Dubai is a very very special place. I’ve been there twice and will probably visit again every year to see family that live there. I was totally blown away on my first visit, and still continue to be impressed every time.

I was sent the attached PDF entitles “Everything in Dubai is BIG” so I thought I’d share it with you.on my last visit I was told that Dibai is known as “Land of the Superlaitives” which for me truly sums it up perfectly.
Everything in Dubai is BIG

This is a message that was posted to the US website Craigslist. Best reply ever…

THE QUESTION:

Okay, I’m tired of beating around the bush. I’m a beautiful (spectacularly beautiful) 25 year old girl. I’m articulate and classy. I’m not from New York . I’m looking to get married to a guy who makes at least half a million a year. I know how that sounds, but keep in mind that a million a year is middle class in New York City, so I don’t think I’m overreaching at all.

Are there any guys who make 500K or more on this board? Any wives? Could you send me some tips? I dated a business man who makes average around 200 - 250. But that’s where I seem to hit a roadblock. 250,000 won’t get me to central park west. I know a woman in my yoga class who was married to an investment banker and lives in Tribeca, and she’s not as pretty as I am, nor is she a great genius. So what is she doing right? How do I get to her level?

Here are my questions specifically:

- Where do you single rich men hang out? Give me specifics- bars, restaurants, gyms

-What are you looking for in a mate? Be honest guys, you won’t hurt my feelings

-Is there an age range I should be targeting (I’m 25)?

- Why are some of the women living lavish lifestyles on the upper east side so plain? I’ve seen really ‘plain jane’ boring types who have nothing to offer married to incredibly wealthy guys. I’ve seen drop dead gorgeous girls in singles bars in the east village. What’s the story there?

- Jobs I should look out for? Everyone knows - lawyer, investment banker, doctor. How much do those guys really make? And where do they hang out? Where do the hedge fund guys hang out?

- How you decide marriage vs. just a girlfriend? I am looking for MARRIAGE ONLY

Please hold your insults - I’m putting myself out there in an honest way. Most beautiful women are superficial; at least I’m being up front about it. I wouldn’t be searching for these kind of guys if I wasn’t able to match them - in looks, culture, sophistication, and keeping a nice home and hearth.

THE REPLY:

I read your posting with great interest and have thought meaningfully about your dilemma. I offer the following analysis of your predicament.

Firstly, I’m not wasting your time, I qualify as a guy who fits your bill; that is I make more than $500K per year. That said here’s how I see it.

Your offer, from the prospective of a guy like me, is plain and simple a crappy business deal. Here’s why. Cutting through all the B.S., what you suggest is a simple trade: you bring your looks to the party and I bring my money. Fine, simple. But here’s the rub, your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity…in fact, it is very likely that my income increases but it is an absolute certainty that you won’t be getting any more beautiful!

So, in economic terms you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset. Not only are you a depreciating asset, your depreciation accelerates! Let me explain, you’re 25 now and will likely stay pretty hot for the next 5 years, but less so each year. Then the fade begins in earnest. By 35 stick a fork in you!

So in Wall Street terms, we would call you a trading position, not a buy and hold…hence the rub…marriage. It doesn’t make good business sense to “buy you” (which is what you’re asking) so I’d rather lease. In case you think I’m being cruel, I would say the following. If my money were to go away, so would you, so when your beauty fades I need an out. It’s as simple as that. So a deal that makes sense is dating, not marriage.

Separately, I was taught early in my career about efficient markets. So, I wonder why a girl as “articulate, classy and spectacularly beautiful”

as you has been unable to find your sugar daddy. I find it hard to believe that if you are as gorgeous as you say you are that the $500K hasn’t found you, if not only for a tryout.

By the way, you could always find a way to make your own money and then we wouldn’t need to have this difficult conversation.

With all that said, I must say you’re going about it the right way. Classic “pump and dump.” I hope this is helpful, and if you want to enter into some sort of lease, let me know.

Look at this picture. Pretty dull and uninteresting. This is a photo of the submarine telecommunication cables that extend more than 8,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean before reaching this endpoint in Avon, New Jersey. They transmit as many as 60 million simultaneous conversations.

“There’s a humor because the cables are so important, yet they look so unguarded and unimportant,”

This is from the book: Taryn Simon: An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar.
More Here

This is a strange little video I found, it’s part of something called the Portable Firm Festival, and well, watch it and see…

Police are hunting a motorbike rider who appears to hit 189mph on a UK road in a YouTube video. It is said to be the fastest speed ever recorded on a British road and then posted on YouTube.

The video shows the rider negotiating a roundabout before making a high speed run. The clip is called ‘first run on cam’ and in the description the rider says the ZX10r was spinning its wheel at 180mph. Some internet users have questioned whether the bike’s speedo may be out, noting it takes under six seconds to go from around 100mph to 189mph.

The video has now been viewed almost 15,000 times, most of which are probably by police trying to identify the rider.

A few months ago Google announced on their blog, their newest venture entitled “Google Knowledge” or “Knol” for short. Basically they are going to create something quite similar to Wikipedia, but it will differ because each knol article will be written by a single author, and other users can edit it only with permission from the author. Readers may rate or comment on the articles. There can also be multiple articles for the same topic, each written by a different author.

In response to this, it seems that today Wikipedia’s founder Jimmy Wales has launched a search engine that takes a leaf out of the Wikipedia book. It’s called Wikia. The site still has an index of the web like Google, but the idea behind this is that they take from the expertise and knowledge of the Wikia community, to give you better and more relative search results. I’ve always thought that somehting like this would be a good idea. I’m sick of search results being the battle of who’s designers are better at SEO - rather than which sites are going to give you the information you need.

I’ve been into electronic music for about 10 years now. Before that I was into metal and rock, but as soon as the rhythm of house got into my blood, there was really very little for anything else. I’ve always been pretty close minded compared to others when it comes to the variance of music styles. I like what I like, but no much else… Electronica is absolutely vast when it comes to sub-division of different genre’s, but really I’ve always been pretty much into the same stuff; mainly ‘House’ and it’s many variants. Funky, Deep, Progressive, Disco, Electro, Tech and Tribal have always been there, and there was almost no need to go anywhere else… Until now.

The most recent and significant progression of my musical tastes, is my recent exploration into the realms of Minimal. “Minimal Techno” or “Microhouse” as it is sometimes known, is a more recent spin off from the well known Techno genre, focusing on the more basic and stripped down repetition of rhythms and beats, somewhat lacking in the melodies tha are moreso found in House and Electro. The thing is that only about 18-24 months ago, being the big music snob that I am, I hated anything of the such, but have more recently grown to be listening to very little else!

There was a very interesting article in The Guardian a few weeks back:

The sound that has been filling those clubs and distributed on those labels, and which has exploded across the continent, is broadly known as “Minimal”. Over the past five or so years, it’s grown from an arcane subdivision of techno into an ubiquitous buzzword on the dance scene. Even two years ago, minimal techno was still the preserve of the so-hip-it-hurts sunglasses-at-night set. Its trendiness was endearingly encapsulated in the ubercoolische.com website, a charming soap opera written about the adventures of minimal figureheads Ricardo Villalobos, Magda and Richie Hawtin. In 2006, minimal finally crossed over, though, when Gabriel Ananda’s 10-minute percussive epic Doppelwhipper exploded across Ibiza.

Minimal is not exacltly going to burst onto the Irish Club Scene any time soon. It is much more suited to dark and dirty underground Berlin clubs at 5am, but it has grown so much on me that I listen to it most mornings on the way into work…

It’s truly is incredible what people can do with Photoshop these days… This is a photo of the model Gisele wearing what appears to be a dress made from water.

For more fantastic photoshop skills, www.worth1000.com is always a great place to kill some time.

Yes I know I’m nearly a week late but I only started this blog the other day, and I really like this photo!

I’ve always had an avid interest in investing and share trading, but what really scares me is the volatility of the markets. Unless you really now what you are doing, picking your own stocks is a serious gamble, and even if you stick to the blue chips, 5%-10% gains would be considered pretty good…

Managed funds on the other hand are, to me, a bit of a no brainer. You’ve got a full time fund manager who is probably one of the brightest minds the company has, managing a collective pool of money to invest in a specific industry or region. Personally I’ve no issue with trusting an expert with my money more than myself who is comparitivly clueless.

Rabo Direct have a very straighforward way of getting into funds. You can start with as little as €100, put in money whenever you like, and the charges are pretty good value I think anyway. The fun comes in choosing which funds to invest in - this is where it is up to you. Now I know all the “Past performance is no guarantee of future returns” bullshit, but really,take a look at some of them, and you have to just laugh at anyone who has money on deposit in a bank.

Take a look at the following funds and their performace over the last 12 months:

China Fund - 44%
World Mining - 51%
Emerging Stars - 35%