Mancunian Exchange

Is this thing on....

2005-12-18T04:46:00.000-08:00

Ok, this is more for me than anyone else, because it's been 17 days or so since I added anything, and more than a month since I added anything interesting, so I can't imagine anyone picking this up again.

The whirlwind Paris-Rome-Florence-Amsterdam trip is in the books. It's funny to be able to say, "It's nice to be back home in Manchester" since I'm really only 1 degree more comfortable here than any of those aformentioned cities.

The trip was great - we sold out every show and the crowds were real friendly. I think we'll get some bigger gigs in Paris next time we go back. And it looks like we're about to be huge in Belgium.

But, there was little internet access to be found, and even less time to use it. So, I couldn't even begin to try to write some stories about the trip while it was in progress. Piece by piece I'll upload some stories before heading to DC, where I'll have almost no internet access. My aunt doesn't have broadband, and few coffeehouses have free wi-fi, so i'm going to be on an webless island again. So, I should probablytake this chance to wish everyone a merry xmas.

But, let me throw out a few bullets while I sit here procrastinating:
- I love that all chairs outside French coffee houses face the street.
- The Louvre isn't just big, it's impressively enormous. Maybe my expectation was set low, but the thing takes up several city blocks. I don't know if you could walk through the whole thing in one day if the walls were bare and you were just looking for a restroom. Stopping to admire the art would just take all week. I didn't go in, but put it on my list of places I need to spend an 8-5 day in sometime.
- The Eiffel Tower is much more impressive at night than during the day.
- Everyone in Europe has a fake burberry scarf, umbrella or purse.
- In terms of conciously wanting to rip off tourists, there are no worse people in the world than Italians in Rome - even worse than Mexican street merchants. These are the least trustworthy people I have ever met. At least the Mexican street merchants and you have an understanding that this is a barter/haggle arrangement. For example, the italians cab drivers are just flat out liars and cheaters. Almost made me hate the whole city.
- But I love the fact that in Italy you can get a $1.00 cappucino made with cream so thick you have to eat the froth with a spoon.
- Some Florence street merchants are so congenial and funny that they are a joy to haggle with. It's great when your purchase also comes with a little entertainment rather than annoying bartering.
- There is something marvelously ironic about Amsterdam, where they have this efficient mass transit system that Seattle would be jealous of, and yet everyone is consistently stoned. Maybe Seattle's executives and politicians need to hop off the caffeine train and smoke a few joints so they can come up with some sort of logical transportation plan.

More to come as I get all packed up. Today's Sunday, and I leave Tuesday morning, so the next 36 hours are really an effort in fitting 8 suitcases full of garbage into 3 suitcases. I have a feeling some of my U.S. bought stuff is going to find a permanent home in a UK rubbish dump.

Absolutely Worthless Musings

2005-11-28T16:06:00.000-08:00

When you are in a place that doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, and try to read Web sites from a place that does, you realize what it means to "phone it in." What a bunch of worthelss sludge made its way across the column inches of cnn.com et all. And then I realized that when there's no real news to cover, and no one to read it anyway, well you just kind of make stuff up.

And so in honor of Thanksgiving, I present useless content that has no rhyme, meaning or artisitic value.

Things about Manchester that make me smile:
- Grown men cried (I actually saw one) when former Manchester United star George Best died last week. Since I didn't understand it, they explained to me that it was like Michael Jordan dying. But if you said to them, "Well, kind of, except Jordan didn't quit at age 28, then drink himself through both his original liver and the new one they gave him," they look at you like you said the queen was a prostitute.
- However, we must give credit to Mr. Best for his legendary quote, "I spent a lot of my money on birds, booze and fast cars. The rest I just squandered."
- The girls here have accepted that its cold, and now wear leg warmers under their mini-skirts.
- I live between 2 train stops (Oxford Road and Deansgate) which are each about 300 meters in opposite directions. I have travelled by train to Edinburgh (north), York (East), London (South) and Liverpool (West) and not once has the train I needed to be on been scheduled to stop at either of these stations.
- Our apartment has a combination washer/dryer which I have dreamed about for decades. Just think how it easy this would be! You can maybe wash a pair of jeans, 2 pairs of boxers and 2 t-shirts at once, and the whole cycle takes 3 hours. And the machine locks itself shut, so there's no way to heht anything in or out unitl the process is complete. Mucking with the dials just pisses it off and it shuts down until you apologize and leave the flat.
- We had a huge Tree Lighting festival last week in the Town Square to celebrate the beginning of the Christmas season. Huge event here - kind of a poor English version of Rockefeller Square. And the celebrity guests to throw the switch were.....wait for it......the characters from Madagascar. Yes, the 90 minute Disney movie. About zoo animals lost in Africa. Connect the dots for me here.
- The same town square is now hosting the crafts fair that it does every year. Full of German food, crafts and gifts. German marketplace. In Manchester. For Chrstmas.
- If you want to get Internet access from a company that is not British Telecom, you are certainly able to. But to sign up, you have to give them your BT number. Which means in order to get a service that competes with BT, you first must be a BT customer.
- I love English TV. Some shows start at 6:20,some at 7:10 and some at 8:30. There seems to be no such thing as the half hour block.
- The big TV show here is Coronation Street, which is a half-hour drama that comes on at the randomest times during the week so I don't know how anyone watches it. And since there is no such place as Coronation Street in Manchester, as there is no Wysteria Lane in the U.S, they create the street for the opening credits. Except I swear it's a model town shot with a macro lens, just like Mister Rogers Neighborhood.

Ok, so that should be enough words to get me past my drunk editor who is probably asleep watching football anyway.

Birthdays and Thanksgiving

2005-11-25T17:59:00.000-08:00

Ok, let's be honest. Getting lost in places you've never heard of is WAAAAAAYYYY easier to make funny than a writing papers in rainy Manchester. There are only so many ways to make fun of the people trapsing through my house every day. So once again we're going to have to combine two days into one and pretend it all happened together.

In an incredible quirk of fate, Augustin and I share the same birthday, so we threw a little gig over here at The Hacienda. People are slammed right now with school work, so we expected a nice, small affair. And it was your typical night at our flat, where a variety of countries showed up with wine bottles and a few stories. But then it differentiated itself.

My roommate Guillaume has elevated himself to the level of "Nicest human I know" without even meaning to. I wish we could clone this kid , who I already liked before. We've had a number of birthday parties this year, and they are all the same, just a reason to hang out and eat cake. No one ever gives presents. But just as Gus and I blow out the candles (a task made significantly easier when there are 2 people), here come the Chinese girls with two wrapped boxes. Guillaume had gotten everyone to pitch in and give us Manchester United and Manchester City jerseys with our names and #107, which is our flat number. In the world of unexpected nice presents, this ranks near the top for me (even if they did accidentally get the old jersey from a few years ago...)

And so it was with a feeling of international satisfacion that I awoke on Thanksgiving Day, or as the Brits tend to simply call it, "November 24." Earlier this year I met up with some other Americans, Courtney and Kimberly. They're from Virginia and Alabama, and you really don't here many southern accents out here, so they tend to stand out. Anyway, I headed over to their place to celebrate proper Thanksgiving with them and about 10 English folks.

The only problem with such a strong class full of international students is that you forget you are in England. It's like moving to Manhattan and working for the United Nations - you don't actually meet any New Yorkers. So this was really one of my first true experiences in a British flat with a roomfull of British blokes speaking real British. I gotta tell ya, I couldn't understand a bloody word they said. One on one, they sound fine. But when they all start blabbering without even bothering to mix in a consonant for variety's sake, well they're damn near unintelligble.

Of course, we Americans lose all credibility when we try to answer the simplest questions like, "How did Thanksgving start?" First off, they are puzzled why we celebrate a harvest in the beginning of winter, which is a valid point I didn't have an answer for. Then you have to run throught he whole Native American debacle and try to explain the legalities of Tribal Casinos. By the time you get through trying to explain how marshmallow yams could have possibly been around in 1621, you're ready to stick the bird on someone's head.

But the Brits thoroughly enjoyed the Thanksgiving feast Kimberly and Courtney whipped up, and I must say they did a fine job. Saturday we're hosting our own belated T-Day Saturday for the exchange class, and everyone can be thankful that I have absolutely no responsibility whatsoever. It's Dan's project and our place is simply the environment. Apparently my poor cooking skills are now so legendary, that I wasn't even made aware when dish responsibilites were being doled out. I mean, even the Canadians have responsibilities for certain entrees. But me, well I just gotta unlock the door when everyone gets here.

Unfortunately, this week is more of the same - papers, papers, papers - then I get interesting again in Paris, Rome and Florence the week after.

A Night at Old Trafford

2005-11-23T11:53:00.000-08:00

Let's face it. If you are going to call yourself a real sports fan, and really sit down and debate sports with guys who think they know their stuff, there is a certain list of requirements you need to have accomplished in order to qualify.

For example, despite what you'll hear from people in the Pacific Northwest, you cannot make blanket statements like, "Husky Stadium is the best place to watch football" if the only places you have been are UW and Bellevue High School.

There are some events you have to see in person to make honest comparisons and some places you have to go for actual context. For example, in baseball, it's Wrigley (check), Fenway (check), Yankee, and you can maybe add Safeco and Pac Bell (check check).

But if you really want to have legs to stand on in the International scene, there are a set of stadiums worldwise that must be experienced. I know I'm leaving a bunch out, but Barcelona, Madrid, Milan, Arsenal and Liverpool spring to mind - and of course Old Trafford, the home of Manchester United.

Earlier this year, I attended a Manchester City game, and at the time I identified them as the White Sox to Man United being the Cubs. And now, that comparison still holds true. Going to a White Sox game is a good way to sepnd a Sunday morning, but going to a Cubs game is a true experience. Ditto Man City and Man United.

It's not just the history, the 66,000 people wearing red, or the constant singing. It's the entire, unreplicable atmosphere of being somewhere famous. It's that look of nostalgia that comes to a colleague's face when they say, "Oh, you've been to Old Trafford you have" just like two baseball fans reminiscing about an afternoon in the Wrigley bleachers.

And so a 0-0 tie did nothing to damper the enjoyment of landing in one of sports most hallowed fields for 90 minutes of football. There's no question I'd be a Man United season ticket holder if I lived out here. I honestly tried to go the way of "The City's team" but there's a reason Man Utd is so popular worldwide. You can't help but get chills in that stadium, listening to those fans - who according to the people next to us were a "terrible crowd." There's something you can't describe when an entire stadium spontaneously combusts into song.

(I have this argument with my good friend and US Soccer supporter all the time. When 66,000 people are singing the same song, it's cool. When 66 US soccer fans are singing all game long, it's annoying. So Sam's Army, I implore you, teach other people the songs before the game. And please, take a few minutes before launching into them consecutively like a musical AK-47 gone awry. We don't need them for 90 minutes straight.)

Although I couldn't understand one cheer from another, I swear they were singing, "Take me home Country road at some point." And if someone can explain to me how a flippin John Denver song became a staple at Manchester United football games, I'll happily buy you a beer.

So despite the fact an American owns the team now, and that it's the EPL "All-Star team" I have to tip my hat to Man United. If the Yankees had so much character, they'd be hard to root against as well.

(Unfortunately, the pictures turned out like crap - must have had the camera settings all fouled up. But here are the couple worth salvaging)

This Manchester Place is Kind of Cool

2005-11-21T06:35:00.000-08:00

I think it was either Isaac Newton or Alan Greenspan who said that for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. Then by definition, by spending 4 straight weekends out of town, my knowledge of my adopted hometown is few and far between. So, thanks to a weekend full of class and dwindling back account, I finally got to spend a weekend here in Manchestah. And this really isn't a bad place.

On Sunday, we were forced out of City Centre to attend the Memorial service for Amit. There was certain Nick Hornby feel about 15 people who didn't know each other 2 months ago, taking a bus route we didn't know, wandering through a suburb we've never been, to visit a house where we didn't know anyone, to attend a service for a man we had only recently met. The only real common thread was the fact that it just didn't seem possible that someone our own age could just die in his sleep.

Earlier in the weekend, I was able to explore some other corners as well, as part of showing around a friend from Univ of Washington who was in town from Copenhagen. There's something nice about going out in groups of 15 people, but there's also something comforting about 2 friends wandering around a foreign city and telling old stories from UW, and find little places that don't need to satisfy a group en masse. It was a great excuse to duck into dive clubs playing loud music and chi-chi lounges offering overpriced drinks and the beautiful people.

The long and the short of it was simply getting to see where the non-students go in this town, and to be honest, it doesn't really look too much different than Belltown and Fremont. Some fun places in the Northern Quarter to look up if you get here are Centro, Odd, Bluu, and Night and Day. And if you have a good group and want to see a colussus dance club, check out M2.

It's hard to believe that school is in its final weeks, and everyone is kind of looking around the corner now. There's an unspoken feeling of disappointment as we see the real world trying to nudge itself out of the locked box we have it trapped in right now. So it's hurry up and panic time for a bunch of things.

Thus, I'm indulging on a birthday present tomorrow to see a Champions League match between Man Utd and Villareal. Man Utd needs the win and Villareal is on top of the group, so it should be a pretty exciting match. Plus Man Utd is fresh off the upset over Chelsea, so people are excited about them again. And I just couldn't forgive myself if I was in Manchester for 3 months without getting to Old Trafford. It's like living in New York all summer and not seeing The House that Ruth Built.

I'm becoming more and more fascinated by this $100 laptop MIT Media Labs and Nicholas Negroponte are trying to get built. In our current assignment we have to write a strategic plan detailing how Microsoft will respond. Let me know if you disagree, but we've decided they will publicly support it while going behind the scenes to absolutely destroy it through skunkworks, negative analyst reports and forcing key distributors to abandon it. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go to Google and type in "Negroponte $100 laptop Microsoft." It's a pretty interesting story.

That's all I got this weekend. Augustin and I share the same brithday (many, many years apart) so we're throwing a 70's/80's party Wednesday to celebrate Gus getting one year closer to my age (apparently, there's a loophole and if you' re in grad school AND over 30, you don't actually age.) Two weekends left in Manchester then two in Paris/Rome/Florence/Copenhagen/Amsterdam then I'm back in the States on the 20th, Seattle on the 24th. Has it really been 2 months???

A Tale of Two Cities

2005-11-17T03:04:00.000-08:00

So, part out of laziness, and part out of a lack of creativity, I thought I'd combine Dublin and London into a single post.

The fact is that each one of these two towns are actually thriving metropolises. Dublin, as opposed to small Irish villages like Galway, is actually quite large, with a giant downtown shopping area and district called Temple Bar that rivals what used to be the French Quarter.

Temple Bar is so big and so touristy that it begs the question of whether visiting Dublin is really a representation of Ireland, or if you visit Dublin for the atmosphere of Temple Bar itself. Again, New Orleans comes to mind. For most people, a trip to New Orleans meant Borboun Street and a cheesy replica of a Paddleboat. The real New Orleans was quite different, but no tourist would enjoy the rest of what New Orleans had to offer. So I wonder if Dublin is the same way.

On Sunday night, Lisa and Pauline decided they wanted to take Dan to Gay Bingo and asked if I wanted to join. Now, I think this shows my maturity. I would have been perfectly justified if I had stared at Lisa for a moment and exclaimed loudly, "Are you flippin crackers? I'm sorry, has someone reached inside your skull, snatched your brain, and replaced it with a pint of Guinness?" But, I politely mutterred something about going to watch Irish bands. I felt bad for Dan who came over to me to me later and said, "You don't play bingo and you're straight, so I'm not sure why they thought you'd want to do that on your last night in Dublin." So, common sense seemed to prevail.

While the rest of the crew hit Gay Bingo, I ventured about 15 minutes out of downtown Dublin up to a local music venue called Whelan's, where I was soothed with the sounds of Irsh rock and rollers playing Johnny Cash. But the people were friendly in that "neighborhood out with their friends" kind of way. It made me think Dublin would be a pretty ok place to live.

Now, if you've been to London, then you know exactly how big the place really is, and I really don;t need to do any explaining. It's basically New York with older buildings, nicer taxi cab drivers and people driving on the wrong side of the road. If you've never been to New York, London or I imagine Tokyo or Hong Kong, you can't really get a sense of the scale.

We did the cheesy tourist things - Buckingham Palace, Parliament, Big Ben, the London Eye, etc...and you really feel the chasm between tourist and native. Tourists (like us) wander around without a clue, while Londoners are on guest lists at bars and plan nights out with precision so they don't waste money on excess cabs and trains. Nowhere have I ever felt so lost and hopelessly out of control of a travel situation - and we even had a great tour guide leading the way.

So I can understand why people live there and choose to stay forever. It really is an amazing mix of smart, talented people, in a city that's a 3 hour flight from EVERYWHERE, and where you can make a ridiculous salary. I definitely added it to my list of places to send resumes. It's expensive as hell, but the good news is that wherever you travel, you're getting a discount.

Here are some quick stats from the trip to London:
Citizens of London: 8 million+
Places to see: Thousands
Price of Zone 1 Daily Underground Pass: 4.70 pounds (US $8.50)
Favorite Underground Stop Names: Chalk Farm, Mornington Crescent, Elephant and Castle, Tooting Bec, Mudchute
Underground Miles Travelled: 2.6 million
Cost of Average Taxi ride: 10 pounds
Cost to get into a good club: 20 pounds
Cost to get into a bad club: 5 pounds
Amount of money we spent: Who knows?

I'll try to put more effort into the pictures, because words don't really adequately describe either city.

I'm in town this weekend for the first time in a month, so I'll try to find some funny Mancunian trouble to report on.

A Very Sad Day

2005-11-15T04:23:00.000-08:00

It seems unbelievable to even type this, but today (Monday, 11/14) we learned that our exchange classmate Amit Gupta passed away in his bed in Manchester.

Amit was enrolled at Rotterdam Business School fulltime and a native of India. Of course, you can't really know someone that well in 2 months, but Amit seemed to be a very nice guy, 34 years old, looking forward to completing a Western MBA and return back to his wife and children.

We don't know anything further about what happenned because MBS has not released any information. Hopefully they'll tell us something soon.

But after all the joking about getting kidnapped in Latvia and other nonsense, it's a little frightening to think a guy in your class in Manchester, Seattle or just a 34 year old colleague at work could pass away in his bed. Will kind of shake you up a little.

To the side are some pictures of Amit from our trip to the camp in Dovenest at the beginning of the quarter.

The Search for the O'Neil's

2005-11-14T02:34:00.000-08:00

Apologies for the slow posts. I've broken the cardinal rule in blogging - deliver fresh content. Early market research shows I've lost as much as 67% of my viewership (dropping 2 of my faithful 3 readers...)

Now, we jump in the "way back" machine and head back in Ireland, where Pauline, Lisa, Dan and Andy have just left on a 8:30 train out of Galway. To where, you ask? Well, where everyone goes when they visit Ireland - the town of Roscommon.

Now if you know where Roscommon is, well you just know too much about Ireland. Ireland is about 5 hours across by train and Roscommon county is smack in the middle. We were trekking into this forgotten territory to find the ancient ancestors of Dan O'Neill, who's great grandfather moved to the U.S. in the 1880's and in a fit of wild creativity, changed the family name from O'Neil to O'Neill. I'm always up for a good geneological scavenger hunt, so this little adventure was something I had been looking forward to.

The actual city of Roscommon can't have more residents than about, I don't know, maybe 6, so when I say we headed all over town tracking down leads it wasn't exactly an exhaustive exercise. We started at a giant Catholic church which dates back to the 1800's and has all the baptismal records going back through the history of Roscommon. And chances are mighty high that if your name was O'Neil and you lived in Central Ireland, a Catholic Church was a pretty focalpoint of your childhood.

Unfortunately, the priest was out doing mass or something else non-conducive to geneology tracking, so we wandered into the bustling city center. Along the way we passed Mr. Doyal O'Donelll (nope - not making that up), who used to be the head of the town council. We asked the lovely Mr. O'Donnell if he knew any O'Neil's, and he gave us a wonderful rundown of every citizen of Roscommon in the last 40 years, but amazingly, said he knew no O'Neils. He knew of McNeills - they have a store down the street - but then he followed up with, "I knew an O'Neill, but she married a (something else) and they all died off. But you should talk to John Kerrigan of Henry Street. He's the town historian."

We weren't quite ready to invade a man's house, so we headed to the local pub to ask some locals. The bartender was insanely helpful, saying, 'I know some MacNeil's - they have a store down the street. But you should ask John Kerrigan of Henry Street. He knows everyone."

Next we hit the town library to see if there were any old newspaper archives of the O'Neils. But sadly, there were none. (I was tempted to look up the McNeills to find out when they opened the store everyone raves about, but I forgot to.) The librarian was very helpful, and started her sentence, "You know who you should talk to..." and I interrupted, "John Kerrigan of Henry Street?" and she answered, "Um, no. I'd go to the church down the street and ask the priest." Then she looked at me with disdain and disgust for interrupting her and I realized I would never be welcome as a full-time resident of Roscommon.

Dan headed back to the church, so I headed to Henry Street just out of curiosity. I was half-expecting to see an old guy in a rocking chair telling stories of Roscommon to a bunch of 8 year olds while drinking Irish Whisky on the rocks (the guy, not the kids - just pardon the dangling modifier). But alas, I walked up and down Henry Street a few times without ever catching the elusive Mr. Kerrigan, and there were far too many doors to knock on each one. Plus, I didn't really have a better line of introduction than, "Um, I'm a crazy American with no Irish Heritage, but I just had to meet this Mr. Kerrigan fellow." Which would have been fine in itself but doesn't really lead to much follow up conversation of import. So I headed back to meet Dan.

So, long story short - The priest was done with his real job and able to track down the birth records of quite a few O'Neils, and Dan can now hand off the data to his little brother, who will follow up the quest in the spring. Hopefully, then they will meet a real live O'Neil that has some blood relation to their great grandfather who left long ago. And that, my friends, was our daytrip to Roscommon, and off to Dublin we went.

My Meeting with Manchester City F.C.

2005-11-09T04:04:00.000-08:00

It suddenly dawns on me that I forgot to talk about one of the more interesting appointments I was able to set up here in the UK.

One afternoon in a fit of pure folly, I tracked down the email address of a Marketing Exec of the Manchester City Football Club. To my extreme surprise and joy, Mr. H actually responded, saying he would love to meet with a North American MBA Student, and if I would be so kind as to provide a critical analysis of his Web site.

So last week, this American from Seattle headed over to SportCity Stadium to tell an Englishman how he could better market Football to Mancunians.

Some quick context: Manchester City is kind of like the Chicago White Sox (if you exclude the World Series this year). They are "Manchester's team" but play 2nd fiddle to the uber-popular Manchester United, much the same way the White Sox fall behind the Cubs. They have a shiny new stadium built in 2002 that increased capacity from 35,000 to 48,000.

When the stadium held 35,000 people, they sold out every match. Now attendance has risen to 42,000 per game, but that still leaves about 6,000 empty seats when they aren't playing Man Utd, Chelsea, Liverpool or Arsenal. So a couple of things struck me as odd - and it's probably just the difference between English and American marketing tactics.

First, I relayed a personal anecdote about having trouble finding the time of a game one night when I was trying to watch it on TV, so I asked where they advertise. I was surprised to hear a response of, "Well, we don't need to advertise, since everyone knows when the games are." Maybe that's fair. I know the Seahawks play on Sundays and someone will tell me what time, so maybe that's applicable. Except, oh yeah, Man City plays EPL games between Thursday and Monday, depending on when Sky Sports wants to televise the games. And the Carling Cup matches are on Tuesday or Wednesday every 3 weeks or so. So you pretty much need to hook a palm pilot up to the web site to keep track of when the games are. But it shows the attitude of marketing football in England, "Everyone knows when the games are, so why do we need to bother?"

One very cool system they have instituted is the "City Card." This is not (as I assumed) a credit card. If you are a Man City supporter, you buy this card for a pound or so. You give them all of your personal data (email, Mobile SMS, etc...) and attach a credit card to the account, so when you buy tickets, they just tell the database where your seats are. So you don't actually ever receive printed tickets anymore. You simply run your card through the scanner at the gate. They set this system up 3 years ago and are able to track all the demographics and buying behaviors of their fans over 20+ home games a year.

Now, I want you to read that last sentence again and do a personality test.

If you felt a tingle down your spine, and your brain suddenly converted into an abacus calculating, "42,000 x 20 = 840,000 fans per year x 3 years = 2.5 million customer records..." then you my friend are a marketer.

2.5 million customer records! Some of you are now falling over yourselves trying to find a whiteboard to release the geyser of ideas of what you would do if you had a database that not only tracks when your customers like to go to games, but where they like to sit, how much they'll spend and how to contact them via SMS if there are empty seats for a game that fits these parameters. I can feel the energy from here as your hands quiver with excitement of ideas of how to segment the data. And now I'm going to tell you what Man City does with this data.

Nothing.

They're "looking into it and doing a little number crunching at this time."

I know, it's as if someone just shot your dog, isn't it? It's like putting the Mona Lisa at the end of a 100 ft hallway without any lights. You know it's there, but you just can't appreciate it.

After I regained my composure and picked up all the furnitutre I had thrown at Mr. H, we talked about some other ticket pricing schemes. The EPL is not unlike American Sports, in that they've priced themselves right out of the family market. For obvious reasons, they've controlled the hooligan aspect of the game, while simultaneously raising ticket prices into the executive class to match the free spending clubs of Chelsea, Arsenal et all. So, now you have a stadium full of corporate types, some lifelong fans who can't afford to keep their tickets and growing unrest from those who say the games don't have the same excitement. In a nutshell, it's now the NBA.

And so incredulously I listened to Mr. H lament about not really having a way to segment his fan base and send them unique, nearly personalized offers that would help solve this problem. (Thankfully, the team was at home, so the club doctor was able to surgically repair my tongue when I had bitten all the way through it.)

Final thought that will amuse you. I assumed that there was no instant replay screen because of an EPL regulation. But in fact, when they spent their $100 million on the new stadium, they couldn't get a sponsor for a video screen and decided the additional $1 million was too much. So in a sport with 1-2 goals a game total, you have no replays in the stadium, but 42 seperate camera angles if you watch it in a bar.

Anyway, interesting differences between UK and American Marketing. It will be interesting to see what the Glazer family does over at Man United.

Galway, I hardly knew ye

2005-11-07T14:46:00.000-08:00

A continuing theme through these posts (other than the fact that they are entirely too long and in horrific need of both a spell check and an editor) is that there just simply isn't enough time to see everything. And you really need the perfect combination of travellers to get everything you can out of a town.

And so it is that after two days in Galway, I left feeling like I needed more time in Western Ireland. This weekend's collection of Manchester Biz School exports consisted of myself, Pauline the sensitive French girl, Lisa the sarcastic Canadian and Dan the world's nicest American. And while we are all quite lovely people, we never seemed to get all the wheels on the ground at the same time. So, my report is somewhat incomplete. But that also means I'm coming back with a big group, so save your money now.

Some quick facts on Galway - it's the second fastest growing city in Europe (can you name the first - answer will be listed below) with a population increase from 25,000 to 80,000 in 15 years. Some people say this is because the Irish transportation infrastructure is so bad that people come to visit and can't get back, but others attribute it to a growing university population.

Galway's other claim is that it's basically the gateway to all of the small cities in Western Ireland. And there really are a lot of neat things to see. Unfortunately, the aforementioned transportation system makes it pretty difficult to move around.

Everything you need to see in Galway proper is in about a 6-10 block town square, but that does have a lot to see, including lots of traditional Irish pubs and a surprising amount of International joints. One odd rule seems to be that pubs stop serving food at 9:00, so if you have a late lunch and thus want a late dinner, you are stuck in the 18-20 Euro zone of fancy restaurants.

For me, the highlight of Galway's is a bar on the other side of the river called Monroe's. If you have ever been in an American version of an Irish bar, well this is the place they ripped the design off of. It comes complete with 3 old Irish guys on stage playing a string-like thing, a drum-like thing and a horn-like thing and belting out traditional music and an occasional Bob Dylan song (don't ask me - I just report what I see). I had decided to leave my travel buddies behind towards the end of our last night here, in order to make a mad dash through the places we hadn't been, but I ended up getting stuck on a bar stool in this place because it was so cool. It was so perfectly Galwayian (yes I just made that word up) that the only thing NOT Irish about it were the lost American guy and 2 Swiss girls. I'll add that the second coolest place to relax here is called "The Crane." Here, 8-10 musicians take over a section of the bar and just jam together on Irish horns, guitars, etc... As a crowd, our jobis just to sit and listen, so it has a nice laid back feel.

(Answer to above question - Warsaw.)

Even if you decide not to spend a single minute in a Galway pub, you are just a tour bus away from just about the loveliest coastline and small Irish villages you can imagine. We only made it as far as the Cliffs of Moher, and I fear there's no way the pictures of the tour cannot do the countryside justice.

So after Thursday and Friday nights in Galway, we were off to find Dan's long lost ancestors in a little Irish village called Roscommon, along with 2 nights in Dublin. Stories to come...

Latvia Day 2 - Your Mala? No, My Mala.

2005-11-02T11:08:00.000-08:00

Holy shite time in class flies by. Here I am back in Manchester, finally nestled all snug in my bed, when the weekend's upon me and to Ireland I head. So let's finish off the Latvian stories.

When we left our heroes, they were having lunch and sightseeing on their first day in Riga. I think the pictures tell the sightseeing stories. And, I don't think anyone is really that interested in hearing stories about Halloween Friday night in an Eastern European town, submarine nightclubs, bars named after the Latvian word for "breasts", a club scene that doesn't *start* until 1am and ends at 6, what apparently turns out to be a world renown prostitution market and dance clubs packed from A to Z filled with the most unblelievable looking women you have ever seen. As a mature audience, I think you agree that those stories get old, so let's just zip ahead to the next day.

So at about 1:00pm we rubbed the sleep and sin from our eyes and embarked on a simple project of finding a restaurant where we could "have lunch by the sea."

Our comical tour guide Eugene said he knew of such a place and so we followed him - not to the sea actually - but to a train station. Apparently there was another town by the sea in which there may be more restaurants, because God knows how hard it is to contain oneself to a single lunch. So, off we went on our little adventure to Jurmala (your-mala).

I jest, but I was actually pleased we were going on this little journey. I mean, with Gene at the helm we were most certainly assured of getting lost. Plus, if there’s anything more exciting that getting off a plane in a foreign land, I think getting on a train in a foreign land may be it. Jurmala is kind of the Latvian equivalent of the Jersey Shore, about 30 minutes by train and nestled nicely into the Baltic Sea. We wandered down a long boardwalk type path that in the summer is probably teeming with Latvian tourists on holiday. Bars, Cafes, Restaurants, Shops – all the things you’d see in a classic American Beach Town like Cape Cod. Of course, Cape Codians know that autumn and winter are no time to be walking down a boardwalk, and Latvians are no dumber, so many of these places were closed. It was now 4:00pm and Vittorio's 24 hour long dream of “lunch by the sea,” made more difficult by the 1:00pm wake up and the fact nothing seemed to be open, looked bleaker and bleaker. The beach was gorgeous, though bloody cold, and we played around down there a while. If there’s anything good about a cold beach, it’s that frozen sand is much easier to walk on.

We had just about lost all hope for "lunch by the sea" when a little Lebanese place appeared out of nowhere. It was warm, inviting and friendly. There were plenty of couches facing the picture windows and we chose one right out front where we could concentrate on nature and less on the people cuddling and making out on other sofa. And so we indulged ourselves with overpriced Italian wine, expensive piroshkys and a giant apple hookah. We sat inside this beachside cafe watching the sun set over the Baltic sea and felling generally content about everything life had to offer. And when the sun had departed and the wine and beer had been drunk, we smiled fondly at our little personal play pen in Jurmala, basked in a happy glow. Such is life that if 1 year ago you had asked me to name 100,000 places that I would spend Oct 29, 2005 watching a sunset, Al Thome Restaurant and Bar in Jurmala, Latvia probably would have been behind JJ's Pig shop in Little Rock, Arkansas. But that's the real beauty isn't it? Who knows what's behind each door so just keep your eyes open and play along.

Yeccccchhhhhh, enough melancholy and sap already.

Let's just say at some point time marches on and we said goodbye to Al Thome and made our way back out into the dark and cold where we coaught a train back to Riga. And like I said, no one is interested in more stories of hot blondes, booze and dance clubs, so we can leave it at that.

And, since these entries strecthed pretty long, and Sunday was really no more than a day of more exploring, picture taking and general merriement, we will leave Riga behind simply with recommendations to spend a summer holiday visiting the country, along with Estonia and Lithuania.

Now, off to Galway and Dublin. Back Monday. Have a good weekend.

Blame it on Riga

2005-10-31T07:24:00.000-08:00

I think its safe to say that I have never prepared for a trip with less of an idea what to expect. Like many Americans, my knowledge of Eastern Europe and Asian geography comes from a Risk board. I knew that Lativa was somewhere around Ukraine and thus a total pain in the tookas to try to defend.

And if you asked most of my friends to put Russia, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia on a map, we’d get at least 25% of them right. But I did a little research before leaving and was quite pleased to see that Latvia was on the coast of the Baltic Sea, near Finland and Sweden. Now to me the words Baltic Sea, Scandanavia, Russia, and late October conjure up images of bone biting cold and army troops on skis, so I checked out the weather channel before I left and discovered it would indeed be cold – somewhere between 27 and 40F.

An aside – I think it really is something about this civilization that not only can I fly to Riga today, but I can check the weather report from my desk at home. Just a random note there.

The Liverpool to Riga Express makes two trips back and forth a day, starting at 7:00am. Liverpool is roughly the distance between Seattle and Everett, so we needed to awake at 4:00am for the 5:00am cab to the airport. Security to travel to this former Soviet Bloc country was easier than flying from Seattle – San Francisco, so we had a few minutes to sit in the gate area and watch with astonishment the group of 20 or so English guys, ages 18-48, laughing and enjoying their pints of beer at the airport bar. Yes, you read that right. 6:30 am and these guys are swilling pints. It made my stomach hurt just to watch.

Everything else went off without a hitch and we were Riga Bound.

Now as I mentioned before, I expected it to be chilly. I bought gloves and packed appropriately. I was mentally and physically prepared. But when I stepped out the plane to descend the stairs to the tarmac below, the first thought my brain could manage about this strange land was, “Holy Fargin Christ it’s cold.”

As you can imagine from the fact we deplaned to the Tarmac, the Riga airport isn’t much larger than say, the Pyramid Alehouse. But there is a very distinct thrill when you get into a terminal and see signs in Russian and Latvian (coupled with a small disappointment when they are in English as well.) Then you listen and hear some strange combination of letters that don’t even really exist, forming a language you could not possibly understand. And that’s when the thrill of being in Latvia kicks in.

The fear of being in Latvia kicks in seconds later at Customs where the most stoic and cheeriless figure I have ever encountered stared at me in a drab green uniform and asked for my passport. Of course, he could have been asking for a stick of chewing gum for all I know, but I went with the passport thing. That’s when you get that little shiver – did I take the steak knife out of my bag. Is ibuprofen considered an illegal narcotic? But of course, I went unchecked and I was able to successfully smuggle in 42 pairs of Levi’s jeans.

Vittorio and I shared a cab, while Eugene (the one guy who speaks Russian) took a cab with Lillian and Irene, because while we knew the Chinese girls would be kidnapped eventually, we thought they deserved to at least see a little of the city first.

Before we got into the cab Eugene had gone through a fairly extensive negotiation with the cab driver, and a price of 5 Lats was agreed upon. (Roughly 1 Lat = 1 Pound). This negotiation had gone on quite some time, before Gene left us and the cab started moving toward Riga. So Vittorio and I were quite surprised when the cab driver looked back and asked, “Where go?”

This was the first in a continuing series of humorous moments provided by our Russian speaking tour guide. I cannot even fathom how he was able to go through the whole negotiation without once telling the cab driver the name of the hotel, and then forget to think that might be a piece of information Vittorio or I would find useful. Boggles the imagination, but the more important issue was that we were now driving aimlessly as far as 5 Lats was going to get us, without a way to contact our friends.

I remembered the term “Old Town” which at least gave us a direction and worst case scenario. I attempted meekly, “Hotel Sauvin on Marketa Street,” which received a response of a grimace, shake of the head and a grunt. The good news was that the International Russian Roaming activated on my cell phone, so for what I am sure must have cost $30-$50 I was able to text Lillian and Eugene. The bad news is that neither Lillian or Gene’s worked at all so I might as well have been texting you guys. Vittorio and I could text all day which would have been slightly more helpful if we weren’t sitting in the back seat of the same cab.

Eventually the cab came to a stop in a pretty safe looking, tourist filled area and the cabbie made indications that it was time for us to get out. I attempted a few more street names ‘ “Marleta” Maektla’ “Markela” and at Markela I received a “OH Markela. Dsgdj sgdhdjkds asfdhjkdkl One two xzxsdsf (hand signal right) hdhjdkfhy xvzcxfsg cdvdsbgd. (Smile)"

Long story short, Markela St was two blocks down and the hotel was found and our friends were confused about why we were late, and we all decided it was lunchtime in Riga and time to find a little cafe.

We wandered out of Old Town to find a more traditional place and the patrons of the smoke filled café we found seemed quite amused at this little collection Chinese, Italians and Americans who looked helplessly at the menu at the wall. But we all enjoyed large plates of things like fried cheese (which we thought was going to be a cheese steak, pork chops with sauce and mushrooms, sodas and coffee, all for about 12 or 13 Lats total, which was quite pleasing. If prices stayed this slow all weekend, I’d have to invent new ways of using this play money for fear of getting stuck with it at the airport. (Alas, prices did not stay so low and money was spent with the kind of recklessness of a woman at a shoe sale.) Plus, the restaurant was nice enough to provide all the cigarette smoke we wanted free of charge.

I don't think Latvians see smoking as a hobby, it's more like breathing. You see Latvians walking down the street taking a breath of fresh air and they grimace like, "There's no tobacco in this air. I must find a pack of smokes." And at .70 Lats a pack, no wonder. The government not only fails to tax these things, it appears to subsidize the whole industry. I don't understand, but this may have been my favorite part of the trip, because these things sell in England for 5.50 a pack. I brought back 2 cartons to sell here, so I can probably net about 55-60 pounds on this thing.

I think now it’s best to let some pictures do some talking, because between the 5 of us we must have snapped 400 photos. I’ll add more as I get them, and spend some time on the headers and such, but this will have to come in good time. Consider this the Latvia appetizer.

Like I said, I didn’t know what to expect – anything from large communist style apartment buildings to 10th century temples would have seemed appropriate. But safe to say, Riga is absolutely charming and attractive in that old European way, and adds a considerable amount of edge to the mix. Later I decided it would be a fineplace if I ever needed to hide. I think I said the same about Scotland, but Riga has that “Russian mafia’ thing about it where the streets are clean, people are friendly and you never know if the guy you are talking to is moving a shipment of AK47’s to Albania.

I’ll get to more posts about Latvian women, Urmalla, food, music and other fun stuff. But homework calls now.

Scotland - Glengoyne, An Then, and Mr. Executive Class

2005-10-26T13:06:00.000-07:00

Ok – last Scotland post. Finally.

So my Venezuelan buddy Raymond wanted to see a distillery, and planned the whole trip out. I just went along for the ride. After I get to Glasgow, I do the math and ask Raymond, “Are we really spending 4 hours on busses and 2 hours in Glasgow for a 90 minute distillery tour?” And he answers, “Yus, Ahndy. Eet was reallee de only way we could make sure we saw a deestillllllleree.” And I said, “Raymond, you’re my kind of traveler.”

Anyway, if you've been to a winery, you know the drill. To their credit, they start you off with a nice generous helping of 10 year old Whiskey as you walk in the room, and if you turn your head a 2nd one magically appears just as fast, so I give them style points for that. And really, two glasses at scotch is two more than you need before noon. Glengoyne’s claim to fame is that their 17 year old Single Malt is the most recent winner of the World Series of Scotch. So, in a fit of extravagance, I bought a bottle, egged on by the fact that if I managed not to lose all the paperwork between now and then, I can get a check back for the 17% VAT when I return back home. That probably will only make the bottle 40% more than I would have paid in the states. But hey, I had to bring home a souvenir.

This also means that anyone who comes over for dinner the first time I reacquaint myself with my house and have people over will likely enjoy a mighty fine glass of Whiskey. Look at me bribing people to hang out with me when I get back…

I only saw a piece of Glasgow (which doesn't have the same flair as Edinburgh) but have one funny story. I said earlier that Scotish accents are even harder to understand than English. We stopped in a Burger King (I know, I know) at 10:45am because we had a few minutes before the bus left for the distillery. I asked the girl behind the counte, "Are you serving breakfast or lunch now?" Her response was, "An Then.” I stared for a second, turned my head and looked at Raymond, who simply shrugged his shoulders with a look of, “Don’t look at me, it’s your F@#$%^& language.” So I turned back and tried again. “Are you serving Breakfast or Lunch?” And she said again, "An Then.”

It became quite clear that we could do this dance all morning, and tempted as I was, we did have a bus to catch so I started trying to decode. Did she want to say, “Eleven?” “Eating?” “And then you can order?” After about 15 seconds of an American, a Venezuelan and a Scot staring hopelessly at each other in a Glasgow Burger King, I ventured, “Did you say I could have ‘Anything?’” And she said, “Yeah, An Then.”

Last thing - I have picked up a nickname. Whenever I travel with my group and make hotel of dinner suggestion, I now get back, “Oh, I see Mr. Executive Class has found a nice expensive place for us.” Which frankly, I really find hilarious. I’ve been called a lot of things, but I don’t think “free-spending” had ever been one of them…

Ok, Scotland is in the books. I could talk about being a 32 year old guy living in a 20 room castle/hostel for 2 days, but frankly I’m still trying to erase the memory, so we’ll just leave it at that.

Scotland - Loch Ness

2005-10-26T13:03:00.000-07:00

A quick note. You CANNOT see all of Scotland in 3 days. For comparison, here’s what we tried to do in Pacific Northwest terms.

- Take a train from North Vancouver BC to Seattle on Friday.
- See ALL of downtown Seattle on Friday by foot.
- Take a bus at 8am to Lake Chelan Saturday morning and come back that evening.
- Take a 9am bus to Tacoma Sunday morning to transfer to another bus and see a distillery in Enumclaw. Return in time to take a 6pm train back to North Vancouver.

So the great Loch Ness adventure was 5 hours up through the Highlands, 2 hours around the Loch and 5 hours back through the other side of the Highlands. Yeah – too much bus for one day.

Quick story that we learned – Way back in time there were the McDonaldand Campbell clans. As you can tell if you check out the pics, the Highlands are quite rugged, so there’s been this thousand year old tradition called Highland Hospitality. It basically says that if anyone traveling needs help or a place to stay, all they have to do is knock on a door and the owners are obligated to take care of them with a drink, food, place to stay, whatever.

So the King of England (I think) hires all these guys from the Campbell family to go collect taxes from the Scots, but not tell anyone they were Campbells. The Campbells and McDOnalds never got along anyway, but the McDonalds extended their “Highlands Hospitality” and let them stay there for weeks. Then in the middle of one night, a signal was given and the Campbells hired by the King started murdering all of the McDonalds. Bastards.

Then, a few years ago, an American guy named Campbell was vacationing in Scotland and stops at a hotel owned by a McDonald. The American guy didn’t know anything about the past history, but the McDonald wouldn’t let him stay in the hotel when he saw what his name was. So apparently the clans still resent each other.

Back to Loch Ness…

There’s no question this is a tourist trap, but the guy who owns the boat and takes you on tours of the lake (for 7 pounds – another bloody rip off) REALLY believes in this thing. He swears to have seen it about 8 times. His boat is all decked out with sonar and radar stuff. Though, it’s not like he has a giant net or spear gun on the boat, so I’m not sure what he plans on doing if it does saddle up next to him one day. I guess just wave and take some pictures.

Can’t really tell too many more stories about Loch Ness, but the Highlands are beautiful so if you go up there, make sure to spend a quiet night in Inverness or up on the islands off the Northern Coast. Or another thing to do is cruise from Loch Ness to Aberdeen because there are about 123 distilleries it’s basically the Napa Valley of Whiskey – which would make for a fun day.

Warning - Humorless Post Ahead. Strictly for Those Interested in the Academic Pursuits

2005-10-25T19:16:00.000-07:00

I thought a more extensive post about my actual learning would help counteract the assertions I’ve been getting from people that I’m on a 12 week vacation. Now if you wanted to argue Business School overall was a 18 month vacation from reality, I’d be hard pressed to put up much of a fight. And there’s no question that the 2^nd year of business school is far easier than the first. But that’s also because the sheer volume of work in the first year is crushing. 2^nd year you have more chance to work on things you actually care about, which makes the work more pleasurable and more in tune with your everyday life.

So, I’m been quite pleased with how my assignments and projects have laid out. So this report just for the people interested in my academic progress along with geographic tracking.

Of most interest is the import/export project I’m working on for the MBS Incubator and Start-Up Business Consulting Class. I mentioned the company, Martin Conquest in an earlier post so I won’t go on and on about it. But here’s a project that has potential to turn into a real consulting gig down the road.

In a similar ilk, my Entrepreneurship paper is all about comparing and contrasting funding options for SME’s in Asia, Europe and the

U.S.

This research is helpful for figuring out where one might find early or later stage capital.

Over in Strategic Retail, we’re building a Market Segmentation for the

’s largest computer retailer, PC World. For obvious confidentiality reasons I can’t go into too much detail here, but it actually afforded me the chance to feel like a grownup again today. We booked a meeting with PC World’s research firm, which is based outside Oxford. So I threw on my little shirt and slacks, took the train down 3 hours to Oxford, had about 3 hours of meetings with my group, PC World and the Research Firm, and am now back on the train heading to Manchester. For seeing different parts of the country, train rides aren’t bad. So I didn’t mind the long commute. Plus it gave me a place to concentrate on things I had to do – like study for my exam, finish up the mBalmer and write meaningless blog entries.

I know I have another class….Oh yeah. Marketing in a High Tech Environment. Very interesting class taught by an old IBM exec. For that class I need to finish up the business plan I needed to write for our little idea, as well as the UW Biz Plan Comp. So it’s a good place for models and charts that help the plan come along. Also, we are working on a group project regarding Nicholas Negroponte’s $100 laptop that he’s trying to get built for kids in the 3^rd world. It's a really interesting story, one of those market changing events if it works. If you want to read up on it, we’re putting our paper together from a blog at http://mmtle.blogspot.com so we can see what each person is working on. You won’t see a whole paper there but you’ll see some info and links we’ve collected and starting to pull together in paper form.

Plus, I don’t think I can understate the eye-opening experience of dealing 1:1 with people from 10-15 different countries. There was a debate on the UW MBA Mailing List the other day about how some first years felt the International Students “slowed them down” when doing group work. I had to laugh because it’s possible I had similar views last year, but this quarter every group I’m in has at least 3 different nationalities, and sometimes it’s 4 or 5. You’d think that would slow us down even more, but the reality is that back at UW, the International students aren’t the problem. It’s the

U.S.

students trying to force them into their structure and not asking how they’re used to doing projects. Anyway, I’m off on a soapbox and need to come back…

So that’s the Academic side to this little savings-account clearing adventure. This would turn into a great story and nice investment if the import/export thing turns interesting.

Ok – long boring blog all taken care of.

A Brief Interlude

2005-10-25T13:32:00.000-07:00

Ok, I have to put you through a little time warp here and bring you back to the present.

Augustin and Guillaume have two friends in town from Paris for the week. So now we've got 4 Frenchies and an American in this flat (but I'm still pretty sure I could take them all in a fight).

Anyway, last night I'm writing papers all night while these guys are drinking wine and catching up on old times. Then they notice the poker chips I've not so subtly left up on the kitchen counter for a few weeks. So, all of a sudden they want to play poker.

These are guys who have never played Texas Hold 'em before and I'm trying to teach them. I need you to try to imagine midnight in an apartment. 4 French guys and me. The 2 visiting guys don't speak English as well as Gus and Guillaume. So I start explaining things like "Burn the top card and then deal the flop" and you have 8 set of drunk bloodshot eyes translating the sentence into French and just not coming up with anything that makes the least bit of sense int heir head. So we go through everything at a tedious but hilarious pace. We have to discuss why we just flip one card at "Le Rue Quarte" but three card during "Le Floppe."

Oh, then I bring up knocking and you would have thought I was trying to describe how to castle a king. Great humor. I hope they figured it out and keep playing. That could be a nice source of income for me...

Scotland - Nightlife

2005-10-25T13:12:00.000-07:00

Now I don't want to say the Scots are drunks, but there are A LOT of place to go out in Edinburgh. And they all look cool.

First off, this was going to be an easy night because we had an 8:00am bus to go catch teh Loch Ness MOnster in the morning. And I'm not good with hostels or long bus rides, so a hangover was not going to help.

I should mention we had 12 exchange students on the trip, a merry mix of Chinese, French, Venezuelan and Americans that certainly stood out in any crowd of Scots. But my aversion to spending any waking minute in the hostel, by default I became the leader of a two person recon mission to find a place to start the night.

I can't remember if I mentioned the complete inability of this group to make any decision. This is an absolutely great group of people, but their one flaw is that you honestly have no chance to get them moving unless you tell them exactly where you will be. Then they feel an obligation to find you. They may complain about it when they get there, but they'll stay there a while until they can muster the energy to think about someplace else to go.

I'm going to be brief because it doesn't translate well, but Edinburgh has so many of the coolest little bars with the perfect amount of people and unthreatening crowds. There's always 1 person in line ahead of you for a beer, and enough people to feel full without being crowded. That may have something to do with the 2,000 pubs.

But we found everything on Grassmarket entertaining and visited a ridiculous monster of a place called Espionage. This is a bar on a hill where you walk in at ground level and see an unassuming lounge that holds about 50 people. You snoop around a little and go down a staircase to a lower floor lounge and a few more people. Walk through there and get to another staircase which takes you down to a bigger bar with a huge dance floor. But follow the staircase down and you get to floor 4, with a huge dance floor playing R+B hits. If you lose your mates here, you're likely never to see them again.

Quick story: Raymond (the Venezuelan guy) and and I took a quick detour to an Irish place down the street because he had never heard Irish music and I thought that was a crime. When we came back, I saw Guillaume smoking a cigarette at our table with some weird drunk guy who must've wandered over. Guillaume absolutely doesn't smoke, so that seemed odd. It seemed odder when I looked back over and saw the drunk guy face forward down on the table, passed out. I went over to the bouncer and said, "Yeah, I think there's some guy we don't know passed out at our table." The bouncer chuckled (you don't see that often in Scotland) and the problem was eliminated.

Anyway, being that we really couldn't drink that much and I REALLY didn't want to go back to the hostel, Raymond, lillian, Guillaume and I set out on a long, long, long walk around the city that took us from Old Town to the West End, back down through New Town and back up to the castle hostel. We walked by 100 bars on the trip, so I feel like I can speak with some authority on this subject.

Moral of the story - if you have some time and some good mates, Edinburgh would be a tremendous place for a summer weekend of golf and going out.

Scotland - Edinburgh

2005-10-25T12:44:00.000-07:00

Ok, well I'm going to try to fly through these things so lets start chronologically.

Edinburgh (pronounced Edinboro for reasons I can only imagine) is the capital (I think) and the crown jewel of the country. I can say this with some certainty because the crown jewels of Scotland are actually in the BIG FREAKING castle up on the hill.

The city is split into a few districts, and the train station drops you right in the middle of the main two sections - an old one with tons of ancient buildings and the new one with all the modern business district. In a rare example of British efficiency, these are actually called "Old Town" and "New Town" which made me like Edinburgh immediately.

A trip up to the castle is a tourist necessity, but this was actually pretty cool. Aside from the ludicrous entrance fee of 9 pounds and the afroementioned 40 degree wind and rain, it's a neat tour. If youa re into irony, then easily the funniest part of the tour comes where you see the impressive cannons pointing out at the ground hundreds of feet below, and you think, "Damn, I'd hate to try to attack this thing - those cannons would destroy me." Then the tour guide says that "Those cannons weren't actually here. In fact, they didn't fire cannons from the castle." WTF? That's like an old building in Philadelphia having a statue of Franklin, Washington, Jefferson and Adams playing poker with the inscription, "Here's what it would've looked like if any of these guys played cards or had ever stepped into this place."

But the castle is huge (see pictures at shutterfly) and there's a touching memorial where every Scottish soldier killed in any modern battle is memorialized (I got a dirty look from the guide when he added, "Even the recent Iraq conflict.") Plus there's an interesting prison where they took all the American sailors who were captured in the Revolutionary War. Boy that must've sucked. Your boat sinks, they throw you on a British ship and send you several thousand miles and months away to a cold and damp jail on the top of a mountain in Scotland. You gotta figure the war was over for at least 6 months before these guys even heard it was over and then another 12 months to get them back.

For the most part, from a tourist perspective Old Town consists of the Royal Mile which extends from the castle down to the current home of the Scottish Royal Family when they are in town (probably the 2 or 3 days of nice weather in July).

One fun stat and then we'll move onto a new subject. At one time in Scotland there were 70,000 people and 2,000 pubs. Yes, that's 1 pub for every 35 people. Which is probably a good segue.

Soctland - Intro

2005-10-24T02:39:00.000-07:00

I'm going to cut the Scotland report into a few different posts for a few reasons. One, Scotland is going to be a pretty long post and I want to be sensitive to those with 4-5 paragraph attention spans. More importantly, I said I'd have something posted Monday morning and want to hold to that. Basically, I would like to condition everyone so that if I say, "I'll put up my first Latvia post Monday at 9am PST," and Monday at 9:01am there's no post from Latvia, I hope your 9:02am thought will be, "Hmm, if I had to, I wonder how I would go about getting Marines dispatched to Riga?"

So very briefly....There's a reason you do not hear travel agents promoting Autumn or Winter trips to Scotland. It's cold, rainy, windy and generally the sort of weather that forces you to head into a warm living room, light a fire and watch the entire season of Arrested Development.

That being said, I need to give the Scots some credit for two things. First, somewhere along the train tracks between Manchester and Edinburgh, common sense comes back into existence. If you missed the point I made a few weeks back about Manchester girls, if you see a picture of 4 or 5 of them together in their "going out clothes" they could be in Hawaii, Greece, Fiji, Northern Alaska, Chicago or Manchester. Tank top, skirt, boots. Doesn't matter how rainy and cold. (In fact I kid you not - I saw a newspaper ad for "Micro skirts" which I assume is the smaller version of it's prudish cousin, the mini-skirt.)

But the Scots see this dreadful weather and say, "It's bloody miserable. I best bring my umbrella and put on a pair of jeans before getting a wee bit snokkered."

Also, for a miserable climate, they are generally a happy bunch. They are stuck in the Arctic end of a country that has spent the better part of human existence conquering and murdering their people. They don't really have their own governement, and I'm sure at least some of their tax dollars go to support a royal family whose ancestors killed theirs. But at the end of the day, they just laugh and say, "Yeah, but we've got Whiskey" and then kind of wander off happily.

Plus, walking up and out from the bowels of the Waverly train station in Edinburgh during the gloom and rain is actually a pretty exciting way to spend an October Morning. It's like the founding fathers said, "Out of all this flat land, let's build the town on the hilliest, most unwalkable part. Surely the English will leave us alone then." (But alas, they did not.) So you come up these stairs to Princes Street, look up about 1,000 feet to the left and see the 1400 year old Edinburgh Castle. And over on the other side is the 1200 year old Edinburgh Cathedral. And just as your standing in the street getting lost looking at the old buildings, a huge red bus honks its horn and forces you off the busy thoroughfare that you now notice is also lined with every modern clothing store on the planet.

So, that's the intro. As I get pieces of homework done throughout the day, I will add some stories of Edinburgh Castle, the Loch Ness Monster Hunt, Edinburgh Nightlife, Hostels, Scottish History and language, and a Glasgow Distillery, along with hundreds of pictures.

If all goes right...

2005-10-20T12:30:00.000-07:00

In the business, we call this a teaser....

So I'll be offline a few days up north, with the Loch Ness Monster, Scottish castles and I hear there are 1 or 2 distilleries. I don't believe the distillery part so I volunteered to check it out. I *should* have plenty of pics and stories since 12 of us are going up there and sharing a hostel like we're 18 year old Young Lifers.

Then after a few days of school work, I'll be off in Latvia for four days the following weekend. Why Latvia, you ask? Well, it nails a couple of the Boyer Rules of Travel.
1) If someone asks you to go someplace you've never even thought of going before, always say yes.
2) If you can go someplace for less than $150, and the rest of your life the same trip will cost $1000, say yes.
3) If you are thinking about going someplace ridiculous, take advantage of the opportunity if someone knows the language (in this case Russian).

The week after that is a lovely 5 day tour of Ireland, starting in Galway and slowly moving east to Dublin.

And if all goes according to plan, London after that.

So again, if all goes right, there should be some interesting stories and pics up here (and I've been quite frightened to learn people actually READ this thing. Yikes!!! The pressure!)

Now, a lot of things could go wrong. And since you know me, some of these are more realistic than others:
1) I could miss the bus in Loch Ness and be stranded in Northern Scotland.
2) I could be confused for a fugitive Chechnyan rebel in Latvia and get kidnapped.
3) My wallet / passport gets lost and I have no money or ID.
4) My Chinese travelling companions get confiscated in Latvia and I have to empty out my savings account to save them from a life of Eastern Europian prositution.
5) Since the Latvians don't actually like the Russians (a nice piece of information to have been told BEFORE booking tickets, and which by the way makes Boyer Travel rule #3 COMPLETELY MOOT), having the Russian guy on board could cause some kind of huge bar brawl, in which I have to gather all of my fighting skill, survey the situation, and run as quickly as I can, fleeing the city like a conflict out of a donut shop to hide in a tree for 3 days.
(Actually, as I think about this, Latvia seems a lot more dangerous than Scotland...)

Anyway, if you don't see a new post up here for a week or so, please get worried and start calling embassies. Since I have an 8 hour head start on you, you should see something up here your Sunday or latest Monday. If not, contact Haggis Tours in Scotland and come save me..........

Also for you UW guys, look for the next issue of the mBalmer soon...

Manchester Radio

2005-10-19T03:27:00.000-07:00

I threw in a couple of links to Manchester radio for you. It's a good listen and gives you a pretty good sense of the Music scene here.

Slow Postings, School and Other Nonsense

2005-10-18T12:41:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been taking a while to get stuff posted, what with all the hectic school work and such....

I should give a little insight into my actual class schedule.
Tuesdays 1-5: Marketing in High Tech Environment
Tuesdays 5-9: Start Up Business Consulting
Thursdays 9-5 for 5 weeks: Entrepreneurship
3 weekends Thurs, Fri, Sat 9-5: Advanced Strategic Retail Management

I think I'm just adding this to make it sound like I'm doing tons of work, but we also do two pretty major projects for UK companies - one is a Market segmentation for PC World (large computer retail chain in the UK) and then there's a US import project for an interesting company called Martin Conquest. Check them out and tell me what you think - http://www.martinconquest.com. They are adapting BMW motorcycles for handicapped bikers, so that people with injuries below the waste can still ride. Interesting idea and they see Arizona and Florida as potential markets.

We don't have many actual exams, so most of the grades are all based on our huge papers. But, in order to be able to travel on weekends, I have to work on these papers done on Monday and Wednesday. So, it's not all fun and games.

Last weekend however, was ALL fun and games, with a trip to a pretty ridiculous dance club called Tiger Tiger. 2 giant dance floors and thousands of people. (Go ahead and start making fun of me now, but the English clubs are fun, and I actually like going out dancing here...) Then the Italian guy, Vittorio, wanted to cook 3:00am Pasta and we had 10 people at the flat eating pizza, spaghetti and drinking wine until 5:30am. What a mess. I'll get the pictures up there later this week.

This weekend should be a blast with an early Friday train to Edinburgh, returning Sunday. We'll get one day up in the highlands and a trip to see the Loch Ness Monster.

Sorry I don't have anything funny to say, but hope to have some good stories from Scotish Distilleries.

Two Sad Things

2005-10-14T05:23:00.000-07:00

Nothing to do with Manchester....

First of all, I was extremely displeased to be walking down the street listening to my iPod on "Shuffle" when I was suddenly bludgeoned in the ear drums by a Sheryl Crow remake of Sweet Child of Mine. What did Axl Rose do (besides the drugs, booze and women) to deserve this? I can imagine David Geffen sitting around pissed at GnR and saying, "How can I get back at Axl? I know - I'll take his most popular song and turn it into a girlyfied piece of crap." Exactly how this crap found my iPod is another thing that needs immediate attention. I need to immediately replace the 3MB of pain with something less offensive, like an alJazeera broadcast or sounds of screeching cats.

Secondly, and of much more import, I was very saddened to learn that James Juhl passed away this week. You may not know Juhl, but you know some of the characters he wrote gags for, including Kermit, Fozzie, Gonzo, and Miss Piggy. I would argue that the old Muppet Show and Muppet Movies - especially The Muppet Christmas Carol - are some of the most clever scripts out there. It's an amazing accomplishment to write a show about a bunch of puppets hosting a variety show, to the point that the viewer enjoys the variety show and forgets he's watching puppets. Farewell Mr. Juhl.

If I Can Make it There, I'll Make it Anywhere

2005-10-14T05:12:00.000-07:00

It’s taken a while to get this posted, but let me say for an afternoon of leisure and delight, I cannot more highly recommend anywhere than York, England.

I don’t even know what to write to make this funny, since York is a delightfully lovely little place about 2 hours by train, where you feel like you could knock on any door and Mrs. Doubtfire would invite you in for tea and crumpets.

Of course the reality is that York is a giant tourist trap, and all of the classic old English buildings are filled with multi-national businesses. But after a month in Manchester you are quite willing to forgive this small detail and just be happy to see a town that you once imagined all of the UK looked like.

In brief, the main showpiece of the town is the Cathedral, and neither words nor pictures can accurately describe how big this freaking thing is. I generally walk into an old classic architeural wonder and go, “Cool. What’s next on the list?” But this thing blew me away. It was built in stages over about 1500 years, but it all looks like it was done at the same time.

There are 3 or 4 different chapels, tombs, tunnels, and things I don’t even know how to describe. You all know how cheap I am, and it was impressive enough for me to spend 25p a piece on postcards, just in case my pictures looked like crap. I even looked for Christmas cards, but the only ones they had didn’t do it justice. I thought it was quite a pity that in the entire gift shop they did not have a single picture of what the place looks like all decorated for Christmas. It must just be splendid.

The rest of the town is all walkable – the whole place can’t be more than 1 or 2 square miles. It’s England, so there’s a pub on every corner, and I found two, “The Hole in the Wall” and “King’s Arms” to rank amongst my favorite watering holes of all time. The King’s Arms, especially made me smile, as it is a little place seemingly carved out of stone on the edge of the river. While I was reading my guidebook (not as easy as you might think because the only one we have is in French) I sat next to a table of about eight 60 year old gents telling old stories and bragging about their kids. It was a Sunday night and the lads were out busting balls and swilling pints like they were 17. It was great.

I have some pics up on the shutterfly site.

Based on the York experience, Oxford is definitely on the list, and I’m desperately trying to round up a party to Wales this weekend because I hear great things about it.

Painting a Broader Picture of Manchester

2005-10-10T04:23:00.000-07:00

Manchester Picture

So, I'm on a train headed back to Manchester after an impulsive day trip to York, England (about 2 hours Northeast). Since I have time to kill and working laptop, I thought it seemed proper to try to paint a more complete picture of Greater Manchester. Now that the initial shock has worn off, the city is beginning to look like any other you would live in, and maybe I can effectively relay some of the pictures by way of words.

I was reminded that this blog could be made funny after stumbling on a copy of Bill Bryson’s excellent “Notes from a Small Island.” It’s a brilliant read and I hope all of you will give it or another Bryson book a good read soon.

But let’s talk about Manchester for a bit. Without meaning disrespect, I should say that Manchester is possibly the filthiest city I have ever been in. Mancunians have a general disdain for garbage cans. However, the cans themselves are in pretty short supply, so you might surmise that the city governors know that the public would just turn them into projectiles and just saves the middle step in the process. But regardless, a Manchester street can offer anything you might normally find in a rubbish bin, plus a little bit more.

In a related note, Manchester men seem to set a certain standard on a proper night of drinking. Basically, if you haven’t thrown up yet, you are still sober. Throwing up is the official beginning of “the buzz” and then the inability to speak English constitutes “drunk.” Mancunian English already requires a certain level of concentration, and a drunk Mancunian might as well be reading Polish backwards. You have to look for the glimmer in their eye and cock-neyed smile to determine if the strange assortment of consonants, vowels and various made up letters form a friendly "how do you do" or an invitation for a brawl.

The added effect of random hordes of drunk Mancunians wandering the streets is their ability to find bathrooms. Well, to be clear they don’t find bathrooms as much as create them, usually in doorways of some of the finer buildings in town. Doorways here seem to be created as either 1 or 2 person loo’s.

So, let’s be clear that the constant rain in Manchester is quite a blessing. If we lived in Tucson the town would smell like the deep recessess of a neglected pig farm. So the rain does a suitable job of washing the waste into the street, But a general rule of thumb is never step in a puddle in Manchester. You have been warned.

But, that’s not to say the city doesn’t have its charm. Like I said before, we’re talking about 80,000 students or something in a town of 500.000, so there’s a pretty heavy college tilt. But you can escape about a mile north and a few miles south to more yuppie areas of town that freakishly resemble Belltown and Fremont respectively.

The primary difference in the bar scene is that it pretty much runs Monday – Saturday, with Sunday being reserved for pubs and football. Every night the short skirt brigade is out in full force. Ironically, as girls are allowed to walk into bars nearly naked, on weekends almost every bar has strict dress codes for men. No tennis shoes of any kind, jeans are discouraged at the good clubs and at one particularly posh lounge we were advised we needed to “dress smarter” if we wanted to enter. I suspect he did not mean we should go buy oxford polos and horn rimmed glasses, so I need to figure out exactly what “smarter” means in terms of wardrobe.

But, I respect that bar. Optimistically, it appears to be a place where guys wait to throw up until after returning home, or possibly not at all. If I owned a bar, I’d probably want to have some pretty tight controls on which Mancunians I was willing to risk my liquor license on. So this week we need to go get some “smarter” clothes.

If you look at the Google map and type in M15 6PB, find Oxford Street and just consider that the vertebrae of the city. Everything falls off of that. The whole city seems to be on a triangle grid system, which makes navigation tricky. For example, near our house Deansgate is about a 5 minute walk from Oxford. But then a little further north, Deansgate intersects with Oxford. Plus, they like to change street names in mid stream, which is generally ok since street signs are either completely hidden or placed on the 45^th floor of the building closest to the corner, so you rarely know where you are anyway.

But I digress. Follow Oxford North, when it turns into St Peters. At Deansgate, St Peters turns into Quay (pronounced key). At Deansgate and St Peters, a left turns sends you to a younger set up yuppie bars and a right turn sends you to the older set of yuppie bars. But if you only follow Oxford as far as Portland and hang a right, you reach the southern edge of the main shopping district. Then you can head left and get the full Arndale Center experience – a combination of outdoor and indoor malls that threatens to tire out even the most ardent American woman.

(Side note – I may not be very smart. But I’m on a train and was facing forward the 1^st half of the 2 hour trip home. I haven’t changed seats, but now I’m facing backwards. Someone explain to me what happened, because I know my stop is the next one.)

But like I said, the town is not without charm. Head outside of the city centre and you see the rows of English houses made famous by BBC documentaries. There are still English pubs on every street corner and and people and their goofy accents still make me smile.

And later, I'll write about my Sunday afternoon jaunt to York, and post some pictures. York couldn't have been lovelier even if the whole city had a giant red bow on top of it. That post is next, so stay tuned.

Watching Baseball in the UK

2005-10-02T14:05:00.000-07:00

I was emailing with a friend bout this issue and others might find this interesting...

Not a single sports bar in Manchester carries American baseball. They look at us like we're crazy. Sky is the big satellite network out here and we were told that some bars have the additional NASN (North American Sky Network). But even those who can show the game WON'T show the games because absolutely no one cares about baseball, and there's a football match on just about all hours of teh day. It's like walking into Sport in Seattle on a Sunday afternoon and asking to watch cricket.

And Sunday was a HUGE day in MLB. I was going nuts not being able to watch any of the games. So we had to set up a laptop and watch the games today over the Internet. 2 Canadians and an American sitting in the school cafateria type area switching between the Yanks/Sox, Indians/Sox, Phils/Nats and Astros/Cubs. Pretty funny experience.

But once the playoffs hit, all the games are going to start at 8:30pm ET, which is 1:30am ET out here. Not sure how we'll deal with that. Maybe we'll try to record them on a giant hard drive somehow.

Man City vs Everton

2005-10-02T06:59:00.000-07:00

So it took 2 weeks, but I finally made it to my first English Premier League Match. (pics will go up in a day or so).

Like I said before, this wasn't necessarily a classic. Everton is near the bottom of the EPL and headed towards relegation. But it is close to Manchester so there's a little rivalry.

A few interesting tidbits made this a kind of unique experience either way. First off, the match started at 11:15am, which is unusual for EPL and takes away some of the adrenalin you'd see from a fan base that hits the pub at noon for a typical 4:00pm match. Also, most of my Exchange classmates (who are NOT British) care about the EPL as much as you do. So getting them to drop Â£33 (about US $60) was a tough sell. So I ended up with two of my quieter Chinese classmates Song and Li. To summarize, if you're looking for a story about how me and 4 blokes sat in the pub for 4 hours before a match and then sang songs for 90 minutes in the middle of the Man City Supporter Section, you'll have to wait for another game.

BUT, it still was a blast. Some things of note:
* So I was worried about my Chinese friends wearing the wrong colors and getting heckled. Man City is blue, so I through on my navy blue shirt this morning and headed out. It was Song who wasembarrassedd for me, asking me why I was wearing Everton navy blue instead on Man City light blue.
* They have a pretty efficient system of getting everyone to key points in City centre then bussing everyone the mile or so to the stadium. Imagine an entire bus made up of Man City supporters headed to the game. Then Li, a small Chinese girl, announced very loudly to me that she loved arsenal the best and didn't really care who won between City and Everton. I think the Brits were still sleeping, because we made it off the bus unscathed.
* There's really not much of a pre-game show at these things. People wander in slowly and it wasn't really filled until kickoff.
* All Everton fans were seated in one section starting behind the goal and ending in the corner. You could tell where they were because on each end of every row, there was a stadium security person sitting there. And at the top of each staircase that led to those sections, there were 5 cops. All the potential chaos was organized into one little packet.
* American Stadium music guys have nothing on the Man City music team. They pumped out a little "What's the Story Morning Glory" and "Wake Me Up When September Ends" during the pre-game. Nice choices for a 11:15am game on October 2.
* Here's something you would never see before a Mariners game. Just before player introductions, they did about a 3 minute ceremony for a long-time supporter who had passed away that week. They brought the family on the field and the crowd game them a standing ovation. It kind of gripped at the heartstrings that the team cared enough to do it and the crowd felt that they had lost one of their own.
* There are no food or drink vendors roaming the stands at anytime. Very odd.
* One of the players got hurt so I jumped out to grab a quick bite, and all but one of the stands were closed. This makes sense I guess since no one leaves their seat while the match is underway. But why not turn them into vendors? Wouldn't that make sense? What do the concessionaires do while they wait the 45 minutes for halftime?
* Here's another thing that's important to know - you can't drink any beer in the stadium part, you have to be out in the concourse. I wandered around during halftime for about 14 minutes and then grabbed a beer to take back to my seat. I got to the tunnel and only then was I told that the beer would not be joining me.
* In case you are curious, both beers and burgers are Â£2.75 ($5.00). So, it sounds like stadium ripoffs, but beers are usually Â£2.00 anyway and the burger is about Â£2.50 so they really don't try to screw you as much as they do in the U.S.

On to the match.....It was not unlike a Seahawks vs Arizona Cardinals game. You know the Hawks are going to win, so it's hard to get too crazy early. Then neither team scores all half, but you still know you'll win. Then about 10 minutes into the 2nd half, you get all fidgety and nervous. You start getting angry at the players for not getting on the board. Then finally in the 76th minute you get that 1st goal on a brilliant play by the person you least expected, and the place erupts into pandemonium. Then you get to celebrate the last 14 minutes (but not with a beer at your seat) - and they reward you with another goal at the very end. Everyone walks away happy and then hits parking lot gridlock. Just like the states.

In a nutshell, very comparable to a decent NFL game, but the soccer fans sing more. And they don't have as much rhythm, so when they do the classic chant "Go City, Go City, Go City" after about 3 or 4 chants it just becomes Oh ity oh ity oh ity. But there's a side subculture of pre-game bars and restaurants that I missed, but I'll try to get back down there. Who knows, maybe one weekend I'll just head down for the bars and restaurants part...Also, this wasn't City vs United or Chelsea vs Arsenal so there wasn't quite the venom. But mark it off the list - One English Premier League game in the books.

Man City this Sunday

2005-09-30T09:39:00.000-07:00

So, people keep asking when I'll get to a football match, and the answer is this Sunday. Manchester City vs Everton. It's comparable to Mets or White Sox (Man City) vs Tampa Bay or Kansas City. Not exactly a barnburner, but it should be a blast either way.

Manchester City is really the local's team, and Man United is the rich people and tourist club. It's like being given the choice to root for your hometown boys or being a Yankee fan because they have Alex Rodriguez. I may get to a United game just for the fun of it, but being a sports masochist, I of course have to follow the lesser team.

Some links are to the side if you feel the desire to learn a little about the world's most popular sports league.

Unrelated....I don't know if I'm a genius for figuring it out or an idiot for it taking me so long, but I figured out how to listen to some US radio in the greatest pennant race in the last 10 years. I can grab the KJR stream off the internet, record it using Replay Music and then stick it on my ipod. So I'm recording the morning show now, which I'll listen to tomorrow morning, which is really not that long from now. Also, god bless all the American companies like espn.com that utilize Podcasting. Pretty clever if you ask me. Download the news and take it with you. Media companies take note - you should do this because you can stick ads in teh middle and people are too busy walking to skip through them.

Look for a football match report and pics later this weekend. Cheers.

Some cultural differences

2005-09-30T05:29:00.000-07:00

So, one of the more interesting aspects of the trip is learning the different norms and mores of each natioanlity. For example, you may remember an earlier post in which I felt bad about the fact that the French girl didn't have a place to live. So it turns out she's Moroccan and her 7 year boyfriend is moroccan as well. She found another place to live with a Canadian guy, but the Moroccan boyfriend "wouldn't let her" move in with the other guy.

As an American, this seemed quite shocking. First of all, what nerve to tell your girfriend she has to live in a crappy dorm instead of getting a flat. Secondly, knock Morocco off my list of places I want to visit. Granted it's a sample size of one, but Moroccans seem to be possessive and psychotic. I can imagine myself in Morocco, walking into a bar, asking a girl for directions and getting a bottle broken over my head by some ridiculous, jealous hothead.

On the flip side of that experience was an hour long conversation I had with a Pakistani guy. He laughed about the Indian-Pakistani conflict, explaining that he has many Indian friends and the people get along fine. It's the government fighting over Kasmir, but in reality most Pakistanis and Indians bear no ill will toward each other. he went as far as to say the governments actually fuel the extremeist groups who cause the conflicts, but the ordinariy citizen is indifferent. It's also interesting to hear how many large American companies - including Proctor and Gamble - have offices in Pakistan. Not something you would ordinarily think about. He did mention that the American heads of these corporations need bodyguards - again not from ordinary Pakistanis, but from the extremists.

And one final thing about English. We have a class in Entrepreneurship that involves a group project. The class is about 4 Exec, 8 exchange and 8 full-time students. We were supposed to "network around" the class and find groups, but damn if the English full-time students hadn't already teamed themselves up ahead of time. What a bunch of jokers.

Editors Concert

2005-09-29T07:41:00.000-07:00

Hey, I might have this blogging thing figured out, but I still haven't mastered the pictures. So just click on the shutterfly link on the right if you want to see some photos.

Ok, so I think the Editors are getting some airplay in the states, but they're blowing up out here. I'm sure they'll be on every summerpalooza tour next year, so keep an eye on them.

We saw the show at a Manchester music venue called Manchester Academy. It's like a smaller version of the Showbox, the kind of place where if a fire starts we'd all die from being trampled to death but no one would die from the smoke. Because honestly, you put 700 Brits in a closed space and you're damn near death from the smoke inhilation anyway. Cigarettes here are 5 pounds 50 a pack, which is about $10.00 U.S. and they still smoke them like there's a never ending supply sitting in the cupboard. Just proves that a sin tax doesn't curb behavior but just drains the pocketbook of those who partake.

Anyway, it was classic Manchester show - unbelievably loud, packed to the rafters, filled with crowd surfing kids and 45 year old Mancunians standing in the back. Since a rock show isn't really that unique and the Editors are someone you have probably heard of, AND since it's really not that different than a U.S. show, I'll just cut this short. I guess the only thing I found funny was that they wouldn't give you unopened beer cans because they were afraid they'd be thrown on the stage. But they would open the can for you and let you take them back into the audience. I suppose the theory is that - well I can't even begin to figure out a theory for that one. But yes, some people did choose to spend their 2 quid on spraying the crowd with their beer later. Go figure.

A few picks up on shutterfly. Talk to you later.

New Pics

2005-09-28T09:59:00.000-07:00

I got the pics working up on Shutterfly. You'll probably have to give them your email address and set up an account, but it's about 3000% better than flickr. New pics up now.
http://mancunianhusky.shutterfly.com/action/

Just a Few Thoughts

2005-09-28T08:22:00.000-07:00

I can't tell if it's Blogger or the crackpots running the MBS IT department, but my blogging abilities are severely impaired these days. Knowing what I do about the Brits, I'm not putting any blame on our friends down at Google. (I suppose it could be me, but c'mon...)

A few thoughts that may or may not be interesting:

1) I've still yet to find anyone in Britain that's even the slightest bit helpful. All polite, but absolutely no action items come from any conversation. Every conversation ends with a Brit looking at you with a blank stare waiting for you to leave empty-handed.

2) Yahoo bought Flickr a while back and absolutely killed it. It's obvious they replaced the great Product Managers they had with Textbook memorizing Ivy League MBA's who have never heard the term "Customer Experience." I'll be moving the pictures to shutterfly soon.

3) The bus system in Manchester is all privatizied. It's crazy. 7 different bus companies all competeing on the same and different routes, on different schedules and different rates. Totally nuts.

4) I figured out how to cross the street on foot. The secret is that intersections are for cars, and pedestrians cross wherever they can. So if you see an opening, look both ways and run, no matter where you are.

5) The weather here is nuts. It's like Seattle where you get sun, rain, cold and warm, but in Seattle weather shifts through those options over a few days while in Manchester they change in an hour. Literally, you can be sitting in shorts and a t-shirt after a pleasant sun-filled stroll, and see someone walk in drenched and shivering after getting caught in a hail storm. It's that unpredictable.

6) A few more pics are up on Flickr for the time being. Hope to be moved over to shutterfly tomorrow.

Hope all is well.

One Week,

2005-09-25T11:55:00.000-07:00

Howdy everyone from lovely Manchester. I had envisioned myself posting every day, but that has proved to be impossible. So, hopefully I can recap Mancunian life on at least a weekly or bi-weekly basis.

Let's start with the arrival. I left Seattle at 11:00am Saturday and landed in Manchester Sunday at 8:00am. Since I slept a little on the plane, I really felt that my body and mind adjusted on the spot (though we'll see in later posts that my brain was obviously not at its peak.)

I'm going to try to help you out by listing the post codes of the places I'm talking about. If you use http://maps.google.com you can ride along with me and it may make things make more sense.

I jumped on a train from the airport (M90 1QX), and 10 minutes later hit Picadilly Station (M60 7RA). My honest to god first thought of Mancehster was, "How horrible. This can't be Manchester. What did I just commit to?" I had heard that the University of Manchester was walking distance from the train station, so I lugged my bags around for a while in a mindless search for the Business School's in-house hotel. But, this is when I realized I didn't really know the address of the hotel, and I finally ended up at another hotel (M1 3BB) where I was able to catch a cab home to the Biz School, which is place I should have just cabbed to in the first place (m15 6pb).

This was actually the first instance of a continuing trend of peculiar English behavior. They are simultaneously exceedingly polite and utterly unhelpful. You get a lot of, "Why love, that's an excellent point and I really wish I could help ya but I can't. I really hope you enjoy your stay in manchester tho."

Anyway, on to something actually halfway interesting. Manchester Business School (MBS) has its own hotel, which is odd but cool. But it also had a computer lab which was exceedingly helpful. The added benefit was that all us homeless exchange students could use it. It didn't take a real genius to figure out that everyone else in there was an exchange student, so in the course of about 5 minutes from checking in, I had a solid base of 5 or 6 equally confused friends, mostly from France and Canada.

The rest of Sunday was spent walking all over Manchester and setting up some methods of communication - namely a mobile. And just for the record - wandering around England is not as easy as it sounds. Every intersection you take your life into your hands. Cars actually speed up if they see you in the road and it's like walking in a mirror trying to figure out who will be taking a left or right turn. Plus all of the streets are marked with white lines, regardless of whether they're 1 or 2 way. So the first day I usually just stood on the corner waiting for someone else to cross and followed them. Jaywalking is not only legal, it's encouraged. The walk / don't walk sign are green and red. Green means 'You're totally safe." Red means, "Screw it - go ahead and give it a shot."

I'll spare you the details of Monday's search for a flat, in which I had a place, didn't have a place, then ended up back in the place with different roommates and possibly being a jerk for not volunteering to give up my spot to a French girl. But hey, only the strong survive and desperate times call for desperate measures, and besides - I had already dropped 450 pounds ($800) on the place so I stayed strong. I lost a little sleep over it, or it may have been the jet lag keeping me awake, but it all worked out.

So I'm living with the coolest little French guys, Augustin and Guillaume. They are young kids but absolutely hilarious. They are also the cleanest guys I've ever met, which forces me to ratchet up my own cleanliness about 4000%. We're in a 2 BR place (M15DE) but it's cool because the French kids cook dinner and lunch almost every day. And they *like* to clean, so I just stay out of their way and try not to make a mess. I'll add some more pics soon.

The place is on the site of some old and historical Mancunian Rock Music Club from the 70's. Considering how much trouble most people are having finding a place, I was glad to get invited in by the French guy who found it. We're having tons of issues with British Telecom and can't get Internet access for some reason right now, so that's making it hard to post stuff online. Also, we have no tv, which totally sucks but I'm working on it.

(Side note: At our first dinner in the apartment I told Augustin and Guillaume I would look for a Pawn Shop and get a TV and DVD so we could at least watch some videos. They looked at me funny and so I asked if they had Pawn Shops in France. They sheepishly said they did but something still didn't seem right. That's when I figured out they thought I was telling my new roommates that I wanted to bring home some movies from the "Porn Shop." Anyway, we cleared that up.)

There are a few million pubs here, a few thousand bars and then another few hundred clubs. The key difference, as far as I can tell, is Pubs stay open until 11, Bars until 2, and Clubs until 4. And our new apartment is about 200 yards from a group of about 7-8 Bars called the "Deansgate Locks" which I'm sure will help with my studies.

I don't know what your stereotype of English women is, but mine is that they are old and doddy. However, the Manchester women have adopted Paris Hilton as their fashion icon, and try to copy her outfits. It doesn't matter how cold it is, they're wearing short skirts and taktops with heels. Not all of them, but enough to make even the Italian guy in the group say, "I have never seen so many women in all of my life."

Now that I'm settled with a place to live, we've been able to watch some football games on TV. Manchester City is basically the Cougs in blue kits, inventing new ways to lose heartbreaking matches. Also, this week we're hitting a Mancunian club to see The Editors. So, the pieces are starting to fall into place.

Well, I'm running long so I'll shorten things up to say the folks in the Exchange Program are a blast. Americans, French, Italians, Chinese, Indians, Bulgarians, Swedes and Candians and we all seem to get along well. I think US MBA students should be forced to go on an Exchange. It's unbelievable how much you have to open your eyes and learn about new companies just to survive. And you need to read world journals to be able to have a conversation with people from other countries, and not sound like an American Imperialist. Oh, and pretty much the entire world hates our current governemnt and administraion. It really is something to have so many cultures agree on one thing, and be able to speak intelligently on the subject.

I have a link to my Flickr account on the side of the page and I may use that for a photo album. The pics of the Exchange students are from an event we did this weekend - teambuilding stuff like building rafts, obstacle courses, business simulation, etc...

I'll be in touch soon. If you set up skype - and all of you should since it's a free telephone just by using a computer - my user name is aboyer08. Give me a call. And if you see a really weird number on your caller ID, it's probably me.

- Andy