ME :)

I was on the bus at about 2:00am in the morning coming home from my friend’s birthday at Gilgamesh in Camden Town when I eavesdropped on a bizarre argument between these 3 Spanish guys. At times it was really heated and they were screaming and swearing at each other because there was a difference in opinion or one spoke over the other and vice versa.

They were arguing for about 30 minutes and because they were talking so loud I had to eavesdrop and gather what they were talking about. The trio are heading to South America soon for about 1 month and with a low bank balance, they were discussing a business idea to earn some money while they’re there.

The idea that they had is to translate menus at local restaurants to English and publish or display these English menus on the internet. The business pitch was for the business owner to pay about 20-30 Euro to get their menu translated and have an accompanying internet site to advertise to the world and travellers like themselves to go to these eateries.

It sounds like a good idea to me but it has been done before but that’s not what this argument was about. These guys were adamant that this is a great idea and that this idea would make them rich. They had the argument over how to go about publishing each restaurants web site. Being a Web Developer myself, I was interested in what they were saying and I knew what the best strategy was and I knew which guy had the right idea.

The two guys who had differing opinions were in a slanging match while the third guy was the mediator calming them both down and suggesting a way forward, Perhaps an analogy could be two programmers with different views to solve a problem and a project manager or team leader weighing up the options.

Spanish Guy #1 came up with the approach of securing the deal with the business owner and then publishing the business’ translated menu on a website. The website will be hosted by one of those free hosting companies with all the advertising. So his idea is that each business would have their own different website and they can be found only through the Google search engine.

Pros:

• Each business will have their own website with a unique layout.
• They can add or amend anything to this website as it will be their content.

Cons:

• If 50 businesses purchased this service then that would mean Spanish Guy #1 would need to make 50 websites and 50 different layouts. If you were one of these businesses and you had a layout the same as another business next door, you wouldn’t be happy.
• Free website hosting is crap and unreliable.
• Maintenance would be a nightmare, 50 different accounts and 50 sites to update if they offered this service.
• Spending more time creating websites then actually having a holiday!
• Impossible to search for this site through a search engine if the site isn’t added to a search engine

Spanish Guy #2 came up with the approach of securing the deal with the business owner and then publishing their menu, business profile and any other content on a central website. So the idea is to have a website and a business would have their own profile, their menu displayed, comments and feedback, and other information they wish to add, quite similar to say having a Facebook profile or a MySpace page. When you search for a restaurant, go to the website and then search the site for a restaurant in country x or restaurant y. I’ll forgive this guy for not get the technical terminology correct but I was getting his drift.

Pros:

• Easy to maintain
• Scan the menu, translate the menu and create a profile in a matter of minutes therefore more holiday time
• Business can look after their own profile (if they’re computer literate)
• Site can have different or custom layouts which business can select from
• Easy to search restaurant at different locations
• Only one website to remember and not 50

Cons:

• Expensive to start up the idea with servers and developers to build

To summarise, Spanish Guy #2 had the best approach. Spanish Guy #1 had the novice approach and he of course was the most aggressive in this argument. It was his way or the highway and it was him who swore the most, spoke the loudest because he thought he was right and that his way was the best approach.

It was a funny way to end off the late night and I must have listened really well if I could analyse their arguments and dissect what they had to say. Good luck to them in South America and I do hope they take Spanish Guy #2’s approach.

If you want my Business Analyst services, please take me out to dinner (you pay), have a few drinks then we’ll catch the bus home together and discuss your business ideas. Otherwise I charge £199.99 per minute + VAT.

smiles

It took us 1.5 days to pack, load, move, unload and unpack our belongings into the new apartment in Vauxhall. I’ve never done any sort of move like that before and it was literally a painful experience. It is not fun living on the 5th floor of an apartment and you are required to move. Firstly you need to load your items into the lift and then unload them at the bottom of the lift and then you need to load it into the van. Repeating this 100 times is ridiculous!

There should be a company who operates some sort of conveyer belt service that latches on to your balcony frame or window and then you load your items on to this belt which slowly brings the items down to terra firma and straight into the van. In Amsterdam most homes use a pulley system to bring items from the ground on to the appropriate floor. If you pay attention, you will see homes with a hook/pulley at the very top of the house.

Now if you weren’t sore from loading things into the van then you should be a full time removalist. Its twice the work unloading the items from an underground car-park, then taking a lift, then walking a short distance to another building, then juggling 3 IKEA bags of stuff while trying to open the double door with a fob, then taking another lift to your floor before unloading that batch and repeating the process another 20 times.

I couldn’t feel my arms the next day and my back wasn’t in the best shape either but now the move is complete and I’m in a new place closer to civilization, it was worth the trouble. Albeit a few things going wrong the first week like the no hot water issue, washing machine tripping the power, door handles coming off and curtain rails coming off the wall but everything else has been sweet. Might I add that the first 3 of these things managed to be solved using Google and some DIY knowledge so it hasn’t been too bad.

The apartments itself especially the penthouses are quite luxurious. You would be paying at least £2000-£3000 per week for your humble abode. The underground car park is simply a car show parading really expensive cars. Instead of finding the best looking or most expensive car, it was harder to find the shit car parked between the white lines. There were Ferrari’s still covered with their emblem covers, Bentley’s, Lamborghinis, and the list goes on.

Unfortunately I do not own any of these vehicles. An annual car park permit is around £2000, that’s almost the price of the council tax here. Rumor has it that JK from Jamiroquai has 6 personal car park spaces housing his expensive cars. The agent did say he lives many floors above us, probably in the penthouse.

It’s only been a week living here and I still need to buy more odds and ends for my room. IKEA was good for a few things but now I’ve simply fallen into the shopping abyss of Amazon. It has everything I need and its many times cheaper then several stores out there. The best thing by far is that it is delivered to the concierge where I can pick up the items on the way home from work. Who said it wasn’t going to be easy?

smiles

For all the times I have seen snow, I’ve skied through it, hiked through it or glided across it. Never have I had to walk through snow in order to get to work. Well today was the first time I’ve ever walked through the snow to get to my office and it wasn’t a walk in the park, far from it.

Continuing on from the previous post, I had thought the rain last night would have washed away the snow. In fact it didn’t rain that much last night but instead the temperature dipped well below zero causing the snow to mould into slippery ice and surface of the water on the canal to freeze over.

I knew it wasn’t a good idea to put on my work shoes and tread through the snow. Instead I put my work shoes in my backpack, put on my hiking boots, gloves and waterproof jacket over my business attire. I wasn’t making a fashion statement, I was being sensible and wearing the right gear for the right weather conditions!

The snow was no longer fluffy and soft. Overnight it had turned into slippery hard ice and could cause some major bumps and bruises if one had fallen on to the ice. My hiking books were not made for walking on ice, it’s more slippery then a water slide so I had to tread carefully and look for the soft patches. The number of times I almost slipped over was ridiculous.

There was one slippage incident which almost could have been on funniest home videos if I had fallen. I was merrily walking to the train station on the main road, being careful where I was walking but there was a patch of ice I didn’t see. I walked over it, slipped and lost my balance. Luckily I managed to counter balance myself and got back upright.

Seeing as I slipped along a main road, and with many buses stationary at the red light, it would have been highly amusing for the passengers to witness this idiot slipping all over the place. I did take a quick glance to see how many passengers were on the bus but then quickly shuffled around the corner to avoid further embarrassment.

The snow will be here for a while or should I say the ice. The ice will not melt any time soon with the temperatures well below in single digits and negative overnight. What I really need on my boots to tackle this slipping problem is to get some crampons. Crampons for those who don’t know are basically spikes that you can put at the bottom of your boots to get better grip on the ice. I would probably get arrested for wearing them on the train as they could see these crampons as weapons. Can they be that narrow minded?

If crampons can save me falling on the ice with my work clothes on or reduce the risk of public humiliation for floundering around like an idiot on a footpath or walkway with a thin layer of ice then I’m all for it.

smiles

Personally I didn’t think it snowed at all in London because the terrain that London sits on appears to be quite flat and the city itself isn’t very high above sea level (this could risk flooding – but thats another thing altogether). Well that view all changed when it snowed for 24 hours causing what appears to be a city in total chaos with transport being cancelled on the rails, roads and whatever snow touched.

If I had done any research or simply googled ‘Snow in London’ then I would have got a million hits on when the last snow flake hit the town. The snow falling last night and all of today appears to be Britain’s worst snowstorm in 18 years. It caused havoc on travel plans and to think anyone made it to work at all would be a miracle.

I think a majority of employees and employers today would have worked from home because the lifeline of London is the underground tube network, without it, you are going nowhere! I certainly had to work from home today because there were no trains or buses running. My manager did suggest I trek to work, but in my work clothes? I’d have to ask him to buy me new clothes for when I arrive to my office desk.

To think 15-30cm of snow could grind an enormous city like London to a halt is simply amazing. I cannot imagine what would it be like if it snowed constantly for more than 1 day. The forecasts warning that this climatic snowstorm were announced 5 days before it hit last night, yet no preparation or planning took place to battle against the elements.

We can only make a snowman each before we get bored or adore the white powder sticking on to our clothes. Lets clear this snow and get this transport system back up and running before we have the best snow ball fight in 18 years. The snow will melt tonight, the rain will wash it away. Will the melting snow cause more unprecedented cancellations tomorrow? I’ll wake up tomorrow and find out!

smiles