Still Standing... barely.

Ah, it feels good to be back - I think. Professionally, the past 10 months have been a roller-coaster ride of epic proportions, and even now, when I am all puked out, it still goes on. In the last year Wall Street and the US economy have gone through a slide that is historic in scale. When I joined The Bank last year, business was at record highs. We were on our way to having a banner year and in the grip of some serious hubris - we could do no wrong! People were lining up to buy just about any product that the Street would sell.

And then, the bottom fell out. A combination of banks and financial institutions making loans to people who didn't even come close to qualifying for them; selling loans that were little more than lipstick on pigs and selling securities that promised to turn base metal to gold has led the Street to the brink of the greatest financial disaster since the Great Depression.

About a year later, nearly 20,000 people have lost their jobs on Wall Street alone, with no signs of the bleeding stopping anytime soon; the venerable Bear Stearns has ceased to exist, foundering from it's perch on the Fortune 500 in less than a week; and fear and paranoia stalks those of us still standing. Going to work every morning not knowing if one will have a job at the end of the day makes for a whole new definition of stress.

A few years from now, if not already, histories will be written about the 'Great Credit Crunch of 2007' and learned scholars will try to explain what happened, why and who did what to whom. It will all be very well researched and footnoted and annotated and will become part of business school syllabi. But, as Rose Bukater says of surviving the shipwreck at the beginning of Titanic, "the [actual] experience of it [is] somewhat less clinical."

An experience I would never want to relive.

Wise Man Say... 08.01

"There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born there, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size, its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter--the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night.

Third, there is New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something... Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion."

E.B. White, 'Here is New York'*

*White, E.B. (1949), 'Here is New York', Harper & Brothers, New York, NY, pp 53-54. Reprinted: 2000, Little Bookworm, New York, NY

Fire!

The other day, at my favorite bookshop in the Village, the fire alarm went off.

In the closed confines of the bookstore, the shrieking of the alarm was even louder than usual - deafening, for once, was not an exggeration. A few minutes later the fire trucks arrived, sirens wailing, to add to the cacophony. In trooped five of New York's brvaest, in full combat gear. The owner/ manager/ person in-charge of the shop told them it was a false alarm, they checked that everything was alright, switched off the alarm and went back.

No one left the building, no one panicked, no one stopped talking except to assert, with the absolute certainty that only New Yorkers have, that it was a false alarm, heck - no one even stopped browsing! The sales clerks continued to ring up sales and other than the approx. 6,000 db sound level inside the store and men in red hats and axes standing around the entrance, it was as if it was business as usual. Come to think of it, it was business as usual. Through all the brouhaha, the people in the bookstore reacted - by not reacting at all!

Only in New York, folks, only in New York!

Wise Man Say... 07.03

He thinks it's a halo but it's just a swollen head
Anon.

It's a Dog's Life

For a good part of my life growing up in India, we had a dog. I love dogs and ever since coming to the US I have always wanted one, preferably a Huskie or a Samoyed. Of course it is not at all in the realm of practical feasibility for me to get a dog - for one, I live in an apartment and not a house with 'grounds' for the dog to gambol in and for another, I am gone 14-16 hours a day. A cat would be fine with that kind of alone time, but a dog? - it would destroy the apartment. A dog walker or doggie day-care is out because, after all, I wouldn't want my dog to be raised by strangers (what kind of father do you think I am?!).

But now, help is at hand! FlexPetz, a doggie rental service (or as they put it, "a shared dog ownership concept"), starting this fall will let you reserve quality time with a dog of your choosing. Rental, err, shared ownership times can vary from a few hours to a number of days. And if you are not only too inept to own a dog but are also too lazy to schlep it from the FlexPetz store, they will bring it to you!

FlexPetz dogs are all rescue dogs, are obedience trained, eat only organic dog food and come with GPS tracking devices on their collars "in the event that a FLEXPETZ dog and a member become separated" (translation - if you kidnap one of the dogs, they are going to hunt you down like a, well, dog!).

Only in New York, kids, only in New York.