Another Road Trip

It has been a while since we went on another road trip from Penang ultimately down to Singapore via the orang utan reserve at Bukit Merah, Taiping, the Cameron Highlands and Malacca accompanied by our Bermuda friends Charmaine and Dave. I did the Track My Tour thing here but wanted to add some other bits as an afterthought.

Orang Utans

Everyone has seen these hairy but gentle apes on TV programs like the BBC's Earth or something like that and to my surprise we discovered that there's a refuge just over an hour away in Bukit Merah. I thought it was great as the apes are housed on an island but visitors are within a caged tunnel so you can view but the apes are free to roam. It is home to the early stage apes saved from death in the wild. There is another 2nd stage which gets the apes more used to fending for themselves and then its vroom, out into the big wide world.

The island at Bukit Merry

Except if you're a full grown male that is. The really big ones get to 200 kgs (that is huge!) and they don't much like moving around in the trees as that's a heck of a lot to swing from branch to branch. They also don't like the rain largely because they are massively hairy and if wet, that adds another ton of weight for them too. So all those pictures you see of those cuties swinging and playing are the tiddlers, before they are grown.

Growing up is tough too... and this isn't a comment aimed at the orang utans alone. It applies across the spectrum. They live in single grown male family groups and the only way for an adult male to live past a certain age is to kill the alpha male and take his place otherwise it is curtains for you! The one on the island comes in at a growing 145 kgs and he made it to number 1 by killing the former alpha male who was the 200 kg guy.

Talk about survival of the fittest. There must be an analogy to all grown males there somewhere.

Tea in the Highlands

One of the many things the British did during colonial times was to create hill stations. The Cameron Highlands is an example in Malaysia. Actually so is The Hill in Penang. At sea level it is hot and sticky and in past years, colonials may have ranked at the top of the social tree but they also ranked at the top of the diet for a multitude of bugs, bacteria and various viruses. You can see it anywhere there's an old church and cemetery. In Bermuda the big killer was typhoid and it seemed that almost everyone in the graveyard was less than 23. My doctor once told me during a physical that if I didn't die of a particularly nasty disease before I hit 70 that I should be OK for another 30 or 40 years. Not sure about that but I suppose that means if you have good resistance to fell diseases, you'll survive. At least from fell diseases.

The hill stations are particularly nice. Including Penang, I've now been to three (Penang, Cameron Highlands, Sri Lanka... the oldest) and I can certainly see why they would be popular. So much cooler, fewer bugs and great views. Also tea. Now of course tea isn't indigenous but introduced and even now it forms a massive part of the local economies. More in Sri Lanka than Malaysia but when we visited the Cameron Highlands, what is apparent is the massive scale of development. I should have thought about this before as every time you buy veggies in the supermarket here, all the local ones come from some Cameron Highlands farm or other.

Tea harvesting in action. No technology here

Sadly they are really, really ugly.

Endless greenhouses. They are everywhere

Tacky Stuff

I know that we are all sophisticated and would normally look down our noses at tacky stuff. I mean who needs another fake handbag or pair of Gucci shoes? We wouldn't go there, would we? Also who would want to ride around a Unesco World Heritage city that was one of the oldest European settlements in the Far East riding around in a floral pink trishaw decorated with little ponies also pink and a soundtrack of Asian rap?

Nyonya Cuisine

The term nyonya refers to Chinese immigrants who came to Malaysia during the 19th century mainly to work in the mainland tin mines or to escape one of the endless wars or famines prevalent in China. They settled and in many cases married locally and generally found they couldn't get the same ingredients for their cuisine as back home so they adapted to what was available locally... hence nyonya cuisine. The nyonyas are also known as Perankans and other names too, but this one seems to to be the one used mostly for cooking.

Some well known dishes have a nyonya twist. I am thinking of curries here and of course beef rendang is a nyonya curry varietal. So when I saw the chance of having a day of cooking classes, yes please!

Heavy coconut cream? Yup. Thanks Kathy, nyonya chef supreme

One thing we'd omitted to pay attention to was the fact that much nyonya cooking is really heavy so it was a little rash to expect to want to do anything energetic after eating as we'd originally planned. If you have the chance to try nyonya cooking, try it!! You do like chillies though, don't you?

Markets in particular Night Markets

One thing I have discovered here is that whenever guide books say such and such Night Market is a blast and shouldn't be missed, you should take that with a distinct pinch of salt. For sure markets and in particular night markets are busy places with hordes of probably mostly tourists scouring through endless stalls of vendors selling... well junk really. You may want a fake handbag for example or yet another little zip bag with elephants embroidered onto it, or some such like that. But you can go to daytime markets for that too. If you're expecting an authentic cultural experience, forget it. This is all about selling stuff to you.

The Jonker Street Night Market in Malacca was like that although the upside to all of these places is that the street food is fun, very creative and often very tasty. And at the end of the day, yes it is still pretty fun too. Remember that decorated pink trishaw I wrote about before? Well they also have fairy lights on them for nighttime so in addition to all the other stuff, they are a cascade of lights too!

First take wooden satay sticks about 8 inches long. Lay them in what looks like a waffle press like this but in the specially crafted grooves. In the little holes that are under these grooves, crack small quail eggs and wait for a second or two et voila you now have a yummy snack of 5 cooked quail eggs on a stick that you can drench in your favorite chilli...

Cricket

There's a guy at the Penang Sports Club, John, who is a long time ex-Singapore hand and at some point was the President of the Singapore Cricket Club. Now I've been playing cricket for over 50 years and know quite a few club presidents. Most are nice guys but have had a history of presiding over, say, Leigh on Sea CC whose pitch is one of the two connecting pitches on the big field at Chalkwell Park in Southend on Sea. My home town. It has a nice elevated view of the Thames Estuary too but can in no way compete for the location of the Singapore club. My goodness. It reminds of the story of the rollers at Centre Court Wimbledon. The lovingly maintained grass courts depend on this big, heavy roller to keep the surface so pristine and one year someone asked to borrow the roller for Court One. The groundsmen said OK, hasn't been asked for before and then tried to move it over discovering in the process that the roller was too big for the exits. It simply could not be moved from Centre Court. This caused much head scratching until the early records were consulted and it was discovered that because in the old days there was no lifting mechanism capable of moving the thing far away from Centre Court, they simply built the stadium around it. Yes folks, the roller came first.

It strikes me that Singapore CC is very much the same. It occupies an unbelievable location on the Esplanade and if you know Singapore and can visualize the sky scrapers and development in the city, you'd be amazed that such an anachronism could still exist. But exist it does and it is, yes, right there in the middle of the most expensive, most exclusive, most desirable, most demanded part of town. I guess they simply built the new city around it.

IP Theft

My school in Southend was called Eton House and was for some years after I left school the cause of much confusion. At one interview when I was I think 21 or 22, the first thing I was asked was "who do I know from my school days?" Well of course I know loads of people: Pete, Kev, Gary, Ronnie. It took a little while for me to realize that the interviewer was looking for something else. As in which member of the royal family, nobility or political class was I at school with? It made me laugh sort of (I didn't get the job as after I explained and we all dutifully laughed, they lost interest completely) as I knew that our Headmaster (and owner of the school) chose the name in 1926 specifically for this reason. He felt that Southend School for Boys may not have had the same cachet and PR hook as a vague and unexplained Eton connection.

In Singapore! Bloody cheek!!

He was an interesting character all by himself. His nickname was Bubble as that was what his bald head looked like in later years but his name was SHT (before the acronym became tarred by another similar word made by inserting the letter 'I'). His twin died in WW1 and he took part in the Los Angeles Olympic Games as a 400 meter runner ("too upright, see, so no good, flagged at the end due to me gassing at Loos in 1917"). He was an unforgettable character!

Management on Steroids

I think you either love or hate Singapore. Maybe not, but its just a gut feel that I have for what they have done to transform a tiny island swamp into this sparkling megalopolis is just stunning. And to think that most of it happened after independence and the rather embarrassing split with the rest of Malaysia. I have heard it described as 'Asia Light' and the more I think on that, the more apt I think is that description. We have friends that spent a couple of years working there that seems to have given them a bedrock in life and while they visited Angkor Wat and some of the other cultural high points, I'm pretty sure they never visited a hawker centre, or Little India, or some of the more Asian bits. Certainly Singapore is in the midst of Asia, but at times it doesn't feel it.

I loved it and going back to the tacky comments from earlier, who wouldn't love to stand on a balcony 57 stories up in a 3 tower hotel that reminds you of Las Vegas? The view is stunning.

Talk about planning. I simply cannot imagine the meetings they all had. I worked in a quango for a time in Bermuda and the meetings we had barely rose above the mundane. There must have been some powerful thinkers, strategists and personalities to get this done.

Great trip though with my favorite traveling companion!!

A Very Bad Year

I subscribe to various news services to keep up to date with what's going on. I have to say that it is really difficult to get balanced reporting on most issues. Every media outlet has its own agenda that it is trying to put out and I suppose if you share those views then you like that. But if you don't the reporting on the other side is just as slanted. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy that people then tend to read only those things they agree with. That is sad and in my view quite dangerous as in many instances (say 50%) you are most likely wrong so hearing another view can actually be pretty helpful.

Don't worry though I don't plan to preach or anything like that. It is just that I read a truly fascinating piece that suggests that the year 536 was the worst ever time to be alive.

So this is a non-controversial subject as nobody alive today would have been back then either and if you read the full piece it seems that simply managing that (i.e. staying alive) was a real big win.

So what happened, Michael? The year 536 AD was just about 100 years after the fall of the western Roman Empire when the barbarians trampled over the remnants of that once great empire... but only 200 years into the eastern Roman Empire's over 1,000 year history, most latterly as Byzantium. In Europe the barbarians were not intent on making too many friends, they were far more intent on rape, pillage and enslavement as a pastime. So simply by virtue of the fact of being in Europe in what was a pretty horrible time was made worse by something???

Now this is climate change.  I sometimes complain about the weather but...

Given that this has now been documented, how on earth did people actually verify this? And this was the bit that fascinated me and caught my attention. It was the polar ice cap. Antarctic not Arctic.

Inside this thing scientists bore into the ice cap and from studying the various levels and aging them, they can tell pretty much what happened scientifically. Given this data, historians are able to interpret it from the often weird writings of contemporary scribes and come to amazing conclusions about our world's history, both natural as well as social.

This is the full litany of woe...

I would post the full article or at least attach a link but somehow I have lost it and cannot find it at the moment. It is definitely worth reading and remembering that climate change is just as much about natural phenomena as it is about human interference. That doesn't of course mean that we should be complacent about things but it is worth remembering. A couple of days ago, for instance, I read another piece about how the global insect population is down 70%+ since the 1970's with the result that some parts of China have to employ people to pollinate their plants as there's nothing else left to do it for them. Now that was human interference.

The Honorable Lanka

Living in Penang you see the word 'Sri' all the time in front of a group of other words and for the longest time I had no thought really about what it meant, if it meant something, or it was something else. It took our visit to Lanka in October to settle things. The word 'Sri' is an honorific which I take to mean something like 'the honorable' or something like that. As the pre-Colonial name for the country was Lanka, that is what they first named the country after 'Ceylon' was ditched after independence adding the 'Sri' only a little later. Claro?

I used Chris' wonderful app Track My Tour for the day to day stuff and if you want to follow that you can do so here but wanted to add some other bits that I didn't write about or thought about after.

First up, great country. Lovely people. Hopeless infrastructure. My goodness, does it rain. Animals everywhere.

OK that's it all done.... well not quite. Any people that do read my posts know that I probably drone on at too much length so a post this short and sweet just isn't going to happen. So here it is, the memories that will stay with me in no particular order.

1. Elephants

Nothing more to add, just that it was fabulous to see them in the wild

2. History

In a later post I will refer to Malacca in Malaysia as part of a recent road trip that Viv and I did with some friends from Bermuda. It bears striking similarities to Sri Lanka as it was the Portuguese who were the first colonial settlers and it was they who were summarily kicked out by the next settlers, namely the Dutch, who in turn were removed by the British who then never left and generally fixed the things that the others hadn't.

The Portuguese settlements were very much at the fringes, seaside settlements in the south with just the one in the pointy bit at the top, which is Jaffna. So easy meat for the Dutch who came in force over 100 years later and kicked them out. They tried to take over the entire island but couldn't manage the middle section (which was where Buddha's tooth ended up, Kandy) and made a big mistake by not preventing the British from settling Trincomalee (sort of top right, below Jaffna but above the middle fat bits on the right hand side) and creating a naval base there opposing the French in Madras. The British liked the place so when the French marched into Holland in 1792, the Dutch presumably much against their will and definitely their better judgement asked the British to care of things for a while. Until the French left. No problem, thanks. Trouble was when in 1815 they asked for it back (as they did in Malacca and other places further east) the British said no thanks, we like it here. Oh yes and if you want to try and take it back, let me introduce you to the Duke of Wellington who just thrashed Boney up and down Europe... and some of his friends in red jackets.

Well that wasn't going to work so getting the best deal out of a pretty poor situation was all they had left so the Dutch said OK you can have Ceylon (they called it Ce-lun apparently, a corruption of a misheard Portuguese word) and Malacca and if you must Singapore, but we wouldn't mind having back Java and Sumatra. Probably don't fit in with your imperial plans. The Brits had no imperial strategy of course, only the East India Company, a bunch of penny pinching capitalists and absolutely no desire to take on anything else after that ruinously expensive 30 year war against the French so said thanks and generally history moved on.

Having acquired the new territories though meant actually doing things with them and in general the British did fairly well by Ceylon, as it was now called. Or so it seems to me. Certainly when we visited the big historical and archaeological sites, it was the British who 'discovered' them. Apparently even the locals had forgotten about these places as they were abandoned centuries beforehand and the previous colonizers being typically inefficient and generally useless had walked right past them.

3. Tea

I suppose if you don't much care for tea, then this bit will be irrelevant for you, but as a tea lover I was totally taken with the tea plantations. Even today, the tea industry is the single largest industry in Sri Lanka. 

This picture tells you all you need to know about when, where and how tea came to be in Sri Lanka. Apparently the original plants were not from the already entrenched Indian plantations but came straight from original Chinese plants which is what gives Ceylon Tea its distinct flavor. We bought loads!

4. Infrastructure

The subtext to the above note on tea is actually a very sad one as reliance on a tea industry as the number one component of the economy means that that economy is not very developed. It isn't. One of the key reasons why stems from the 30-year civil war between the majority Sinhalese (mostly in the south) and the minority Tamils (in the north). Add religion into the mix too: Buddhist vs Hindu, and the mix was very toxic indeed.

I read a little about it from my first point of contact for most things these days, Wikipedia, and what was written was sad enough but you just know the reality was worse.

So to dates. Independence finally in 1972, add 30 years and a few before and after the civil war and you come to now. The war itself ended within the last 5 years so there simply has been no time to repair or even build any infrastructure. Also factor in the unforeseen catastrophe that was the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004 which absolutely devastated the southern part of the island particularly around Galle, and this is the situation Sri Lanka finds itself in. You can see it or rather the lack of it everywhere however all the people we met were some of the nicest, friendly, most optimistic people I have ever met. 

The tuk tuk is the solution!

5. The Weather

People in England talk about the weather all the time, particularly the rain and the deadly grayness of the country between November and March. That is true of course and I personally think it is the greyness that is the worst thing. After weeks of it, things are so depressing. My birthday is in February and it always rained.  Ugh. But not like Sri Lanka.

My goodness does it rain. I had to chuckle that the England cricket team were touring Sri Lanka just about at the same time as us and I really wondered if anyone that did the schedule actually bothered to ask what the weather would be like around then because it is in one of the many rainy seasons here and when they say rainy, they do mean rainy.

Facing a broadly similar issue in Penang about determining exactly when the seasons start and end I asked Fernando, our guide, and he told me that now was the rainy season. He may have said it was the North West monsoon but could also easily have said the South East one for apparently there are many rainy seasons here. Our time until December for one, then becomes dry for the month of January. After that comes the different direction (maybe SW) monsoon season for Feb-March and then another month of comparative dry before the NE monsoon season kicks in during May and which lasts to the end of July. August is most likely relatively dry but then you get the slow drag that is the beginning of the NW monsoon season that really gets going in October again and ....

So the island is very green and you often see scenes like this where only the day before was dry land.

Love the water buffaloes though!

Loved it. Ready to return at any time! And I didn't even get to talk about the dogs and cows ...

Odious Comparisons

I just found this post that I wrote back in 2012 when the global economy was in tatters following the Great Recession and I was trying to make sense (to myself) of some of the why's and wherefore's as to why Bermuda was struggling while Cayman was booming. Why should I care? Well my company has offices in both locations so clearly from a business perspective it is absolutely essential to figure out where to use your precious and limited resources. Why do I do it this way? Well some people are able to talk about things. I am not one of those people. I have to write things out in full to make sense of things. This is what I did. Does it make sense today? Is it even relevant today? Well not entirely relevant as there have been 2 elections in Bermuda and at least one in Cayman so what was envisaged back then has actually happened/or not and other things have moved into prominence.

I read only today some 6 years after I drafted this post that 99.7% of all businesses in the US are small businesses and employ 90% of the total workforce. That means that what goes on at Apple or General Electric, say, is irrelevant to the greater population hard as it is to imagine that in all the hype that accompanies their every movement. Of much greater import is the small business. Where small business goes, so goes the national economy.

In a Bermuda/Cayman context it is difficult to see this is the same thing but I would think that a far larger than 50% amount of the local workforces work for smaller companies. Like ours. So despite the fact that small business is largely ignored by both media and decision makers in government, it really it us that still makes it all happen. As a small business owner we knew this and were perennially aggrieved that decision makers didn't really care about our needs despite our relative importance to the economy. Amazing as it is to hear, government actually said that the trickle down effect well known in economic theory does not apply.

I never posted this note as at the time I thought it was potentially inflammatory in the same way as my note on a Bermuda bank (that I prepared for my business' clients) was inflammatory. This bank had fallen foul big time of sub-prime mortgages in its investment book to the point that it was realistically insolvent (the CFO tried really hard to tell me it was all a question of timing... but it wasn't). I spent a lot of time reviewing this and talking openly to the CFO who very generously gave of his time and I just knew they'd need to get massive outside assistance (which did happen). However I was left with a very tough decision. Do I make public my findings and create the self fulfilling prophecy in which there very may well have been a run on the bank, or do I not do this and make a decision based on what was best for the public who had no idea this was the case (just read a 10k issued by a listed company and tell me if you undertsand any of it. I do because that was my job but it takes a heck of a lot of training and then work). The bank took the bail out and has survived with no depositor losing any money as opposed to the Greek and Italian banks whose depositors took a haircut when they had to seek support from their 'friends' in the EU and the IMF. So, happy ending there.

However time is a great healer and what was inflammatory back in 2012 is today merely history. And history as the name suggests is merely a story about what transpired at a certain time according to the person who followed it -- that's me. So please bear this in mind when/if you read the following. It is how I saw things at the time.

***

25 years ago when I was working at the Bermuda Monetary Authority in my first Bermuda role as sole regulator -- essentially the only Banking Supervisor pre-these Basel I, II or III days, collator of Balance of Payments, Controller of the Currency and the then in situ Interest Rate controls as well as the supervisor of the Bermuda Stock Exchange -- I had a staff issue where I wanted to hire another person and needed both budget approval from the Ministry of Finance and permission from some obscure government department whose name I forget.  It couldn't happen until a Board agreed and the MofF signed off -- quite why is beyond me as the BMA was and remains a quango responsible for setting its own budget.  I was assigned a member of this department who would plead my case in front of the board -- I was not permitted to talk at all although I could observe.  I briefed this person in detail and agreed a strategy that he totally ignored starting his presentation with the immortal words: "I know comparisons are odious but..."

Our case was thrown out and ever since I've always tried to never, ever use that ridiculous statement in any way shape of form however with this post I simply cannot think of another way to head it.  My intent is to try to compare some key elements of Bermuda and Cayman, their politics, economy, etc. -- similarities there are but also differences, both cultural and economic.

I care because I have spent considerable time in both countries and my firm has an office in both jurisdictions. I simply don't want either to fail.

The first similarity is the airport.  Both are aging and in need of a spruce up for sure and both don't have those pod things that slide out at door level to allow passengers easy access straight into the arrivals area -- the old fashioned ways rule.  You climb up or down stairs and walk along the tarmac (see note at the end of this post for an update).

Another and probably more relevant comparison is the fact that both are offshore financial centers; Bermuda primarily insurance related while Cayman is big in banks and funds.

Both too have UK common law systems but this is where things are a little different for Bermuda is self-governing whilst Cayman is still just a colony.  This means that Bermuda charts its own course even though it has a UK appointed Governor who has titular responsibility over the Police and certain government functions such as the office of the Auditor General.  Bermuda also has responsibility for its own budget.  Cayman's UK appointed Governor is still the head of government although there are elected officials as well, the leader of whom carries the unofficial title of 'Premier' is actually legally titled 'Head of Government Business'.  Cayman does not have responsibility for its own budget and must seek approval from the UK each year.

And herein lies the rub.  Bermuda has been able to finance its ongoing deficits with increasingly large amounts of borrowing that they drive whilst Cayman has been denied that privilege by the mandarins in Whitehall.  On the day I arrived in Cayman, the front page of a local newspaper carried a story in which the Premier was triumphantly announcing the final agreement of the 2013 expenditure budget with the UK in the amount of $575 million.

I'm not as close to Cayman's budget issues as I am to Bermuda's (I used to compile the BMA's own contribution to the Bermuda budget so retain a keen interest still) but this seems either an awful lot or an awful little... and I cannot figure out which it is.

The reason for my being in Cayman is business development which means visiting as many local businessmen as I can in my allotted time here.  In practice, you don't talk about the real thing that you want to talk about, you edge into it.  You chat.  My 30 or so meetings in 10 days therefore have taken me to talk to a number of highly placed business people who have opinions extending beyond their business and like me want to see their jurisdiction succeed.  Many have very strong opinions and some even have specific knowledge -- Cayman like Bermuda is small so people tend to know other people's business in far greater detail than they may in a larger jurisdiction.

Distilling it all down for Cayman is the over spend on 2 new schools for Caymanians.  In itself a laudable project of course for raising education levels across all classes is a vital way for a country to stay ahead of the competition.  It was the cost apparently that was the issue: I heard figures of $80 to $100 million for each of the schools from different people.  Now I haven't a clue what a true cost should be but know that the Berkley project in Bermuda a few years back was budgeted around $60 million and came in around $150 million so government overspend isn't that unlikely an outcome.  Its just the size that is the variable.  Again the same people suggested that these Caymanian schools could have been built at half the cost which suggests to me that government overspend on these projects could be around $100 million.

That's a lot of money for a population of 55,000.

But is it?  Well, it sure sounds it of course but when you consider that Cayman's population is just about the same as Bermuda's and its land mass is somewhere between 4 and 5 times larger but Bermuda's expenditure budget is around $1.2 billion -- doesn't that make Cayman sound fiscally prudent?  Or putting it another way, how on earth can Bermuda spend twice as much as Cayman?

It sure beats me but I suspect much of it comes down to economics.  Everything ultimately does.  I've just finished reading a great book entitled "The Lords of Finance" -- a book about the 4 leading central bank heads just after World War I faced with a world in recession, then depression, war debts of such enormity that even today look to be completely unrealistic (way worse than what the bankers have done to the world), reparations that the victorious nations imposed upon the losers and the inflexible, outdated gold standard.  Essentially this is a book that Ben Bernanke of the Fed must know inside and out for those 4 men (heads of the Bank of England, New York Fed, Banque de France, Central Bank of Germany) did everything that could be done to fix things but using solutions that were outmoded and not of a size able to dent the problems facing them, everything they did made things much, much worse.  But do read the book.  Just wonderful if you like that sort of thing.

The point I was coming round to was that the root cause of WWI was actually not the inherent distrust of the French for the Germans, or the desire for territorial gains but simply economic: Germany resented Great Britain's economic dominance of the world, the French were trying to get back the reparations they were forced to pay in the 1870/71 war with Germany that they cataclysmically lost, the Brits wanted to keep every foreigners hands off their foreign possessions and trade routes and the Russians ... well they were different and nobody really knew why they fought the war.  Every one of these countries was warned categorically by their advisors in the years leading up to the conflict that going to war with another great power was economic suicide.  That was why the French and Germans didn't go to war in 1911/12 -- both backed away as their advisors told them they couldn't afford it.  So sadly both nations went away and built up their gold reserves to the point where the rulers felt that they could ignore the accountants -- they were wrong!  Accountants are always right.

I don't believe that in either Cayman of Bermuda governments really comprehend the basic GDP equation: GDP = C + I + (X - M) + G.  By far the largest component of GDP is C -- which is we the consumer.  C is all the stuff we buy, eat, wear and generally consume.  Typically in advanced economies this is around 65-70% of the total.  I represents business investment, typically 15-20% depending on the business cycle. X is exports and M of course imports -- which offset one another typically. G is government, and in developed economies comes in at around 15%.

When times are tough, governments step in with 'stimulus' raising G in the equation.  By far the most important part is the consumer and then businesses.  Business will not invest in uncertainty and consumers won't spend if they don't have a job or are concerned that they may not.  But when G is already more than 30% (as it is in Bermuda, I don't know about Cayman) how on earth do things turn around?

Cayman is lucky in that there is the Dart family willing and able to throw billions of dollars into infrastructure -- Camana Bay is the highest profile example of the ultimate "Field of Dreams".  This is a billion dollar new city built on swamp to a very high standard where it is almost impossible to consider that there will be a return on capital any time soon.  Stunning place, simply wonderful.  Other projects including re-siting the dump and building another near billion dollar new resort on Seven Mile Beach including the redirection of the by-pass roads, which under Dart supervision is nearly complete already.  I wish there was someone like him willing to take that sort of chance in Bermuda!

That is the I part of the GDP equation and thanks to the Dart family, Cayman's GDP is somewhat bolstered during a tough time for both the banking and fund business, their financial services staple.

Obviously there is a quid pro quo for a couple of billion dollars of speculative investment and the Cayman government has made significant concessions (tax and work permit) apparently in the greater good.  I wish it would be so in Bermuda where government seems resistant at almost every opportunity to make concessions other than the most minor kind.  For example, waiving the 60/40 rule only for Bermuda listed entities means that only 4 or 5 of the larger companies will seek this waiver and while it is nice to think that foreign capital would flow in via this source, the question has to be: into what?  More likely the waiver is being sought to provide greater liquidity to the individual company's shares as chances are step 2 will be a listing on NASDAQ, TSX or FTSE.  Why not make it a blanket 60/40 waiver for all companies?  There's far greater chance that new capital (or I) will come into Bermuda if you actually enable it.

Both Bermuda and Cayman face impending elections at some point in the next 6 months so politicking is growing and the hot air of rhetoric is blowing from all corners.  Bermuda has constituencies and a 1 man, 1 vote system based on the UK's first past the post system so pretty straight forward ignoring the perennial boundary changes every government does seemingly all the time.

Cayman's system to the outsider (well this outsider at least) is unfathomable.  There are constituencies but for some reason they are grouped so in West Bay, for example, there are 4 seats. In Georgetown 6 and in Bodden Town 4 more.  The East End and North Side have 1 each and the outlying islands a further 2.  If you live in Georgetown, you get 6 votes and so on, so technically speaking someone from Georgetown could be seen to have 6 times as much political say as someone from the East End (actually not so as you cannot vote for the same person 6 times).  Cayman's 1 man, 1 vote referendum to change to the individual constituency vote system was defeated earlier this year not necessarily because it wasn't wanted (it was) but because neither of the parties gave official and vocal sanction to it so the turnout was of a level whereby the required majority simply couldn't be achieved.  I can't say I understand why this would be so for as someone explained to me the opposition party strongholds are in Georgetown and Bodden Town so the possibility for them to lose the vote at the next election is actually very high.

Both countries have party politics, Cayman's being the more recent.  Personally speaking I am an opposer of party politics as all that does is generate a divide between the parties making consensus for the good of the country being impossible on occasion.  The US is a prime example of this at the moment.  The entire world (well certainly my financial services world) is watching and hoping like hell that the politicos climb down off their high horses (actually there are pretty low in my estimation) and agree on something, anything really that moves the country away from falling over their fiscal cliff. Not doing so is irresponsible.  Doing what's right in this day and age though seems to be going out of fashion.

Party politics also stifles debate.  There's no debate really any more as on the one side, you have one opinion and one party line and on the other, there's the other one.  The ruling party wins because everyone votes the party line for to not do so means the potential end of their comfortable sinecures, which is the lot of today's professional politician.  The 'good of the country' therefore becomes whatever the ruling party says it is.  How is that democratic?  History has shown us that governments get it wrong all the time.  Human nature doesn't change.  But because we say so, it is so.  No wonder politicians the world over are increasingly detested by the voters.

And finally back to the present day (2018) for the moment. The following comment is truly timeless...

And then there's the beaches and OK here I am truly biased.  Bermuda's pink coral sand beaches are the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen anywhere.  Grand Cayman has Seven Mile Beach which while lovely white sand and mainly very calm water simply cannot compete.

***

Note: Since writing this in 2012, Bermuda has committed to building a new airport as has Cayman but utilising very different means. Cayman has also stated that they have the intention of growing their population to 100,000. Bermuda has not made any announcement of any sort related to this. Infrastructure building in Cayman is still massively ongoing. Go visit both places and enjoy them for what they are.

Historic.... for now

I am currently in Toronto, actually leaving for Penang tonight, and have been indulging my exercise gene not in the gym (perish the thought) rather from taking long walks in this very pleasant autumn weather here. It's a great way to get to know a neighborhood and today was no different.

My goal was a pea meal bacon sandwich at St. Lawrence Market which is between Jarvis and Church on Front Street, pardon the geography lesson but there is a point to it.

To get there on foot from where I am, you can either walk down Bay Street or go east to the various north/south streets which the map shows quite well. Even the map calls it 'Old Toronto', I wasn't aware of that but did note on many street signs the comment 'Historic Queen Street East', so let's then call it 'historic'.

The definition of historic is 'something that will be important for a very long time'. That isn't my definition, it is what I found on the internet but it is appropriate in this context for historic means something that will be important for a very long time. Examples include important buildings and one thing that you can say about the Toronto city planners is that I am starting to notice quite a few more plaques noting a historic building, so and so lived here and all the rest of it. Sadly however they are not attached to any building for such and such historic building was demolished in the last 20 or so years so that a 60 storey glass building could sit on its 'historic' spot. These plaques are on little pedestals that people can read about.

I cannot imagine what these 2 storey 'historic' buildings looked like because they are no longer there.

Throughout my stroll down to the market I walked past many of these old presumably 'historic' buildings... and to be fair, many are pretty scuzzy ... and endlessly they were shuttered and had a sign up announcing the intent to build a 65 storey something or other on this spot.

Just how many of these will need to have been built to make this area no longer 'historic'? I do wonder about all this building. I receive regular updates from realtors wanting to be my friend and help me either sell or buy a condo and apparently despite the amount of new building, there is still a shortage. It is quite difficult to believe. From my window alone I can count more than 20 new towers under construction.

Having just walked around New York a bit, I am taken with the notion that New York planners have got the mix right. You can walk 20 yards off a major north/south or east/west road and be in a treed residential zone which is just lovely. In Toronto you have endless glass buildings. What makes New York interesting is the fact that both old and new co-exist. I get the feeling that planners in Toronto will knock down anything they can.

I do hope I am wrong.

24 hours in the Big Apple

Every year for some time now around this time I go to the Big Apple for meetings. It's a great excuse to visit this wonderful vibrant city and if I have time I do try to go out and visit something new. So I planned the trip to arrive in New York on the Monday, de-jetlag and then be ready for the meetings that start on the Wednesday. This year was a little different in that Viv and I had been in Sri Lanka for 10 days immediately prior to my leaving (we returned to Penang on the Sunday!) so I basically got off one plane and rose at 4 am the following day for my hideously long but early start flight to JFK. In all it took 29 hours including layovers and the usual messing around at the beginning and end of the journey.

I am usually OK on long flights. I don't usually sleep that well but I know that and usually have a nap when I get in and am pretty much up for things immediately afterwards. Not this time and I put it down to my new neck pillow.

It is a very nice neck pillow and really does allow you to get your head in a comfortable position from where you can actually sleep a bit. So I think I did sleep a bit. Of course this would have been in between getting woken up by the flight attendants to eat or drink something (I don't usually eat or drink much on long flights as it makes me uncomfortable) which always happens at the most inconvenient times so any sleep that I did get was broken up. Still it was more than usual so I thought I'd readjust easily.

That didn't work this time as for some reason I have been consistently waking up around 3 am every morning (a week later still the same) and around 3 pm each day I have felt incredibly sleepy. It is bugging me I can tell you. But for the purpose of this post it did mean that on my one day at leisure in the Big Apple I was up with the larks, probably before them actually, wondering what I should do for my day's adventures.

Luckily it was sunny so whilst brisk it was a great day to walk the streets. But first breakfast.

Now I love corned beef hash so a proper New York Jewish deli had to be the way to go and luckily courtesy of Mr. Google I chose Sarge's at 548 3rd Avenue, a great midtown diner.

I expected a normal person sized helping but did note in passing it came with 3 fried eggs and home fries. It was a huge bucket load of really fantastic corned beef hash, so much that I couldn't eat again for the rest of the day... except of course that I did so should really say that I shouldn't have eaten for the rest of the day rather than couldn't. Go there. Sarge's is wonderful. Ridiculous portion sizes though so be warned.

I had some shopping to do, tennis related, so thought I'd see if I could find the tennis shop belonging to a guy I'd met a few years ago at a tennis camp, Woody. He had a couple of shops, one on 35th near Macy's and the other at Flushing Meadows, the home of the US Open. His shop is called NYC Racquet Sports (website: www.nycracquetsports.com so do visit) and is well stocked. Woody was there as well busily stringing racquets. Lots of them with people coming in all the time to get him to do theirs.

Woody told me though that his business and by association all of retail is being seriously harmed by the internet. As I had just ordered some tennis shoes from Tennis Warehouse and am an enthusiastic shopper on Amazon, I really didn't feel I could say much and did feel rather abashed about the fact that my shopping choices were adversely impacting my buddy's business.

It did make me think about the rights and wrongs about this and it is a tricky one for small businesses like Woody's cannot hope to compete on price and choice with the likes of the big internet retailers and I'll focus on Tennis Warehouse for now. Every piece of inventory that Woody holds he has to pay for out of his precious cash flow and it cannot be as large. It is simply too much money. Tennis Warehouse has hundreds of pages of stuff with dozens of different suppliers. Not everything they advertise is in stock so for those items they have to go out and source them before sending it off to the buyer. We the buyer are OK with that if it is the specific thing we want and we ... important point here ... do not blame them for not holding that particular item in stock. But if we do go to a small retailer like Woody and he does not have that specific item, we roll our eyes and go somewhere else. The likelihood of us returning as a result of this is lower too. We have been disappointed once so why try again when there are alternatives? So we the buyer now have double standards when dealing with the small retailer and that is before considering price. Really difficult for the small business to compete which is really tough as what they do provide is service and advice. You don't get that from an internet retailer. When I was in Woody's shop, probably a dozen people came in with racquets and he discussed with them each time their requirements. One particular lady hadn't played in some years and told him she wanted string tension to be 59 pounds. Apologies to non-tennis players here but for the racquet she had, recommended tension by the manufacturer is 54-55 pounds but regular players would chose 52-53 pounds tension. 59 pounds is like playing with a piece of wood. Woody calmly and quietly said all this and put her right. If she starts playing again she will thank Woody for his advice... or rather should but in all probability will not which is a shame. This is what you pay that little bit extra for.

I left Woody with the intent on changing my buying behavior immediately in favor of the small business. Then I went and bought coffee from Starbucks. Grrr.

The day really was glorious and for some reason I suddenly realized that the UN HQ is only a few blocks away from my hotel.  It is down by the East River and is probably a thriving place bubbling over with interesting stuff. So I walked the few blocks until I found the building and looked for the ticket office opposite.

I was surprised for the UN is one of the most important global organizations bar none and one would have thought that there'd be oceans of visitors. It was virtually empty. No lines. I was greeted by the security guard who had a nice chat with me... oh nice, Bermuda, eh. That's great. Love to go... all that sort of thing before he ushered me through the door into the ticket office. Sorry deserted ticket office. I joined the line, or rather would have done had there been a line but there were those line divider things in expectation for the crowds. Just in case. The lady behind the counter called out "Next" and I went up to the counter.

She asked me how many, I said one. She asked for my ID and I provided my Bermuda drivers license. She didn't know where or what Bermuda was so I explained. She entered my details into her 'system'... yes the bloody 'system' again ... and told me that Bermuda was not one of the options in her pull down menu. I said in that case why not just put in Great Britain as Bermuda was a colony still. She said she couldn't do that because I gave her a Bermuda ID, not a GB one. I didn't have my passport. So she went over to a colleague who gave her a book and I must say I was very surprised that such a book should exist for it was a book alphabetized by country showing all types of acceptable ID. I was looking at it upside down but it looked like it had drivers licenses, passports, social security cards, and a bunch of others. She couldn't find Bermuda. Mind you I think part of that was due to her inability to figure out that Bermuda would come after Belgium in alphabetic order. I tried to point it out but instead she called for a supervisor. He looked at my ID and said 'yeah Bermuda, well that's OK'. He'd never been there either but had heard of it and most importantly he was able to find it in the book once he figured out the alphabetic thing. In fact the picture they had on the page was a Bermuda drivers license very similar to the one from me that he was holding.

In all this took around 20 minutes to complete and at conclusion there was still nobody else in line. I just cannot imagine what would happen on a busy day.

I don't know why but I still thought that there'd be others jamming up the public parts of the UN building but I was welcomed through the outer gates, personally greeted through security and made my way pretty much alone still into the main hall where I nearly jumped out of my skin as I thought they had a statue of Johnny Barnes right in front welcoming all and sundry. I was wrong of course for on closer looking it was Nelson Mandela. The main meeting room was also less than half empty and it looked like not much was going on.

And I have to say that was my experience of the UN HQ building. It was all rather disappointing that on the one hand nothing much appeared to be going on, debate wise, and on the other that there were not crowds of people visiting one of the most important buildings in the world. It made me rather wonder if the UN really is becoming something of a nothing really and running that thought further along whether being Special Ambassador to the UN was actually a positive career move. During the Soviet era, I think it was probably a bit more important, but now? Well I don't know.

All in all though it was still a great day to be strolling the streets of this wonderful city. And yes by 3pm I was really dragging my feet!

OK on replay they don't look the same but they do both have their arms outstretched to greet you! Sorry guys.

Visitors

We had our first visitor recently in Penang. It was Debbie our long time friend from Bermuda who now lives in England. It was great to see her and that she was our first.

Viv and I realised that we really haven't done all that much sight seeing in Penang so this was a chance for us to do just that. It has been great, a real eye opener for us as well, so where to start?

1. Circumnavigation

On a couple of occasions I tried to but a street map of the island of Penang. You can find small ones in various tourist brochures but never a proper map. I like maps and discovered to my dismay that no bookshops stocked them. The main tourist office said I should find a Lonely Planet guide and use the map in that as they had none too. So in our defence we hadn't really pushed the envelope in looking around much and decided that Debbie was our perfect chance.

The island is pretty big. Certainly large enough to hold nearly 800,000 inhabitants and it appears that most live in right hand side which includes Georgetown and the urban suburbs.  The middle is largely mountainous and jungle and the left hand side is actually pretty sparsely populated. However there is the Tropical Fruit Farm there.

2. Fruit Farm

The fruit in Penang is marvellous, so different to where we had been before, and the Fruit Farm is all about that. Sadly it is not main season for most fruit (that is April to June) so no durian (gulp), mangoes, and lots of other fruits. However the all year round favourites were there as was a very knowledgeable guide who was able to walk us through the various orchards, avoid most of the mosquito swamps (it has been raining a lot here) and generally keep us alive as this island is a constant reminder that much of it is still primal jungle.

The view from the fruit farm down to the coast in the distance. It is built on the side of hills

The fruit that was there was very delicious too. Very worth while visit.

3. The Bottom Left

This part is rather unpopulated and its villages are very poor looking and extremely rural. At the end of one road... and it was the end... it seemed as though everything just ended. Then all of a sudden, we came into a very wide and impressive highway going from somewhere to somewhere else... we had no map so could not be sure where we were. Except definitely bottom left.

4. Cocktails

As I have mentioned before we have known Debbie for quite some time. 1985 to be precise. One of Debbie's rather endearing traits is the 5 o'clock cocktail and I had forgotten this and I think so had Viv but on our first day of exploration around late afternoonish, Debbie's demeanour changed. Not for the worst of course but she did pointedly start a conversation about this tradition of hers and we finally noticed that it was well past this point. And when one considered things all in all, we felt that this was one tradition that was well worth keeping up in Penang.

We'd started Debbie's holiday with a rooftop cocktail overlooking the entire island and at home thereafter would continue with a themed cocktail du jour depending on what we all felt like. Limes and fresh mint are readily available so once I'd sourced some Bacardi... mojito's. That's how it went.

We had been recommended Red Garden in Georgetown as a good people watching spot and as we had never visited decided that would be the place on our first day of exploration... and found it to be a sort of Octoberfest location. Big bandstage in the centre. Hawker stands all around the periphery. Tables set out in the middle serving buckets of 6 beers at a time to thirsty frequenters and revellers. Just perfect for us in fact after a hard days circumnavigating (we didn't discover that we had barely 'done' half of the island later on when we looked at Google Maps!).

5. A Tale of Two Bridges

Once we discovered our oversight in completing the job on Day 1, we decided to complete things but including both bridges and some shopping in our itinerary (Debbie is a keen shopper). Hence our two bridges tour.

This was simply heading to the Design Village on the mainland for the retail therapy part and both bridges there and back. Still fun to see even though the Design Village is still pretty much someone's field of dreams... build it and they will come.

6. Massage Therapy in Georgetown

Everyone's favorite relaxer ... I should say pre-5.01 relaxer, just to cement the place of the cocktail in the daily calendar, is a massage which are great in Penang. Personally I love foot massages and Viv had found a recommended one in Georgetown proper so we could combine it with some heritage.

7. Georgetown's Heritage

Until we began, we didn't quite realize just how much of it there is. In some cities we had visited there were a few things slung around but in Georgetown it is vast and with such diversity too. British colonial is what we thought but that's only the tip of the iceberg. Add in Chinese shophouses, wonderful clan houses, Perankan mansions, the jetties and then the different parts of town: Little India, Chinatown, Armenian Street... Fully discovering and marveling in this town will take more than the few days that we had with Debbie so we gave her a break and just hit some high points.

8. Street Food

You cannot visit Penang without sampling street food. There are all manner of restaurants for sure but to experience it fully, you just have to hit the hawker stands.

Typical hawker stand

9. Penang Hill

We'd not visited the hill so thought we'd take Debbie. People will tell you that you shouldn't go if it's cloudy as you won't see anything which is true enough but it is always cloudy. It was sunny at sea level this day but the clouds were everywhere at the top... whatever. And rainy. With threats of thunderstorms. So we chose to visit the Heritage Centre which is basically an eco conscious enclave boasting some pretty neat things and most importantly had a shuttle to take us the couple of kilometers from the cable car railhead.

Backing up, the hill is one of those wonderful British colonial inventions. Take over a really hot and sticky country and you can chose to either suffer at low levels and probably contract typhus and die at age 23 (check the graveyards) or far better find the nearest high ground, hills are good but low mountains are the best, and build some residences in this 'hill station' from where you can enjoy life rather better and maybe even avoid typhus or some other fell disease. Hence the Penang Hill. It was residences, hotels and hospitals from the outset... and remember the entire island was unoccupied when the British acquired it in 1786, only a few fishermen had temporary shacks at water level, so this was entirely a British colonial construct.

The Heritage is built on top of a hotel and the really high walkway they've built was on top of an old tennis court. However it was really cloudy and the rumored thunderstorms came in so we had to abandon the really high spots. So we really only scratched the surface and will return.

A break in the clouds just before we had to run for it

As a post script I mentioned our visit to a tennis friend who is also a bit of a nature enthusiast and he was scathing about the Heritage centre blaming its construction of footpaths with cheap materials for the 19 landslides that took place last year during the heavy rains that caused deaths and so much damage down below. Now I definitely don't know what to think!

So it was a frenetic time for Debbie with us and for us both a joy to have her visit as well as a wonderful opportunity to learn just a little more of this wonderful island.

Road Trip in SE Asia Part 1

This is a very densely populated part of the world but one where many people are continuously on the move which is being enabled by a vast improvement in infrastructure, mainly roads. This means that driving say from Penang to Hat Yai in Thailand to play tennis for a few days isn't a massive task. Rather one where you just start up at 8.30 am and reach your destination around tea time.

Doesn't look far on the map as I have noted our start/end points.

Sounds like a long while but if you count an hour or more for lunch, a lengthy stop at the duty free shop on the border to pick up your duty free wine (or other spirit of your choice), some interesting getting into and out of the bus at the various immigration points and a number of pit stops to care for the personal needs of many of we oldies on the bus, then it boils down to not very long at all.

I was chatting with someone who didn't come on this brief weekend sojourn only today who told me that Hat Yai is the place where people go every 3 months to get their passports chopped (aka stamped). Why would this be, I asked? They issue 3 month tourist visas and some people who live here in Malaysia from as innocent as a spouse of a Malay who never bothered to get a visa in their own right to illegal workers (and they do exist, coming in from Myanmar and Indonesia primarily or so I am told) head there and get restamped.

It is quite a palaver actually. On the way out isn't an issue from the Malay perspective but it is on the Thai side. The organizer told me that Thailand is the only country in the world to charge you when you go through Immigration for the privilege of getting a stamp. However this isn't certain as there are signs everywhere saying "no charge for passing through Immigration... during regular hours." Apparently they justify the charge by saying it is for "overtime".

We didn't pay anything or at least don't think we did and as we chose to go out on a Friday and back on a Monday, the crowds weren't too bad. So the delay wasn't that onerous.

Coming back though was the reverse. The Thai authorities ushered us through in no time but the Malay side was a bit of a pain. Nor from the immigration perspective but from customs. Being a muslim country, Malaysia is pathologically concerned with alcohol and making sure that nobody ... and I do mean nobody... has more than 1 liter of the stuff per person.

I don't know what else they are looking for as they took great pains to examine our bags for booze and stopped a couple from our party who had in addition to their allowance the remnants of a bottle of wine with no more than 2 inches left at the bottom of the bottle and hassled them. This after they had 'cleared' things with the supervisor at the outset.

Some more serious things they look out for at the border: human trafficking and ivory

However the real reason for going to Hat Yai was to stay at a sports resort just out of town where there were 4 indoor tennis courts. Very good they were too and apparently very useful as it rains an awful lot in Thailand (and for that matter Malaysia too). The entire thing was a nice idea having in addition to tennis courts, 5 badminton courts, a big gym and a Muay Thai complex as that sport (Thai kick boxing) is hugely popular.

The town itself is meant to be the largest in southern Thailand with over 200,000 inhabitants. It is located in Songkhla Province more of which later. Only further south is the separatist insurgency! Thankfully. We saw no sight of it but there were certainly tons of police and armed forces lurking around all the time.

Tuk Tuk is the best way to get around

The big reason to come here other than as noted in the guide book is food and shopping. One big shopping mall takes care of the latter but the food is everywhere. You simply cannot avoid eating and being with a bunch of Malays from Penang meant that nobody wanted to. You can scratch the surface of even the grumpiest Penangite by asking where his/her favorite chicken rice stall is and that lets loose a fountain of information (always different from someone else) and you have broken the ice. Voila!!



We had some great food, so much so that I have resurrected my other blog "Grey Nomad Eats" -- you can find it here -- to wax lyrical in the way it should be done.  But my goodness the food was simply fabulous. It is great in Penang and so it is in Hat Yai too.

Unfortunately we stayed at the Lee Gardens Hotel right in the middle of town for one night and it was totally and utterly a dump. I was OK with it for one night but the following day we got stories from every member of the party regarding their experiences. I know that we slept with our bags on the bed with us!

The Western Saloon was pretty good fun... and had the band

Nightlife was fun though. And it was a pleasant surprise that there was no reluctance to serve booze of all sorts. We even found good cocktails as well as craft beer.. and of course a bar that had a house band playing classic rock. Guitarist was very decent too.

Cocktails at Homeless, also a restaurant 

One thing though is the language barrier. One on one, it is OK as most Thais I think know some English but street signs, shop fronts, etc. are simply impossible as they are mostly in Thai script without translation. Google Maps was very helpful.

Sometimes even Google gets confused

Highlight for me was lunch on the 3rd day when we went on a longish drive after leaving the tennis resort and before checking into the Lee Gardens in Hat Yai. The last little while was next to a large body of water on the way to Songkhla proper (we never made it to the town just stopped at the restaurant to eat).

View from the restaurant of the fish farms and the water

Did I say the food was great?

All sea food from the waters next to the restaurant

And here is the itinerary in full. Thanks Track My Tour creator Chris! You can find the full story here.