A Sunny Day in London

Leave home around 10:30am, when the voice of a flatmate's girlfriend upstairs starts depressing me. Hop on a double-decker, heading for Shoreditch, the edgy area of East London. Getting off, walk towards Macondo, my favorite cafe on Hoxton Square. Find funky railings on a backstreet building on the way.



Arriving at Macondo, order seafood paella and chicken salad with mixed berries yogurt smoothie. Start reading an article on the June issue of Monocle, interviewing a Russian opposition PR woman. The smoothie comes first, which could have been colder on such a sunny day. But the paella and the chicken salad are gorgeous, a rarity in London.

Tired of reading Monocle, leave Macondo and enter Hoxton Square park. Following other Londoners, lie down on a lawn in the sun. With my iRiver MP3 player---a resistance to iPod dominance---start listening to the music London gave birth to: drum and bass.

Fabio's liquid funk mix and London's rare sunshine make me drowse a while. Waking up, notice that people keep visiting the White Cube gallery, which is usually closed on Sundays. With my headphone still on my ears, visit the gallery only to find it's the exhibition of latest works by Damien Hirst, probably the most popular contemporary artist in UK. Without being moved at all, leave the gallery and think about where to go next.

Walk down to Old Street tube. Find a graffiti of high quality beside rubbish bins.



Take the Northern Line to London Bridge. From the station, walk towards the City Hall. Realize that the City Hall has a really strange shape, with the Tower Bridge aside.



Walk along the Themes to the west, heading for the Tate Modern museum. Quite a few, but not an overwhelming number of, tourists.

Arriving at the museum, enter the Level 2 gallery, which is in my view the best gallery in Tate Modern. Like Anselm Reyle's works. Futuristic because he uses silver foil, neon colors, and mirrors. And stylish because for contemporary art works, they don't depress viewers. Wish I would have money in the future to buy his works to decorate a large, inorganic room for playing back music.

Getting out of the museum, see St Paul's dome looms across the river.



Turn back and head for Southwark tube station by following orange lamp posts. Take the Jubilee line to Green Park because there is an M&S above the station, where I can buy decent whole milk (I can't stand British milk on the usual supermarket shelf).

Then stop by at a Caffe Nero at the corner with Dover Street, ordering Frappe Latte with an extra espresso shot. Sit at a table outside, watching red double deckers and red bendy buses passing on Piccadilly, which makes me look back at the past five years of my life in London.

I could have visited Dover Street Market, Rei Kawakubo's revolutionary brand clothes store. But prefer not being reassured that any good-looking clothes in London are not affordable. Go back to Green Park tube station, taking Piccadilly and Central Lines to get home with Monocle at hand and earplugs inside my ears to silence the sound made by the clunky train carriages.

Tip for copy-and-past

I've long been grumpy about copy-and-pasting. When you want to copy and past some text on a webpage to, say, your Word file, not only letters but also the font format, which is different from your Word file text font format, is also copy-and-pasted. I finally understand how to avoid this. See this webpage.

A moving quote

"Don't discount Africa. The giant has woken up. You can feel it. I tell you because I travel in Africa a lot. You can see the pride in people's eyes. ... We are awake now. It is coming." ---Titus Naikuni, CEO of Kenya Airways (Monocle, Issue 03, May 2007, p.69)

Nigeria

During the past few weeks, the British media (ie. FT and The Economist) has produced revealing articles on Nigeria.

Andrew Jack of Financial Times reports Nigeria's war on fake drugs.

By the turn of the millennium, Nigerians had become among the world’s most frequent victims of fake drugs.

The Economist reports, two weeks in a row, how Nigerian politicians rig elections:

In Anambra state, most people could not vote at all. They turned up at the voting stations, but often INEC's officials [that is, electoral commission officials] simply did not arrive. When a polling station did open, usually about six hours late, the officials did not have enough materials, notably a register, to let voting begin. On a tour of a dozen voting stations in the state capital, Awka, on the afternoon of polling, your correspondent did not see a single vote being cast, just angry mobs of frustrated would-be voters saying they had been “disenfranchised”. Barely any polling stations were provided with a results-sheet, on which officials and party agents are supposed to record the number of votes cast for each party; presumably these were being filled in elsewhere. ("How to steal yet another election" The Economist, 21th April, 2007)

On the day of the presidential election money-politics could be seen in action in central Kano, the dusty, dilapidated industrial capital of the north. There, in the local government area of Fagge, the PDP had budgeted 35m naira for political “mobilisation” and the main opposition party, the All Nigerian Peoples' Party (ANPP), 40m naira. In one ward, Fagge A, the PDP, according to one of its operatives, had budgeted 594,000 naira ($4,650) for 21,000 registered voters and 35 ballot boxes. Thus each “independent” presiding officer at the polling station was given 3,000 naira and his clerk 2,000 naira. Each policeman was getting 1,000 naira. That left payments of about 200 naira ($1.57) per voter—whose votes, far from being secret, were inked with a thumb on the ballot in front of party agents. Multiple voters, who will have registered several times with sympathetic election officials, might vote ten times, at a reduced bulk rate of 100 naira—still picking up a tidy 1,000 naira each. The friendly officials are paid for a variety of services, one of which is not to scrutinise the register too closely. Hasia, for example, had just voted with the registration card of her mother, who had already voted herself. Hasia had the second of her mother's two cards. She has probably not even reached the legal voting age of 18. Her card clearly identified its owner as being 60 years old, but this had not proved a problem with the right official. ("Big men, big fraud and big trouble", The Economist, 28th April 2007)

But there are pockets of the bright side as well. The war on fake drugs starts paying off.

Recent studies suggest that the proportion of fake and unregistered medicines in Nigeria has dropped to less than 20 per cent over the past six years.

Foudeh Darwish, the Lebanese managing director of Afrab-Chem, a manufacturer of antibiotics and other drugs based in Lagos, ... shows me the plans for his new ₤2m factory set to open later this year in compliance with international quality manufacturing standards. "Two years ago, this would not have been possible," he says. The investment is a sign both of new demand within Nigeria for high-quality medicines, and a reduced threat that genuine regulated products will be undermined by fake alternatives.("Lethal Doses", FT Magazine, 7 April, 2007)

Cross Rivers, one of the 36 states of Nigeria, has a good state governor:

In the state capital, Calabar, the streets have no pot-holes. According to the state government, every village is connected to the national grid and everyone has access to clean water. ... Cross Rivers has no oil wealth. [State Governor Donald Duke] has achieved all this on a fraction of the money available to his neighbours. Instead, he has frozen official salaries, cleverly exploited existing resources and taken on debt. In partnership with private investors, he is also responsible for Tinapa, the largest retail and business development in west Africa. It contains several new giant studios to grab a large slice of the $200m-300m a year "Nollywood" film industry, which churns out, by some estimates, more films than either of its rivals in Los Angeles or Bombay.

You've never heard about Nollywood? The Economist already reported it last July:

IT ALL started by accident in 1992, when Kenneth Nnebue, a Nigerian trader based in Onitsha, was trying to sell a large stock of blank videocassettes he had bought from Taiwan. He decided that they would sell better with something recorded on them, so he shot a film called "Living in Bondage" about a man who achieves power and wealth by killing his wife in a ritualistic murder, only to repent later when she haunts him. The film sold more than 750,000 copies, and prompted legions of imitators. Nollywood, as Nigeria's film industry is known, now makes over 2,000 low-budget films a year, about two-thirds of them in English. ("Nollywood dreams", The Economist, 27th July 2006)

I'm rather impressed by Nigeria's potential both in the right and wrong directions.

DNB in Week 15 of 2007

Fabio's BBC Radio One show last night played several excellent stylish liquid funk tunes (artist name(s), title in quotes, and record label name in parentheses, followed by my comment):

High Contrast featuring Diane Charlemagne "If We Ever" (White) --- An old skool flava with High Contrast's upperclass sophistication.

Unknown artist "Piece Of Heaven" (Zinc Remix) (Bingo) --- This is exactly what drum & bass heads call a BAD TUNE. The bassline is really bad. It's so imcompatible with soulful, smooth female vocal that the result is a perfect match.

Calibre "Dirty Mind (VIP remix)" (Signature) --- minimalist summer cosiness.

Insight "No Love" (Progress) --- Listen to a MP3 sample provided by Juno Record.

Tidal feat Olivia "So Sexy" (White) --- A summer liquid funk featuring female vocal from a new drum & bass talent.

Total Science "Divided We Stand" (White) --- Another BAD bassline.

A.I. "Desperado" (Liquid V) --- A masterpiece. One of the tunes that established, back in 2004, the current popularity of liquid funk. Listen to a MP3 sample provided by Juno Record.

The Nature of Cell Science

Check out this music video clip by Dirk Pacholsky.

Robert Mugabe

The Economist article on the Zimbabwean President this week gives you a slightly different view on Mugabe: giving lessons to staff in the government, working punishing hours, frugal, teetotal, faithful to his wife...

Distillery District

The Distillery District is what Toronto can boast about to the rest of the world. The former booze factory buildings, dating back to the 19th century, are all preserved in outer appearance while their inside is occupied by trendy boutiques, design furniture shops, stylish cafes, spacious contemporary art galleries, and so forth. What impresses me is I can't tell what's inside until I open the door. Shop signs are all discreet, preserving the distillery atmosphere.


Shopping experiences in high streets are usually tiring because you are exposed to too many showy advertisements. Contemporary art galleries are often located in scruffy streets because rents are cheap in such areas. Here in the Distillery District you can enjoy shopping and art viewing in style. I like the whole concept behind this complex. A must see when you visit Toronto.

FT columnists

I terribly miss Tyler Brule's column on FT Weekend everytime I read the very first sentence of the column by Chrystia Freeland, who succeeded Brule as a columnist for the last page of FT Weekend at the beginning of this year.

This week, her column begins with the following sentence:

When Nancy Pelosi celebrated her swearing in as speaker of the House this year...

I actually stop reading before reaching the end of the first sentence of the column. Freeland, FT's US managing editor, keeps writing about America. That's already a cliche. Ordinary intellectuals love writing about USA because the country offers many mainstream polemical issues. Last week, Freeland began her column with:

Whenever the FT runs a picture of Hillary Clinton...

I then stop reading it. I don't care about Hillary Clinton. Intellectuals who love talking about USA always try to talk about some social or political issue triggered by some incident taking place in the State. It's so predictable. Absolute nothing beyond my expectation.

Instead, I have recently discovered an intriguing columnist on FT Magazine: Mrs Monneypenny. She's funny because her views often conflict with mainstream ones in Western society. This week, she writes: "I am not sure why we need lists of endangered species." She defends her position by referring to Darwin's survival-of-the-fittest theory. "If species are not fit enough to survive, then surely they should be allowed to become extinct?" It's so hilarious.

Her view on childbearing is also provocative to many in the West. Two weeks ago, she wrote: "I generally believe in sending [children] to boarding school as soon as possible after they start eating solid food." She refers to her three kids as Cost Center #1, Cost Center #2, and Cost Center #3. (I still don't fully understand what "cost center" really means. I know it's a term from accounting. Anybody willing to post a comment on this?)

Now you know my taste. This is why I tend to be quiet in front of people and keep blogging. :-)

How to Write a Press Release of Your Empirical Economics Research

Based on my analysis of a successful example of RES Media Briefings. (Her research was featured in many major UK newspapers.)

1. The first paragraph begins with a general sentence on the main finding of the research, followed by another sentence repeating the same finding but in a more specific way. The first paragraph must be self-contained: "if you took away all the paragraphs except the first, the press release should still make sense." (Romesh Vaitilingam, RES Media Consultant)

2. The second paragraph states additional important findings.

3. The third paragraph introduces a bit of details on the data used (e.g. what survey is used, who answers the survey, when the survey is conducted, how many respondents the survey obtain) and what you actually investigate. But do not describe these too precisely. Keep the paragraph short.

4. Then restate the main finding with details including the magnitude of the effect, for whom the effect is larger, etc.

5. Restate the additional important findings mentioned in the second paragraph. Introduce some less important (but still interesting) findings.

6. Mention some theoretical arguments explaining the results, if any.

7. Mention the methodological innovation (ie. identification strategy) in an accessible way.

8. Conclude with a couple of policy implications of your findings.

Also see Mankiw's writing guideline.

Libor Novacek

My second-to-last lunchtime concert at LSE is a performance by a Czech pianist Libor Novacek.

Mozart: Rondo in D, K485

For the first time ever in my life, I enjoy Mozart. Libor Novacek juxtapose various expressions within this piece of music, sometimes even at the same time by playing the piano in one way by one hand and in the other way by the other hand. Libor reveals his sutble, but generous and embracing touch on keys. I would get bored if somebody else plays this piece, as the music itself, as usual for Mozart, is rather simply structured. But with Libor's hands, it sounds totally different.

Mozart: Rondo in A minor, K511

The same comments as above. I have heard some of the melodies in this piece.

Janacek: In the Mists (1912)

An intersting and sleepy piece. Towards the end, I nearly fall asleep, not because I get bored. It is because I'm pleased with Libor's play.

Brahms: Sonata No.2 in F sharp minor Op.2

A theatric, Christian Lacroix-ish piece. Again I easily imagine myself being bored if someone else plays this piece. But Libor plays it in a pleasant way. Towards the end, my mind is truly refreshed.

------

Another thing that deserves a mention: the Steinway piano, recently bought by LSE, sounds superb. Part of the reason I enjoyed Matan Porat two weeks ago, I now notice, is also owing to this piano.

Pierre Victoire

Have dinner with Yumiko-san at Pierre Victoire, London's affordable French restaurant.

We have duck in red wine sauce and baby chicken in tomato and basil sauce. Both main dishes are excellent. Bread and olives are excellent as well.

However, service and comfortability is not excellent. Waiters keep kicking Yumiko-san's chair. It takes five minutes to have a bill after asking for it. The place is packed with tables. Our private zone is rather limited. Plus, customers are amazingly noisy here.

I guess this restaurant is affordable despite its excellent food, because it's not that comfortable. If you only need good French foods, it's highly recommended. If you look for a place to relax, never go to this place.

Flatmate Hunting

On the day I decided my future, my landlord asked me to move out in a month's time (see 20 February).

Talking to my landlord revealed that she wanted me (and my flatmate) to move out because she got fed up with finding a tenant for each single room in our house and wanted to rent our house as a whole. (One of our flatmates moved out recently.)

Then I suggested to her that I look for a new tenant to our house. She liked the idea. It also made sense to me because if you're on the supply side of the market, you don't need to travel around in London to view flats and houses or to make many calls to ask questions and arrange viewings. It would be less stressful and less harassing.

I was right. In five days, I managed to find a new flatmate! Plus, I learned a couple of things from this flatmate-hunting experience.

The biggest puzzle to me was why nearly all flat advertisements provide incomplete information on the specification of a room/house. Part of the reason is that the advertisement media limits the number of letters you can use in your ad. But this doesn't explain why all the advertisements at Gumtree.com (this is a nice website for Londoners though it's a bit chaotic) are also incomplete, because you can write your ad as long as possible on this website.

You want to minimize the number of viewers. You want to screen out those not really interested in your property. Otherwise your precious time will be consumed by those who won't take your room.

So in my ad at Gumtree.com, I put every piece of information on the room and the house, including photos of the room, the kitchen, and the garden.

I browsed a real estate agent's brochure to learn how to take a good picture of your rooms. A room picture can be quite tricky. It can make the room look smaller than it actually is. You can end up screening out those who are otherwise interested. I noticed one basic rule among the room pictures on the brochure: take a picture at the corner of a room and make sure that the opposite corner of the room comes at the one-third of the length of the photograph. This makes the room look spacious in a photograph (Lesson 1). See my learning outcomes: a double room and a single room.

On the Gumtree.com ad, I didn't put my phone number. One reason is to avoid receiving calls after you found a flatmate. I also wanted to control the whole process rather than being disturbed every time you get a call. Initially, my landlord kindly created an ad on the gumtree.com with my mobile number on it. Literally a few minutes later, I started receiving calls and texts including unsolicited sales pitches. I hurriedly deleted the ad once. I also didn't want to be distracted by callers who just wanted to ask questions on the room.

Instead I put an email address which is NOT my usual address. I created a Hotmail account for this purpose. This not only prevents spammers from picking up your address but also allows you to shelter your private messages from flatmate-hunting messages.

I learned that Hotmail is quite annoying (Lesson 2). I usually use Gmail (called Google Mail in UK due to the trademark issue). Gmail automatically refreshes the screen when a new message arrives. Hotmail doesn't. You need to click "Inbox" many times. Gmail cleverly screens out spams. Hotmail very often misclassifies junk mails. Finally, Gmail does not have conspicuous advertisements on the screen. Hotmail does.

In addition to the ad at Gumtree.com, I also created an original webpage for the room advertisement by using Blogger. Then selectively email those who have placed an ad at the "Room Wanted" section of Gumtree.com by mentioning the address of this webpage.

Whenever I received a message to my Hotmail account, I called up the sender to arrange a viewing. On Sunday afternoon, I scheduled five viewings. The first viewer, Caroline, didn't come on time because she got our house number wrong. She didn't look impressed by our house after viewing, telling me she would call me after she visited other places as well. The second viewer, Faisal, didn't come one hour after the scheduled time. Neither did Alex, the third viewer. I wanted to make sure if I needed to wait for them. So I called Faisal. He sounded like he overslept. We rescheduled the viewing in the evening. I then called Alex. She got lost. Alex finally came 30 minutes later. Her reaction while viewing the house was Meditteranean: "Fantastic!" But she wasn't Meditteranean when I said no to her question of whether we have the TV. She said she would call me after viewing another flat.

I learned one thing from Alex. She liked the high ceiling of the room. Which I didn't realize when I wrote an ad. Now the biggest puzzle was solved. The reason why flat advertisements tend to be incomplete is that advertisers have incomplete information on what flat-hunters are looking for (Lesson 3). People have different preferences. Unless you are an experienced flat advertiser, you certainly fail to specify important aspects of your room/house.

On Sunday evening, Faisal was supposed to come, but he texted me saying, "Sorry, I can't come. Bye." Another viewer, Eva, never came and never called or texted me. The final viewer of the day, Andrew, didn't come, either. One hour after the scheduled time, he texted me to ask if there is a living room in our house, without a single word of "Sorry" or whatsoever. I didn't reply to him as he wouldn't be a good flatmate.

Some people in London are quite nasty (Lesson 4). Well, I already knew this anyway.

On Monday morning, Caroline texted me, saying she decided to take another place. She's such a nice person. Alex, on the other hand, never contacted me again.

On Monday evening, I had two viewers. Nordine, the first viewer, said he would like to take the room, immediately after he finished viewing the house. Brett, the second viewer, said he was very interested but wanted to see another place as well before his decision. He said he would call me by lunchtime the following day.

Today, Brett didn't call me by lunchtime. I called him to learn that he was waiting for a call from another place he visited. Which suggested that he didn't like our place the most. Nordine becomes our new flatmate.

(In case you wonder, although the ad says there are two rooms available, my landlord says she's happy with just one new tenant. I just wanted to increase the probability of finding flatmates by attracting those looking for a room with a friend of theirs.)

Mankiw's Advice for New Junior Faculty

I learn that Greg Mankiw, probably the most popular economist blogger, advises new assistant professors NOT to start a blog:

Avoid activities that will distract you from research. Whatever you do, do not start a blog. That will only establish your lack of seriousness as a scholar. ("Advice For New Junior Faculty," Feb 24, 2007)

What if a new assistant professor has already started a blog?



I know, I know this is a stupid question.

So the bottom line is ...




Econoclasm's days are numbered (as my days in London are).

Education in Poor Countries

Two new pieces of development economics research on what improves education in poor countries were presented at LSE recently.

Andrabi, Das, and Khwaja (2007) focus on the supply side of education, and find that, in Pakistani districts, private schools are more likely to be set up if public secondary schools are already there. They argue that this is because public secondary schools increase the number of educated women who can become teachers. It suggests the importance of the supply of teachers to expand access to school.

Bjorkman (2007), on the other hand, looks at the demand side. She finds that gender gap in primary school enrolment in rural areas of Uganda shrinks when it rains more than usual (I think Figure 9 in the paper is a nice presentation of this finding). Ugandan farmers grow banana or coffee, both of which are rain-fed. Her finding indicates that poverty is the main driver of gender gap in school attendance, often found in developing countries.

MUSIC@LSE Lunchtime Concert Series: Matan Porat

Now I have time to attend LSE's lunchtime concert series. This week's guest is Matan Porat, a pianist.

Bach: Partita No.1 in Bb Major

Boring. I keep thinking something else. Porat's staccato style of playing the piano doesn't sound fit for this piece of music.

Schumann: Davidsbundlertanze Op.6

Porak shows incredible subtlety during the quite part of this piece. The same motif repeats towards the end, and the way he moves on from there to the last part of extravaganza with a sensitive coda firmly grips my attention.

Bartok: "Out of Door" Suite (1926)

This is an amazing piece of contemporary music. It must have influenced progressive rock musicians in the 1970s. The piece begins with unusually intensive use of bass keys, which is a nice logical progression from the end of the previous piece played.

Porak again shows his incredible subtlety in the quiet part of the piece, but his more aggresive side gets along very well with Bartok, too. I learn that this pianist is amazing with this sort of music in which dynamism and stasis create a stark contrast.

Looking for a flat

My job search is over today. I thought now I could get relieved from all the stress.

No, I can't.

This morning a letter from my landlord arrives, asking me to move out in a month's time. I only need to stay in London for six months more (until the end of August). I will negotiate with my landlord, but chances are slim.

So I'm still too busy to update this blog. If you live in London and have a bedroom available or know someone looking for a tenant/flatmate, please let me know. This is an absolute headache as I'm rather picky: I need broadband, a rice cooker, a washing machine and a dryer, a spacious kitchen, a supermarket nearby with decent whole milk on sale, less than 40 minutes from LSE, and a nightbus from central London (to enjoy the last six months in London). Given my experience of student flat hunting a few years ago, this is a tall order. The current place has these all except for decent milk nearby.

You may want to know what my new job is. No I won't tell you. I will start a retrospective job-search blog after I move, without telling you the final outcome. So you will experience the whole uncertainty that I faced by reading it. Isn't this a good idea?

Millie's Cookies

A mental note. DO NOT BUY COFFEE AT MILLIE'S COOKIES. Their coffee is horrible. And I suffer from it twice in two weeks, first at Victoria Station and this time at Euston Station. Their coffee makes your journey away from London miserable. Beware of it.

Takacs Quartet

This is a very hilarious article written by the first violinist of the Takacs Quartet on how the Quartet copes with a member change, does rehearsing, travels by air, and prepares for a concert.

LSE Catering Service Survey

LSE's Catering Services emailed students to ask for completing online surveys on LSE catering and eating habits.

The prize for cooperation is ...

"a free meal in The Garrick or Brunch Bowl"

I don't need that! (The Garrick and Brunch Bowl are the names of LSE student canteens.)

As I'm grumpy a lot about LSE's catering outlets (so I almost never use them in favour of other school canteens near the campus), I'm willing to participate in this survey anyway, expecting that I'm allowed to give a comment on LSE catering services in sentences.

But the survey only asks multiple choice questions, not allowing the respondent to provide any opinions freely.

I wanted to say, "Why does a bowl of salad with dressing cost nearly 2 pounds?" or "LSE canteens may be above the average in UK universities, but they are certainly below the average by non-UK standards."

So LSE Catering Services do not seriously take into consideration the views from students. No hope for much improvement in the future.

Well, it doesn't matter to me as I leave LSE this autumn. But I'm sorry for LSE students to continue suffering from LSE canteens.