Sorry folks, my life has been taking a very fast curve during these last months and I am afraid I went a bit off road.

First by the end of January I had a health scare. That’s when I learned that cancer is just a bad word, not a sentence. Went through one of these operations that are supposed to last 45 min and leave you with a nifty scar on your belly button but ended up most day in theatre and woke up with three scars that are definitely stopping me from wearing a bikini in public for the rest of my life. It took me some time to recover and half a stone.

The scars of course are not only physical. When you’re being told that there is a nice tumour exploding your ovary and that’s just the beginning of it, one will be – I hope- excused from walking down the street in a cold January afternoon wondering what is going to happen next and just wanting to hold her kids and husband in her arms. I wasn’t inshock, I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t numb but I felt so awfully sorry for my family, with an intense feeling of guilt because my body was letting us all down.

The harsh part is breaking the news and getting organized. The children were sent to school, friends and family in order for me to recover quietly at home. Hubby was at work- in a new place- and the heating had to be changed just then. It took me three months to warm up again. I was taking things as they came, reading my University course – by then I had started my third course and getting ready for my exams on the two first ones-, catching up with petty tasks that I could undertake from my bed and watching enough dvds to my heart content. But most of all, I slept.

Once up and running again- not too much time to think it all over- I went straight into my exams. Six stressful weeks followed by the end of which I had to withdraw from my third course as I had the feeling I was totally missing the point. ( Not the opinion of my tutor or the University administration as I was one the best students of my class). But I came to realise that in order to study economics, I had to understand maths and models and I couldn’t accept just being ” good enough”. So I enrolled straight away on a compulsory course for a degree in finance about developing effective performance at work and another about maths. Of course I thought I would collapse, especially as we were having our windows replaced at the same time- lots of dust, of mess and a house tthat is upside down and noisy.

But you know what- I’m still standing. The house is in the process of being springcleaned, I am back to work and I am at the top of my class with my first assessment. It is a challenging time but it forces me out of my comfort zone. I trust I’m not the only one who has to take a leap of faith towards what the future will bring- so I am ready for all the first steps I will have to take.

Kids movie. A mouse saves the day in a kingdom where soup was popular. A rat deviates the course of things and humans, rats and mice end up being unhappy. Of course it takes a David to put things right and show his world that you should never underestimates someone smaller than you.

My girls ( aged now 6 and soon 5) loved it. It had enough action and events to keep me awake. As it wasn’t a Disney movie the graphics were refreshing and quite elegant. The story is good enough.

For small children though.

Let’s not beat around the bush, I didn’t like it. Bond appears to be more and more on the cold blood killer than the ingenious gentleman who handles shooting as he would casually play chess. The cation is of course impressive- one of the qualities of the movie- and Craig is a good action hero. The girls though….OK, I’m heterosexual, so maybe I’m biased – but both Bond girls were utterly naive and boring. Dame Judi Dench and Money Penny are sexier- thank God for them.

I wish something was done about those Bonds. Craig is good in action but the scenariis- please, please, please…Let’s not destroy a legend. I want the gentleman Bond, not the common thug.

We’ll see what the next one has in store…

  I was away. In a sense. It dawned on me, a few months ago, that I love my job. I am becoming more and more consistent and my knowledge now is giving me this ” intuition” feeling that keeps me away from bad trades. Now let’s get this straight before I go any further: intuition here is of course sarcastic. It is based on the amount of experience I have been accumulating through the years. I now know how to read my charts like an open book- and when I don’t, I simply stay out. Yes, it is that simple.

   And it has become rather boring. There is so much money you can make when you respect your plan and I can’t take more than 3 trades a day on average as I have a tendency to damage my eyes if I stay behind a computer for too long. But the truth is that I love to learn. I love the challenge. And staying behind my computer watching the mini-sized Dow was not enough anymore.

  I wanted to do commodities. And maybe have a look at my old Nemesis- the FX market ( to be clear, I have never traded it much. But I still don’t get it). So I started studying the intermarket relationship. And then it hit me. It hit me hard because I was trying hard to figure out how all this work out and the more I studied, the less it made sense. Take gold for example. I saw some people swear that Gold would reach $2000 an ounce by mid 2009. Other say thatGold will go down the drain in a deflationary move like the rest of all commodities. I’ve heard of margin calls, deleveraging, governement selling and hedge funds panicking; I’ve listened to investors swear that they want to protect their assets and buy more; I’ve read articles about the fact that gold will explode once the selling by the biggies is done and overdone and the people’s action will actually sink in. But what I’ve learned most of all is that nobody knows what is happening. On a daily basis you have your reading. But in 3 months time, better ,in one or two years, what I see is guessing.

  So I decided that there was a lot I didn’t know. In order to have a clue, I needed some fondations. Reading books as they come my way was not enough anymore. I wanted a structure. Something solid, to which I could go back and build my own vision. I didn’t want other people ’s opinion, I wanted mine- not as a reaction to something I learn or I hear, based on some knowledge.

    I went back to University. I registered for business studies before realising that I could make it simpler and go to Economics. Now the Uk system is a tad strange. If you want to register with the best Universities you have to go through a process of interviews, exams and a few other requirements and from my first contacts, it turned out that I was too old, not sponsored by any big companies or name and in short not interesting enough. Oh oh. On one phone call basis I was not straight away turned down but warned to look elsewhere. Although I am usually a fighter I decided that the wiser route was to prove myself and show that I was committed. So I registered with the very open minded Open University. And I enrolled straight away for two level one courses. I was told it was easy. Well…It was half true. One course is easy, one is not.

  The easy one is all about money. It’s about income, taxes, insurance and the Uk system of finance. I love it. That’s probably why I find it easy. The other course is an introduction to business studies. It is a nightmare. It has more concepts per page than I have socks and knickers in my drawers. Most of them seem so complicated that I even dream about them. I have to reread every sentence three times before I even figure out what it meant. And I feel constantly stupid and slow because I have no idea about this stuff. It is not that i don’t understand it- it is that the way it is said and explained look so complicated. It looks to me as if someone tried hard to look clever and made it as complicated as they could. Then you read something like ” Outliers: The story of Success ” by Malcom Gladwell and you find half of one book explained and you go : ” Aaaahhh…why couldn’t they tell it like that?”.

   But guess what, I’m not quitter. Although the matter doesn’t interest me one bit, I hold on. It looks like a real challenge. I have to be concise, to study hard and to respond to other people’s views. So I do it.

University is a whole new world. You find people who are keen on studying and people who make excuses for their lack of organisation. One thing you learn in trading is that ‘if you fail to plan, you plan to fail’. At University is becomes even truer. I end up spending most of my weekends studying and it took me two weeks to do my first 2 assignments as unfortunately it turned out that my two course each gave me an assignment for the same date.  Anyway I did them the best I could- rewrote them about a dozen times and ended up praying that I had understood what I had been supposed to do. But I handed them one day early as I thought that what I wanted most now was some feedback- that would allow me to do better next time. I hope.

So now I’m working part time, studying the other part time and doing what i used to do anyway. It is extremely tiring but I am happy anyway. It is one of the first time I’m doing something entirely for myself. My family seems to accept this with a generosity without limits. The house looks alright although now they all have to participate and do tasks for me. Nobody’s complaining so far. I’m truly amazed- and blessed.

 

   So here you go. I struggle of course- nothing’s ever easy. Otherwise everybody would do it. And the trade offs are to been seen. But I trust that I made the right choice and I’m looking forward to the future. I probably need the courage as this is just the beginning. I have my doubts about my abilities but the truth is- if I don’t try, I’ll never know. The sky’s the limit, the world is my oyster…All that sort of things.

So far I love it.

John Huston very obviously saw himself as a guys’guy. His movie display an array of tough guys who are not stupid enough to hide their feelings and it worked like a beauty. I had been waiting to see this film for about a decade- knowing that Deborah Kerr will never do any movies again forces me to delay my pleasures in order to look forward to the years to come. Anyway. I was a bit careful about this one as she played – again- a nun. Looked like there was a trend back then in the 50’s with Audrey Hepburn, Deborah Kerr and a few others doind it. usually at the end they get the guys. So the twist here was interesting- she gets the guys, yes, and he doesn’t die or get punished for it, but….You wanna know, you watch it.

It takes place during the second world war. Kerr plays a nun left stranded on an atoll in the middle of the Pacific. Mitchum is the G.I. who survives a bombing and reachs the atoll on a raft. To make things harder our two main characters have to survive avoiding the Japanese who soon invade the place. So you have suspense, war, comedy, tragedy and an improbable love story. It is Hollywood- it ends well and very morally. Mitchum plays the G.I who is a tad simple and Kerr the one without life experience but a higher education and loads of compassion. Two extremes left on an island.

Huston liked his actors and it shows. Leave this movie on the shelf if you’re not a fan of the 50’s topics. Otherwise it is an honest little film and you can measure the progress we’ve made in half a century on moral grounds and life experience. But we wouldn’t probably know how to survive on an atoll nowadays- not without internet anyway.

I do not like Farell one bit and his puppy expressions are leaving me cold. But the story of this movie seemed interesting and I was ready to give it a go. So you have two killers sent to Bruges after a job went tragically wrong. ( How can a killer’s work go tragically wrong? Go and see it). Gleeson plays the guys who knows right from wrong and has some life experience behind him. Farell plays Father McGuire ( Watch “Father Ted” if you don’t know what I am talking about). They wait all day in Bruges for a call that should give them another go. Both have very different expectations from this journey- and from each other. And Bruges is not all that it seems.

With an unexpected tenderness this film takes you behind curtains. It wasn’t without reminding me of “Gun shy” with Sandra Bullock and Liam Neeson, although the latest was much more Hollywood like. You end up liking the main protagonists although my opinion of Farell remains low. It is a great movie.

Not for kids under 15 I’d say – it’s an 18 on the box. Gleeson is superb. Ralph Fiennes plays the psychopaths better and better each day. I guess that Farell is himself?

I had seen this musical comedy on stage and almost gave birth whilst watching as the sound was so loud. I remember thinking the plot was quite superficial and the songs, well, I was a teenager during the Abba's years, so I had enough. My mother-in-law wanted to watch the movie and dutifully I proposed to come with my youngest son ( he's almost 11). Surprise! We all liked it! The scenery makes you dream- it puts you in holiday automatic pilot mode. Although most of the male cast were a tad rigid and definitely not the best singers, it gave a touch of reality and tenderness to the whole thing. Mery Streep – whom I would never had seen as a hippy- was so right that you sympathize all along with her character. Her daughter on screen- played by Amanda Seyfried- was just beautiful. She stole the screen at every appearance and made a very unlikely story believeable ( at least for 2 hours). We came out relaxed and joyful. My son loved the songs. Poor me. Another summer listening to Abba. What wouldn't we do for love…<br />
If you need to de stress, go and see Mamma mia!.

We all have heard about this one. Two lovely girls ( tongues out gentlemen please) AND Eric Bana. Guys and gals are salivating. History is happily revised, the story of ambition and love of two sisters who are living opposite in the midst of their dirty family plans is quite a program for a movie. Quite cleverly done ( you don't need a PHD to follow the plot suttleties), you can still see that strong women have to submit to their males counterparts otherwise they have to be ready to pay the heavy consequences ( in these days, it was your head off. Nowadays, a guy who is half as qualified as you are is paid double). Neither portman nor Johansson are entirely convincing in their roles and for some reason I believe that if the director had been a tad more perverse he could have achieved a masterpiece had he inverted the roles of the leading ladies, but hey, it is not my job after all.<br />
Eric Bana is good. I liked him a lot in " Munich"- a movie that deserves better and is worth watching. It is quite nice to see English people acting as low as Machiavel – although they don't seem too good at it. I'd give this a five out of ten. At least Keira Knightley was not in it.

A lovely fairytale for girls of every age who wants to find a prince charming and please to her parents at the same time. If you are the girl in question and you have some act of independency to perform , go and see this WITH your parents.<br />
Christina Ricci is cute, McAvoy is cute, Reese Witherspoon is under employed and the good ones win. Happy ending, it is afairy tale I telling you.<br />
Strangely my eleven years old son liked it. So maybe it is not only for girls.

Dr Randy Pausch is creating a stir on the internet. He's a 47 year old professor at Carneggie Mellon and was diagnosed last August with pancreatic cancer. He was then given 3 to 6 months to live. Being a father of 3 children under 10, Mr Pausch must have taken the news hard. Coming from an ingeneering background he thought of how he was going to resolve this – which he obviously couldn't- so he tried to make the best of it. So what do you do when you think you have about a hundred days left to live? You try to make it worthwhile- that's the dignified way to go. I know a few others who would have done something completely different – like trying to have fun- but that's not what Mr Pausch is about.<br />
So there is this tradition at Carneggie Mellon where professors who are about to retire give their last lecture. Mr Pausch used his right to give it and it was broadly broadcast on the internet. He was at first praised for his lucidity, his courage and his dignity. He encouraged people to follow their dreams and tried to give an example of how to achieve this. The lecture was officially aimed at his students and at his children, but it became open to the rest of the world. And then – you know the saying: Man plans, God laughs. And that's what happened. The plan backfired.<br />
Dr Pausch looks like the healthiest person on earth. Although clinically he is dying, in the facts, he's still there. His sudden notoriety has propulsed him on the scene- you can even have a glimpse on the internet of him doing push-ups in front of Oprah and a large audience, something he is condemned to do again and again like a bad scenario in front of the cameras. And these repetitions – plus the publication of a book called " The last lecture " suddenly becomes an indecent commercial for a narcissic agony. And the lash out begins, followed by the accusations of milking it to the last degree. You have here all the ingredients to create collective fury when it all started with the best intentions. It is easy to see why: Mr Pausch is a good looking guy, with the sort of funny haircut that you can suppose he wore all his life since he was 12 or 16. His beautiful wife and lovely children seem to come straight of a Disney story. He has achieved a great career and has many friends who are ready to support him. He's trying to do the right thing, like probably he has been doing all his life. In one word: he has it all. Dying the is the catch, but if you think about it one minute, it is going to happen to all of us and we are not all making a big deal out of it. We could- after all, not all of us have the time to get prepared and ready for it. So he remains a lucky guy throughout the end. <br />
But then the paradox begins. He is dying, right, but in this world of instant information, he doesn't drop dead once he has finished his lecture. So people feel cheated and are demanding explanations, which he has to answer to- radios in hand and defenses all out. The poor guy gets trapped by his own snare. So now he's out there trying to get his point through and wasting precious time, instead of laying on his living-room floor and playing with his kids.<br />
I have no judgements to pass on this one. Mr Pausch forgot one thing- that some events such as birth, marriage and funeral are best kept private. It is in our culture. He probably tried to overcome his fears by trying to pass on what he had learned in his short life. Making a book out of it was a simple way to perpetuating the message and maybe even to assure a little income for his family once he had disappeared. It may be seen as cynical when I believe it was just desesperate. The plan was genuine but hadn't been thought through- for one good reason: nobody will shoot an ambulance. But Mr Pausch didn't look ill enough- and that was the paradox.<br />
Were he dead now we'd say " rest in peace". I don't mean " piece"- and nobody else should.<br />
That was my lecture of the day.