, and now I've got it. I've got money now, but I'm no happier. It's not material things that bring me happiness. Perhaps that's why I work with food, with growing things. ... My respect and admiration for life has come from food, through food.'

- White Heat, Marco Pierre White

Vitamin D - more of the same

Every now and then I check Google News for the latest findings on the sunshine vitamin. Here are some of the latest (past week):

- Vitamin D Deficiency Tied to ESRD in Blacks
- Vitamin D might lessen your flu risk
- Fight Off Back Aches & Pains This Winter With Extra Vitamin D
- Low Vitamin D Tied to Heart, Stroke Deaths- Low vitamin D linked to higher risk of breast cancer
- Vitamin D 'may cut premature birth risk and protect newborn babies'

And from the Scientific American, 'scientists found that the lower the subjects’ vitamin D levels, the more negatively impacted was their perform­ance on a battery of mental tests. Compared with people with optimum vitamin D levels, those in the lowest quartile were more than twice as likely to be cognitively impaired.

Now here's the thing. It is highly probable that in many instances low vitamin D could simply be a marker of poor health versus actually being a causal factor, and in all these cases correcting one's vitamin D level would offer little to no direct benefit. However, there is quite a bit of (mounting) evidence favouring vitamin D supplementation and very little downside, and for now at least that makes supplementation a very good trade.

Paul Tudor Jones 'Trader' film is here ... for now

The extremely hard to find Paul Tudor Jones 'Trader' documentary from the 1980s is on-line here. For folk who don't know this chap, he is a premier league hedge fund manager who called the 1987 crash - the call is captured in this video, which is pure 1980s, through and through.

I had a lazy Sunday today and watched the whole thing, which is about 55 mins long. Some years back, Jones apparently tried to buy up all the video copies in an effort to withdraw it from public consumption. Now that we're in a digital age, it's constantly appearing on sites only to be taken down shortly after, so if you want to see it, act fast.

Milkeshake City - danger, danger

Last night we sampled the delights of Milkshake City in Friern Barnet, London. The idea is simple and effective - you take your pick from an almost infinite list of chocolate bars or biscuits, and then watch as your selection gets blitzed up with milk and ice-cream, transforming into a delicous milkshake. I had a liquidised Snickers which was first rate, if a touch on the heavy side (though we mustn't start counting calories when partaking in such ventures!).

The business concept has launched in the teeth of the recession but it could well succeed given the desire for comfort eating in times of crisis. A key problem Milkshake City may face is dealing with very low 'barriers to entry', because if the idea has legs there is very little to stop Starbucks, etc from jumping into the fray.

5/5

A couple of interesting links

- The Wall Street Journal highlights an unintended consequence of government meddling:

Thanks to the federal tax credit to buy high-mileage cars that was part of President Obama's stimulus plan, Uncle Sam is now paying Americans to buy that great necessity of modern life, the golf cart. The federal credit provides from $4,200 to $5,500 for the purchase of an electric vehicle, and when it is combined with similar incentive plans in many states the tax credits can pay for nearly the entire cost of a golf cart.

... The IRS has also ruled that there's no limit to how many electric cars an individual can buy, so some enterprising profiteers are stocking up on multiple carts while the federal credit lasts, in order to resell them at a profit later.

- The Armchair Economist by Steve Landsburg is a wonderful introduction on applying economic principles to daily life. It was published a great many years ahead of the likes of Freakonomics, The Undercover Economist etc, and remains my favourite book of the bunch. Well, Landsburg finally has a blog; it's part of his new book launch, and hopefully it will run for a long time into the future.

Film: This is It

After watching this lovingly put together compilation of rehearsal footage, it's clear the live show would have been pretty amazing. MJ was way too thin and frail looking in the film but at the same time he was filled with energy and enthusiasm, and he was still on top of his dance game. It's definitely one for all the fans.

Vitamin D train is chugging on

The FT has just published a comprehensive piece on vitamin D. An important point is made with respect to carrying out robust research:

"... randomised control trials are important. The trouble is, trials that could convince policymakers to advise an across-the-board increase to vitamin D recommendations for all children and adults might never take place.

There are a number of obstacles to the research, but the simplest, and biggest, is money. Vitamin D is not a proprietary compound. It’s cheap and easy to produce. A bottle of 180 1,000-IU capsules can be purchased online for about £9. No pharmaceutical company is going to put up the many millions of dollars necessary to conduct the trials."

Indeed, if there isn't any profit in it, why should private companies respond? Isn't this the moment where the government is supposed to play its hand, or are we too busy spending tax payer money scrapping roadworthy cars to subsidise the automotive industry?

Anyway, I'm happy taking my daily vitamin D supplements (1000 IU) and I'll continue to do so until the evidence tells me otherwise.

Books - Don Quixote

Woe is me! The massive size of Don Quixote, combined with my appalling forgetfulness, pretty much destines me to be eternally lost in the mesmeric land of La Mancha, the domain of the Knight of the Sorrowful face. I finished the book for the fourth time just over a week ago and I am missing it already.

I previously planned to read this book every year but there are so many other worthy books to read (including other variations of Don Quixote!) that I must find the discipline to put this book to one side for a good while.

I know that when I return not only will my memory have faded but the passage of time will have made me a different person. And so it is that Don Quixote will take on a new meaning, just as it has with each of the previous readings.

I'll post some quotes from the books at a later date.

Goldman Sachs fat profits - Russ Roberts lays it out

A simple and fantastic article article on the mega profits being made at Goldman Sachs.

More Katlama comments ... I sense the forming of a movement

"I am a proud Brummie living in East London! I seriously love my Katlama, nothing else will do. I love it with the red sauce the most and a cup of water goes down well. Sometimes and only sometimes I have two! But my question is this.. I want to befriend like minded people who are willing to work together in the quest to find a Katlama vendor in East London! I've tried everything I can but just imagine the ground we can cover if a group of us venture out in search! I have made Phone call after Phone call to Kebab shops in Aldgate and Commercial Road but man they think I'm talking some sort of Jibberish! Just the other day when calling a very popular establishment on Brick Lane, the somewhat irritated gentleman on the other end announced that I am a Bas****d Bl***y B***h! So my plee to you is join me on foot patrol cause I believe there can be found a Katlama in London!"

Book Review - Where Underpants Come from: From Checkout to Cotton Field - Travels Through the New China

I quit this book about 60-70 pages in. It would have been so much more interesting had the author focussed on the economics and production of the underwear, but instead the book is just a rambling general travelogue that seems without purpose. To make matters worse, it isn't particularly well written either. In other words, 'Where Underpants Come From' is a bit pants.

*1/2

Next up is the Logic of Life by Tim Harford. I'm only a handful of pages in right now, but so far so good.

Great deal at IKEA

IKEA are running a great offer until next Sunday. If you take five books into any IKEA store they'll give you a voucher for £5, with no strings attached. The books are being collected for a children's charity.

We've been on a search for a decent pepper mill at a decent price for over a year now, and IKEA has finally delivered with this strange little beast. It's called the 365+ Spice Mill and costs £4.99 (perfect for the voucher!). The mill has a ceramic grinder that is way way better than the plastic and steel grinders found on most Cole & Mason pepper mills. Also, because the pepper comes out from the top of the grinder, it doesn't leave any pepper dust on the table. Nice. Hopefully, the search stops here.

Cheap books at Borders ... while it lasts

A few of the Borders bookshops are closing down and prices are nicely reduced. I picked a bunch of books up today at 70% off the sticker price. Act fast as the shelves are clearing at a pace.

Mashy peas or mushy peas?

I have learned that fish and chips are a long standing tradition at my workplace on Fridays, and I am doing my part to ensure this institution does not go to ruin. They are served with peas of the mashy/mushy variety, tartar sauce and a slice of lemon.

Omm, nom nom nom.

The Wire, end of

'The Wire' is the first long running series where I watched every episode in order. To summarise, and to reiterate earlier comments, it's brilliant but it's not quite as good as The Shield.

5:04 pm - 5:23 pm

5:04 pm - Left office.
5:23 pm - At home, showered, and changed into my civvies.

That's what I'm talking about. It won't last but I'll enjoy it while it does. Woo hah.

Vitamin D levels

One of my loyal army of readers (cough) kindly enquired as to my vitamin D status. I had my blood tested during the peak summer, after significant sun exposure, and my vitamin D3 blood serum level came in at 63 nmol/L. This is not 'deficient' but it does fall into the 'insufficient' category. Anything above 70 is classed as replete.

This isn't as bad as I feared but it's still pretty dismal given that it represents my peak vitamin D levels. Also, because there seems to be such a high tolerance before there are any expected side effects, I'd prefer to err on the higher side of the spectrum.

To give my D3 levels a boost I'm taking these tablets, each of which provides 500% of the woefully inadequate RDI.

Nigerian e-mail scams don't quit

Without daily pruning, hotmail accounts can fill up pretty fast. The first e-mail I have to deal with is from a certain Hajia Mariam, who informs me of the sudden death of her husband:

'Due to the sudden death of my husband General Abacha the former head of state of Nigeria in June 1998, I have been thrown into a state of hopelessness by the present administration ... I got your contacts through personal research,and had to reach you through this medium. I will give you more details when you Due to security network placed on my daily affairs I cant visit the embassy so that is why I have contacted you.My husband deposited $12.6million dollars with a security firm abroad whose name is witheld for now till we communicate. I will be happy if you can receive this funds and keep it safe I assure you something good out of the funds in return for your assistance.'

Bad times for Mrs Mariam, although I fear I will enter into my own state of helplessness if I get involved.

Disconnected

I have just spent five days without internet access and with barely any mobile signal, and I was spending my nights in a sprawling business conference type hotel that was previously owned by the technology company ICL!

The first week has been a great introduction to Centrica, my new employer. It's a company with a really positive energy that seems to be making all the right moves, and I'm sure it's going to be pretty interesting to work for them in the years ahead.

Anyway, work is work and blog is blog, and rarely the twain will meet.

Back to gen-pop

I'll be re-entering the workplace on Monday, after having spent some time in the wilderness. With the world economy in a pretty deep funk, jobs are getting increasingly scarce (1, 2, 3), so I had better make the most of this opportunity.

Spreadsheets, rush hour, coffee machines, early starts, late finishes, shirts to be ironed, suits to be dry cleaned, shoes to be polished, firewalled internet access, cheeky checking of web-sites when no one is looking, ergonomic swivel office chairs, business cards, intranets, expense forms, and so much more. Bring it, bring it all, bring it all in spades.

Book review - How to Be Free by Tom Hodgkinson

How to be Free is an enjoyable and insightful diatribe against the hectic, modern age.

I knew what I was in for with this book when, a few pages in, Tom states that in today's word it is easier to rob the poor, and cites the evil supermarket Tesco as a chief culprit. In the argument for self-sufficiency and independence, comparative advantage (the whole reason why trade takes place), is wholly overlooked, which is a shame. However, I guess this book, while very well researched, is all about opinion and Tom's opinion is put forward very well, even if he does massively overstate the case (my opinion).

While I can see gaping holes in Tom's prescription, I can also appreciate much of what he has to say.

****

Some quotes from the book:

… it is important to read decent stuff. Put quality materials into your mind, quality ingredients. A diet of god writing, without crappy newspapers and magazine, which just make the anxiety worse, will produce quality thoughts and a self-sufficient, resourceful person. Feed your mind.

Sometimes I think that life is becoming no more than staring at a screen. We stare at a screen all day at work. They we get home and stare at our computer screen before staring at the TV screen. For entertainment, we stare at cinema screens. Screens make us into passive receivers. Smash the screen and find a pencil and a piece of paper instead.

Put simply, if you avoid consuming the products of the system, then you will not have to pay for those products. This way, you will save not only the money that you used to spend on umpteen services, you will also save on the time and mental hassle spent dealing with all those bills. The oppression will gradually depart from your doorstep. And you won’t have to work so hard. Life will become cheaper and easier.

… we tend to try to become very good at one small thing to the exclusion of all others. This is called professionalism but could more accurately be labelled ‘being useless’.

The best thing is to possess pleasures without being their slave’ not to be devoid of pleasures. Aristippus, 435-356 BC.

Our built-in stupidity is what makes us fearful, We can’t do enough for ourselves and therefore rely on others to do things, and that makes us scared. We have also been told since the days of the Protestant revolution that we are more or less alone in this world, that we should trust nobody and suffer alone and in silence. How different from the old ‘brotherhood of man’ of pre-1500 days, where we were all in this together.

But. Insists Neitzsche, “To ask it again: to what extent can suffering balance debts or guilt?” What difference does it make? My suffering makes no difference to anyone else. It is a negative; it is completely pointless; it has no practical benefit to anyone.

When I walk down the Uxbridge Road in London, I see Somalians, Indians and West Indians simply hanging out and talking in groups. They are outside their shops, they are at their stalls in the market. But most of the white middle classes hurry through this scene alone, rushing back to the security of their burglar-alarmed terraced houses. We have lost that easy camaraderie of life, and we’re lucky that people from other cultures have moved to our cities and are demonstrating a more humane and enjoyable way of living right under our noses.

Machines have become as much like people as people have become like machines. They pulsate with life, while man becomes a robot. – E.F. Schumacher, Good Work (a letter written by a British worker)

As the gloomy Robert Burton writes: ‘In adversity I wish for prosperity, and in prosperity fear adversity … what condition of life is free? Wisdom hath labour annexed to it, glory envy, riches and cares, children and incumbrances, pleasure and diseases, rest and beggary, go together, as if man were therefore born to be punished in this life for some precedent sins.’

This is not to deny the pleasures of the log fire; indeed, the pleasures of the log fire are all the more intense when you have just been out in the snow to chop up the logs for it.

Humanity knows nothing at all. There is no intrinsic value in anything, and every action is a futile, meaningless effort. – Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution, 1978

The rise of the pension as a sort of earthly reward for having suffered forty years or more in a job you didn’t like – this is something new. Likewise, pension as a kind of national entitlement. A pension has become something that you work for rather than something that you get after working. In other words, it is an expression of reward by the authorities for good work, the ‘secular afterlife’, in the words of my friend Matthew de Abaitu. Suffer now: enter paradise later.

A life lesson from Ask Monica, my favourite nutrition blog

"With all due respect, Dr. Eades has a deep and abiding ideological bias. I'm sure he arrived at it honestly, from examination of the evidence. But once Considered Opinion has been allowed to harden into Intractable Point of View, it becomes increasingly difficult to evaluate new evidence on its merits."

Ask Monica

Cool poem segment

From A Summer Night, By Matthew Arnold

For most men in a brazen prison live,
Where, in the sun's hot eye,
With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly
Their lives to some unmeaning taskwork give,
Dreaming of nought beyond their prison-wall.
And as, year after year,
Fresh products of their barren labour fall
From their tired hands, and rest
Never yet comes more near,
Gloom settles slowly down over their breast;
And while they try to stem
The waves of mournful thought by which they are prest,
Death in their prison reaches them,
Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest.

And the rest, a few,
Escape their prison and depart
On the wide ocean of life anew.
There the freed prisoner, where'er his heart
Listeth, will sail;
Nor doth he know how there prevail,
Despotic on that sea,
Trade-winds which cross it from eternity.
Awhile he holds some false way, undebarr'd
By thwarting signs, and braves
The freshening wind and blackening waves.
And then the tempest strikes him; and between
The lightning-bursts is seen
Only a driving wreck,
And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck
With anguish'd face and flying hair
Grasping the rudder hard,
Still bent to make some port he knows not where,
Still standing for some false, impossible shore.
And sterner comes the roar
Of sea and wind, and through the deepening gloom
Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman loom,
And he too disappears, and comes no more.

Is there no life, but these alone?
Madman or slave, must man be one?

Economists .... bah !

A weather team at Tesco

Surprisingly, Tesco has its own weather team:

After three years of research, the six-person team has created its own software that calculates how shopping patterns change “for every degree of temperature and every hour of sunshine,” Tesco said last month.

... “Rapidly changing weather can be a real challenge,” Jonathan Church, a Tesco spokesman, said in a statement. “The system successfully predicted temperature drops during July that led to a major increase in demand for soup, winter vegetables and cold-weather puddings.”

This type of economy of scale just doesn't figure into the thinking of the average high street operator but when you are the size of Tesco, with a turnover of over £1bn a week, the smallest improvement can be produce a big impact on the bottom line.

PS - For my money, Sainsbury's beats Tesco hands down.

Facebook - search for 'The Johal'

I was in the garden today, enjoying the last of the summer sunshine, surfing the web and reading Don Quixote, when the name of somebody I barely knew at university popped into my mind - his name is Jagtar Johal. I jumped on Facebook to see if I could find him. He wouldn't remember me, but I thought I'd try. I found a Jagtar Johal in Leicester and befriended him ... but it was the wrong Johal. This one was a local kick-boxing hero, not the studious, pool-playing Johal I knew. I wonder, where is 'the Johal' now, what is 'the Johal' up to?. Facebook and Google searches proved fruitless. The Johal is off the grid. Bye bye Johal.