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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "meejahoar" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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08:10 pm
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Nice neologism
Enjoyed this nice neologism using German syntax: rightwordforitness (scroll to the end for this tidbit).
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10:39 am
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Pretty in pink
Isn't he gorgeous?
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06:48 pm
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Keep it all en famille
Ye old great, great, great... whatever he was grandfather from France was a man of many parts:
List of owners of the Godchaux family house at Reserve, Louisiana (sugar refinery).
History of Leon Godchaux as sugar refining magnate and The Life and Times of Leon Godchaux, Sugar King.
History of Leon Godchaux as department store magnate.
Article about him from the Los Angeles Times, November 1896.
Leon's daughter Elma apparently wrote a novel about him called Stubborn Roots, which seems to have been well received for its realistic portrayal of all different classes. She comes under "Jews / Women / Louisiana" at the State Library. A student at University of Louisiana wrote a dissertation on it in 2001. The New York Times reviewed it in 1936 and it had a mention in the New Orleans City Guide published in 1938. Must check out one of the four copies in the New Orleans Public Library next time I'm there...
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06:44 pm
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Confucius say...
"Top of ladder nice place – but very lonesome."
Or so says our Malaysian fortune cookie.
The other fortune we got was more prosaic: "Good things come to those who graft hard while waiting" (or something along those lines).
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11:25 pm
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Leaving Prague
My last day in the office! Gábena (Gabriela) and I go for lunch outdoors, and have chicken with cinnamon, roast garlic and grilled beetroot, utterly delicious. Martin and I have a lengthy chat in the morning about how our firms can work together and what specialisms they have in real estate. As is becoming habitual we break for tea and cake on the balcony – today Míša has bought chocolate cake with coconut, which is delish.
I have quite an emotional farewell with the people who have looked after me, including Míša, Bára, Petr and Martin, and they give me two beautiful books of photos, one of Prague and one of the Czech Republic, which they have all signed.
Gábena has invited me to hang out Friday evening and Saturday. We go to her flat to check on her new kitten, Chip, who is miniscule, and then we take the tram to the big park overlooking the city. We hop on the funicular railway and take it the two stops to the top, where we discover to our delight that the mini-Eiffel tower there is still open. We climb to the top. The city is shrouded in a light mist which makes everything glow and gives Prague an even dreamier, more fairy tale feel.
We have dinner at a Mexican place (Prague is absolutely dripping with Mexican and Chinese restaurants) and then I go back to my hotel.
Saturday morning Gábena rings to say she's running late and can I meet her at the Metro station in Wenceslaus Square. I do my best to be on time but 1) wheeled suitcases are designed for rolling on pavement, not on cobbles, so it's rather slow going, and 2) the main square has about eight streets that come off of it and "over there" is not really the world's most helpful directions under the circumstances.
We find each other eventually and we take the Metro to the end of the line where her parents pick us up. We then drive about 20km on the motorway to Beroun, where there is a bi-annual pottery festival.
It takes us 45 minutes to park and then we breakfast on some pastries with prunes, cheese and poppy seeds (mmmm) and spend an hour or so wandering around looking at all the wares. Hilariously, Czech hippies look... just like hippies everywhere else!
I buy a pair of stripy handmade mugs (à la Paul Smith) for my friend Mary's birthday and then we eat klobasa (giant pork sausage) with mustard and beer.
We go back to Gábena's parents place, which is five minutes from the airport, and after a couple of hours sitting in the sun in their garden with her parents' new kitten, Nelly, who is equally miniscule, she drops me at the airport. It is with great regret that I leave Prague – but I know I'll be back.
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10:30 pm
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Thursday in Prague
A long-ish but peaceful day in the office today, as I forgot to check my schedule and apparently this was supposed to be my "free" afternoon! Oops.
I continue working on my finance document for Jan (Topinka) and Ivo. Míša and her friend Barbora Šípová (Bara for short) take me to lunch at a Czech restaurant, where I have creamy onion soup with chives followed by trout fried in butter (pstruh smažený na másle) with lemon and potatoes, and they have the beef broth with vegetables and then chicken with mushrooms and cream. It's a lovely restaurant with an open courtyard full of tables, and it is rammed inside and out, always a good indicator that the food is excellent (and in this case reasonable).
The Czech government produces luncheon vouchers which any company with employees can buy and for which the company receives a tax break. The employees are then given these vouchers or sold them at a discount (so for example the firm might pay 60% and the employee 40%) and most restaurants take them. What a great idea! I'm sure the UK has something like this but I personally have never seen or used one.
We stop on the way back at a lovely bakery near the office and buy three giant slices of honey cake (medovník) for later.
At four o'clock precisely we gather for cake and coffee/tea on the balcony, joined by Zuzana (Picková). The medovník is so light and fluffy (you can see that it is made with multiple layers and is rather like a honeycomb) that even though the pieces are huge and I cannot imagine finishing mine, it disappears within seconds and I feel I could probably manage another slice without too much trouble.
In the afternoon I have coffee (or rather I have mint tea and Jan and Josef have coffee) with Jan (Topinka) and Josef (Otčenášek), who are the banking, finance and capital markets team. We chat for a long time about the state of the market, about current conditions, about how our firms can work together more. Then we have to dash back to the office because Jan is trying to organise things so he does not have to come in on Friday. Jan says he thinks the work I have been doing on their standard form document is extremely helpful, which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.
Martin takes off around 6.30pm on his Suzuki Bandit. I make a few more amendments to my slide presentations for Friday morning (ulp!) and send these to Petr (Skalsky), so that we can print them out, and I leave around 8pm.
Back at my hotel I decide that as I have to give my two presentations at 8.15am I will have an early night, so I do the lazy traveller's thing and eat dinner at my hotel. I have something which seems to be referred to as vrabec("sparrow") and consists of roast duck, roast pork, smoked pork, spicy sausage (the colour of a but much tastier), white and red cabbage, bread dumplings and potato dumplings. After eating roughly half of this along with a glass of red wine, I am stupified by the sheer weight of protein and carbohydrates. I go to my room and call Tom to say that I am having a meat overdose. I do not think I have ever fallen asleep so quickly!
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10:30 pm
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Wednesday in Prague
Today feels less busy, somehow, although I am still working on a standard form document for HH's finance team, and we have a meeting late in the day to discuss progress and going forward. The partner with whom I am meant to be having lunch, Mike Mullen, who is like me an expat Yankee, is off sick so instead I have a pizza with Martin, Petr Skalský and Jan Hladký. It is a standing joke in the office that Hanzo (which is what people called Jan are frequently nicknamed) always has a mobile phone glued to his ear and is constantly talking to some high-powered politician or other. True to form, during lunch he has his fork in one hand and his mobile in the other.
The firm has a wine-tasting party in the evening for its VIP clients (nothing to do with my visit, just happy coincidence) on the balcony of its building. Caterers spend about three hours rushing up and down the hall outside the office I'm sharing with the HR manager, Katka, and the result is stunning: tables laden with wine glasses, canapes, bottles of wine, duck, salads, fruit, desserts and coffee. One of the HH partners (I cannot see which one) gives a speech in Czech and then a happy client from the Netherlands talks about his relationship with HH in English, and we all clap.
The wine tasting guy keeps announcing which wines we're tasting over the PA but by this time everyone is chatting so loudly it's impossible to hear him (and in any case he's speaking Czech), so we just carry on drinking whatever comes past. I chat to the Dutch guest and to Natalija Traurigová (who is originally Russian and mans the Russian desk), Zuzana Picková (who is working with one of the partners to set up an energy specialism), Petra Chudíková (who works in M&A and qualified seven months ago), Barbora Šípová (koncipientka, or trainee) and of course Míša.
All in all it's a very successful party and I sleep very soundly afterwards.
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04:57 pm
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A word on traditional Czech cuisine
I am desperate to try some classic Czech dishes but all my foodie advisers at HH have warned me that lunch is not the best time to indulge as Czech food, they say, can be "quite heavy".
Take a look at this dish from the place I've been recommended, Kolkovna, and you'll see what they mean: "Old Czech KOLKOVNA Platter 500g: 1/4 duck, Moravian „sparrow“, smoked meat, beer sausage, white and red cabbage, dumplings, bacon dumplings and potato dumplings".
All this for one person?!? Holy carbohydrate overdose, Batman!
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11:45 pm
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Tuesday in Prague
Today I spend most of the day working on a draft template for HH’s finance team. My lunch with finance partneř Josef Otčenášek and advokát (associate) Jan Topinka has to be postponed as they are in meetings that run over time (ah, it was ever thus!) but Míša ("Misha", short for Michaela) (on the right) and Gabenka (Gabriela) come to my rescue and take me to a fabulous restaurant called La Boca, where I have marinated octopus, chicken Caesar and, for pudding, gnocchi with cherries.
Then around 18.30 Martin – who has been with a client in a car for seven hours and in a meeting for five hours negotiating terms – arrives back at the office and we set off for our evening event, an avant garde party at the utterly amazing Museum Kampa co-sponsored by the British-, Italian-, French- and Belgian-Czech Chambers of Commerce.
This is right on the river, an enormous white building that was bought by a Czech woman who emigrated to the US and became very wealthy, then came back to the Czech Republic and has been investing heavily into its cultural history. The building itself was previously Sova’s Mills and it has glass excrescences built onto it which give stunning views over the river, up to the national theatre and, on the very top, of the castle.
My camera is not really up to super night photography but here is my best shot, so to speak.
The great and the good are here, including the British ambassador. We are plied with delicious barbecued meats, Italian wine, Belgian chocolates and (the British contribution, one presumes) Pimms. On the roof of the gallery is a booth serving Chivas and a Czech liqueur called Becherovka, a sort of bitter distilled from herbs. I am given this in a deceptively gentle but seductive cocktail called a Celebration, which is Becherovka, apple liqueur, ginger ale, fresh lime juice and a sprig of mint. I say seductive because it is delicious and cooling and mild and I reckon you could drink two or three without really noticing and then find you were being carried home on a stretcher.
The art is extraordinary, enormous brightly coloured animals, part of an exhibit called Re-evolution by Italian avant garde artists The Cracking Art Group. Here is a photo of Martin with a giant orange rabbit:
which he says he now plans to use as his business card.
Martin and I stay looking over the city and drinking (me my Celebration, him a Chivas) until the bar closes and then we walk over the Charles Bridge, which itself is lovely, back to the office. We have a final drink (him a pivo, me a hot chocolate) while he waits for his taxi and then I go back to the hotel (where I nearly have to break in as it’s late) and go immediately to sleep without passing go or collecting $200. We have another party on Wednesday evening, on the balcony at the office, and a girl needs her beauty sleep!
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11:00 pm
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Monday evening in Prague
HH in the form of Martin treats me to Mexican dinner at Red Hot & Blues, which has live jazz and an open-air courtyard.
A bunch of people from the office come along, including Ivo, Michaela (or Míša, pron. "Misha") and the American proofreader, Adrianne (who went to Grinnell College in Iowa – that’s “university” to anyone British – in Iowa, as did one of the partners here, and is here for a year following graduation).
Good food, great company, nice music. We talk about, among other things, Ikea, hotdogs, washing machines, politics, TV and your so-called “right to bear arms” (ie right to shoot yourself, more often than not, with your own weapon) in the US.
Then I walk Adrianne towards her flat so I can see the main square. It is stunningly beautiful, especially at night. The church with the astrological clock is intriguing as half of it burnt down, I think, so it is half ancient and half not so ancient, giving it a rakish charm.
There is a building just off the square the entire wall of which is painted to look like relief – but when you get up close to it you realise it is in fact only 2D. Many of the buildings are painted in lovely clear pastel colours. A guy on a bike with multiple seats offering brochures to tourists and little carts are selling gelati and a traditional Czech pastry which I think is called a trdelnik. I resist these as I am very full of chicken burrito and nachos and, of course, pivo (beer) brewed in Prague.
Home to bed whereupon I am instantly asleep (particularly as one of my favourite shows, The Closer, is on TV when I get in… but dubbed into Czech!).
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02:10 pm
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On exchange at Havel & Holásek in Prague – Monday
Breakfast is stunning: cereal, yoghurt, juices, tea and coffee, hard boiled eggs, six kinds of bread, four kinds of cheese, honey, jam, butter… the list goes on and on.
Martin Fučík comes to collect me and my hotel, it transpires, is literally on the doorstep of Havel & Holásek.
The firm resides in a beautiful 15th century former customs house, over three floors. It is very light and full of plants, and has a balcony with bay trees and tables and chairs which smells delicious. The building has many amazing original features, including massive wooden stairs and parquet floors. It is something of a maze, though compared to Adelaide House it’s fairly easy to master.
I am to share an office with Katka (short for Katerina) in HR, with a window that opens over the square smelling of spices from the Dr Stuart’s emporium below. A pack of office supplies – biros, highlighters, pink and yellow Post-Its – has kindly been put together for me.
Luckily for me “hello” in Czech is “dobry dyin”, which is near enough to the little Russian I remember that I can say it reasonably confidently. I am taken round to be introduced to everyone in the office (except for a few of the partners, who not unlike English partners appear to spend large chunks of time out of the office). My Czech doesn’t quite stretch to, “Lovely to meet you!” but I shake lots of hands and do much nodding and smiling. Everyone welcomes me enthusiastically.
The HH office feels friendly and casual, with some people even wearing jeans (though Katka who introduces round both me and the work experience student who is starting today says they didn’t oughtta) and hardly anyone in suits except for partners. (There are three people on the office management side called Katerina, all of whom as an aide memoire are called Katka for short, about four called Jan, two Barboras, a handful of Josefs – it's a bit like the Monty Python sketch about the philosophy professors who want to call the new guy “Bruce” to avoid confusion.)
The big differences are that largely people sit together by position – partners seem mostly to sit alone, associates (“advocáti”) mainly share with other associates and trainees (“koncipienti”) share with trainees, or occasionally with an associate – and that doors are closed more often here. The doors are wooden with no windows, and the glass walls have silver venetian blinds behind them, so you see fewer faces when you wander down the hall. But the atmosphere is similarly casual and friendly to that at BLP so I feel right at home.
Petr Skalský (who shares an office with my "buddy", Martin) asks me to review an Agreement for Cooperation between an SPV and the Czech equivalent of a local authority (in English, needless to say), just for sense and English usage, which I do.
Czech legal documents, it seems, are divided into two types: named, largely standardised forms called nominate contracts (leases, or sale and purchase contracts, for instance) and contracts which do not fall under any of these named categories, called “unnamed” or innominate contracts. This is the latter.
Section 269(2) Act No. 513/1991 Sb, the Commercial Code, permits parties to conclude a contract that is an innominate commercial contract and section 50(a) (I think) of the civil code is the basis for innominate civil law contracts.
Apparently in Prague one eats lunch at 11.30. This afternoon I am going to help out with finance templates, which should be fun.
Later:
Back in the office around 13.00. Partner Josef Hlavička and koncipientka (trainee) Michaela Riedlová, who both coincidentally come from Moravia, take me to lunch at a place with high ceilings and a largely Italian menu. I share an enormous green salad with Michaela, who worked as an au pair in London, and then I have an even more ginormous black risotto (with squid in its own ink) all to myself. Mmmm. We are all too stuffed to eat dessert.
I hear more about the differences between the Czech and English legal systems. In order to transact any sort of business in the Czech Republic you have to be registered, usually as an entrepreneur. Business agreements are regulated in some cases by the civil and in others by the commercial code here, and sometimes by both, and it seems to depend on a) the type of document (lease, SPA, etc) and also b) the nature of the parties to the document as to which.
This can lead to difficulties because, for example, a document that is regulated by the civil code such as a lease or other property transactional document may be part of a larger transaction where other documents are regulated by the commercial code. The two codes have different limitation periods, among other things.
Czech legal training is longer and tougher than ours, perhaps not so surprising when you realise that a Czech lawyer is an “advocate”, both solicitor and barrister. They have five years of study, three years of work experience and then five written and five oral exams at the end of their training after which they are admitted to the bar. The oral exams sound particularly gruelling as koncipienti are examined by a panel made up of lawyers, academics and judges and are marked not only on their level of accuracy but also on their persuasiveness.
Even later:
Another person I have chatted to today is Gabriela Doudová, who is the Provozní Manažer at Havel & Holásek. This sounds very exciting and elegant but I am not certain exactly what she does. Will investigate further. Ah, yes, Google translates this as “Operating Manager”. “Provozní Manažer” sounds SOOO much better, doesn’t it? More enigmatic and intriguing. Like something you need a neoprene balaclava and some carabiners to do, rather than a phone and a PC.
Still later:
Have a meeting with Jan Topinka (advocát) and Ivo Průša (koncipient) on developing some standard forms with them, including loan and priority documents and checklists to use with these. Will be interesting to look at documents from a borrower’s, rather than a lender’s, perspective.
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11:30 pm
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Pootling to Prague
My flight goes from Terminal 5. Getting there via the Heathrow Express is wonderfully quick but the terminal itself is a bit disappointing – it looks… like an airport. Or more accurately, like a B&Q. The shopping, too, is disappointing: almost too upmarket. There’s a Harrods, there’s a make-up place that’s too rarified to have a Clinique counter, some random bookstore I’ve never heard of (H&H?), a Gordon Ramsey place called “Plane Food”, and the usual suspects (Dior, Gucci, etc).
The flight is delayed by 50 minutes, then brief and unedifying – I am sat next to a British man and his unremittingly thick yet relentlessly perky North American wife/girlfriend/life partner – the classic Ugly American – who talks incessantly for the entire flight in the sort of tones I so despise… a squeaky little girlie voice you can't sleep through.
She can’t understand why the US doesn’t just go into “Eye-Rack” and get rid of all the problem locals. And when the flight attendant asks her if she would like lemon juice and Tabasco sauce in her tomato juice, she says brightly, “Just like a bloody Mary without the vodka!” to which the flight attendant gamely replies, “That’s the idea.”
My hotel has arranged for a car to collect me from the airport. Driving through the dark, quiet suburbs you can see well-lit, half-empty trams rolling through the streets and lots of peaceful looking low-rise blocks of flats.
The city itself is beautiful, as are most cities at night, but this one in particular has ancient and unusual buildings. You can see why it is used as a location for so many films. Dimly lit cobbled streets, bright restaurants with waiters in white shirts and bow ties, stone buildings with many archways and overhanging trees. I feel right at home as we drive past two Hugo Boss stores, Dunhill and Burberry.
By the time I reach my hotel, the Černý Slon, it is after 23.00. It has no lift so I am gratified to discover that when a Czech says “second floor” they mean what we Yanks mean by “second floor”, or what the British puzzlingly call… the “first floor”, so I have only to lug my suitcase up one flight of steps.
The hotel building is on the Unesco heritage list (as is much of Prague) and my room has a gorgeous ceiling of elaborately painted beams.
On my TV, amazingly, is one of my favourite films ever, John Sayles’ The Return of the Secaucus Seven, with subtitles so I am able to watch it. Then I put the timer on the TV and fall asleep to the sound of Dave Brubeck live.
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02:49 pm
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Bristling with indignation...
...over two stories:
Distressing Digeridoo Discrimination Aboriginies are up in arms about a book that teaches girls to play the digeridoo. Um... where I come from we call that sex discrimination; and
Grammatical Grimacing A great list of people's least favourite grammatical and punctuation errors. Me, too: I literally become incandescent with rage's.
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02:43 pm
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"In a world where..." RIP
Oh great tragedy! The guy who did the voiceovers for all those Hollywood movie trailers that said, "In a world where black is white, sometimes black is grey", has died of a "lung-related illness" in LA, aged 68.
I'm never going to the pictures again!
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02:05 pm
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East meets West; virtual bimbos
BBC News Online's Magazine has a nice little feature on the cultures of East and West during the Cold War. It quotes Jane Pavitt, curator of the Cold War Modern exhibition opening next month at the Victoria and Albert Museum, as saying, "Consumer society was used as a bulwark against communism in Europe in the 1950s. That's why fashion and kitchen goods can be seen as part of this." Lovely.
Meanwhile... read this absolute horror on ABC News about a site that let kids as young as 8 give their virtual dolls breast implants and diet pills. Grody to the max!
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07:32 pm
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Lions and tigers and housecats, oh my!
Love the photos from this story in the Daily Mail about an abandoned lion cub and a ginger housecat who have become the best of friends (hilarious Daily Mail headline: The Purrfect Couple).
These vie for unbearable cuteness with the Mail on Sunday's photos of these equally abandoned white tiger cubs at a German zoo (equally hilarious Mail on Sunday headline: All white now). Listen to those squeals (Reuters video)! Most un-tigerish.
Of course none of them are as cute as our new adoptee, Isaac Hayes, who is now about 7 months old and already as big as Lucifer. He has "kitty crazy hour" pretty much all the time when he is not eating, sleeping or having a giant poo. Lucifer is not terrifically happy about all of this; at 13 years old and weighing a stone he has always ruled the roost. Never mind, having someone around to attack has made him behave like a kitten again. Jemimah just growls at him and glares.
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02:26 pm
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When clicking "Enlarge" doesn't do what it says on the tin...
The poor Argentinian-born actor whose "manhood" was airbrushed out for a Royal Opera House poster – the poster has now been "withdrawn".
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12:07 am
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Democrats' next campaign slogan?
"Racial superiority is a mere pigment of the imagination" – author unknown.
Also applaud Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, who argued thus in favour of 42-day detention: "We are not legislating now on the basis that we are bringing it in now for something that might happen in the future. We are putting in a provision for it if it becomes unhypothetical" – as The Sunday Times so nicely put it, thus proving herself the true heir to John Prescott.
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07:53 am
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Bons mots
In an article in yesterday's Times on the proposed "presumed consent" for organ donation, a spokesman from the British Heart Foundation said, " 'The recommendations must be adopted in full. Half-hearted solutions won't do'."
Er, quite.
Also my brother, Doug, noticed a headline in yesterday's paper in Boston which read, "Firefighter's allegations spark heated debate".
And there's still nothing to top this gut-wrenching story (ha very ha) of a deceased baby whose organs were removed without his mother's consent. As Doug put it, "The baby boy's mother had my full sympathy right up to the point where she said 'gutted'. Possibly not the best word choice, there. Ahhhgahhd."
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01:53 pm
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Techno talk
Interesting article on BBC News Online on Future directions in computing.
Also some cool shipping technologies: The Economist Technology Quarterly mentions electric engines for ships (see report from US Congressional committee and article by Philippe Masson and others in Superconductor Science and Technology) and also Tom told me about giant "kite" sails for tankers – Sky Sails.
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