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I am walking down the street, with the sun setting behind me. My pace is slow, I walk with a purpose but it is not apparent to me, as if I was watching myself from above. I am really drifting between the various moods that a certain album inspires. Then for some reason I think about consumption, and my appetite for everything; and I think about how I get obsessive over things and have to consume them. Not food, more like media and information, there is no such thing as too much information in my mind, there is always one more article I just have to read, one more profile to absorb, one more page to turn, one last paragraph to finish, one more episode, one more highlight reel, one more listen…and it does not stop
“I can't get no satisfaction“

So I fear as to what am I becoming, a consumer with a never-ending appetite that just wants to swallow everything and absorbs nothing. Is my soul empty and hollow? Am I just a product of greedy western consumer culture that takes all it can, regardless of necessity? Or do basic survival instincts take over and demand that I consume it all before it, or I disappear.

napping on trams

this is a dangerous topic my friends.

you get on a tram, and you are confident you will get home, however you have 10-15 stops to go till your stop...so slowly your eyelids start to close, and as you struggle to fight a losing battle your eyes give out, and you convince yourself its just for a station or two...

then before you know it, you are at a new station name, one you do not recognize, and now comes the issue.
do you walk left or right, if you follow logic, you know all tram stops before your stop, and thus when you get dropped of, you turn left and walk that way till you reach something you recognize.

unless you are Lav, then you go right, and you pass one tram stop and loo for familiar sights and as you dont see any, you keep walking, and you walk, past the next, and the next, and the next station, and soon you see a tram waiting in the distance (never good news, since it means you have reached a turning point for trams) but you walk towards because for some reason you are sure that is the way to go. As the tram leave the station you notice that there are no more tracks for you to follow, and that you have in fact reached the end of the tram line.

At this point you begin to curse. everything. mother father brother sister friend uncle cousin and anyone you cna think of, and you start to call people that may be awake so that you may bitch appropriately about the fuck up you just created. and hope that maybe they see some humor or positive side to it, because you surely do not.

when you realize that in fact everyone is sleeping and that no one gives a fuck that you are a fucking moron who sleeps on trams and they feel no pity or anything for your stupidity, that's when you realize that you have to walk back, all 4 tram stops, and even if that happens to be 2 miles, and there is nothing that is separating you from that fact, you are tied to it. if you wish to come home, you will walk, if not, you can nap on a street corner like a bum and hope to catch a morning tram...

the moral is my friends, do not sleep on trams, and if you do, when you get of, and you are unsure of your surroundings, always, ALWAYS turn left and walk towards the left side, as that will bring you back......


my legs and my brain is tired now, and to top it off....i missed an NBA playoffs game.....now that's a real reason to be damn pissed off!

Pasticada part II

2nd part of recipe

To the marinating mixture also add a glass of wine, and some chopped up onions, like 3-4 of those little bulbs that are the size of garlic bulbs, and several carrots
Now that the meat has sat overnight….take it out of the fridge, sauté a few onions that are chopped into quarters and add them to the mix, about a cup of tomato sauce, and then put it on the stove, and let it simmer, on a light fire, for a couple of hours. At this time, take out the chunk of meat, and cut it into long cuts (making sure that you cut with the meat ex. Do not cut against it, meaning go with the lines on the meat) that are about an inch thick. Then get your blender out, and slowly pour the veggies and sauce into it (several times if needs be) and blend thoroughly, return everything to the pot. And let it cook for another 30-45 minutes.
In a separate pot, bring to boil a lot of water, and toss some gnocchi in it. Make sure it’s enough gnocchi, and that they are at least 80% potato, or else they are not as good. Now with gnocchi you do not need to drain, as soon as one of the buggers floats up, he or she is done, and take him out, use one of those spoons with holes in it so that you do not take water too. It is crucial to take gnocchi out one by one, and not drain them like pasta, because some are done faster and some slower.
Place the gnocchi in a bowl, go to the pasticada, take out a few pieces of the meat, and place over the gnocchi, and cover in the sauce.

Enjoy….

p.s.
Make sure you have leftovers, because it tastes way better the 2nd day, and way way way better on the 3rd day, so I was not kidding when I said to make a lot. Also do not re heat in a microwave, put it on the stove. This only applies to the pasticada; the gnocchi should be made fresh each day!

p.p.s.

sorry no post sooner....was too busy eating pasticada....my favorite part is the sauce....i could eat just the sauce with some fresh bread....mmmmmmm

The times we are in

Good analogy...

When a fireman sees a house on fire, he sounds an alarm, dons his turnout gear, bravely rescues the occupants and puts out the fire.

When an investment banker sees a house on fire, he quietly sells the burning house short, uses the proceeds to buy a larger house for himself and, when someone suggests that his taxes be raised to help the homeless, he rails against the dangers of socialism.

I saw this at NY times this morning...i think its very appropriate

Update

A month has gone by and I am sure many are wondering ‘what has happened to this blog?’
Well nothing to be exact, I have posted some cool links and videos mainly on my facebook page since it is so much easier to link to that page. However this I can access from work thus it does also have some advantages when I just absolutely must publish something no matter the price.

In culinary news:
Made ‘pašticada’ with the dad two weekends ago, and it is an amazingly delicious dish, here is how we prepped and then made it.
First you buy a giant piece of beef (not baby beef, but older) about 2 kg (4-5 lbs) because when you make this it is for a lot of people or you want to eat it for a few days. Slice and dice any fat of the edges, now what we did next was amazing, get a blub of garlic, peel all the cloves, and start making small but deep cuts into the meat and stick the garlic cloves into the meat, do this all over the meat, from all sides. Next get some pieces of bacon, and now this is not the kind of bacon that is soft, you want the cured bacon, the one that you cut with a knife that is hard and not the soft stuff that you fry in the pan with eggs. Slice the bacon into pieces about a 2 cm (1 inch) in length and roughly the thickness of an iPod nano, and proceed to stuff them into the meat in the same manner as the garlic cloves.

Dump the meat into a giant pot, and I cannot stress enough how giant the pot should be, freaking huge, and also cut up a celery root into fairly large chunks, toss into the same pot, along with what I believe was some vine vinegar and a bit of water. (I will double check the amounts tonight, as I am making this again, and then update the post) and let it sit marinating overnight. (Again if I have missed anything this will be appended tonight to let you know)

We resume this recipe tomorrow when we begin the 2nd half  so you have something to wait for!

In upcoming trip news:
Its Easter soon which means that I am off to the bundesrepublik! To visit a lil burek eater that is demanding I bring her at least 2, but I know that she would prefer a minimum of 3!
It is going to be exciting as I am also tasked with brining back some hardware for my dad, and more than that, jenny will have loads of Easter chocolates and eggs and various things to make me get fat  which I love oh so very much.
And lets not forget that I am also going to get too see my burek eater! This is the whole point of the trip.

In sports news:
Liverpool is playing the best football I have seen a team play in a while, to beat Real Madrid in Madrid 1-0, then a week later trash them 4-0 at home, and a mere 4 days later go to Old Trafford and destroy Man United 4-1 speaks volumes! The club is on a roll, I can only hope that Arsenal gets their act together and makes some noise in the champions league as it is clear that domestically they are no match for Man U and Liverpool. DaSilva is back, which is great news for Croatia too, we really missed dudu, he is the spear of our team as we do not have anyone as capable of unlocking the game with some wizardry. Milan is getting older and older and one can only hope they reinforce their defense and attack with some fresh faces this summer, but somehow I doubt it will happen.
Lakers are doing great in the NBA, and D-Wade is tearing it up lately, though it seems as if LeBron got a bit annoyed at all the attention Wade was getting, so he went out and had 3 triple doubles in a row…BEAST!

In I am a working man news:
IM GETTTTTING PAID!!!!!!!
Yeah that’s all im going to say about that

In economic crisis news:
Some good news, some bad news, some interesting ideas, but really does anyone at all have a clear picture of what is going on? And has anyone give a good reason as to why we should or should not be bailing out corporations all across the world? It seems as if there is so much posturing on all sides and the media is loving it, especially as they were so disappointed that the election was over, they are loving this crisis, they can print print print about it day in day out. However they are adding nothing to the debate, and are actually taking away from what is important and focusing on issues that in the grand scheme of things do not matter that much. Most notably Rush Limbaugh, as if anyone really cares what twiddle dum has to say? Does it matter? And who gives a rats ass if he wants anyone to fail, hell I want him to fail, but I do not assume that I will be getting thousands of stories written about it, that all just repeat the same one quote and add nothing to any debate.
AIG, has managed to usurp Rush as the story, they paid out bonuses of 165 million $ to the same traders that almost collapsed the firm so that they can retain them. First off, this is about .1% of the total amount they have received from the government (170 BILLION $) THAT’S RIGHT 1 TENTH OF 1 PERCENT! Instead of focusing on the rest, and why should we sink even more money in a company that until 2 days ago was trading at 40 cents with 2.69 billion shares outstanding, that means you could own the whole company for 1.076.000.000 . This is roughly 1% of the amount of money the government has subsidized AIG with so far… chew on that for a minute
And all anyone can talk about is 165 million in bonuses, how about the fact that AIG is unlikely to be able to repay the 170 billion anytime in the next 2 decades….
Magicians everywhere know the tactic, show a shiny object in the left hand, while you pick pocket with the right hand, this is essentially what people in power do every day, and the media are such tools they fall for it every time.

A Confession

Since the spring, and most acutely this autumn, a global contagion of fear and panic has choked off the arteries of finance, compounding a broader deterioration in the global economy.

Financial institutions have an obligation to the broader financial system. We depend on a healthy, well-functioning system but we failed to raise enough questions about whether some of the trends and practices that had become commonplace really served the public’s long-term interests.

As policymakers and regulators begin to consider the regulatory actions to be taken to address the failings, I believe it is useful to reflect on some of the lessons from this crisis.

The first is that risk management should not be entirely predicated on historical data. In the past several months, we have heard the phrase “multiple standard deviation events” more than a few times. If events that were calculated to occur once in 20 years in fact occurred much more regularly, it does not take a mathematician to figure out that risk management assumptions did not reflect the distribution of the actual outcomes. Our industry must do more to enhance and improve scenario analysis and stress testing.

Second, too many financial institutions and investors simply outsourced their risk management. Rather than undertake their own analysis, they relied on the rating agencies to do the essential work of risk analysis for them. This was true at the inception and over the period of the investment, during which time they did not heed other indicators of financial deterioration.

This over-dependence on credit ratings coincided with the dilution of the coveted triple A rating. In January 2008, there were 12 triple A-rated companies in the world. At the same time, there were 64,000 structured finance instruments, such as collateralised debt obligations, rated triple A. It is easy and appropriate to blame the rating agencies for lapses in their credit judgments. But the blame for the result is not theirs alone. Every financial institution that participated in the process has to accept its share of the responsibility.

Third, size matters. For example, whether you owned $5bn or $50bn of (supposedly) low-risk super senior debt in a CDO, the likelihood of losses was, proportionally, the same. But the consequences of a miscalculation were obviously much bigger if you had a $50bn exposure.

Fourth, many risk models incorrectly assumed that positions could be fully hedged. After the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management and the crisis in emerging markets in 1998, new products such as various basket indices and credit default swaps were created to help offset a number of risks. However, we did not, as an industry, consider carefully enough the possibility that liquidity would dry up, making it difficult to apply effective hedges.

Fifth, risk models failed to capture the risk inherent in off-balance sheet activities, such as structured investment vehicles. It seems clear now that managers of companies with large off-balance sheet exposure did not appreciate the full magnitude of the economic risks they were exposed to; equally worrying, their counterparties were unaware of the full extent of these vehicles and, therefore, could not accurately assess the risk of doing business.

Sixth, complexity got the better of us. The industry let the growth in new instruments outstrip the operational capacity to manage them. As a result, operational risk increased dramatically and this had a direct effect on the overall stability of the financial system.

Last, and perhaps most important, financial institutions did not account for asset values accurately enough. I have heard some argue that fair value accounting – which assigns current values to financial assets and liabilities – is one of the main factors exacerbating the credit crisis. I see it differently. If more institutions had properly valued their positions and commitments at the outset, they would have been in a much better position to reduce their exposures.

For Goldman Sachs, the daily marking of positions to current market prices was a key contributor to our decision to reduce risk relatively early in markets and in instruments that were deteriorating. This process can be difficult, and sometimes painful, but I believe it is a discipline that should define financial institutions.

As a result of these lessons and others that will emerge from this financial crisis, we should consider important principles for our industry, for policymakers and for regulators. For the industry, we cannot let our ability to innovate exceed our capacity to manage. Given the size and interconnected nature of markets, the growth in volumes, the global nature of trades and their cross-asset characteristics, managing operational risk will only become more important.

Risk and control functions need to be completely independent from the business units. And clarity as to whom risk and control managers report to is crucial to maintaining that independence. Equally important, risk managers need to have at least equal stature with their counterparts on the trading desks: if there is a question about the value of a position or a disagreement about a risk limit, the risk manager’s view should always prevail.

Understandably, compensation continues to generate a lot of anger and controversy. We recognise that having troubled asset relief programme money creates an important context for compensation. That is why, in part, our executive management team elected not to receive a bonus in 2008, even though the firm produced a profit.

More generally, we should apply basic standards to how we compensate people in our industry. The percentage of the discretionary bonus awarded in equity should increase significantly as an employee’s total compensation increases. An individual’s performance should be evaluated over time so as to avoid excessive risk-taking. To ensure this, all equity awards need to be subject to future delivery and/or deferred exercise. Senior executive officers should be required to retain most of the equity they receive at least until they retire, while equity delivery schedules should continue to apply after the individual has left the firm.

For policymakers and regulators, it should be clear that self-regulation has its limits. We rationalised and justified the downward pricing of risk on the grounds that it was different. We did so because our self-interest in preserving and expanding our market share, as competitors, sometimes blinds us – especially when exuberance is at its peak. At the very least, fixing a system-wide problem, elevating standards or driving the industry to a collective response requires effective central regulation and the convening power of regulators.

Capital, credit and underwriting standards should be subject to more “dynamic regulation”. Regulators should consider the regulatory inputs and outputs needed to ensure a regime that is nimble and strong enough to identify and appropriately constrain market excesses, particularly in a sustained period of economic growth. Just as the Federal Reserve adjusts interest rates up to curb economic frenzy, various benchmarks and ratios could be appropriately calibrated. To increase overall transparency and help ensure that book value really means book value, regulators should require that all assets across financial institutions be similarly valued. Fair value accounting gives investors more clarity with respect to balance sheet risk.

The level of global supervisory co-ordination and communication should reflect the global inter-connectedness of markets. Regulators should implement more robust information sharing and harmonised disclosure, coupled with a more systemic, effective reporting regime for institutions and main market participants. Without this, regulators will lack essential tools to help them understand levels of systemic vulnerability in the banking sector and in financial markets more broadly.

In this vein, all pools of capital that depend on the smooth functioning of the financial system and are large enough to be a burden on it in a crisis should be subject to some degree of regulation.

After the shocks of recent months and the associated economic pain, there is a natural and appropriate desire for wholesale reform of our regulatory regime. We should resist a response, however, that is solely designed around protecting us from the 100-year storm. Taking risk completely out of the system will be at the cost of economic growth. Similarly, if we abandon, as opposed to regulate, market mechanisms created decades ago, such as securitisation and derivatives, we may end up constraining access to capital and the efficient hedging and distribution of risk, when we ultimately do come through this crisis.

Most of the past century was defined by markets and instruments that fund innovation, reward entrepreneurial risk-taking and act as an important catalyst for economic growth. History has shown that a vibrant, dynamic financial system is at the heart of a vibrant, dynamic economy.

We collectively have a lot to do to regain the public’s trust and help mend our financial system to restore stability and vitality. Goldman Sachs is committed to doing so.

The writer is chief executive of Goldman Sachs

From the financial times, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0a0f1132-f600-11dd-a9ed-0000779fd2ac.html , at least one man, Lloyd Blankfein, has come out and said what they did, and the funny part is, Goldman Sachs was the only Investment Bank that made a profit last year. I want to see John Thain and company also come out and at least tell us what they did or at least admit what they messed up, show some pennance!


This is the industry that interests me, so i hope that they find a way out of this mess, through regulation and self review. Because as Blankfein says, 'a vibrant, dynamic financial system is at the heart of a vibrant, dynamic economy.'



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THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN POSTED LAST WEEK, THE SYSTEM MADE AN ERROR

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World Handball Cup!

I know its a little late, but i have been busy and lazy. work, a jenny visit, and all other things considered...sorry for neglecting el blogo!

enjoy our celebrations of 2nd place in the world handball cup, that took place right here in croatia!





more videos







when second place feels like first place! :)

Disgusting

PRIVATE school: $32,000 a year per student.

Mortgage: $96,000 a year.

Co-op maintenance fee: $96,000 a year.

Nanny: $45,000 a year.

We are already at $269,000, and we haven’t even gotten to taxes yet.

Five hundred thousand dollars — the amount President Obama wants to set as the top pay for banking executives whose firms accept government bailout money — seems like a lot, and it is a lot. To many people in many places, it is a princely sum to live on. But in the neighborhoods of New York City and its suburban enclaves where successful bankers live, half a million a year can go very fast.

“As hard as it is to believe, bankers who are living on the Upper East Side making $2 or $3 million a year have set up a life for themselves in which they are also at zero at the end of the year with credit cards and mortgage bills that are inescapable,” said Holly Peterson, the author of an Upper East Side novel of manners, “The Manny,” and the daughter of Peter G. Peterson, a founder of the equity firm the Blackstone Group. “Five hundred thousand dollars means taking their kids out of private school and selling their home in a fire sale.”

Sure, the solution may seem simple: move to Brooklyn or Hoboken, put the children in public schools and buy a MetroCard. But more than a few of the New York-based financial executives who would have their pay limited are men (and they are almost invariably men) whose identities are entwined with living a certain way in a certain neighborhood west of Third Avenue: a life of private schools, summer houses and charity galas that only a seven-figure income can stretch to cover.

Few are playing sad cellos over the fate of such folk, especially since the collapse of the institutions they run has yielded untold financial pain. But in New York, where a new study from the Center for an Urban Future, a nonprofit research group in Manhattan, estimates it takes $123,322 to enjoy the same middle-class life as someone earning $50,000 in Houston, extricating oneself from steep bills can be difficult.

Therefore, even if it is not for sympathy but for sport, consider the numbers.

The cold hard math can be cruel.

Like those taxes. If a person is married with two children, the weekly deductions on a $500,000 salary are: federal taxes, $2,645; Medicare, $139; state taxes, $682; and city, $372. With an annual Social Security tab of $6,621, the take-home pay is about $293,000 annually, said Martin Cohen, a Manhattan accountant.

Now move to living expenses.

Barbara Corcoran, a real estate executive, said that most well-to-do families take at least two vacations a year, a winter trip to the sun and a spring trip to the ski slopes.

Total minimum cost: $16,000.

A modest three-bedroom apartment, she said, which was purchased for $1.5 million, not the top of the market at all, carries a monthly mortgage of about $8,000 and a co-op maintenance fee of $8,000 a month. Total cost: $192,000. A summer house in Southampton that cost $4 million, again not the top of the market, carries annual mortgage payments of $240,000.

Many top executives have cars and drivers. A chauffeur’s pay is between $75,000 and $125,000 a year, the higher end for former police officers who can double as bodyguards, said a limousine driver who spoke anonymously because he does not want to alienate his society customers.

“Some of them want their drivers to have guns,” the driver said. “You get a cop and you have a driver.” To garage that car is about $700 a month.

A personal trainer at $80 an hour three times a week comes to about $12,000 a year.

The work in the gym pays off when one must don a formal gown for a charity gala. “Going to those parties,” said David Patrick Columbia, who is the editor of the New York Social Diary (newyorksocialdiary.com), “a woman can spend $10,000 or $15,000 on a dress. If she goes to three or four of those a year, she’s not going to wear the same dress.”

Total cost for three gowns: about $35,000.

Not every bank executive has school-age children, but for those who do, offspring can be expensive. In addition to paying tuition, “You’re not going to get through private school without tutoring a kid,” said Sandy Bass, the editor of Private School Insider, a newsletter that covers private schools in the New York City area. One hour of tutoring once a week is $125. “That’s the low end,” she said. “The higher end is 150, 175.” SAT tutors are about $250 an hour. Total cost for 30 weeks of regular tutoring: $3,750.

Two children in private school: $64,000.

Nanny: $45,000.

Ms. Bass, whose husband is an accountant with many high-end clients, said she spends about $425 every 10 days on groceries for her family. Annual cost: about $15,000.

More? Restaurants. Dry cleaning. Each Brooks Brothers suit costs about $1,000. If you run a bank, you can’t look like a slob.

The total costs here, which do not include a lot of things, like kennels for the dog when the family is away, summer camp, spas and other grooming for the human members of the family, donations to charity, and frozen hot chocolates at Serendipity, are $790,750, which would require about a $1.6-million salary to compensate for taxes. Give or take a few score thousand of dollars.

Does this money buy a chief executive stockholders might prize, a well-to-do man with a certain sureness of stride, something that might be lost if the executive were crowding onto the PATH train every morning at Journal Square, his newspaper splayed against the back of a stranger’s head?

The man would certainly not feel like himself on that train, said Candace Bushnell, the author of “Sex and the City” and other books chronicling New York social mores.

“People inherently understand that if they are going to get ahead in whatever corporate culture they are involved in, they need to take on the appurtenances of what defines that culture,” she said. “So if you are in a culture where spending a lot of money is a sign of success, it’s like the same thing that goes back to high school peer pressure. It’s about fitting in.”

By the way, the frozen hot chocolate costs $8.50.

The fact that someone had the gall to write this is insulting. NYT should really think about what they publish, as i was unaware that they were into satire, and comedy.

The author should hang his/her head in shame for actually arguing that these people need full time nannies (hows about raising YOUR kids), limo drivers (WOW!), a Vacation home (it be nice, wouldnt it), $10,000 gowns (ARE YOU FUCKING SHITTING ME), and i mean it goes on and on

This sounds like a LUXURY whishlist, not a list of necessities for living in Manhattan or NYC, i am sure anyone of us can make a list of things we 'need' and are 'part of our social standing' but this takes it to the ridiculus heights, and only serves to show how out of touch with regular people these peddlers of crap are

Smiling Faces

I need to know this - cause I notice when you're smilin'
Out in the sun havin' fun and you're feelin' free
And I can tell you know how hard this life can be
But you keep on smilin' for me

Things that have made me smile recently:

Getting that giant 'zagrebacki'
Hearing Jenny got a perfect score on her exam in linguistics
Having a job
Buying a squeezer for oranges, to make fresh juice, my task for the week, and something I will appreciate every morning
Seeing that I have the flyest wardrobe for work at work
Wearing ties
Seeing my hair grow back in the way I want it to
Croatia kicking ass in the Handball World Cup
Getting some winter style socks (go above the ankles)
Sending cards with little yellow bears on them
Going on my first business trip
Having beers with my dad
Watching sports with Neven

Thing that will make me smile to most soon:

Jenny coming for 5 days
Getting to wake up next to her
Showing her more of Zagreb
GIVING HER THE BIGGEST KISS EVER!!!